82 THE HORSE 



" So I hear you cut down all the Blazers yesterday ! " I at 

 once replied, "Oh no, I didn't." "Oh yes, but you did 

 though," he answered, as he turned his horse away ; and 

 then one of my brother-oflScers came up, the Hon. Algernon 

 Grosvenor, and exclaimed, " I would gladly give a thousand 

 pounds to do what you did yesterday with the Blazers." 

 But even yet I was not convinced, and thought they 

 intended kindly, but were mistaken in what they had 

 heard about the run. It was not indeed till I stayed with 

 my old friend, Mr. Studholme, in 1903, just thirty-one 

 years afterwards, whom I had not seen for twenty-two 

 years, that I at last grasped the full significance of their 

 remarks. When chatting over the old times, all of a 

 sudden he remarked, " Do you remember the day when 

 you cut down the Blazers on Kettleholder ? What a horse 

 he must have been! " And then I learned that his feat was 

 still remembered, and had long been a local tradition. A 

 further tribute to the memory of that gallant horse was 

 paid only two years ago from a most unexpected quarter. 

 Correspondence in connection with the letting of a grouse 

 moor renewed a friendship begun on that very day, the 

 outcome of that exhilarating run. The late Johnny Eyre, 

 of Eyrecourt Castle, as popular and daring a comrade as 

 ever lived, was one of the field, and when the hounds 

 moved on to draw the Eyrecourt coverts, he invited me to 

 ride up to the Castle to snatch a hasty lunch, and introduced 

 me to his sister, Miss Alice Eyre, the acknowledged belle 

 of Galway, a favourite partner at balls of our late lamented 

 King, then Prince of Wales. Our paths in life had lain in 

 very different directions since those days, but the grouse 

 moor led to a happy renewal of our old friendship, and in 

 one of the first letters was this sentence : "Do you re- 

 member that famous run, when you were quartered at Birr? 

 Poor Johnny used to rave about it, and was never tired 

 of talking about it." Kettleholder, it may be remarked, 

 remained an inmate of my stable for seven years, and 

 performed many a gallant deed, well worthy of his high 

 lineage. 



It has been shown what a high-class thoroughbred horse 



