SEASON 1875-76 75 



less than 20 miles as the crow flies. " It was a 

 pity we had not more daylight to have enabled us 

 to kill our fox," Gillard remarks against the day, 

 " for it looked fifty to one on our doing so had we 

 not been compelled to whip off" in the big woods, 

 and I never saw hounds so glued to a scent or so 

 determined not to be stopped. Mr. John Hardy, 

 the Rev. W. C. Newcome, and Major W. Long- 

 staffe acted as my whippers-in, helping me to 

 get hounds back to Grantham, where the van 

 Avas awaiting us." No day was too long for the 

 veteran Mr. " Banker " Hardy, who was one of 

 the mainstays of the hunt ; he kept a stud of good 

 hunters at Grantham, rode them hard, and enjoyed 

 the sport thoroughly. His great friend was the 

 Rev. " Billy " Newcome, and the two were very 

 often the last to bid the huntsmen good-night, for 

 they never thought of going home until hounds 

 did. Mr. Newcome was a well-known figure with 

 the Belvoir hounds for half a century, being all 

 that time Rector of Boothby. After hounds he 

 was a fearless rider, possessed of iron nerves, 

 though not a finished horseman ; he frequently 

 went pounding along with a slack rein, and at 

 different periods of his career came in for 

 some serious crumplers. A contemporary of Sir 

 Thomas Whichcote at Eton, he was born the 

 same year, 1813, and passed away in the winter of 

 1896. 



A run down into the fen country when it rides 

 deep is always a stiff day's work, and on December 

 28th, after meeting at Rauceby Hall, a great gallop 



