The Foxhound. 67 



tail, of which the old lord, regardless alike of the tooth of time or the 

 increase of the gods, decreed, ' We will fall our Brocklesby oaks 

 every hundred years and our ashes every fifty.' The Brocklesby horn 

 also descended from father to son for several generations, and old Will 

 Smith's last command to his son and successor was, ' Stick to Banter.' 



" Tom Sebright was first entered to the chase by running after his 

 father's primitive pack in the New Forest, where they would hunt any- 

 thing from a deer to a dragon fly. He was then caught up and schooled 

 by Mr. Musters ; thence he passed to Sir Mark Sykes for three 

 seasons, when he was transferred to Mr. Osbaldeston as whip, with this 

 recommendation, ' He kills all our horses.' In 1822 he entered upon 

 his forty years' service under Earl Fitzwilliam, and hunted the Milton 

 hounds up to his death in 1862, having spent well-nigh half a century 

 in breeding and hunting hounds. He had his favourite Furriers and 

 Feudals ; but the cheery face of the veteran never beamed more radiantly 

 than when he dilated on the Quorn Tarquin of his whipper-in days. 

 ' There never was such another hound as Trimbush ' was Will Danby's 

 rooted belief, and he had had a lifetime of experience in the Baby, 

 Holderness, Ainsty, and Harworth saddles. No day was too long and 

 no seduction powerful enough for this unpledged disciple of Father 

 Matthew, always excepting the cura9oa substitute in the coffee cup 

 when the Holderness meet was under the old Scorbro' elms ; but he took 

 much more kindly to this little counterfeit than any allusion to his fast 

 fifteen minutes with the Neswick badger, which he pulled down on 

 Tibthorpe Wold. The tastes of Danby's henchman, Ned Oxtoby, also 

 ran in the temperance groove ; and he proved that his mother was no 

 false prophetess when she predicted that ' he was born to be a hunts- 

 man,' as the Holderness killed their fox under her cottage window at 

 Long Biston in the same hour in which he first saw light, and he himself 

 was strong in the faith that his mission in life was foxhunting. When 

 the leading hounds once went headlong after their fox over the Speeton 

 Cliff he begged a farmer to fetch a cart rope and lower him over the 

 precipice, and he was drawn up first with Lavender in his arms, and then 

 made a second descent for Petticoat, both of which, but for this gallant 

 rope adventure, must have been left to perish among the seagulls and 

 kittiwakes. 



"Will Goodall's lease of life was as brief as his hunting career was 



r2 



