156 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER 



out tliat dasli that was requisite with an unbroken 

 animal. 



' " Try him once more," continued the Marquis. 



' Again he refused, and the rider seemed as much 

 scared as the steed. 



' " There, jump off," said the noble owner. " I 

 never ask a man to do what I would not do myself." 



' In a second he was in the saddle. He paused 

 not to have the stirrups lengthened, but patting the 

 horse on the neck, he took him back some twenty 

 yards, and went at the fence in good earnest, clearing 

 it in sportsman-like style. 



' '^ Wait where you are," he exclaimed to the 

 groom ; then turning the animal short round, again 

 charged the fence, and, to adopt a Meltonian phrase, 

 negotiated it in a first-rate style.' 



The Marquis eventually lost his life through a 

 fall from his horse. Another hunting hero who 

 flourished about the same period as Lord Water ford 

 was the hero of the following anecdote : 



' Fenton Scott of Woodhall was a remarkable 

 man early in the present century — six feet four 

 inches, very thin, very strong, very handsome, but 

 had a club-foot, from an injury when a child. He 

 began life in a dragoon regiment, and was not to be 

 beaten over a country. Once, travelling down from 

 London by the mail, whilst eating his breakfast at 

 Grantham, he asked the waiter if the Belvoir hounds 

 met near, and if he could hire a horse in the 



