First Whipper-in. 



i8i 



over on to me ; I was underneath, and he got his foot 

 through the leather in the " scrumble " — fortunately for me 

 in getting up he pulled it over my head, but I never liked 

 carrying one again in this way — and never did. 



A good hunting man, and one who understood it and 

 did it thoroughly, was Mr. Joseph Fife who lived at Croft 

 near Darlington, and liked a day in the Fox Hill Country. 

 His get up was always what they call faultless, and he 

 always wore a very much cut away swallow tail coat ; 

 sometimes his friend Captain Maltby would accompany him, 

 and I have seen Mr. W. H. A. Wharton riding with them 

 on his good looking grey, which I always call to mind 

 when his name is mentioned. 



Perhaps the finest sportsman, if I may be allowed to say 

 so, hunting occasionally with the South Durham in my 

 time was Mr. W. Forbes,* now master of the Hurworth 

 hounds, and late master of the Kildare, in Ireland, for 

 some seven or eight seasons. He was apparently a gentle- 

 man of the old school, who hunted for hunting's sake, 

 and from pure love of horses and hounds ; not one of the 

 thrusting galloping school, always on the top of hounds, but 

 one whose ambition was to show good sport to his field 

 when hunting his own hounds, and who liked to see it 

 when he went from home. I never saw him in a carriage 

 or conveyance of any sort in my life ; his proper place 

 seemed to be outside of a horse, and I have always heard 



•Mr. W. Forbes, master of the Kildare Hounds, came to the Spa Hotel, Croft, in January, 

 1882, and hunted from there for some weeks, in consequence of the hounds having 

 been poisoned in Kildare, and all hunting having been stopped there. When things had 

 quietened down a little he returned to Kildare, and continued to hunt the hounds until 

 1884. Finding the hunting in Durham and Yorkshire congenial to his tastes, he 

 came back again to the Hurworth country, and in 1888 assumed the mastership of the 

 Hurworth Hounds — a position which he has since maintained with unqualified 

 success, and it is gratifymg to hear that the present season has been one of the best 

 during his long and successful mastership. 



