i8a THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



" Never believe a, word any man says about a horse he 

 wishes to sell not even a bishop. 



" Never keep a drinking man, nor a very pretty maid- 

 servant. 



" Never refuse a good dinner from home, unless you 

 have a better at home. 



" Breed your hounds with bone and nose : without the 

 one they will tire ; without the other, become slack." 



CHAPTER XI 



The debut in Leicestershire Frank Raby hunts with the Quorn 

 under Lord Sefton, with Lord Lonsdale's, and with the Duke 

 . of Rutland's hounds. 



THE fixture for the Quorn hounds, then lately become 

 the property of Lord Sefton, being very distant from 

 Leicester, Frank Raby had a day to dispose of, and occu- 

 pied it in a visit to Quorn, for the purpose of looking 

 over the establishment, and much as his expectations had 

 been excited, the reality very much exceeded them. He 

 found more than sixty couples of working hounds in the 

 kennel, exclusive of the pack that day in the field, and 

 they were shown to him by John Raven, one of his Lord- 

 ship's huntsmen Stephen Goodall, the other huntsman, 

 being at work on that day. Then, in one stable he saw 

 twenty-eight hunters, all in the finest condition, the 

 building being so contrived that each horse could be seen 

 from his head to his tail by a person standing in the 

 centre of it. In the boxes, he saw some of his Lordship's 

 best horses Plato, Rowland, and Gooseberry amongst 

 them, which cost little less than 1000 guineas apiece 

 and they excited his admiration, not only by their high 

 form, but by their condition, which equalled everything 

 that Mr. Somerby had told him of it during his visit to 

 Amstead, and to which we have already alluded. They 

 were shown to him by Mr. Potter, his Lordship's head 

 groom, who told him that "every gentleman's hunters 

 might be in as good condition as Lord Sefton's were, pro- 

 vided they were similarly treated, and not turned out to 

 grass in the summer." 



There being no one about the house but servants, Frank 



