234 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER 



it; and I have seen it full of performers of the 

 highest character that did not. Tom, however, had 

 a not undeserved opinion of his horse's merits, and 

 in a few minutes more he had a chance of putting 

 them to the test. Down they came ; and as the 

 leading hounds dragged their sterns after them up 

 the bank, one man, and one alone, about a hundred 

 yards to the right of them, was seen to be in the 

 right field; four were in the water a little to the 

 left, one on the top of Old Melody, and the rest 

 nowhere. Of course someone knew of a ford or a 

 bridge, and at the end of another twenty minutes 

 they caught the hounds ; when the first thing that 

 was seen worth notice, was poor Tom Duckett, lead- 

 ing the brown horse by the bridle, badly staked at 

 the very last fence before the hill. The brown horse 

 died that night, and poor Tom was a bankrupt within 

 twelve months from that day.' l 



Great fluctuation often happens in the price of 

 the same animal in a few months, which does not 

 arise from any diminution of his intrinsic value, 

 but depends on the situation in which he is placed 

 from being offered to different classes of persons. 



'I went to see,' says a well-known sporting 

 writer, ' a stud of horses for sale at Tattersall's : I 

 perceived that one horse among the stud seemed to 

 attract very great attention, and this I thought was 



1 Chas. Clarke Crumbs from a Sportsman's Table. 



