66 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



ambition he did not hesitate to risk his neck. He loved 

 to boast about the number of masks his hounds had 

 accounted for, but only on two occasions did he men- 

 tion his own riding. The first was when he said that 

 he could get over any fence in the Harborough country 

 with a fall ; the second was when he told a friend, 

 who had advised him to use a martingale with a certain 

 horse, that his left hand was his martingale. He 

 jumped seemingly impossible places with the sole 

 purpose of being with the hounds. No man probably 

 had more falls. Once he had eight falls in a single run, 

 and then was the only man in at the death ! Yet he was 

 only seriously hurt twice in his life. However, I have 

 been unable to discover a single instance of his " lark- 

 ing " — i.e., jumping big places for the mere fun of talking 

 about them afterwards. Perhaps the fact which speaks 

 most for his horsemanship is that, until he went into 

 Hampshire, he rarely gave more than fifty pounds for 

 a horse, while his rivals in the hunting-field were gene- 

 rally indifferent to the prices which they gave. The 

 truth appears to be that whatever was under Mr. Smith 

 had to go, and the sympathy which he knew existed 

 between himself and his horse made him indifferent 

 about his mount. But in regard to hounds he was most 

 particular. He bought at first the pick of Mr. Musters' 

 pack of Colwick Hall, Notts, for ;^iooo; and afterwards 

 bought largely from the kennels of Sir Richard Sutton, 

 Sir Thomas Boughey,and the Duke of Grafton. His love 

 for hounds in the hunting-field amounted to a passion 

 yet he rarely entered his kennels, nor even rode home 

 with his hounds after the business of the day was over. 



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