240 Saddle and Sirloin. 



came back early in September, as soon as the ram- 

 letting was over. Tom Carter looked to them, but 

 the younger ones were brought back into residence at 

 Sledmere by Sir Tatton himself, when he paid his 

 second visit to Holderness in October, and stayed two 

 or three days with his tenant Mr. Dickenson, of Hum- 

 bleton Hall. 



There were no degrees in his courtesy ; and it is 

 rarely that such guileless simplicity of heart is united 

 to such a keen intuitive perception of men, and a 

 power of taking their measure. There was always 

 the right word for them in the right place, to check or 

 encourage ; he was quite as patient a listener as he 

 was a race-rider, and liked to answer questions ; and 

 if they left him without twenty curious scraps of 

 knowledge, quite unconnected with Kutusoff, " Split 

 Post Douglas," or the Beverley Club, they had only 

 themselves to blame. " Mr. Argus," as he always 

 termed him, when they met, was his great racing 

 writer, and he loved dearly to have his feuilletons read 

 to him, and to see him at Sledmere in person on his 

 last grand field-day there with John Scott. Cows he 

 did not care about, but sheep would soon bring out 

 the story of Ajax, and the day when he would not let 

 Mr. Sanday's father pick his first lot of ewes, and then 

 found his mistake in going for all the most transparent 

 ears. He preferred sheep of a smaller size than the 

 Wold farmers liked, and his belief that they were more 

 thrifty was so rooted, that he would not alter the style, 

 and declared that he could build one of the modern 

 Leicesters out of a fleece and a rail. 



Then he would turn to hounds and those " Sykes 

 Goneaway" days, when he hunted all the York 

 country from Spurn Point to Coxwold, and when the 

 York Wednesday generally found them leaving off 

 about forty miles from home. As the years of Sir 

 Tatton and Tom lengthened, their hunting days grew 

 shorter, and there was often time left for a little hedge- 



