THE ROLLESTON MEET, BY "THE ADELPHl" 105 



After the friendly salutations were over — and their enthu- 

 siastic character astonished no one but the Illustrious 

 Stranger present* — Mr. Smith took his hounds to Shankton 

 Holtjt where he drew only the bottom of the covert ; 

 thence to Norton Gorse, Stanton Wood, Glooston Wood, 

 and Fallow Close, all blank. It was an unfavourable day 

 for scent, a bright sun, with north-easterly wind, not a 

 cloud to be seen, and the cold intense. A fox having been 

 found by Mr. Hodgson, in Yowes Covert, as already stated, 

 away went the hounds towards Horringhold, leaving 

 Blaston to the right. Here Mr. Smith took a strong flight 

 of rails into a road, quite like a " young un." The fox soon 

 afterwards crossed the Welland, and went away for Eocking- 

 ham Park, where, it being late, they whipped off. " We 

 never saw," observe " The Adelphi," " a handier pack, one 

 more completely under the command of their huntsman, or 

 quicker in getting to him at a cast." Of Mr. Smith's 

 horses, they remark : " they were large and powerful, ex- 



* Prince Ernest of Saxe Coburg. 



+ " Mr. Smith " (says the author of " Silk and Scarlet ") ** was 

 wonderfully fond of Shankton Holt. I have seen him get away from 

 it with three foxes in one day : it was a great nursery for them in his 

 time. He liked Staunton Wood and Langton Caudle uncommonly ; he 

 always said the wildest foxes lay there — away directly. He used to say 

 that an hour and a half from Widmerpool to Blackberry Hill, near 

 Belvoir, slap across the vale, was one of the best runs he ever had in 

 Leicestershire." — Silk and Scarlet, p. 58. 



The same writer also relates this singular freak of a fox : "When 

 Mr. Smith was at Belvoir, in 1840, with his hounds, he ran a fox 

 through Ingoldsby, Osgodby Coppice, Truliam Park Wood, and Nor- 

 wood, right to Grimsthorpe Oaks. Will Goodall, who was then the 

 duke's huntsman, gets into the wood, and sees the fox in one of the 

 rides. Off he slipped quietly to Mr. Smith and told him. He was 

 casting across the park. When Will brought the hounds, blame me if 

 the fox was not standing there, still waiting for him. Mr. Smith came 

 to the spot and saw him too : it would be four minutes, and he had 

 never stirred. I never had heard of such a thing, and Dick Burton 

 and Will told me the same." — Silk and Scarlet, p. 63, 



