EEmNISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 67 



had Passinoham watched for it. We had had a fast 

 thing, and Claret had carried his master much to his 

 satisfaction. In the open-hearted good humour of 

 the moment, Hammersley exclaimed to Passingham, 

 " By the Lord, Passingham, that was a sharp thing !" 

 The young farmer drew himself up with an assump- 

 tion of great dignity, and sticking out his leg and 

 bending it at the knee in a peculiar way of his own, 

 so as to reverse the action of the joint, and give the 

 limb the shape of a bird's leg, " j\Iy eye ! " he cried, 

 " I never allows no one to call me by my name 

 without a mister to it, unless he's been properly in- 

 terdooced ! " AYe all of us burst out laughing, save 

 Captain Hammersley, who twirled the ends of his 

 immense mustache, and, as he turned away, muttered 

 the Avords, " cursed puppy ! " 



At the close of a very good run with a powerful 

 stag, and while I was endeavouring to secure him, 

 the deer, with all the hounds at his haunches, trotted 

 down the footpath, not far from Shepherd's Bush, on 

 the Uxbridge road, in front of some cottages. To 

 my astonishment, I saw an oldish man emerge from his 

 house and walk along the path to meet the stag, with 

 an outstretched hand, as if he had been going to 

 catch a cart-horse by the forelock, or a donkey by the 

 ear. I called to him to get out of the way, but the 

 noise the hounds made, I suppose, drowned what I 

 said, and he met the deer as I describe. The deer 

 plunged at him, and took him right in the pit of the 

 stomach. The old man fell as if he were shot, and 

 lay on his back like a corpse by the side of what I 

 afterwards found were his garden rails, and into which 

 garden hounds and stag entered. I was off my horse, 

 and about to grapple with the stag, when heavy 



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