HAND 



notwithstanding that his horse was usually rash, 

 inexperienced, or bad - tempered, otherwise he 

 would not have been riding him, I can call to 

 mind very few occasions on which I saw him 

 down. One unusually open winter, when he 

 hunted five and six days a week from October to 

 April, he told me he had only fifteen falls, and 

 that taking the seasons as they came, thirteen 

 was about his average. Nor was he a very light- 

 weight — spare, lengthy, and muscular, he turned 

 twelve stone in his hunting clothes, which were 

 by no means of costly material. Horses rarely 

 refused with him, and though they often had a 

 scramble for it, as seldom fell, but under his 

 method of riding, sitting well down in the saddle, 

 with the reins in both hands, they never took off 

 wrong, and in this lay the great secret of his 

 superiority. When I knew him he was an ex- 

 ceedingly temperate man ; for many years I 

 believe he drank only water, and he eschewed 

 tobacco in every form. " The reason you gentle- 

 men have such bad nerves'' he said to me, jogging 

 home to Melton one evening in the dusk that 

 always meets us about Somerby, "is because you 

 smoke so much. It turns your brains to a kind 

 of vapour ! " The inference was startling, I 

 thought, and not complimentary, but there might 

 be some truth in it nevertheless. 



We have put off a great deal of time at our 



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