After this I was taken to a new toy of his and the Squire’s, which he termed the falconry, where there were several unhappy birds in durance, completing their education.  Among the number was a fine falcon, which Master Simon had in especial training, and he told me that he would show me, in a few days, some rare sport of the good old-fashioned kind.  In the course of our round, I noticed that the grooms, game-keeper, whippers-in, and other retainers, seemed all to be on somewhat of a familiar footing with Master Simon, and fond of having a joke with him, though it was evident they had great deference for his opinion in matters relating to their functions.

There was one exception, however, in a testy old huntsman, as hot as a pepper-corn; a meagre, wiry old fellow, in a threadbare velvet jockey cap, and a pair of leather breeches, that, from much wear, shone, as 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 does not still look upon him rather as a greenhorn.