REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 75 



to see the stress lie laid on the way I had retaliated, 

 seeming to be quite of the Hudibrastic opinion, 



" That a kick behind hurts honour more, 

 Than many wounds laid on before," 



and assuring the mediator, that " had I struck him, he 

 would not have minded it; but to receive a kick, 

 slight as it was, was beyond endurance." Mr. William 

 Norton was always out with me, and a finer or more 

 manly man I never saw. He was ever ready to soothe 

 the farmers, all of whom he personally knew ; to stand 

 by me, if there was any thing like a row ; and to as- 

 sist in saving the deer, by going into water, rather 

 than that I should have to ride at a foot-pace home 

 with my hounds in wet clothes. I liked him much ; 

 but there was an offhand, independent manner about 

 him, which made him unpopular with many of the 

 other gentlemen who hunted with me. So useful, and 

 so ready did he ever show himself to promote any of 

 my interests in that hunting country, that, as a token 

 of remembrance, I presented him with a hunting-whip, 

 the handle of which was the representation of a stag's 

 head in silver. 



On a beautiful scenting day, we were just com- 

 mencing a very fine run, crossing from the plough 

 country over the Uxbridge Road between Hillingdon 

 and Hayes for the Harrow Vale, when the following- 

 occurrence took place. I was on Jack-o'-Lantern, 

 and my poor friend, one of those now no more, 

 Colonel John Lyster, then a Captain in the Guards, 

 was in the same field with me : every body else had 

 skirted that field by a lane leading in the same 

 direction. As we crossed the field, hounds running 

 hard, I might have been fifty yards in advance of 

 Lyster, and, seeing the gate out of the field exactly 



