286 Saddle and Sirloin, 



women running violently towards the spot from 

 whence they proceeded — " Dearie me ! Mary Ann, 

 let's gan and see. Somebody's murdering somebody. 

 Come along, lass !" Jack Backhouse's speech has 

 accompaniments which may well make the fox cubs 

 tremble in their pads. The toast was the " Unsuc- 

 cessful Candidates," and Jack announces himself as 

 " Yorkshire Jack." First he tells how, when he and 

 his friend Ben Morgan are " ligging a long way fra 

 yam," they don't " lap it up," but they draw for a 

 second fox. Leaving the past, he dashes boldly into 

 the future ; and referring to the contests of the day, 

 he says, " I'll get a prize ye now — I've been what they 

 call ' recommended.' "*' It was a great speech. Mr. 

 Hall can hardly believe in such eloquence on the part 

 of Jack, when it reaches his ears later in the day, but 

 he asks a huntsman or two, and they are unanimous 

 in their testimony. The scarlets linger near the 

 hunters for the rest of the afternoon, but by the 

 morrow's morn they are far away. On Friday, the 

 sixpenny crowd are in at one o'clock, and by four, 

 man and beast are on the move homeward. Some 



* No one knows that Jack was " recommended," as he states ; but 

 at Beverley, in 1869, he fulfilled his prophecy, and took a 5/. prize and 

 a 2/. gratuity for being second in the dog puppy class with Leader. 

 The Bishop of Oxford, who was staying with Mr. Sykes, M.P., and 

 took his seat with his peers on the M. F. H. bench, could not resist the 

 beaming looks of his brother Yorkshiremen ; and the oration which 

 Jack delivered in honour of Leader, first holding him by the head and 

 then by the stern, when the dog tried to cut it, was one which the 

 eloquent prelate will not forget. Soon after this Jack was so struck 

 with the tie of one of his brother huntsmen, that he insisted that it 

 was starched and ironed on him, and wouldn't believe in " one effort" 

 — il Nowt of the sort." Old Will Danby came over once more to the 

 county where he and Mr. Tom Hodgson performed such prodigies 

 among the foxes ; and when a photographer placed the huntsmen and 

 judges in a group, Mr. Tom Parrington took the modest old fellow by 

 the collar, and compelled him by "gentle violence" to come on to the 

 flags. Mr. Hall was reminding him of the Lammas Stream business 

 when Will got over on a 15/. grey, and he himself got "stabled between 

 banks" on a 400-guinea brown. 



