32 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



curtailed, and he had no more peacock chicks to 

 come and steal. All the foxes were honourable 

 as to chickens and ducks, but peacock chicks 

 were outside their code of morals. 



Fedamore was an ideal little gorse in those days, 

 sheltered and quiet, with a good country all round ; 

 now a crop of allotments makes the riding one 

 side quite hopeless. Fortunately the line across 

 the allotments is one a fox does not often take 

 now, though twenty years ago almost all of them 

 except the old fox used to scatter off for Ballina- 

 garde, and the chances of its many rabbit holes 

 giving safety. 



Mr. Humble was brave to hunt at all. He had 

 had a fall racing, and was badly crushed, but he 

 held on gallantly to the last, preferring to ride out 

 rather than dream out his last days in the sun- 

 shine. 



There are very few people hunting now who 

 were out in those days. Of the ladies, I think, 

 only three. Girls had to have a chaperon then 

 even out hunting, and Mrs. Wyndham Gabbett 

 used to look after us. The finest of riders, the most 

 charming of women, riding with a curious dash 

 which was all her own ; a landmark gone in the 

 Limerick hunt. She was out one year riding as 

 hard as ever and gone the next, always missed 

 and always regretted. 



I must speak of a few of the hunting field of 

 over twenty years ago, because people who have 



