CUMBERLAND: It was the first of the classic trials of the season. Shafts of sunlight fell across rock, scree, timber, and fern over which companies of hounds were driving the scent of aniseed and paraffin. The light colours among the scores of strivers scudding the trods were like gulls hunting the bracken clock fly. Always ahead and alone was one so dark as to justify his name of Black Diamond. He was racing to register his 130th triumph. For all his elderliness – he is a five-year-old – he was showing his fellows how knowledge added to resolution, speed, and stamina can prevail. Could he finish successfully a task he had begun well?
The crowning test was the traverse of two meadows of 500 yards with two stone walls to climb. The hay grass was high. Only head and tail of hound could be seen as his lobbing body waved apart the seeding crop. A challenger was near enough to quicken ambition and to make a further call on heart and lung, but the dark hound did not falter in his stride. Catlike he climbed the walls, topped them, achieved a quick take-off, and flashed to the tape. He was the greatest of all the conquerors of the day.
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