Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon

My successful scramble across the Potford Vale obliterated all the dreariness and disappointment of my days with the Dumborough. My faith in foxhunting had been reinforced in the nick of time, and I joggled home feeling a hero. Highly strung old Harkaway seemed to share my elation. His constitution was equal to a fast hunt, but he needed to be taken home early in the afternoon. The long dragging days in the Dumborough woodlands wore him out. Even now he had a dozen miles to go to his stable, but they seemed short ones to me for I was thinking all the way how pleased Dixon would be. For the first time in my career as an independent sportsman I had a big story to tell him.

In the light of my mature experience I should say that I had very little to tell Dixon, unless I had told him the truth. The truth (which I couldn't have admitted even to my inmost self) was that my performance had consisted not so much in riding to hounds as in acting as a hindrance to Harkaway's freedom of movement while he followed Mr. Gaffikin's mare over several miles of closely fenced country -- almost pulling my arms out of their sockets in the process. Had I told the truth I'd have said that during that gallop I was flustered, uncomfortable, and out of breath; that at every fence we jumped I was all over the saddle; and that, for all I had known, there might have been no hounds at all, since they were always a couple of fields ahead of us, and we were, most of us, merely following the Master, who already knew exactly which way they would go.