No horse will face them, preferring a jump at the cost of any exertion, to the risk of a stab from the cruel points.

The least touch of this green bayonet draws blood, and a fall _into_ a Spaniard is a thing to be remembered all one's life.

Interspersed with the Spaniards are generally clumps of "wild Irishman," a straggling sturdy bramble, ready to receive and scratch you well if you attempt to avoid the Spaniard's weapons.
Especially detrimental to riding habits are wild Irishmen; and there are fragments of mine, of all sorts of materials and colours, fluttering now on their thorny branches in out-of-the-way places on our run.

It is not surprising, therefore, that we guarded our legs as well as we could against these foes to flesh and blood.
"We are rather early," said the gentlemen, as I appeared, ready and eager to start; "but perhaps it is all the better to enable you to see the track." They each flung an empty sack over their shoulders, felt in their pockets to ascertain whether the matches, hooks, boxes of bait, etc., were all there, and then we set forth.
At first it appeared as if we had stepped from the brightness of the drawing-room into utter and pitchy blackness; but after we had groped for a few steps down the familiar garden path, our eyes became accustomed to the subdued light of the soft summer night.

Although heavy banks of cloud,--the general precursors of wind,--were moving slowly between us and the heavens, the stars shone down through their rifts, and on the western horizon a faint yellowish tinge told us that daylight was in no hurry to leave our quiet valley.