170 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



to, and yet, " Oh ! PRAY catch that horse if you please ! " 

 is usually the only result, repeated over and over again 

 without injury to anybody. Now, if people who really 

 have never learned to ride, mounted on young horses 

 who have never learned to hunt, can thus attempt to 

 follow hounds without damaging much more than their 

 clothes, it ought to follow that an experienced rider on 

 a clever hunter has, at all events, not more danger to 

 apprehend than other people are liable to, who ride solely 

 on hard roads, on which a horse is very apt to travel 

 carelessly, and always falls heavily. Will Williamson, 

 now upwards of eighty years of age, who has been hunts- 

 man to the Duke of Buccleugh for more than fifty years, 

 and whose worst accident was lately caused by being 

 overturned in a dog-cart, still follows his hounds ; and, 

 in like manner, in every part of the kingdom are to be 

 found old men who, with very little to complain about, 

 have been hunting from their boyhood, and occasionally 

 from their childhood. 



Charles Payne, the huntsman of the Pytchley, was 

 much damaged by being thrown out of a gig ; while, a 

 short time ago, his head whip, who had fearlessly crossed 

 almost every fence in Northamptonshire, dislocated his 

 shoulder by slipping off a little deal table. The gallant 

 master of the Tedworth hounds was severely injured in 

 his conservatory ; the huntsman of the Surrey fox-hounds 



