64 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



more than once presented me with a picture of Keepsake on his back 

 and Nimrod under liim, in a ready made grave. But he did not make 

 a single mistake in the course of the day, nor were there so many falls 

 as might have been expected in so severe a country, in which horses not 

 used to it, would make a bad figure at first. 



We had a kind of a practical apologue at the conclusion of this run, 

 which will confirm the character I have given of Mr. Grieve's powers in 

 his saddle. A horse on sale was brought out for Lord Saltoun's inspec- 

 tion, and, on the sug-gestion of Mr. Mc Dowal Grant, Mr. Grieve was 

 requested to give him a " lark," to ascertain his proficiency in fencing. 

 After taking him a ring around the neighbouring country, he all at once 

 appeared in our sight, in the act of charging a flight of rails on the other 

 side of which was a 'drop — for 1 measured it — of upwards of ten feet, 

 into a hard turnpike road ! There was no time to check him ; and when 

 I saw himself and the horse in the air I expected both would be smashed 

 on the spot. Strange to say, although the horse's forelegs gave way 

 from the concussion, and he made a sort of a groove — as if with a hoe 

 — across the road with his knees, which was absolutely lined with hair, 

 Mr. Grieve sat as firmly in his saddle as if the animal had been standing 

 still under him at the time ; and, equally strange — the consequence no 

 doubt of no angular stone coming in contact with them — the knees of 

 the horse were not incurably broken. Sir David Baird, who rode in his 

 usual masterly style (and, as a friend of mine, who knows him well, says, 

 " who can beat him ?"), nearly put out one of his horse's eyes in a bull- 

 finch fence in this run ; but although the eyelid was deeply cut, and the 

 bleeding profuse, the eye was found to be uninjured. 



The day concluded with a dinner at Lord Eglinton's, to which I had 



