THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 179 



Crick country, he never knew the extent to which the 

 man who rides after hounds is opposed in his attempts 

 to go straight. Although mounted on the General, one 

 of the finest fencers in England at least in the parts of 

 England in which he had previously been hunted he 

 got three falls in little more than as many miles, and 

 lamented that it had not been the turn of one of his 

 newly purchased horses to have carried him on that day, 

 as they were more accustomed than the General to make 

 their way through the enormous blackthorn hedges to 

 say nothing of the ditches, brooks, and timber, with which 

 this part of Northamptonshire abounds. Frank, however, 

 left the country very highly enamoured of it. It appeared 

 to him to leave both Oxfordshire and Warwickshire very 

 far in the shade, and he nearly despaired not but that 

 there are some rough fixtures in Northamptonshire of 

 ever seeing a better. In fact, when he was told that 

 there were woodlands in it, near to the town of Kettering, 

 the property of the Duke of Buccleugh, in which were 

 seventy miles of finely rideable avenues, from which 

 hounds could never be out of sight of the men, for the 

 purposes of cub and spring hunting, he seemed to make 

 up his mind that, taken for all in all, Northamptonshire 

 as a hunting country could net be much excelled. 



As may be imagined, for it is particularly the case with 

 young sportsmen, our hero noticed the best horsemen in 

 each country he visited, and those of Northamptonshire 

 did not escape his rather discerning eye. Mr. Warde 

 never shone as a rider ; that is, he was not, even in those 

 days, what is called a fast man over the country ; nor, 

 indeed, have there been more than a dozen " fast men " 

 of his weight since the world was created ; but his two 

 brothers went well : Harry Warde, as he was called (after- 

 wards General Sir Harry), in particular, quite tip-top ; 

 and what very much surprised the " young one," was the 

 fact of his very best horse being a roarer. Then there 

 was one man in the throng, to whose horsemanship rather 

 a far-fetched epithet might be applied ; it was beautiful. 

 I allude to Mr. Davy, who has hunted in Northampton- 

 shire, I believe, ever since ; and, as somewhat of a strange 

 coincidence, there was a singular defect in his best horse. 

 He had but half an eye, having quite lost the sight of 

 one, and a cataract was formed over part of the pupil of 

 the other. He called him Skylark, and a brilliant hunter 



