The Sport of Our (^Ancestors 



enforced so rigidly as to prevent these men from enjoying 

 an occasional day's hunting. Trollope knew them all in- 

 timately. In an earlier chapter he exhibits their salutary 

 prejudices with a true sense of comedy. The man Goarly 

 owned some land on the edge of Dillsborough Wood, the 

 property of Lord Rufford, and actually proposed to institute 

 a suit against that nobleman for damage done to crops by 

 his lordship's pheasants. Moreover, he had the effrontery 

 to propose himself as a client to Mr. Masters, the attorney, 

 whose daughter Larry Twentyman wanted to marry. ' The 

 man is an utter blackguard,' said Larry. ' Last year he 

 threatened to shoot the foxes in Dillsborough Wood.' * No ! ' 

 said Kate Masters, quite horrified. As a result of this con- 

 versation, together with much pressure from a convivial 

 conclave of the Dillsborough Club in the back parlour 

 of * The Bush,' Mr. Masters had thought it wise to abandon 

 the case of Goarly. 



We have met Goarlys here and there. Their bark is 

 worse than their bite. They are irritating in small ways. 

 For instance, there is no surer way of irritating Fox- hunters 

 than by appearing with a gun when the Hounds are out. 

 How Goarly drew them all by doing this, and how he en- 

 listed the wrong-headed sympathy of the American Senator, 

 is good to read. 



But perhaps the most amusing passages are those which 



tell how poor John Morton, by no means an expert, was 



worried all day by having to find answers to the half-hostile, 



half- plausible drift of the American Senator's questions 



250 



