194 THE HUNTING FIELD 



have known both shoes come off together. And yet 

 there was nothing the matter with the horse's feet ; 

 they were good, sound, healthy feet — he did it by 

 catching the hind shoes with the fore, and no con- 

 trivance or ingenuity could prevent his doing it. 

 Now that is a case "in point," as the lawyers say, 

 and though we admit the occurrence is a rare one, 

 still we think that question might just as reasonably 

 be asked as half the questions that are put about 

 hunters. 



Speaking of this horse, leads us to observe how 

 beautifully Providence turns even the infirmities of 

 His creatures to good account. To look at this 

 animal no sportsman could doubt the appropriateness 

 of its form for hunting purposes. It was the hunter 

 all over, with one of the lightest, best set on heads 

 we ever saw. Added to a commanding figure, it had 

 the finest freest action imaginable, and though the 

 circumstance of such a horse coming to the hammer 

 single-handed as it were — that is to say not in a stud 

 — certainly was suspicious, still there were always fine 

 venturesome men in the yard ready to speculate on 

 such a piece of perfection, and it was sold in different 

 parts of London — at TattersalFs, Aldridge's, the 

 Horse Bazaar, and Barbican a dozen times at least 

 before it was regularly blown. We recognised it in 

 five hunts one season — the Royal buckhounds, Mr. 

 de Burgh's staghounds, the Hatfield, the Surrey, the 

 old Berkeley, and more than once saw its sleight-of- 

 hand trick of chucking a fore-shoe half-way up in the 

 owner's face, before we suspected what screw was 

 loose. On each change of hunt we need hardly say 

 it was in the hands of a different owner, and as luck 

 would have it, about the twelfth time of " asking," our 

 friend Blatherington Brown, the Manchester ware- 

 houseman of Friday - street, who thinks he knows 

 more about horses than muslins, had strayed into 

 Tat's with a nice clean fifty pound note in his blue 



