though they had been japanned. He was very contradictory and
pragmatical, and apt, as I thought, to differ from Master Simon now
and then, out of mere captiousness. This was particularly the case
with respect to the treatment of the hawk, which the old man seemed to
have under his peculiar care, and, according to Master Simon, was in a
fair way to ruin: the latter had a vast deal to say about _casting_,
and _imping_, and _gleaming_, and _enseaming_, and giving the hawk the
_rangle_, which I saw was all heathen Greek to old Christy; but he
maintained his point notwithstanding, and seemed to hold all this
technical lore in utter disrespect.

I was surprised with the good-humour with which Master Simon bore his
contradictions, till he explained the matter tom e afterwards. Old
Christy is the most ancient servant in the place, having lived among
dogs and horses the greater part of a century, and been in the service
of Mr. Bracebridge's father. He knows the pedigree of every horse on
the place, and has bestrode the great-great-grandsires of most of
them. He can give a circumstantial detail of every fox-hunt for the
last sixty or seventy years, and has a history for every stag's head
about the house, and every hunting trophy nailed to the door of the
dog-kennel.

All the present race have grown up under his eye, and humour him in
his old age. He once attended the Squire to Oxford, when he was a
student there, and enlightened the whole university with his hunting
lore. All this is enough to make the old man opinionated, since he
finds, on all these matters of first-rate importance, he knows more
than the rest of the world. Indeed, Master Simon had been his pupil,
and acknowledges that he derived his first knowledge in hunting from
the instructions of Christy: and I much question whether the old man