156 REMINISCENCES, ETC. 



hounds, to see tliem do their work. Blame me, but IVe 

 seen him, at the end of a run, all blood and thorns. Mr. 

 Smith never galloped his horses at fences, he always drew 

 them up. He had little, low-priced horses when he first 

 came into this country, but he rode them so as no man ever 

 will again, and they would do anything ; get into bottoms 

 and jump out of them like nothing. And how handy he 

 made them ! Those were different days ; you might find at 

 Melton SjDiuney and run to Billesden Coplow, and not cross 

 a ploughed field. I have seen Mr. Ilolyoake go like dis- 

 traction for fifteen minutes, but Mr. Smith and Mr. Greene, 

 and Mr. Gilmour, and Lord Wilton, they are the men to go 

 when others are leaving off." * 



Horses sometimes get second wind. Mr. Robert Can- 

 ning's Conqueror once showed symptoms of distress, and 

 began to kick his belly with his hind legs. " You are 

 not going to stop, are you 1 " said his master. The 

 animal rallied at the well-known voice, and took a large 

 fence out of the very field where this circumstance occurred. 



Sometimes fox-hunters will resort to an ingenious device 

 to conceal the fact that their horses are beaten. Not long 

 ago, in Leicestershire, during a run in which the pace had 

 been very severe, a rider was observed walking very leisurely 

 towards a stiff fence, but without any intention of taking 

 it, with a horse's shoe in his hand. " What is the matter?" 

 said a friend, " why don't you screw him at it 1 " " Can't 

 you see," was the reply, " that he has cast a shoe 1 " 

 " Why," observed a third, who had just come up, " my 

 good fellow, your horse has got four shoes 07i" 



Among the foremost of Mr. Smith's field, the last season 

 he hunted in Leicestershire, was Colonel Wyndham, of the 

 Scotch Greys, who had returned to England after the battle 



* It was about this period of Mr. Smith's career that Lord Middleton 

 presented him with four first-rate hunters, as an acknowledgment of 

 the excellent sport he had enjoyed with his hounds in four successive 

 seasons. 



