3 1 4 Silk and Scarlet. 



dells and ling. They were constantly having runs 

 almost into the heart of Westmoreland, and hounds 

 kept arriving at the kennel all night. In the cover of 



" Cheerless Understone, 

 Where cock never crew, and sun never shone," 



they once divided, and Will had about as much chance 

 of stopping them as a flight of pigeons. After riding 

 wildly in one direction, while Kit went in the other, a 

 shepherd at last halloed to him as if from the clouds 

 on Whiteside, and descended with Bardolph and half 

 a dozen hounds. His account was that they had 

 nearly worried him as well as their fox ; but he had 

 summoned courage enough to pick up the brush, and 

 hang it round Bardolph's neck. Of the other run 

 nobody ever knew anything, except that Baronet and 

 his party were found at the mouth of an earth at 

 Masham Moor Heads, thirty miles away. 

 The Hoidemess. .^his wild sort of training of which the 

 above is a mere sample, and three or four 

 seasons more with the Badsworth and Scarborough, 

 found Will well up to the mark, when Mr. Hodgson 

 took the Holderness, and beckoned him to his side, as 

 first whip and kennel huntsman ; and that memorable 

 pair were in their third season, when "Nimrod" arrived 

 at Beverley to watch the proceedings from the back 

 of " Little Shamrock." Few men had such a country 

 to work in, gentlemen and yeomen all fox preservers 

 to a man, and looking on 



'* The green gorse in Dringhoe that waves," 



as the most sacred of plants. 



Will very narrowly escaped jumping down a coal 

 waste ; but the horse's second effort just saved him. 

 Jack Robinson, ^his leap was generally talked of, with 

 one that Jack Robmson, whip to Mr. 

 Bethell of Rise, had taken over Wansforth Lock, some 

 seasons before. He was determined to be with his 



