BAILEYS FIRST SEASON. 171 



calf like that of a dustman. Crawley's calves — if he ever 

 had any — had loni^ enough ago gone to grass, and so thin 

 were his legs that it used to be said of him that, if his tops 

 had been made to fit his legs properly, he would never have 

 got his feet into them ! 



Lord Rookwood, in his most valuable contribution to 

 this work, says of the new huntsman : — "A more excellent 

 choice 1 never made, for, in his first season even, without a 

 knowledge of the countr\', he showed unmistakable siens 

 of what a first-rate huntsman he was to become. Cool and 

 quiet in the field, a capital horseman, and civility itself, he 

 made up his mind at once when hounds were at fault, and 

 was seldom wrong ; and even in that first year of our effort 

 to hunt the country, notwithstanding a most inclement 

 season, when hounds ijot little cub-huntino- from the late 

 harvest, and were stopped by frost for five weeks in 1879, 

 and nearly three weeks in 1880, he showed some excellent 

 sport. This proved one of the shortest seasons I re- 

 member, from the causes 1 have mentioned ; but we had 

 only one blank, and there were a tew really red-letter days, 

 such as January 15th, 1880, after a morning's run of one 



hour trom Down Hall yorse to a kill in a cottage in Hat- 

 to o 



field town, when we had a very fast fifty-three minutes 

 Ironi our avenue to Lord s W ood, in the afternoon, which I 



