THE COST or a good thing. 139 



I saw my second liorse, who had come up by a for- 

 tunate green lane, the one I was on having had 

 enough of it; and mounting him, I soon after passed 

 Mr. Vivian, who was shooting, and who called out, 

 "You must have him, he's just before you dead 

 beat." A little further on we caught sight of him 

 a field before the pack, and from that time either 

 George Carter, Tom Skinner, or myself had him in 

 view till the hounds ran from scent and killed him. 

 It was rather more than forty minutes, and as bril- 

 liant an aifair as any could wish for. It cost me 

 two guineas a minute ; so it ought to have been 

 pleasurable, for it was the first day George Carter 

 rode a brown horse I had just purchased for eighty 

 guineas of the Duke of Manchester ; and over some 

 fence the horse seemed to have clapped one of his 

 hind feet on a sharp-pointed old oaken stump, which, 

 by the force with which he struck it, had entered be- 

 tween the frog, and broken in the very joint of the foot 

 in such a way as to be beyond the power of extraction. 

 Mr. Vivian good naturedly put the horse into his 

 stable, where he remained for weeks till his sufferings 

 were put an end to. 



George Carter whipped-in to me two years, and I 

 think three times during that period it fell to his lot 

 to hunt the hounds. On one of these occasions, I 

 was too ill to go out ; in the other two, I v^.s, de- 

 tained on business. The morning that I was ill, the 

 fixture was Moulsoe Wood : at least, that "wood was 

 the first cover within the draw ; and on two or three 

 former meets there I had found a fox, who had 

 always beaten me. This fox always ran the same 

 line, going from Moulsoe to Bromham by Hanger 

 Wood, and then down to the river, nearly opposite 



