222 Saddle and Sirloin. 



they were half tempted to believe'that his rapier had 

 done good service for the cavaliers at Marston Moor, 

 and that the oak tree for his coffin was a sapling yet. 

 The reverence felt for him in Yorkshire was akin to 

 idolatry. To see him riding out of the Eddlethorpe 

 paddock after a September ram-letting on his Colwick 

 black, which then numbered with its rider 108 years, 

 accompanied by the clergyman of Sledmere, and re- 

 turning the greetings of friends and tenants, and to 

 hear the half-whispered ' God bless him ! how hearty 

 he is he'll put in for a hundred" read to us like a 

 chapter out of the Spectator. 



" How's Sir Tatton looking ?" was one of the first 

 questions asked as each York and Doncaster meeting 

 came round. Strangers might well descend from the 

 Grand Stand as soon as he had been pointed out to 

 them at his wonted place by the rails, and make a 

 series of mysterious gyrations round him, in order to 

 do full justice to the assurance, " You II never see such 

 a man again? Then they would hear the regular 

 string of anecdotes which have long been told of him 

 by the woldsmen's firesides how he had seen every 

 St. Leger but Charles XII.'s since he was fourteen 

 how he nearly missed Blacklock's by riding 720 miles 

 to " cannie Aberdeen" for a mount on Kutusoff, with 

 only a clean shirt and a razor for his baggage how 

 he rose with the lark and slashed his own hedges, and 

 how bluff Jack Shirley, the huntsman, complimented 

 him upon the excellence of his work, near the Eddle- 

 thorpe kennels, before he guessed who " my old gentle- 

 man" was how he helped to dig the big pond in his 

 park how deftly he could rebuke forwardness in the 

 field or on the carpet, or give the retort courteous to 

 a bizarre politician how he often walked by the side 

 of his young horses to and from the Marshes, and drove 

 his first lot of Leicester ewes a three days' journey 

 from Lincoln to Barton Ferry how " Gentleman 

 Jackson" and Jem Belcher had taught him their best 



