88 SKETCHES IN THE HUNTING FIELD. 



thither he proceeded in the vain hope that a 'cute and 

 experienced man who passed his life in buying and 

 selling horses would be beguiled into parting with 

 quadrupeds for less than their value by a person very 

 much less accustomed to such bargainings. It is not at 

 all difficult to get a horse at a low price ; but that this 

 is not necessarily a cheap horse many gentlemen have 

 before now discovered. In return for a cheque for not 

 much over a hundred pounds, Scruton became the 

 owner of four animals, for the arrival of which we 

 waited anxiously at the meet on the day appointed for 

 the beginning of the season. 



Three of them duly appeared, one of the purchases, 

 described as a very good-looking chestnut mare, being 

 incapacitated ; her near fore-leg had filled after an 

 exercise canter on the Downs. Scruton himself was on 

 a decent sort of bay horse, far the best of the lot, for 

 which he had paid the, to him, large price of forty 

 pounds. Certainly it began to make a noise when we 

 got away and had crossed some three or four fields — a 

 noise suggesting to the hearer the wheezing of a con- 

 sumptive steam-engine ; but Scruton scorned the idea 

 that it w^as broken-winded. 



" Some horses were like that," he very truly observed, 

 and it is only fair to the animal to add that, whatever 

 was the matter with him, he did not stop, but got 

 through a tolerable day's work. 



The huntsman was oil another of the new ones, a 

 really handsome brown, more like a coach-horse than a 



