CHAP. I.] Mr, Nethercote — -Jem Wood, 2 1 



the occasion, and gave a description of tlie day's sport, 

 thus writes : " One day at Sywell Wood we were not able 

 to throw off till 12.30 for the snow: at that time it had 

 sufficiently melted, and an immediate find was followed 

 by a very sharp burst ; and in the bustle the snowballs 

 from the horses' feet were anything but sport. We 

 soon came upon an ox-fence — a very liigh flight of rails 

 — a sort of a hedge and a deep, wet, broad ditch on the 

 other side. The leading man, Mr. Nethercote, a deter- 

 mined rider, charged it on a well-known hunter, whose 

 four legs, however, the snow took from under him on 

 taking-off, and he went through into the next field ; as 

 ugly a fall as need be, where he lay, horse and all, 

 doubled up like a hedgehog. I made use of the fallen 

 man's clearance, and hearing from himself that, as the 

 Irishman says, he was not kilt eutirely, I made play as I 

 was best able." The writer continues, '^ We had a trying 

 sharp burst of iSve miles, to a drain, whence our fox 

 was bolted in about five minutes, and thence a very 

 severe chivy by Orlingbury and Isham to a large home- 

 stead near Barton Seagrave where King (huntsman) 

 seeing that Pug was likely to prove tricky, gave the 

 hounds a lift and turned up Charley in a ditch. Jem 

 Wood, the first whip, than whom no more brilliant 

 rider ever lived, not excepting Dick Christian himself, 

 went extraordinarily well in this run, on a raw five-year- 

 old of Mr. Elwes of Billing. All the time Wood seemed 

 going at his ease, and the mare at hers apparently, and 

 made no bones about it. I have seen him on all sorts, 

 and once on a coach-horse, to which he was reduced 

 by an accident; and it was all the same. They all 

 went brilliantly, but how was probably as much known 



