254 Silk and Scarlet. 



best kennel-nursery one we have ; and her Cleopatra 

 Needle monument, ten feet high, but bearing no in- 

 scription, is still standing in the middle of a field 

 close by what once were the old Bainton kennels. 



Lexicon, one of the hounds in the Duke of Rutland's 

 pack, goes back to her ; but the muteness has not 

 descended to him. They were not only short of 

 tongue when Tom Wingfield got hold of them, but 

 far too quick for a bad scent, and it was mere chance 

 whether they had a day's sport at all. In fact, every 

 hunting man who saw them, used to confirm Tom's 

 caustic comments, that " it was principally our opinion 

 whether it was a fox or not ; they didn't know what 

 they were running half their time." During the next 

 thirteen seasons, they got back their tongue by breed- 

 ing from the Duke of Beaufort ; but still they had 

 hardly enough to satisfy Mr. Drake, and he selected, 

 among others, stallion hounds from Mr. Warde's in the 

 Craven country, which were even suspected of having 

 too much. It was a remarkable fact, that in Stephen 

 Goodall's and Ben Foote's day, they would always 

 pack with the Duke of Beaufort's (when they clashed 

 in the Heythrop country) and Lord Althorp's, but 

 never with the Duke of Grafton's. In this they showed 

 their judgment, as the latter were as wild in the open 

 as they were effective in the woodlands. Still Tom 

 Rose sometimes had very fine things with them, and 

 it was at the end of one of them that he exultingly 

 shouted, " I'd give five pounds to have Mr. Lloyd 

 here. What will he say of onr fat bullocks now ?" 

 Tv/r,. <-..«• T ^^ A Few men knew better about the work 



Mr. Griff Lloyd. i -n» >> i i 



of hounds than " the Parson ; and he was 

 sure to get to the end of every run somehow or other ; 

 but not content with being field-master, he constituted 

 himself a sort of standing counsel to the huntsman. 

 He would never go to covert or to dinner except on 

 horseback, and he did not care if he rode five-and- 

 twenty miles to either. So faithfully did he stick to 



