292 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



rather cow-hocked, aud a very handy and quick 

 jumper of every description of fence. There used to 

 be a sort of magic sympathy between the two. Mr. 

 Smith, who always seemed to teach his horses to 

 throw themselves sideways over their fences, would 

 trot along, with the reins carelessly held in his left 

 hand, and waving with his right to the hounds at a 

 cast, and Jack would take him over fence after fence, 

 as they came, such as would have stopped nine-tenths 

 of a field in a run, while he never once seemed to 

 take his eye off the hounds. He was one of the most 

 careless of roadsters, and though generally so gentle 

 that a child could have ridden him, he was at odd 

 times, if he was at all ruffled, perfectly ungovernable. 

 It is on record that just as the fox broke away from 

 Burbidge Wood, he took the bit in his teeth, and 

 dashed off for a couple of miles in exactly the oppo- 

 site direction, before his owner could get a pull at 

 him. This he did with quite as much apparent gusto 

 as the late Mr. Musters, who delighted, whenever he 

 did not like the " thrusting-scoundreP look of his 

 field, to blow his hounds out of cover, and to go as 

 straight as a crow for another, some five miles off; 

 thus not only shaking off three-fourths of his field 

 for the day, but deluding several of the rest into a be- 

 lief that they had a very fast thing. On one occasion, 

 in the Oxton Warren country, according to Action* 

 he craftily ran five miles after a fox's head, which 

 his second whip, according to orders, had tied to his 

 thong, and finally thrust down a strong head of earths, 

 over which a sneak of a gamekeeper presided. After 

 exacting a solemn promise that the latter would not 

 dig him out, Mr. Musters leturned stealthily from 

 Colwick at dark, and found him busy at it with three 

 assistants, and trying "to comb his jacket," as he plea- 

 santly remarked, at intervals, with a long rose brier ! 



* Sporting Review, February, 1850. 



