20 HUNTING REMINISCENCES 



night, your horse has been suppered up and the 

 stablemen have gone home with the key. Come 

 and shoot some rats with me ! ' However, I was 

 more than content to look on whilst he handled the 

 gun, and keeping my eyes open, I saw a chopper 

 lying in the wood-shed and picked it up. ' What 

 are you going to do with that ? ' he asked. ' Unlock 

 the stable-door,' I replied. It had the desired effect, 

 I got my horse without any further trouble ; but he 

 dearly loved a joke, and would turn rats down in a 

 room when the ladies were about, wearing those big 

 hoop crinolines. Another fine old Lincolnshire 

 sportsman was Sir Thomas Whichcote of Aswarby 

 Park. It may safely be said that for half a 

 century he was the most prominent figure with the 

 Belvoir hounds, and in their palmy days too ! He 

 rode one of the finest studs of hunters ever seen 

 in the country, and in his younger days was an 

 undefeated horseman. Always a hard, zealous 

 rider, the Melton division delighted to journey 

 to such fixtures as Weaver's Lodge to take Sir 

 Thomas on over his own country, and it was no 

 unusual sight to see two and three four-in-hands 

 come to the meet full of riding talent. Half Sir 

 Thomas's stud were stabled at Grantham, and he 

 would drive any distance with a fast trotting horse 

 to hunt on the Leicestershire side, returning to 

 Aswarby again that night. After the death of his 

 first wife, which happened in the fifties from the 

 result of a carriage accident, Sir Thomas never again 

 hunted in scarlet. He belonged to the good old 

 school, and was regarded as one of the fathers of the 



