The hardest riders there had already crossed from the road into the country, and were going well to the hounds, ignorant, some of them, of the brook before them, and others unheeding.

Foremost among these was Burgo Fitzgerald,--Burgo Fitzgerald, whom no man had ever known to crane at a fence, or to hug a road, or to spare his own neck or his horse's.
And yet poor Burgo seldom finished well,--coming to repeated grief in this matter of his hunting, as he did so constantly in other matters of his life.
But almost neck and neck with Burgo was Pollock, the sporting literary gentleman.

Pollock had but two horses to his stud, and was never known to give much money for them;--and he weighed without his boots, fifteen stones! No one ever knew how Pollock did it;--more especially as all the world declared that he was as ignorant of hunting as any tailor.

He could ride, or when he couldn't ride he could tumble,--men said that of him,--and he would ride as long as the beast under him could go.

But few knew the sad misfortunes which poor Pollock sometimes encountered;--the muddy ditches in which he was left; the despair with which he would stand by his unfortunate horse when the poor brute could no longer move across some deep-ploughed field; the miles that he would walk at night beside a tired animal, as he made his way slowly back to Roebury! Then came Tom the huntsman, with Calder Jones close to him, and Grindley intent on winning his sovereign.