PICTURE OF MR. SMITH ON AYSTON. 39 



squire mounted him, as he showed signs of being unruly, 

 one of his friends asked him what " screw " he had there. 

 The end of the run, however, showed the " screw " almost 

 the only nag up, and from that day he went by the name of 

 Screwdriver. Jack-o'- Lantern was a blood-looking bay, with 

 crooked fore legs, the son of a chestnut of that name ; he 

 was an old horse when he came into Hants, and as perfect 

 a hunter as man ever rode. " I remember," relates an eye- 

 witness, "a tremendous day, early in the season, the weather 

 hot and the ground deep, when, after two hours in South 

 Grove, the fox went away to Milton Hill. Here, for the first 

 time in his life. Old, for he could no longer be called Young, 

 Jack-o'-Lantern, stood still, and the squire said he would 

 never ride him again, and he never did." 



The most extraordinary horse of all was Ayston, a yellow 

 bay, all over a hunter, and with excellent shoulders, but 

 " l^igeon-toQiX" and so bad a hack that he had to be led to 

 covert j " doubtless thoroughbred," as the squire used to say, 

 " inasmuch as I bought him warranted not so." But, even 

 with the above disqualifications, in a hard run with plenty 

 of fences, and through dirt, the horse was never foaled that 

 coyld beat him. His master would at no time have taken 

 a thousand guineas for him. Ferneley has faithfully repre- 

 sented him in the fine sporting picture that still adorns the 

 billiard-room at Tedworth, and in which the squire's seat on 

 horseback is true to the life. He is surrounded by some ol 

 his favourite hounds — Watchman, Commodore, Romulus, 

 Dimity, and others. " On two occasions (out of many)," 

 says a contemporary, " I can instance the superiority of this 

 gallant horse. The squire had been riding him with a 

 hanging fox around the deep rides at South Grove * all the 

 morning, while all the field were standing still ; at last 

 they got away through the heavy clays and perpetual 



* For a singular device of Mr. Smith's to get reluctant foxes out of 

 covert, see Appendix, No. VI, 



