First Whipper-in. 177 



horse (then eleven or twelve years old) would have won, as 

 he was a good stayer and sticker, and later on I may refer 

 to him again as I rode him for some part of a season when 

 Mr. Stephenson was unable to hunt. Mr. Appleby was a 

 keen foxhunter, and in those days a bold rider with a 

 good class of animal which he always kept ; he always tried 

 to be at the tail of hounds, and Mr. Harvey once remarked 

 by way of a joke, " there 's Mr. Appleby first and the hounds 

 nowhere " — but he did not mean it seriously. I never 

 knew the names of his horses, and he seemed to change 

 them frequently, but I remember he bought the good 

 looking bay of Mr. Thomas Dobson, which carried the 

 latter so well in a run that will be referred to later on — this 

 was on January 5th, 1880. I never saw Mr. Appleby go so 

 well as he did one afternoon when we found a fox near 

 Morden and ran him past Homer Carr to the Tilery wood 

 at Wynyard, after partaking, I understand, of some good 

 old brown sherry at Sands Hall. He must have seen a 

 good deal of hunting and gained a lot of experience in the 

 hunting field, as I see that he still keeps it up as keen as 

 ever ; his sons were at school when I was with the South 

 Durham, but used to come on ponies ; one of them unfor- 

 tunately got kicked and broke his leg — this happened near 

 Elton, and was owing to a young horse of Armstrong's 

 of Stockton, and ridden by Dick Humble, a very fine horse- 

 man, lashing out at a gateway, and breaking the poor boy's 

 leg — it was very unfortunate, as he was just beginning to 

 hunt. 



Mr. Fisher, and sometimes Mrs. Fisher of West Hartle- 

 pool, hunted with us ; he had two good horses, one a bay 

 mare that blew her trumpet a bit, the other a brown, 

 which carried him wonderfully well, as he knocked along 



