Fox-himting Past mtd Prese^tt 



when it came to Vanguard, the best he thought he 

 had ever hunted, he declared he was much too 

 good to give away to any one. Osbaldeston was 

 so enraptured with Furrier that, years after he had 

 reHnquished the horn and the saddle, he would 

 start at the very mention of the name if even play- 

 ing an interesting game of billiards, and then 

 nothing would get him off Furrier. Lord Henry 

 Bentinck was never emotional, but when coming 

 in his diary to Contest he says : ** A most remark- 

 able hound, that could not well do wrong." Then 

 there was old Harry Ayris, so long with the Lord 

 Fitzhardinge's. He would seemingly forget gout 

 and old age at a question about Cromwell, as he 

 showed you his skin on which he rested his feet. 

 The best hound in the world — there was never 

 another like him. He would find a fox if there 

 was one within a mile of him, and go to the front 

 to put them right everywhere. You could not get 

 him off the line of Cromwell in an afternoon, as he 

 would tell you of the death of the old earl, and 

 how he was ordered to take up two couples to his 

 bedside just before he died, and although Cromwell 

 was only a second-season hunter he took him up, 

 and the old lord just looked up and said, *' There 

 could not be better ones, Harry," and those were 

 his last words. ^' I saw he was sinking. I feared 

 I might hurt him, so bundled the hounds out as 



quick as I could, choked as I was with grief." 



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