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may be pleasant enough for cub-hunting, but to have 

 to bucket your horse almost to a standstill in the deep 

 rides, and then sit down to a stern chase over the ridge 

 and furrow and well-nigh impracticable fences of the 

 adjoining pasturage, is not felicity to every mind. 

 There is only one man who never is left behind, and 

 afterwards cannot be shaken off, and that is Mr. Tailby 

 himself. He appears to get away by a kind of instinct, 

 and constant practice and most determined resolution 

 enable him to make light of difficulties that choke off 

 men twenty years his junior. It certainly is a genuine 

 drawback to some of his best country, that the hardest 

 field have to tail when hounds cross it, for if negotiable 

 at all, it is only so in one or perhaps two places ; and 

 you may lose half a field and the whole of your pleasure 

 while waiting your turn in the crush. There are some 

 few districts indeed which cannot be got over in a direct 

 line at all, Skeffington lordship being about the best 

 known. 



Since the above was written, Colonel Lowther has 

 formally signified his intention of claiming, after next 

 season, that part of Mr. Tailby's territory which properly 

 belongs to the Cottesmore. It will be remembered 

 that the country which Mr. Tailby has hunted for the 

 last fifteen years is made up of cessions (or temporary 

 grants would express it more properly) from the Quorn 

 and the Cottesmore, and was originally formed for Mr. 

 Bichard Sutton during his father's lifetime. 



* * * Mr. Tailby's run of the season 

 (1870 — 71) was just before Goodall was laid up, and 

 was something extraordinary for distance and country. 

 This was on Thursday, February 16th, from Shankton 

 Holt, when they ran fast by Illston, Kolleston, and Key- 

 thorpe, over a stiff turf line to Allexton Wood, then 

 hunted on by Manton, and at length to ground near 



