144 COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



cold hand of death, and I have heard that his face was rosy and 

 bore a smile. Mr. Robinson, who had a great horror of drown- 

 ing, and could not swim, had always said that, in case of an 

 accident of the kind, he should never quit his horse, and now he 

 was the only man who had not dismounted, and he stuck to his 

 saddle when the boat went over, but his horse very soon sank 

 under him." 



This, of course, caused great grief throughout the country — in 

 fact, the county of York might almost have been said to have gone 

 into mourning, and the York and Ainsty hounds did not meet 

 again that season. Lord Middleton came a few days over the 

 border on his side, as did Mr. George Lane Fox, of the Bram- 

 hani Moor, on his, just to keep the foxes moving, and Mr. Hall, 

 of the Holderness, brought his pack by train to York, and had 

 a great day from Dring Houses. A long ringing run in the 

 morning from Swan's Whin suflficed to get most of the field, 

 who were strangers to the country, down, for neither the horses 

 from the Holderness or Lord Middleton's country understood 

 the cramped places and blind ditches with which Ainsty 

 abounds, and several loose horses were to be seen together in 

 the same field. In the afternoon they had as fine a run as was 

 ever seen in this or any other country, eight miles as the crow 

 flies, from Askham Bogs to Redhill, where the hounds were 

 stopped, as Sir Charles Slingsby's sister, Mrs. Leslie, was living 

 there at the time. Had it not been for this, there is no doubt 

 but that they would have killed their fox. 



Sir George Wombwell, of JfSTewburgh Park, took the hounds, 

 and the next season went on with Peter CoUinson, from the 

 Cheshire (a very good man), as huntsman. As if a strange 

 fatality hung over the hunt, in the ensuing cub-hunting, poor 

 Will Powter was killed near Askham Bogs. His horse fell with 

 him at a blind ditch, and thus CoUinson was left with no one 

 that knew the country to lend him a hand, though of outside 

 interference it is said he had more than enough, so that things 

 on the whole did not work very well, and at the end of the second 



