200 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. 



done, he is fain, I think, to admit that " the best of his 

 fun he owes to horse and hound." For racing (oddly- 

 enough), though he was associated with his brother in re- 

 generating Derby races, he cares not a jot. It was, there- 

 fore, rather amusing that " Spy " should have represented 

 him as a typical race-goer. But if he once begins to talk 

 about hunting, his brain seems to be one vast deposit 

 of good runs ; so good, in fact, that he frankly admits 

 that he cannot give any one of them the palm of super- 

 excellence. There are racing bursts, such as the one from 

 the Grove, Drakelowe, to Seal Wood, when for twenty 

 minutes hounds absolutely flew with Lord Stanhope, 

 on either Mad Moll or Betsy Baker, thoroughbred ones, 

 nearest to them, and next to him Sir Matliew Blakiston. 

 As the narrator mentioned no one else, it is presumable 

 that he was third. Every horse had had enough for the 

 day at the end of this spin, and hounds went home. No 

 one, except Lords Chesterfield and Stanhope, had second 

 horses in those days, not even the Hunt servants. The 

 run in 1873, from Sudbury Coppice to Bentley Car, and 

 thence to Potter's, where old Tom, then ex-huntsman, 

 viewed a fresh one, was a capital thing. However, hounds 

 stuck to the line of the hunted one. From Potter's they 

 ran to Cubley, whence six men — Lords "VVaterpark, M.F.H., 

 and Berkeley Paget, Messrs. Boden, Buncombe, G. F. 

 Meynell, and young Mr. Harrison from Yorkshire, on Mr. 

 Feilden's famous horse, the Robber — slipped the field, and 

 had the pleasure of seeing hounds run hard by Marston 

 Park, over the Dove by Mayfield, where ten years before 

 Mr. Boden and old Tom had crossed it together, and up to 

 Wootton Lodge. Here hounds were close at their fox. 

 Lord Berkeley left his horse, which probably did not want 

 much holding, and jumped over the wall into the grounds, 

 following the hounds. Mr. Boden got through a gate 

 lower down and met the fox, which was run into at his 

 very feet, and he whipped ofi" head, brush, and pads. 

 Another grand gallop was from Eaton Wood, ending with 

 a kill in the pond at Ednaston. Then there was a splitting 



