REMINISCENCES OF BERT DRAGE 



not get through the crowd on the Banbury Road, 

 so ran down beside the hedge towards Byfield 

 where hounds checked. Mr. Paget, who lived at 

 Brixworth then, was riding a new horse he could not 

 hold, so he jumped it out of the road on the other 

 side, where he saw Gaylass and Garnish hit off 

 the line down one of those Fawsley doubles. 



That Garnish was the best bitch I ever had. 

 Hunt a line on the hardest dusty road, and always 

 in front. Gaylass was her sister by Desperate ; 

 they were both almost black with white collars. 

 Garnish never bred anything half so good as herself, 

 but Gaylass did. It was extraordinary how 

 they picked the line through all that crowd on the 

 road. I saw most of the field turn and ride up 

 the road back to Badby Wood as I clapped my 

 hounds over the road. They started to run like 

 hell. The Fawsley doubles are almost unjumpable, 

 and the hand gates delayed the field, which gave 

 the hounds a real chance of settling down, not that 

 they could have been interfered with much that day 

 they were running that hard. 



They just touched Church Wood, but they 

 never stopped for a second, and I am sure they 

 never changed there. Beyond Preston Capes they 

 ran over an easy country into the heart of the 

 Grafton. They only went through a corner of 

 Ashby Bushes. At Adstone Bottom, about a mile 

 or so on, there were a lot of falls — even Lord 

 Annaly had a scramble there and lost his whip — 



52 



