MR. BARCLAYS HARRIERS 35 1 



over the gates, more often than not, is the best way out of the 

 fields. I consider him a perfect weight-carrier up to between i6 

 and 17 stone ; showing plenty of quality, he can gallop as well 

 as jump, and is a first-rate hack. He has carried me for five 

 seasons, and, until the present one, when I lamed him in early 

 autumn in the blind Suffolk country, I have never had him 

 laid up from hunting." 



Mr. Barclay winds up his exceedingly interesting account 

 of this valuable horse by saying that, "although he is now 13 

 years old, I don't see wdiy he is not good for another ten 

 seasons, for he is one of those hard horses you cannot really tire 

 out, and is a rare doer." All of which we hejirtily echo, and 

 hope that when he has carried Mr. Barclay another ten seasons 

 that he will meet with another of his stamp that will serve him 

 as well. 



Friday seems to be the lucky day in our country this season. Is it because 

 no hunt breakfasts are arranged Easton way as we have known them to be, 

 and postponed time after time on account of the frost ? But on Friday, 

 Januar}' 25th, if the roads were shppery with a morning rime, and the snow 

 still lingered in the hedgerows, the country was very rideable, and Mr. 

 Barclay scored a <^veat run with his harriers. They met at Warlies at 10.30, 

 and an hour later I rode out with one of my boys on the chance of finding 

 them ; nor were we disappointed, for after a very pleasant field ride of three 

 or four miles on grass, from which every \-estige of frost had disappeared 

 (no jumping, and every gate shut behind us) we heard the horn some 

 minutes before we caught sight of the hounds, which, after affording us a 

 momentary glimpse of them near Shatter Bushes, vanished from sight, over 

 the brow of the hill in the direction of Galley Hill Green. 



A solitary horseman, doing sentinel duty by the side of the fence, 

 through which the hounds and their followers had recently passed, pointed 

 out the spot where a hare, probably the hunted one, had just come through 

 the fence. To jump the fence and clap forward over the hill was the work 

 of a moment. The Master was not long in responding to the signal of an 

 uplifted hat, and hounds picking up the line carried it forward into the 

 spinney below Shatter Bushes. One after another we filed over the gap ; 

 some jumped big, some jumped small, some scrambled through, some sat 

 tight, more sat loose, none sat l:)etter than the boy on the chesnut pony : 

 not my youngster however, for from his coign of vantage, the right side of 

 the fence, he felt free to criticise. He was a little hard on his old father (I 

 shan't tip him, he returns to school next week), whom he lumped down as 

 the worst of the lot, and made some very unfavourable comparisons between 

 the way the ladies sat and the men, coming to the conclusion that it must 

 be easier to ride a horse side-saddle fashion. 



Of course, he did not know what graceful and accomplished exponents of 

 the art of riding in the persons of the Miss Buxtons (there were only five 

 out) he was comparing so unfavourably with his own sex. The hounds in 

 the meantime hanging about covert afforded an excellent opportunity for 

 discussing the morning's sport, which, by universal consent, was admitted 

 to have been of the most meagre description, there appearing to be abso- 

 lutely no scent. This, in the state of the atmosphere, I could not account 



