HIS IDEA OF A HUNTSMAN. 149 



The following anecdote was related by Mr. Child, a 

 Hampshire yeoman of the right sort, who always had a fox 

 for Mr. Smith in Wilster Wood : " The first time Mr. Smith 

 ran a fox into the Newbury Yale, I and some friends, seeing 

 he pointed for the meadows near East Woodhay, got for- 

 %vard to a tremendous leap, that had often stopped the whole 

 Craven Hunt. It was a stile, bank, and hedge, and a liberal 

 allowance of water on the far side. Down came the squire 

 on Screw-driver, and took ifc in bis stroke. This did not so 

 much surprise us, but what did ^^'as, that he never once 

 turned round to look at it ; whereas, had one of our fellows 

 got over it, he would have looked at it for a week and talked 

 of it for a year." 



His notion of a huntsman was that he should always be 

 with his hounds. On this principle he invariably acted ; 

 for he well knew that unless a master of fox-hounds, hunt- 

 ing them himself, had head, hand, and heart, and could be 

 close to his hounds when they were close to their fox, he 

 could not do his duty as it should be done. One day wdien 

 he had the Q.uorndon, after a sharp affair of forty minutes, 

 the fox, quite beaten, ran into a small covert with a lane 

 half round it. The field kept the lane j the squire exclaim- 

 ing : " They will have him in five minutes ! " leapt into tlie 

 adjoining paddock, at the farther end of which there was a 

 tremendously thick bullfincher. Unused to denial, he rode 

 at it, and fell with his horse on a heap of rough stones on 

 the other side, tearing his white cords most piteously. He 

 was up again in a moment, and as unconcerned as if he had 

 fallen out of his arm-chair, and did kill his fox within the 

 five minutes. Mr. Smith had a great contempt for a man 

 who attempted to hunt a pack of fox-hounds and could not 

 ride to them ; and he never scrupled to express his opinion 

 whenever any such instances came under his own observa- 

 tion, as no man was more fairly entitled to do. 



The following anecdote of his courage was related by 



