THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



rideable avenues, from which hounds could never be out of sight 

 of the men, for the purposes of cub and spring- hunting, he seemed 

 to make up his mind that, taken for all in all, Horthampton- 

 shire as a hunting country could not he much excelled. 



As may be imagined, for it is particularly the case with 

 young sportsmen, our hero noticed the best horsemen in each 

 country he visited, and those of Northamptonshire did not 

 escape his rather discerning eye. Mr. Warde never shone as 

 a rider ; that is, he was not, even in those days, what is called 

 a fast man over a country ; nor, indeed, have there been more 

 than a dozen ' fast men ' of his weight since the world was 

 created ; but his two brothers went well : Harry Warde, as he 

 was called (afterwards General Sir Harry), in particular, quite 

 tip-top ; and what very much surprised the ' young one,' was 

 the fact of his very best horse being a roarer. Then there was 

 one man in the throng, to whose horsemanship rather a far- 

 fetched epithet might be applied ; it was heautifid. I allude 

 to Mr. Davy, who has hunted in Northamptonshire, I believe, 

 ever since ; and, as somewhat of a strange coincidence, there 

 was a singular defect in his ]:)est horse. He had but half an 

 eye, having quite lost the sight of one, and a cataract was 

 formed over part of the pupil of the other. He called him 

 Skylark, and a brilliant hunter he was. There was something 

 aristocratic in the names of these horses — that of the first 

 being Star, and the other Skylark. And, by the way, Frank 

 Raby heard an extraordinary fact related of this elegant horse- 

 man, j\Ii'. Dav3^ He got a fall in Oxfordshire, and was thrown 

 beyond his horse's head, to the ground. On looking back for 

 his horse, he was non est inrenfiis. He had fallen back into 

 an old, deep well, the covering of which had given way under 

 him, as he leaped on it. 



Raby, for it may be as well now, sometimes, to drop the 

 Frank, had the pleasure of dining several times at the Club — - 

 the famous Pytchley Club, of which so much has been heard 

 and said. Nothing could be more agreeable, and so Mi-. Warde 

 himself said. — ' All very well but the reckoning,' was the praise 

 he always bestowed upon it. But Mr. Warde himself added 

 prodigiously to the agreeableness of this club, and the high 

 social feeling that pervaded all the members of it. And, as 

 regarded our hero, he w^as thus heard, on one occasion, to 

 express himself : — 



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