18 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



" What on earth are you at ? " I asked. 



" Tve heard," said the Duke, in a most solemn manner, " that 

 you have a great deal of game ; so I thought it would save me 

 much trouble to tie up one eye, as I always shut one eye in 

 taking aim."" 



We burst out laughing ; and the servant, with the handker- 

 chief, was sent away. 



We must now hark back again from my first dog to my 

 first pony. Punch. The first hounds I was ever out with were 

 a scrambling pack of harriers, kept by Mr. Westbrook, at 

 Heston. He kept them by subscription, and hunted Hounslow 

 Heath, Harlington Common, Hampton Common, and, occasion- 

 ally, at West End, in the Harrow country. My brother 

 Moreton soon enlisted himself as whipper-in to Mr. Westbrook, 

 and rode, first a pony called Yellow-belly, and then a wonder- 

 fully clever mare over the double post and rails, which, from 

 the different enclosure bills, intersected the country. Never 

 shall I forget my first fall at a fence with Punch, or the 

 laughter it occasioned to my brothers Henry and Moreton. I 

 could go blindfold to the spot now, in the road between 

 Harlington and Dawley wall. We were not with hounds; 

 but they told me to ride over the fence, from the road into the 

 field. Punch did not approve of leaving their horses ; but I 

 put him at the bank, and unwillingly he jumped, but not far 

 enough. He, consequently, came back into the ditch, and my 

 brothers said I scuttled up the ditch, for twenty yai-ds, like a 

 young wild -duck or flapper, evidently under the idea that 

 Pmich Avas still coming on me. It was this that roused their 

 laughter. I hunted on Punch with Westbrook's harriers, 

 occasionally seeing them turn out a bag fox, till he resigned, 

 and then with my brother's harriers ; afterwards two or three 

 of them kept harriers, jointly, or in turns, at Cranford, and 

 still the chase kept on. About this time, old Tom Oldaker, 

 who had been my father's huntsman, but who then hunted 

 Mr. Combe's hounds from the Gerrard's Cross Kennel, and 

 which, from my father having hunted that country, were still 



