358 SPORTING STORIES 



had a decent coat on his back. And the way he managed 

 it was this. 



After office hours he acted as accountant for certain 

 butchers in Clare Market, who paid him in kind. The best 

 of the meat provided the daily dinner for himself and family, 

 and the scraps and offal fed the hounds, which he kept in 

 his garret. Having saved up sufficient to buy his horses, he 

 stabled them in a cellar, fed them on grain from a brew- 

 house close by and damaged corn from a chandler's — 

 writing letters, correcting bills, keeping books, and assisting 

 the proprietors with legal information, and so saving all 

 expenditure of coin. Down in the country where he 

 hunted during the season he gained the goodwill of the 

 farmers by giving them a hare now and then and tipping 

 them a legal hint, while the gentlemen over whose manors 

 he rode were so delighted with his enthusiasm for sport 

 that he could go almost where he pleased. If any poor 

 hunting enthusiast of to-day were to keep hounds in a 

 garret and horses in a cellar, he would meet with a very 

 different fate ; he would promptly be indicted as a nuisance, 

 and summarily be suppressed by the Society for the 

 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Times are indeed 

 changed ! 



The poet of " the Chace," whom I have already quoted, 

 describes hunting as the "image of war without its guilt." 

 It is not only the " image of war," but it is the finest 

 possible training for facing the perils and confronting 

 the crises of actual warfare. The following anecdote 

 of a once famous Leicestershire hunting man, " Tommy " 

 Yule, is one of the best illustrations of this truth that I 

 have come across. 



On the night of 5th December 1857, the nth Native 

 Cavalry, stationed at Jalpaiguri, 650 strong, mutinied 

 during the night, slew their English officers, and galloped 

 off to meet the other portion of the regiment, then encamped 

 some thirty miles off. Next day, having effected a junction 

 with their comrades, they started to join the revolted 

 Sepoys at Dacca. They rode in the direction of Purneah, 

 with the intention of plundering that station on their way 

 to the North- West. But they left out of their calculations 



