16 HUNTING REMINISCENCES 



hardly known, so that it became a duty as well as a 

 pleasure for him to handle the pen every evening 

 after hunting, to inform his master the Duke of 

 Rutland. To this fact the diaries owe their origin ; 

 literally all through his career it was with him " no 

 day without a line," and the twenty-six volumes 

 form a unique and unbroken record of hounds and 

 those who played a prominent part in the world of 

 sport. Memory is but a treacherous jade, but with 

 facts and figures set down at the moment it is 

 possible to conjure up the scenes of the past, and 

 pass them before the mind in stately sequence, 

 recalling the sayings and doings of two and three 

 generations of sportsmen. Our own part has been 

 the result of half -hours snatched with pen and 

 pencil in the mid-current of stirring events, during 

 ten seasons' sport with the Belvoir hounds and 

 Frank Gillard. In this way we have been able 

 to follow the line in memory by familiar scenes, 

 country, and fences, filling in the background to 

 his story. 



To carry the horn for the Belvoir has always 

 been considered the topmost rung in the ladder of 

 fame by all the professional talent, and we trust it 

 will be so to the end of the chapter. Therefore 

 it was a befitting start for Frank to commence his 

 narrative with an allusion to his hunting-horn. 



" The first time I handled the horn for the Sixth 

 Duke of Rutland's hounds I was a second whipper- 

 in, in the year 1860. It was seven o'clock, and so 

 dark in that big covert, Kirby Wood, that the Duke 

 struck a light to see the time. The only other horse- 



