246 THE HUNTING FIELD 



it is not the taste of a sportsman — a taste that 

 amounts almost to affection for an animal that pleases 

 him ; for Captain Shabbyhounde would sell anything 

 he has — his own father if he could get anything for 

 him — and his taste amounts to a sort of enterprising 

 dabbling in an interesting article that brings him in 

 money. He is a good judge of horses, and a good 

 judge of what they can do, and has a turn for cobbling 

 them up, and passing infirm ones off as sound. 

 Hunting, of course, favours this sort of dealing, for 

 as the Captain only professes to deliver them sound, 

 if they break down on the second or third day, he 

 shifts any blame from himself to the chapter of 

 accidents. " Most unfortunate," he will say, " but 

 these accidents will happen ; that horse never had a 

 moment's illness all the time he was in my stable — 

 must have put his foot in a rabbit hole, or wrenched 

 himself some way." If the unfortunate purchaser is 

 a hard rider, perhaps he will throw in some "desperate 

 leap" he saw him take, to make his misfortune 

 lighter. 



The Captain, though a light weight man, is very 

 tenacious about not carrying anything extra. Here 

 the racing man shows itself. Though he would not 

 leave the " coppers " at a turnpike gate until he 

 returns, he will nevertheless wait till the tollkeeper 

 fumbles in all his pockets, and looks in the corners 

 of all his drawers for one of those hide-and-seek four- 

 penny pieces, the most uncatchable and slip-through- 

 the-fingers coin. His clothes are all made on the 

 principle of extreme lightness, and whether in cords 

 or leathers, of which he has " two and one," he never 

 wears drawers, and sometimes he even dispenses with 

 stockings ; his boots, too, are of the paper sort, and 

 spurs of the true racing cut. 



It would puzzle Shabbyhounde himself to make 

 out how he came by the title of Captain. He was 

 originally an apprentice to a clothier at Frome ; but 



