2 76 Silk and Scarlet. 



Mr. NIchol and his whip Joe Peckham ; how they 

 quarrelled about the number of horns of ale Joe 

 ought reasonably to drink out hunting, and how the 

 latter fled for his life to a magistrate " to swear the 

 peace " after his master had found him standing on 

 his saddle, and loading his pocket with cob-nuts, in- 

 stead of watching to see the vixen come across the 

 riding in cub-hunting time. T.ord Kintore bought his 

 fifty-five couples for a thousand guineas in 1828, but 

 fifteen couple had the kennel lameness and mange ; 

 and long before the end of their second season only 

 seventeen couple were in work. What with these, his 

 own, and the Southwold, his Lordship had 104 couple 

 in kennel when he hunted the Old Berkshire and Vale 

 of White Horse countries, and what between their 

 two kennels at Wadley and Cricklade, and five days 

 a-week, John Walker, with Joe Grant and Tom 

 Snooks as his whips, had a hardish time of it. 



g , . It was a lucky chance which led the 



fifth Duke of Beaufort to try for a fox 

 with his coarse stag-hounds of many colours in Silk 

 Wood, on his way home from hunting. After that, 

 the kennels at Netherhaven, Wilts, soon lacked their 

 tenants ; and the deer disappeared from those pad- 

 docks near Oldbury on the Hill (where Philip Payne 

 is buried and Will Long lives), beneath the talismanic 

 influence of the pad, which the chaplain of the Somer- 

 set family hung upon his bell-pull. Silk Wood has 

 been true to its destiny ever since, and one season, 

 under Mr. Holford's fostering care, there were no less 

 than nine litters in it and his other covers. With 

 such a nursery of 150 acres to swell the list, the pre- 

 sent Duke might well calculate that after cub-hunting 

 he had nearly three hundred brace of foxes in his 

 country. Will Long once opened it early in the 

 cub-hunting with forty-nine and a-half couple, and 

 the cry for an hour and a quarter delighted the 

 sixth Duke beyond measure. The seventh would as 



