i8o THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



he was. There was something aristocratic in the names 

 of these horses that of the first being Star, and the other 

 Skylark. And, by the way, Frank Eaby heard an extra- 

 ordinary fact related of this elegant horseman, Mr. Davy. 

 He got a fall in Oxfordshire, and was thrown beyond his 

 horse's head, to the ground. On looking back for his 

 horse, he was non est invent us. He had fallen back into 

 an old, deep well, the covering of which had given way 

 under him, as he leaped on it. 



Raby, for it may be as well now, sometimes, to drop 

 the Frank, had the pleasure of dining several times at 

 the club the famous Pytchley Club, of which so much 

 has been heard and said. Nothing could be more agree- 

 able, and so Mr. Warde himself said. "All very well 

 but the reckoning," was the praise he always bestowed 

 upon it. But Mr. Warde himself added prodigiously to 

 the agreeableness of this club, and the high social feeling 

 that pervaded all the members of it. And, as regarded 

 our hero, he was thus heard, on one occasion, to express 

 himself : 



" This young Raby is a promising lad ; I think he will 

 do, in time, especially if he stays with us for a season or 

 two. I saw him out once, when a schoolboy, in the last 

 country I hunted, and devilish well he went. His father 

 is a hare-hunter, but the young one won't have that ; 

 he flies at higher game ; and, as he will be well breeched 

 some day for, independent of his father, they tell me he 

 lias a rich uncle, likely to choke in his collar, who will 

 leave him lots of the ready I should not be surprised to 

 see him one of us, in another sense. He has asked me a 

 great many questions about hounds, the breeding them, 

 &c., to which I have generally replied, ' Keep mine in 

 your eye, sir, and you will do well, should you have a 

 pack of your own, which no doubt you will, when one of 

 the old ones goes to ground.' He has also a great mind to 

 be a coachman, which Inkleton has given him a taste for. 

 I told him to go to Jack Bailey, of the Birmingham 

 ' Prince of Wales ' coach, for instruction, when he told 

 me he was his pupil when at Eton. ' Then you will do,' 

 said I ; ' Jack himself is a pattern-card for patience and 

 prudence, having need of both ; for heavy loads and weak 

 horses, on bad roads, have made him such. In short, he 

 is a coachman ; and I advise you, if you mean to get 

 upon your own box, to take as many leaves as you can 



