238 The Pytchley Hunt, Past and Present. 



In speaking of his old Northamptonshire days, Charles 

 Payne still delights to tell how one afternoon, when hounds 

 were running hard under Great Harrowden, he fell into 

 a ditch, out of which he was with difficulty rescued by 

 Mr. Young, who chanced to be near at hand, whilst his 

 horse remained inextricably fixed between either bank. 

 A boot, full to the brim of mud and water, came off in the 

 struggle, " and there was I," says Payne, " with hounds 

 running like mad, on the ground with no horse and only 

 one boot." But the " Squire," as usual, was equal to 

 the occasion. Whipping off one of his own boots he 

 insisted upon its taking the place of the disabled one, 

 and mounting the horseless Huntsman upon his own 

 steed, he dismissed him in search of his hounds, by this 

 time well out both of sight and hearing. ^' No man in 

 England would have ' been and gone and done ' such a 

 thing as that except Mr. Young," is the no less grateful 

 than truthful comment of the veteran who loves to 

 narrate this sporting incident of the Squire of Orliugbury. 



Another incident is still green in the memory of the 

 ex- Pytchley huntsman ; when in running a fox from 

 "Long Hold," Mr. Young plunged into a canal, and 

 emerging safely on the other side was followed by Sir G. 

 Wombwell — afterwards so nearly drowned on the fatal 

 day with the York and Ainsty, Dick Eoake and 

 " Cherry " Angel — the latter of whom contrived to turn 

 over in mid-stream, and was with some difficulty rescued 

 from a " false," if not dangerous position. The same 

 keenness which induced a (by no means juvenile) sports- 

 man to entrust himself to the cold embrace of the " Union 

 Canal," led him into occasional developments of eagerness 

 which were not without their amusius^ side. Colonel 



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