132 HUNTING REMINISCENCES 



Place," Haverholme village, the second from 

 Sleaford Wood to Mr. Sharpe the seed merchant's 

 nursery garden, and the third surrendered up his 

 brush in the Bloxholme Hall gardens, where several 

 of the hounds got badly cut by dashing through 

 the window of a greenhouse. " I was riding old 

 Gameboy that day, and he jumped a very wide 

 drain by Haverholme ; Will Wells tried to 

 follow, but his horse made a mistake and fell. 

 I always remember the spot because it is a 

 tributary of the river Brant, and in the days when 

 I was whipper-in to Cooper in a run from Fulbeck 

 on the occasion of the marriage of Colonel Francis 

 Fane, the bridegroom, who was one of the field, 

 got a tremendous ducking owing to his horse 

 jumping short." 



The account of two more brilliant gallops over 

 Leicestershire closes the record of this season's 

 sport. The first of these was from Melton Spinney, 

 *' a regular clipper of twenty minutes, for we killed 

 him close to Mr. George Norman's front door at 

 Goadby Hall. It was a race, for hounds led horses 

 by quite three fields down the valley towards 

 Chadwell. I was mounted on my old roan horse 

 Peter, a common enough one to look at, but he 

 could both gallop and jump with the best of them, 

 and was safe to clear a wide place, for he went very 

 fast at his fences. I remember he jumped into the 

 road by Hose, which is a wide place with an old 

 water-course running alongside, and it all but put 

 Captain ' Bay ' Middleton down when he followed, 

 for he only just saved a fall by good horsemanship. 



