BREEDING OF HUNTERS. 291 



glers, and pointed away towards Whissendine with a 

 fresh fox ; and it was the wondrous turn of speed he 

 showed when Mr. Osbaldeston raced to stop them, as 

 they were running a hare, which jumped up right in 

 their line, when they had run about two miles, that 

 so astonished every one who saw it. The run this day 

 was still hardly so fast as that from Thorpe Trussels 

 to Rolleston, in Mr. Greene's mastership, which was 

 done without a semblance of a check in fifty minutes, 

 the hounds fairly racing away from the field. The 

 Quorn have seldom had as fast a thing, except when 

 they ran Burgess's black-and-white terrier three miles 

 without a check, and finally earthed it under some of 

 the large lumps in its owner's coal-hole. "Have you 

 seen the fox?" roared the puzzled huntsman to a 

 ploughman on the line; and "Noe, but I seed a little 

 bit of a hound, a hundred yards ahead, leading 'em 

 beautiful/' was the still more puzzling reply. Even 

 Mr. Meynell would quite have condoned such an of- 

 fence; as, when a gentleman once complained to him 

 that he had been out on a very wild-scenting day, 

 and that the hounds " had commenced with a fox, 

 had a turn at a hare, and wound up with a polecat/ 7 

 he replied, very much to his friend's surprise, that he 

 "wouldn't give a fig for hounds who wouldn't run 

 riot on such a day." The words were scarcely out 

 of the great maestro's mouth, and he had resumed 

 his conversation, when a hare jumped up before his 

 own hounds, which were reputed the steadiest in the 



world, and away they went. fe Lucky for me, f 



I answered that man as I did," were his first words 

 as he returned with the rioters, after a hard two, 

 miles' gallop. 



Assheton was christened after his owner's distin- 

 guished predecessor at Quorn, whose name will always 

 be associated with his gallantest of chesnuts, Jack-a 

 Lantern. Jack was a wonderfully compact horse, of 

 moderate substance, not much over fifteen and a-half, 



