22 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



maintain niy gravity. He killed the pheasant, and 

 as he did so muttered to me, " You might as well 

 have left him for a breeder ! " 



I remember assembling once in the vestibule at 

 Cranford ; Sir George and the late Sir Horace Seymour 

 were of the party, and the late Duke of St. Alban's Avas 

 my guest. We were j ust ready, when the Duke asked 

 me to wait for a moment till his servant came. The 

 servant arrived, bringing to his Grace a silver salver, 

 on which lay a black silk handkerchief, very neatly and 

 narrowly folded. The Duke took it, turned to a glass, 

 and began to adjust it over the left eye. 



"What on earth are you at ?" I asked. 



" I've heard," said the Duke, in a most solemn man- 

 ner, " that you have a great deal of game; so I thought 

 it would save me much trouble to tie up one eye, as 

 I always shut one eye in taking aim." 



We burst out laughing ; and the servant, with the 

 handkerchief, was sent away. 



We must now hark back again from ray first dog 

 to my first pony. Punch. The first hounds I was 

 ever out with ^vrere a scrambling pack of harriers, 

 kept by Mr. Westbrook, at Heston. He kept them 

 by subscription, and hunted Ilounslow Heath, Har- 

 lington Common, Hampton Common, and, occasion- 

 ally, at AVest End, in the Harrow country. My 

 brother Moreton soon enlisted himself as whipper-in 

 to Mr. Westbrook, and rode, first a pony called 

 Yellow-belly, and then a wonderfully clever mare 

 over the double posts and rails, which, from the differ- 

 ent enclosure bills, intersected the country. Never 

 shall I forget ray first fall at a fence with Punch, or 

 the laugliter it occasioned to my brothers Henrj^ and 

 Moreton. I could go blindfold to the spot now, in 



