154 HUNTING REMINISCENCES 



Miss Coates, who went very fast at her fences with 

 her head in the air. This mare started life in 

 Yorkshire leading gallops at a training stable, 

 was hunted, steeplechased, won jumping prizes at 

 shows, carried the ladies seven seasons, went well 

 in harness, bred four foals, never saved herself 

 at any time, always being keen and light-hearted 

 but lived to be thirty. 



The October gales this year did much damage 

 to fine timber, whose branches were full of leaf, 

 offering immense resistance to the wind. In one 

 of these hurricanes Gillard set out for Aswarby 

 Park, twenty miles distant, which he reached at 

 eight o'clock. Sir Thomas Whichcote was one of 

 a small field who braved the storm, but after an 

 hour of it, Gillard said, "By Jove, Sir Thomas, I 

 cannot stand this place any longer, the trees in 

 covert are flying about like feathers ! " At that 

 moment a huge branch crashed down close to his 

 horse, and up-wind he started for kennels, twenty 

 miles away. All over the country trees were 

 falling about, and the hound van, as it left 

 Grantham, was stopped by masses of debris across 

 the road. Unfortunately, on the last morning of 

 cub-hunting, Sir Thomas Whichcote, who was 

 crippled from gout and many accidents by flood 

 and field, fell heavily from his pony through a 

 stirrup-leather giving way. Like the late Duke 

 of Rutland, this fine old sportsman, on every 

 occasion he fell, always excused his horse. 



When Sir Thomas was seeking a hack to take 

 the place of a hunter, Gillard sent him a pony to 



