Life at Limber 



halcyon days ! Both the capacious old stables at Limber House 

 and Maunsell's newly erected racing stables in the village were 

 filled to overflowing. Our friends' horses, too, we often stabled, 

 for we should have considered it as inhospitable not to have 

 provided the best of everything for their hunters. 



At that time we had Disturbance, Reugny, Furley, Rhys- 

 worth, and many other celebrated animals, which with Maun- 

 sell's own steeplechasers, and those he had in training for his 

 friends filled our stables in the village. 



Open stable — open house — was the order of the day with 

 us at Limber ; our greatest pleasure from the eagerly awaited 

 cub- hunting to the last day of the hunting season — all the year 

 round, in fact. What a specially happy time it was for us all 

 when cub-hunting began in September, and it was a case of 

 early tea or milk at 4.30 a.m. Then away to the stables to 

 mount and off to join the hounds as the day was breaking — 

 generally to the grand old Brocklesby woods, abounding with 

 cubs, and where we could gallop along for miles on the broad 

 grassy rides, watching hounds as they routed out the cubs and 

 chased them this way and that, our horses crushing the early 

 morning dew off the long grass, leaving dark tracks in their wake 

 as we galloped along. There is, moreover, always a good off- 

 chance during cub-hunting — which distinctly increases its excite- 

 ment — of hounds lighting upon a fine old dog fox or a vixen, 

 who will give them and their followers as fine a run as any in 

 the real hunting season, while even a prodigiously robust and 

 valiant cub may, taking time by the forelock, yield up his 

 young life after a noble struggle in the open. 



In cub-hunting, too, there is great pleasure to true lovers 

 of sport, like Maunsell, in watching the puppies beginning their 

 training by a judicious mingling with their elders. Full of 

 joyous young ardour and excitement, they lend themselves to 



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