io6 REMINISCENCES OF 



CHAPTER VIII. 



EXETER AND IRELAND. 



WHEN we marched from Hampton Court to Exeter 

 I took the beagles in a dog-cart, with a fish-kettle 

 slung on the axle to boil the feed in. 



I was very often at Pines. Stafford Northcote's 

 father and grandfather were both very kind to me. 

 He was not at home, being, I think, at that time 

 private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, and I did not 

 meet him again for nearly forty years, in 1871, when 

 he was shooting at Sir Walter Carew's at Hac- 

 combe, and I was staying at Torquay. 



John Quicke of Newton, who had been captain 

 of the boats when I was at Eton, and the Rev. Staf- 

 ford Northcote (uncle of my friend " Tab "), were 

 my keenest beaglers, and Nicholas Cornish, son of a 

 farmer, afterwards huntsman of the Tynedale hounds, 

 commenced his hunting career with my beagles. 



There was a cobbler called Gough who used to 

 find hares for us. He would go out to look for them 

 on his pony in the mornings, then put the pony up 

 and follow us on foot, because he said the farmers 

 would not like to see him riding after hounds. He 

 had an old gun, which had something the matter with 

 it, so he mended it with a bit of leather. It exploded, 



