234 IRiMno IRecoUections au^ TLxwt Stones 



down until, at the finish, he could hardly make a go 

 of it. He was obliged to give in, and said he had 

 never been so fairly beaten before in his life. Of 

 course, after that, I didn't wind the box up any 

 more that night, and when it left off about ten 

 minutes later, George said : 



" If I had only had a glass of brandy-and-water, I 

 could have beaten it." 



He afterwards found out the joke and the 

 mechanism of the box, and was quite cross with me. 



George Carter was an extraordinary man over a 

 country, or, 1 might say, through a country, as he 

 was like Colonel Anstruther Thomson — he would 

 squeeze his horse through thick bull - finches and 

 over big places, at a slow pace that seemed impos- 

 sible for any man and horse to get through. He 

 was a very fine huntsman, especially in the wood- 

 lands. I never saw any man who could kill a fox 

 in a woodland country like Carter. He would 

 gallop down the roughest ride as hard as pos- 

 sible, blowing his horn all the time if he saw a fox, 

 and never seemed to leave him until he had killed 

 him. He was a very heavy man, but no one knew 

 his weight, as you could not get him near the scales, 

 and he always made a boast of it that he had not been 

 weighed for over thirty years. He was a tall man, and 



