352 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



Sir Gilbert he was frightfully angry; he called to 

 him, "You daren't come sir ! daren't you? You on 

 a 400-guinea horse, and you can't follow little Dick, 

 a lad I'll discharge you, if you don't;" and, my 

 word, he did discharge him too. We ran from Tilton 

 Wood and killed under Billesdon Coplow. I had 

 pretty nearly all the fun to myself after that fence. 

 Then we had that " Prince of Wales' s day :" he was 

 nowhere, bless you ; they gave him the brush though, 

 just to please him. We found at Armley Wood, 

 then through Empingham, Cottesmore Wood, 

 straight through Exton Park, across the North 

 Road by Horn Lane toll bar, through Ardwick Wood, 

 where the balloon from Nottingham fell, The Lings, 

 Towthorpe Oaks, Stamford Field-side, Royal Bel- 

 thorpe, Rasen Gretford ; then we came to Langtoft 

 and Deeping let me see and Tallerton, and then 

 by Uppington Wood, and killed at Essendine Park 

 that's it. Six horses died in the field ; there they 

 laid heels up'ards. Mr. Charles Manners and Sir 

 Gilbert were up first. There must have been twenty- 

 two miles or more. The crow would have made 

 sixteen or seventeen of it. The late Lord Lonsdale 

 was out, and Lindow, and Germaine, and Vanneck. 

 I would be about twenty-eight then, and somewhere 

 about ten stone. Me and Sir Gilbert, we went on 

 till he gave up hounds ; that would be 1809; deary 

 me ! it's getting on for fifty years : how time does 

 go ! His horses, they were aU sold at Tattersall's ; 

 thirty on 'em made about J5,000. Then, you see, I 

 went into a farm at Lufienham for eight years. I had 

 married before I was twenty; children, indeed ! I have 

 had orie-and-twenty of 'em, all alive, born and chris- 

 tened ; the twentieth's alive now, and little Freddy 

 he's the nineteenth of 'em. This small-pox took me 

 when I was close on sixty; it would be just before I 

 jumped into that hole. Well, I'll tell you about that 

 after. I kept my hunter when I was a farmer. I had a 



