230 THE SPORT OF KINGS 



will return to the horses. If a man has done his 

 best to act up to the maxim I have already quoted, 

 his horses will be glad of a rest for a few days, and 

 will be the better for it too, for horses have begun 

 to look a bit " tucked up," and though there were 

 not any signs of them getting stale, they were 

 getting sober and sedate, and this means that 

 staleness is within reach. Some men lessen the 

 quantity of corn given to their horses during a 

 frost, but this is a plan I by no means believe in, 

 though I would certainly do away with the allow- 

 ance of beans for two reasons : first, because beans 

 are of a very heating nature, and, when horses are 

 not doing hard work, are apt to throw them 

 wrong ; and, secondly, because when the time 

 comes for hard work again, and come it will, the 

 beans will do infinitely more good when they have 

 been discontinued during a period of comparative 

 ease. I always give my horses their full allowance 

 of oats, rather more carrots than in open weather, 

 and plenty of slow work, either in the fields or in 

 the straw yard. If a good big fold yard be con- 

 venient you can have your horses as fit during a 

 storm as at any time. 



But the man has to keep himself fit as well as 

 to keep his horses fit, and this is by no means so 

 easy a task as it seems. When a man is hunting 

 five or six days a week, he is naturally in excellent 

 condition, and it is also unnecessary to say that 

 as the hunting five or six days a week naturally 

 entails long journeys and consequent early rising, 

 he does not go out much, dinner parties he 

 eschews, and lives plainly and goes to bed early. 

 But when a frost comes, if he is a social being — 

 and what fox-hunter is not ? — there will be arrears 



