196 DISASTERS 



looked well on the farm, the crops of corn most luxuriant, 

 and the cattle — sheep I had but few, having no summer 

 food — in a thrivino- condition : amono; them three thorouo-h- 



CD cj O 



bred mares, two by Haphazard, the other by Buzzard, 

 and a splendid grey two-years-old colt, by Evander, which, 

 with another yearling colt, by Trophonius, entered in a 

 hundred guinea sweepstake at Goodwood, I had purchased 

 at Tattersall's, all having been the property of a deceased 

 trainer and owner. 



These all, as if by a fatality, fell one after the other in 

 this same autumn. The grey, for which I had been 

 offered £200, staked himself in trying to jump the palings 

 of a lonely homestall. One mare broke her leg in leaping 

 into the road at the sound of a postman's horn ; the other, 

 who would never take to her foal, kicked over the stall- 

 post in the stable and was killed ; and the colt that I had 

 broke and sent into training at Winchester, preparatory 

 to his engagement at Goodwood, for Avliich he would have 

 walked over, died of inflammation. 



My partner in this affair was a gentleman of con- 

 siderable notoriety, who, after having gone through the 

 Peninsular "War as Commissary to the forces commanded 

 by the great Duke — acting also as master of a pack of 

 hounds kept for the amusement of the officers Avhen the 

 army was enclosed within the lines of Torres Vedras — had 

 purchased a small projDerty in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of the farm 1 occupied. As our disj)ositions were 

 alike in regard to the pleasures of a country life and our 

 love for the animal creation, we were on the best of terms ; 

 and though the irritability of his temper, and his love of 

 command, contracted in his long militarv career, would 



