98 The Post and the Paddock. 



Will — / know yoii too zuell to believe that yoii zvould 

 bring them back withoiit having it out of them," was 

 the dry, good-humoured response. The result of 

 the conference was that a good stake was put on 

 Memnon, and Will won 650 guineas by his trial 

 mount. 



As might have been expected in a man of his tem- 

 perament, Sam was slow to anger, and of few words. 

 He was never happier than when sauntering along, 

 gun in hand, and watching his favourite yellow-and- 

 white pointer. Banker, wriggling his stern down the 

 stubbles ; and this silent system was much more to his 

 mind than the " fast and furious " sport of which he 

 and his brother often partook with Mr. Thornhill 

 among the pheasant preserves of Riddlesworth. He 

 was a great cocker, and delighted in a breed of 

 •' Vauxhall Clarke" game fowls, which he kept at his 

 seventy-acre Fidget Farm. This stud-farm was per- 

 fect of its kind, and situated about a mile and a 

 quarter from the town, at the extremity of the Bury- 

 hill gallop. It was here that he had a small planting, 

 regularly fenced with wire, and laid out with artificial 

 earths for his pet foxes ; and he would sit for hours 

 in a summer evening watching them come out to feed 

 and play. Many a gallant bagman drew his breath 

 in this little nook ; and when Lord Darlington visited 

 Newmarket (which he never did in the October meet- 

 ings), he generally went on there, not so much to look 

 over the young things, as to get a summer wind-scent 

 of the " Charlies," to keep his spirits up till he could 

 again throw his leather horn-belt across his shoulders, 

 and again enter in his diary that the " darling hounds 

 behaved like jewels!' If the two Chifneys were not 

 well up with the jewels in some of their fastest things 

 across the Bedale country, it was not for the lack of 

 having the best mounts that his lordship's stables at 

 Newton House could afford, and they not unfre- 

 quently went on to stay at Raby, and look through 



