i 4 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



of the head keeper's sons, who, as his father had initiated 

 him into the entrapping art, was of no small service in 

 his pursuits ; and such was their success in ferreting 

 rabbits, that they furnished the supply for the house, 

 of which they were not a little proud, as there was no 

 great abundance of them on the estate Mr. Raby being 

 averse to their increase, on account of the injury done 

 by them to young trees. To a certain extent, however, 

 he wished to preserve them, as the means of insuring 

 litters of foxes in his covers. Still, as may be 

 supposed, this intimate alliance with Jem Perren, the 

 young keeper, was not without its effect on the aspiring 

 mind of his young master. From the superiority of 

 Jem's knowledge in these matters, as well as having 

 the advantage in years, Frank looked up to him as his 

 chief preceptor his reverence the tutor only being 

 second. Then, again, Jem was an accomplished youth 

 of his kind. In the first place, Nature had not been 

 unkind to him ; he inherited a great share of his father's 

 acuteness, and, for his years, more than his share of his 

 Herculean frame and strength. In fact, he was quite 

 the " cock of the walk " among all the lads of the village 

 in which he had received his learning, and had often 

 amused his young master with accounts of the various 

 battles he had been engaged in, at least those which 

 had ended in victory. 



As may be supposed, all this was not lost on our hero, 

 who listened to such tales with delight ; neither can 

 we marvel at his having done so. He was now in his 

 thirteenth year, and had been reading history with his 

 tutor, as well as listening to his brother when reading 

 it, in portions considered beyond his own reach at the 

 time ; and had paid particular attention to the accounts 

 given of those heroes of antiquity who had signalized 

 themselves in gymnastic exercises, boxers and wrestlers 

 especially. He found that the first kings of the world 

 obtained their dominion by being superior to all others 

 in strength and courage in fact, that, even in Homer's 

 time, the argumentum baculinum was essential to the 

 existence of all little governments. Leaving out of the 

 question those apocryphal heroes, Hercules, Theseus, 

 Pollux, and others, who were feigned to have been the 

 original inventors of games and combats (considered so 

 admirably calculated for rendering the bodies of youth 



