The party that we had overtaken now came up, and, after sending on most of the escort so as not to detain His Majesty's mails, we proceeded to try all the dodges known to us of catching a refractory pony. I suppose, if we had been cowboys trained to use the lasso, we should have had no trouble. As it was, we experienced much. A feeding-bag full of grain held out coaxingly at arm's length made the pony laugh. I tried him with a bit of commissariat biscuit, at which--as is often the way of people--he snorted. I tried stalking him from behind my own pony, and got fairly near him, only to find his two heels perilously near our two heads. We laid a grand snare, in the shape of two mule loading ropes joined together, and stretched across a tempting patch of the green-pea field, where not a trace of the rope could be seen, while the men at each end of the rope lounged peacefully and innocently with reassuring looks upon their faces which we thought would not prevent the pony being quietly urged into the space between them. This ruse nearly succeeded. The pony stalked along, grazing as he went, till his feet were against the rope, at which the men holding it, after raising it a little, tried to run to the rear and so encircle the pony. But before they had gone far he was kicking and tugging with his chest against the rope, and in a moment had wrenched it out of the hands of one of the men, and the next minute, after a series of derisive buckjumps, was in the next field munching young wheat.