Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE NEW SCHOOL The good of other times let others state, I think it lucky I was born so late In 1813 the historic Charlton hunt was broken up. The Kegent acquired the Goodwood hounds by gift from the fourth Duke of Richmond, and Charles Davis went to the Ascot kennels as first whipper-in under Sharpe, his future father-in-law. Mr. Hellish, Master of the Epping Forest Hounds, had been robbed and murdered one evening on his way home after hunting with the King's hounds and dining at the Bush in Staines; and from this time a couple of boys on horseback used to be sent out with the Buckhounds whenever George III. hunted. Each boy carried a brace of horse pistols, which at the end of the day they handed to the yeomen prickers who rode home alongside of the king. According to the 'Druid,' Charles Davis started as one of these boys. The ' Druid' in his own line, and within the very differing limits of his opportunities, was as felicitous a compiler of hearsay as Boswell. Take, for instance, his drive with Dick Christian in 'Silk and Scarlet.' He gives to everything he hears from others a visible flash of life and character which makes it, as it were, fasten upon the eye as you read. Sometimes, perhaps, he relates what he would have liked to hear in addition to what he heard. When his admirers gave him a dinner in 1859, Charles Davis himself told thema g i -S circumstantially about this ' unfortunate gentleman's ' fate, and how from that time on, two yeomen prickers with pistols always accompanied George III.'s carriage back to Windsor. But as he gives no colour to this being a personal reminiscence, I must reject with regret a legend which it would have pleased me to preserve. The arrival of the Goodwood Hounds at Ascot started a new period in stag-huntin...