254 HISTORY OF THE YORK AND AINSTY HUNT. 



Is one of those mysteries which are difficult to unravel. But 

 manage it he did, though it would have been well nigh 

 impossible had he had a whipper-in with less energy, per- 

 severance and love of sport than Will Danby. Wiry and 

 tough as whalebone, Will seemed not to know what fatigue 

 was, and so great was his love of hounds and hunting that 

 nothing was a trouble to him that was connected with them. 



Danby went from Mr. Hodgson to hunt the York and 

 Ainsty, in which country he carried the horn for sixteen 

 seasons. He was an excellent huntsman and a keen judge 

 of a hound, but he preferred a close-hunting to a hard-driving 

 hound, and hounds that were dashing and flinging forward 

 were his abomination. On one occasion a gentleman had 

 got him a draft of good hounds from the Milton, but they 

 were not to Will's mind at all. Some time after he asked 

 how the draft was doing. Will's laconic reply was, ' I hanged 

 'em all. I know that sort ; would be over Knavesmire 

 before I got through the gate.' What excellent sport Will 

 showed during the time he was huntsman has already been 

 shown, and he was a capital man over the stiff York and 

 Ainsty country, which did take some getting across in those 

 days. A bold rider such as Will was, riding over such deep 

 countries as the Holderness and York and Ainsty when 

 second horses were not so much in evidence as they are 

 now, was sure to meet with plenty of accidents, and he 

 certainly had his share. ' Flesh rents,' the Druid tells us, 

 ' were innumerable. He has had three thigh wrenches, and 

 all his ribs laid bare on his right side up to the breast bone. 

 His left arm has been broken once, his collar-bone twice ; 

 his right shoulder has been put out ; he has had a slight 

 fracture of the skull above his left eye, in consequence of 

 his horse catching in a sheep-net ; and he also lay for three 

 weeks in a state of coma, the result of a rheumatic fever 

 from swimming a river.' Such an array of accidents was 



