THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



age requires. Each of the fields had a comfortable shed, to 

 which they could resort, to protect themselves from cold in 

 winter, as well as from the gad-fly in the summer, and in 

 which, in the first-named season, was the well-furnished hay- 

 crib, and, occasionally, still more nourishing food. Mr. Raby 

 took a pleasure in exhibiting these ipensioners to his friends. 

 ' These animals have been all valuable servants to me,' he 

 would say, on such occasions, ' and have strong claims upon 

 my protection. That roan gelding, which has now scarcely a 

 leg to support his body upon, carried me, with my hounds, 

 thirteen seasons, and only, to my recollection, gave me five 

 falls, two of which were not to be laid to his account. He was 

 once as proud and prancing as he is now humble and decrepid, 

 and, I fear, I shall soon be obliged to have an end put to his 

 days, as a lesser evil of two. Yon milk-white horse — once a 

 dark iron-grey, dragging his slow length along — was, in the 

 days of his youth, for I bred him, such a roving, riotous 

 fellow, that no hedge or gate could keep him within bounds, 

 and it was a day's work to catch him. Then, when caught, he 

 was no horse for me ; but as I happened at that time to have 

 a sort of dare-devil lad, as whipper-in, who valued him for his 

 skittishness and impetuosity, he made him an excellent hunter. 

 Now such was precisely the character of this lad himself, who, 

 after rather a wild, but not vicious career, sobered down, like 

 his colt, into an excellent servant, and lived with me, as a 

 whipper-in, till his death, which was occasioned by a bad fall, 

 but not from that horse. In fact, the horse and his rider 

 appeared to reform themselves together. But the most extra- 

 ordinary animal here is that strawberrj^-coloured mare, which 

 you see reposing in the shade. She was purchased out of a 

 hack-chaise, for the sum of twenty-five guineas, by my hunts- 

 man, who took a fancy to her ; and, although, as you will per- 

 ceive, showing no signs of high breeding, nor yet of much 

 speed, she proved the best hunter, for the weight she had to 

 carry, I have ever yet seen. It is evident that neither her sire 

 nor her dam could have been of pure racing blood ; but report 

 says that the latter was brought into this county by some 

 gipsies from the New Forest, in Hampshire, and hence her 

 excellence is accounted for. She was, I am inclined to think, 

 the produce of the celebrated Marske, the sire of Eclipse, who 

 covered mares — New Forest ponies amongst them, of course — 



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