82 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



notice forbidding him to draw it. After a time, how- 

 ever, the tempers of each cooled down. The Squire 

 was re-admitted to South Grove Covert on sufferance, 

 and the two Tom Smiths became firm and fast friends. 

 Six months after his surrender of the Craven in 1833 

 Mr. Smith married, for the second time, Miss Denison, 

 of Ossington, the sister of Mr. Evelyn Denison, the 

 speaker of the House of Commons, and we do not 

 hear of him again, in connection with hounds, till he 

 accepted the Mastership of the Pytchley, to which I 

 have already alluded. On retiring from the Pytchley 

 country he went on a Continental tour, when he re- 

 ceived numberless attentions from the foreign nobility 

 on account of his fame as a sportsman. On his return 

 he went back to the Hambledon country, which he 

 hunted till April 3, 1852, when the meet was at Broad- 

 halfpenny. It was known to be his good-bye day, 

 and all sporting Hampshire was out. As a sportsman 

 Mr. Smith might well have taken the motto, Ntilli 

 secnndus. Fox-hunting was the sport he loved best, 

 but he was also a first-rate cricketer and an experienced 

 otter hunter, and he could kill a salmon with Sir Hum- 

 phry Davy. He was also an excellent draughtsman, 

 as witness the illustrations to his own books, and had 

 a taste for mechanics, having invented a threshing- 

 machine in his younger days ; and he was such a good 

 farmer that he realised the highest prices for wheat 

 that had ever been obtained in the county. In every 

 way is he entitled to the praise of posterity. 



