1S16J THE FIK8T WILL SMITH. 2o 



hurt, Tom, I hope. Well, it's an honourable death for 

 old Ploughboy to die." Will pressed on with his hounds, 

 and killed his fox in Lord Yarborough's private room at 

 Brocklesby. As "The Druid" remarked, "It seemed as 

 if he had struggled so far to tell his lordship that his race 

 was avenged on Ploughboy at last." One of the pads was 

 mounted as a paper-knife, and presented by Smith to Mr. 

 Brooks as a memento of the day, April Gth, 1829. It is a 

 curious thing, l)ut Ploughboy's legs were found to be full 

 of thorns, yet the old horse hardly ever went lame. 



It was a AVaverlcy horse that brought about the hunts- 

 man's untimely end in 1845, and I cannot do better 

 than 2five " The Druid's " own account of the lamentable 

 occurrence : — 



'• But sixteen years more, and Will's own voice (whicli, like three generations 

 of Smiths before him, had so often rung out a death-knell) was luished for ever, 

 while he was still in his i)rime. Some of the elder branch lie at Nettleton, and 

 Will, 'aged hO,' is now the latest tenant of that grey row of flat-stone graves, in 

 which rest fathers and sons, lunitsmen and whippers-in. are garnered side by 

 side near tlie chancel door at Brocklesby. On that day he was riding a shifty 

 Waverley horse, and owing to a high thick hedge, was unable to get to his 

 hounds, as they had some cold hunting up the ascent from Bradley Wood 

 towards Barnoldby Church. 'Holloa, my lad! holloa!' he sliouted to a lad in 

 the distance, who had just viewed the fox as he skirted the village ; and his 

 ' Yoick, Kanter, boy!' as his ftivourite hound hit it oil up the hedge-side, still 

 seems to sound in the ears of the few who Avere up and heard it. It was the 

 last cheer he ever gave to hoinid, and it seemed strange that the sad honour 

 sliould tall on one of the blood which has been the special pride and stay of the 

 Brocklesby pack. Over a hedge and into a plot of garden ground he went; but 

 the leap out of it — a rotten hedge with a ditch on the near side of it — was to be 

 his last. Will scarcely knew it was there, as he kept his eye on the hounds who 

 Hew to luanter in the corner of the next field ; his liorse caught its leg in a 

 binder, and was drawn back so suddenly in its drop, that he fell over on his 

 liead. He turned a complete summersault, and lay on his back with his arms 

 and legs extended and powerless ; and when he was picked up, perfectly black 

 in the face, it was found that dislocation of the vertebrie had brought on 

 paralysis in every limb. For nearly five days he lived a complete death in life, 

 Avith his mind and his voice as clear as ever, and waiting calmly for his end. 

 His fall occurred just beneath the shade of Barnoldby Church, in a field belonging 

 to Mr. Nainby, at whose house he died ; and we believe that a small granite 

 obelisk, planted round with evergreens, has been erected to mark the spot. The 

 lapse of years has not quenched the fondness with which every Brocklesby man 

 still clings to his memory. Three more keen and steady sportsmen than ' Old 

 Will,' Charles Upplebj-, of Barrow, and Philiji Skipworth, of Aylesby, never went 

 to their rest." 



