THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



time about to retire from the field, being the first. He was 

 mucli struck with tlie pecuhar character of the hounds, com- 

 bining gigantic Hmbs, and extraordinary height and strength, 

 with high form and symmetry ; and their steadiness in chase 

 was also at once conspicuous. The turn-out, however, was 

 not equal to Mr. Corbet's. There was something like an 

 aflfected disregard of appearances in the costume of the men, 

 and the horses were of a coarser description. Still it was 

 altogether sportsmanlike, for a sjwrtsman was at the head of 

 the establishment. 



Our hero regretted that he was a few years too late in his 

 visit to this country, by which he lost an opportunity not 

 likely to return : this was, of seeing the celebrated Dick 

 Knight, huntsman to Lord Spencer, who formerly hunted the 

 country ; and whose portrait, from the pencil of Mr, Loraine 

 Smith, had helped to adorn the walls of his room in Christ- 

 church College. His noble master, however, he had the 

 pleasure of meeting in the field, and seeing him keep a very 

 good place in a run of an hour and twenty minutes, from 

 Winnick Warren, a cover on the Daventry side the country : 

 his Lordship's son, then Lord Althorp, who afterwards hunted 

 the country, also being one who saw the finish and the death. 

 But, until Frank Raby met Mr. Warde's hounds at a cover in 

 the Crick country, he never knew the extent to which the man 

 who rides after hounds is opposed in his attempts to go 

 straight. Although mounted on the General, one of the finest 

 fencers in England — at least in the parts of England in which 

 he had previously been hunted — he got three falls in little 

 more than as many miles, and lamented that it had not been 

 the turn of one of his newly purchased horses to have carried 

 him on that day, as they were more accustomed than the 

 General to make their way through the enormous blackthorn 

 hedges — to say nothing of the ditches, brooks, and timber, 

 with which this part of Northamptonshire abounds. Frank, 

 however, left the country very highl}^ enamoured of it. It 

 appeared to him to leave both Oxfordshire and Warwickshire 

 very far in the shade, and he nearl}^ despaired — not but that 

 there are some rough fixtures in Northamptonshire — of ever 

 seeing a better. In fact, when he was told tliat there were 

 woodlands in it, near to the town of Kettering, the property of 

 the Duke of Buccleugh, in which were seventy miles of finely 



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