76 THE QUORN HUNT 



in. Both of them were good men, and both eventually 

 became huntsmen, Tom Wingfield becoming very famous, 

 one-eyed man though he was ; but it was said of him 

 that he could see more with his one eye than most men 

 could with two. His partial loss of sight certainly did 

 not affect his riding, for a bolder man never crossed a 

 horse. One day, on seeing a follower of Lord Sefton's 

 hounds decline a big fence, he half turned round in his 

 saddle and remarked to some one who was following, 

 " I'm thinking, sir, that that there gentleman has no 

 business in our shire." 



One of the critics of the time declared that Lord 

 Sefton cared but little for hounds, but made much of the 

 standard of men and horses. To a certain extent this 

 may be true. He certainly was not the hound man 

 Mr. Meynell was, but that gentleman was always ready 

 with advice and assistance, and to him the new master 

 owed a good deal. On the other hand, Lord Sefton 

 could have been by no means indifferent to the kennel, 

 for when he said, as a reason for giving up the hounds, 

 that he could not find horses to carry him as fast as he 

 wished to go, people said that it was a judgment upon 

 him for having bred his hounds so fast, though how he 

 could have made so great an alteration in the pace of his 

 pack in five seasons is not clear ; for Mr. Meynell's were 

 by no means slow hounds ; nor were Mr. John Warde's. 

 However, there is the story. 



In March 1805 Lord Sefton's hounds enjoyed a good 

 run under somewhat singular circumstances. 



A certain fox was reported to have made many depredations 

 upon the poultry of Mr. Stone of Barrow, and him Lord Sefton 

 eventually killed with five couples of hounds only. We find only 

 two instances of a few couples of hounds being used as the Devon 

 and Somerset staghounds employ tufters ; but whether these five 

 couples were so used, or whether they went away with the fox, 

 leaving the main body in the lurch, one cannot discover. At any 



