The scene that met Mr. Sawyer’s eyes was amusing, though alarming. Four _imperial crowners_ at one and the same instant—four loose horses galloping wildly away—four red-coats rising simultaneously from Mother Earth—eight top-booted legs shuffling in ludicrous haste after the departing steeds. Had our friend been Briareus himself, he could not have caught _all_ their horses. He was a man, however, who seldom lost an opportunity, and was not likely to miss such a chance as the present. Selecting Boadicea, he galloped after her, and succeeded in pinning her against a pound: notwithstanding that the mare lashed out at him more than once, he brought her back in triumph to her panting owner. Meanwhile, the four dismounted sportsmen condoled breathlessly with each other, as they laboured up the grassy slope. “I’m but a poor hand at _this_ game,” observed Struggles, who did not fancy carrying his own weight across country. “I wish I’d gone faster at it,” said Savage, who had been grinding his teeth and hardening his heart the whole way up the field. “My chestnut mare would have jumped it!” exclaimed Major Brush, inwardly registering a vow to abstain from “oxers” for the future; whilst the Honourable, though he held his tongue, was thinking what a capital horse that was of Sawyer’s, and dismally reflecting that if Boadicea hadn’t kicked at him when he was down, he never would have been such a tailor as to let her go. “Catch hold!” said Mr. Sawyer, throwing the mare’s reins to her owner, whose gratitude he thereby earned for the rest of his life. “There’s no hurry,” he added, as the Honourable, in a coat plastered with mud and a hat stove in, dived wildly at his stirrup; “they’ve over-run it a mile back, and checked in the next field.” The latter part of the sentence was true enough. His quick eye had shown him the pack at fault, as he secured Boadicea in the corner where the pound stood; the former was a bit of what theatrical people call “gag.” It was as much as to say, “Whilst you fellows are hustling and spurting, and tumbling about, I am so well mounted that I can observe matters as coolly as if I was hunting in a balloon.” It was not without its effect on his listener. As they rode through the hand-gate together into the enclosure where the hounds were at fault, the Honourable Crasher no longer scanned Marathon with the eye of a purchaser. He looked on the horse now as his own property. He was determined to have him.