THE EIGHTH DUKE 



and both went home. Mr. John Bayly was with 

 me, young Mr. Barker with Lord Fitzhardinge." 



Once again the diary records the loss of a beaten 

 fox by untimely halloaing. 



A peculiarly exasperating though not singular 

 instance of this was when the Duke found himself 

 standing in a ride watching a fairly hunted and well- 

 beaten fox crawling about, while his hounds were 

 being halloaed away to a fresh one on the far side 

 of the wood. 



If, as we have seen, the Duke was a keen ob- 

 server of the working of hounds, he was not less 

 observant of the riding of his field. Meeting at 

 Yate Common in the famous Sudbury Vale, " a 

 most brilliant gallop. Excepting in stone wall 

 country, I never saw hounds run faster. Mr, John 

 Bayly, Captain Paynter and Mr. Donovan, both of 

 the King's Dragoon Guards, and Mr. Bernard and 

 Colonel Nigel Kingscote went best." 



They had some good sport in December, but after 

 a day made difficult by a too eager field, the diary 

 for December 19th concludes a paragraph with the 

 heartfelt exclamation, " Oh that the field would 

 stand still ! ! ! " But that is, of course, what no 

 field, even the most sportsmanlike, will do, especially 

 when the master is hunting the hounds himself. 

 Later in the same season the Duke had to take 

 hounds home. The increasing crowd that came out 

 at this time no doubt made the master think of 

 having a professional huntsman. 



195 M 



