304 Silk and Scarlet, 



such a habit of all singling out one hound, and worry- 

 ing him, that the baronet in vain offered a reward of 

 200/. to any one who would devise a cure. Will Todd 

 did not know of the habit when the forty couple were 

 sold into the Old Berkshire country. They, however, 

 began the very first night at the Kingston Inn kennels, 

 and Will procured a great bell, and rung it, and 

 flogged them, till he almost alarmed the neighbour- 

 hood. Next day he kept them out in the yard, and 

 let their unhappy quarry go in and out of the lodging- 

 house as he liked, and they at last got so frightened, 

 that at the first tinkle of the bell, whose rope was at 

 his bed-head, they would stop short in the smallest 

 jar. 

 Mr. Peihamand Shropshire has also a keen remem- 



his Men. brance of Mr. Pelham, who canvassed 

 Shrewsbury alphabetically. He put his men into 

 white coats with black collars and cuffs, and black 

 velvet breeches ; and then, when he had sedulously 

 made them such guys, he would urge his pony for 

 miles out of his road, especially to avoid them. He 

 seems, however, to have kept some eye on them, as he 

 was once, and only once, heard to say, that the hunts- 



XT ^ T> * man Ned Bates was " mouthy," and that 



Ned Bates. _ , ^^ , , , . ,r\ 1 mi 



Jacky Tattle, the whip, was "a boy to kill 

 horses." Ned, who is introduced as whip into Mr. 

 Corbet's hunting picture, rode good sixteen stone 

 latterly. He always said '^ My Honey'' when he was 

 pleased, or the reverse, and had a nose like a red mul- 

 berry. The Rev. Charles Eaton, who was so great 

 over Shropshire or Cheshire for twenty minutes on his 

 scarecrow mare Fair Barbara, once asked him con- 

 fidentially how much a year on a fair calculation it 

 cost him to keep it painted ; but Ned " moved the 

 previous question," and deftly parried the thrust, with 

 — " Aye ! my Honey I if thee' II put, thy mare into my 

 stable, ril bring a blanket off my own bed to kiver her 

 poor honest 



