DONALD GREGORY 65 



Messrs. Howel Price, Barclay, and the Admiral, coming back to you as the 

 pace began to tell on them. Where was the Mate ? I saw him ahead of 

 everyone else in the ridge and furrow field by Hunters Hall, but now I 

 scanned the leading dozen in vain. As they leave Nasing Coppice in the 

 same field with hounds, the Admiral can be seen driving his generous black 

 to the front, and, stealing quietly along, note INIajor Carter and Mr. Jones 

 keeping a bit up their sleeves as running from scent to view (how black 

 and dirty, he looked so bright and glossy seventeen minutes before), hounds 

 fairly ran into their fox in the farm yard at Harolds Park. A brilliant 

 burst that admitted of no shuffling with the fences. 



Mr. Gregory takes his day a week, and enjoys it in that 

 thorough way which only those who work hard can fully appre- 

 ciate. Fox, stag, or hare, whichever comes handiest, suit him 

 equally well, for he loves his gallop as much as he does a good 

 cigar between his teeth, or a good horse between his knees, 

 and that he generally has the latter he in no small measure 

 owes to his professional experience, for he has charge of the 

 veterinary department of one of our largest London Tram 

 Companies, and can spot a good horse directly he sees him. 



Galley Hills.— A brace at least on foot, the first, and the best, away with 

 too good a start to warrant anyone jumping the hurdles, with bar on top, 

 en route to Deer Park, but leisure enough for the Admiral to remove it, 

 and Mr. Newman Gilbey to demolish all that remained to our general 

 satisfaction. All these years, and you don't know Deer Park yet ! Tuck- 

 ing your head in, and driving forward in a silk hat, will never extricate you 

 if you hit it off at the wrong place. The "Open sesame" to this covert 

 is follow the Mate. He has done the trick every time this season from 

 whichever side hounds have attacked it. The huntsman may prove a 

 will-o'-the-wisp, as I shall show^ by-and-by. Right or wrong mattered not, 

 the fox had gone, and if you ask what became of him, I can only add, don't 

 know, but can give you a lot of, perhaps, unnecessary information about the 

 Nasing Coppice customer we found at 4 p.m. 



With ranks diminished we reached the muddy corner of this snug 

 covert, and awaited with the keenest anxiety the result of the last draw for 

 the day. At least two horsemen were very keen, if their one-shay comrades 

 were shaky, and there could be little room for doubt to which contingent 

 they belonged, when, at the first whimper of hounds in covert, the rush 

 took place at the muddy exit, which admitted of only one at a time going 

 through. 'Faith, the double-harvel men, if you like XX, got vastly the best 

 of it. None, however, dreamt that absolutely the first pull, if you'll just 

 except that chuck of the curb rein near Harolds Park, that they would get 

 at their horses would be the bridge over the Cobbins brook at Warlies, and 

 there wasn't time to remove the hanging bush from " Sheila's" tail."'' _ To Deer 

 Park hounds simply raced, the Mate going for his old corner with a few 

 others, w^hile those who followed Bailey into the covert, including Mr. C. 

 E. Green and Major Wilson, had to tread in and out of stubs for some time 

 before they could strike the comparatively clear space, where even then the 

 overhanging boughs switched them in the face as they galloped forward 

 after the huntsman, who, like a 2inll-o'-the-wisp, had disappeared (you cannot 

 compete with a huntsman in threading a covert). 



* Mr. W. Sewell's chesnut mare. 

 C VOL. II 



