94 FOX-HUNTING FROM SHIRE TO SHIRE 



stables, which adjoin the kennels, to look through 

 the horses, which were sold at the end of the season 

 owing to the Duke of Westminster resigning the 

 mastership. About fifty hunters stood in the yard, 

 twenty others having been sent out with a draft 

 of hounds to the south of France, where his Grace 

 was trying the experiment of hunting the wild 

 boar in the deep woodlands. The stud groom 

 Lawrence, who showed us round, was an old ac- 

 quaintance, who for six years served in the same 

 capacity at Cottesmore under Mr Evan Hanbury ; 

 and before that was with the late Mr Henry Boden, 

 of Derby, who owned one of the most beautiful 

 studs of hunters seen with the Leicestershire packs. 

 The Cheshire hunt horses looked wonderfully fit 

 and w^ell, after the trying experience of a very 

 open season's sport in the deepest going, and the 

 following we noted, when Lawrence and his son Billy 

 showed us round. Red Sand, an Irish chestnut 

 hunter under i6 hands with three white legs and 

 a short tail, ridden by Champion, we thought a 

 good made horse on clean hard legs, and at the 

 subsequent auction he went for 170 guineas. Black 

 Bess was another ridden by the huntsman, a short 

 tailed mare with a good " cupboard," and well turned 

 quarters that looked like lifting 15 stone over a 

 fence, she found a purchaser at 160 guineas. Mis- 

 chief, a chestnut with quality, up to 16 stone on the 

 grass, went below his value at 50 guineas. We 

 must confess that the big bay horse, First Flight, 

 with his great ragged hips and ugly head, did not 

 please us as he stood idly in the stable. Lawrence, 

 however, told us that he was the huntsman's fastest 

 mount, and the Cheshire judges evidently knew 

 this, for he made 125 guineas. A very nice, short- 

 tailed, black cobby horse, we thought Pardon, a 



