THE VILLAGE SMITHY

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and still the old complaint holds good, for the smith cuts too much horn away and makes the shoe too big. When were horses first shod? Has the custom changed at all since the Romans left their cast-off shoes behind them? Again we smell the smell of red-hot iron on the horny hoof, and watch the muscles of the brawny arms with measured beat and slow

"And children coming home from school

Look in at the open door,

They love to see the flaming forge,

And hear the bellows roar."

Are there any future Lord Mayors among these children? They may be standing on the same spot, by the same castle walls, watching a horse being shod, as Dick himself may once have watched, before he set out for the city that was paved with gold. Little did he reck then of the ups and downs that fortune had in store for him, and when worsted in his first fight he ran away weary and homesick, the voices in the bells nerved him for another struggle: Turn again, turn again, future Lord Mayor"!

JACK MYTTON'S HALSTON

M

Y last tale was of Whittington, the place and the man. This is of Holystone or Halston, a place adjoining Whittington, but of a man as different from the famous Dick as cne man can differ from another. Jack Mytton, the squire of Halston, was very noted among sportsmen in the days of our grandfathers. He inherited vast wealth, all of which he squandered, and died in debt; a strong body, which he wrecked in middle age; a fitful, wild, and restless nature, whose unbridled passions dragged him deeper and deeper into the abyss of drink and delirium.

The Muttons were a family of Shropshire squires for centuries. the derivation of their name being so obvious in a borderland where sheep-stealing might be patriotism that it was embellished into Mytton. They were probably of a race rather wilder and more ungovernable than usual even in the mixed breeds of the border, for none of the fathers for many generations had ever lived to see their sons grow up to manhood. It may be that each succeeding generation, lacking all parental control, got wilder and wilder until the eccentricity culminated in the man of whom I write.

It is about a hundred years since this John Mytton was born. My father's eldest brother knew him, and in our childhood told us wonderful tales about him. X and

I slightly knew his children. A life of him was written by a friend named "Nimrod," a copy of the original edition of which lately sold for £19. Jack Mytton in

MYTTON'S PRANKS

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herited the beautiful estate of Halston, 10,000 a year, and accumulated rents. He was sent to school at Westminster, where he spent £800 a year, and wrote to his guardian, Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, asking for more money as he was going to be married, he being then of the mature age of fourteen years. His stern legal guardian replied, "Sir, if you cannot live on your allowance you may starve, and if you marry I will commit you to prison." As he grew up his great delight was in fighting or playing at highway robbery. He disguised himself and robbed his own butler, who had been sent to Oswestry for money and boasted no one would take it off him. Then he waylaid the doctor and the parson together, frightening them into fits. If a man wanted a place as gamekeeper he was always told to watch a wood where a sweep went poaching. One strong, determined man had a great struggle with the sweep, and dragged him to the hall, where he turned out to be the young squire much battered and bruised.

When riding about the country he would take his horse into the inn or farmhouse to warm it by the fire and give it ale or beef as he had himself. He kept packs of hounds, racehorses, fighting cocks, badgers for baiting, polecats, monkeys, bears. A friend who went to Halston one day, seeing, as he rode into the stableyard, a bear chained up, exclaimed, “Ah, Bruin!" and the groom who came to take his horse said, as he touched his cap, "Yes, sir, we all'us brews 'ere every week." Mytton rode the bear into the diningroom amid his assembled guests, but as he spurred it, it bit his leg and mauled him sadly. A monkey was turned loose on a hunter after the hounds, to the great delight of the rustics. If a toll-gate were not open, Mytton would charge into it or jump it, which generally caused something to be smashed. To put the postboys in the carriage while he took it over hedge and ditch was as exciting as a steeplechase by moonlight.

All his tips were of gold, in a country where gold was seldom seen, and able-bodied men's wages were eight or ten shillings a week. No wonder if he were worshipped (while the money lasted) and men jumped at a glance from Jack Mytton. His valet once counted a hundred and fifty-two pairs of breeches, at a time when a good pair of buckskins or leathern breeches was handed down from father to son as an heirloom. Thirty thousand pounds a year could not have been spent if gambling had not got hold of him, but it came with stronger drink, and five or six bottles of port wine grew to be the daily allowance.

A genius like this was well fitted to stand for Parliament in the good old days when Shrewsbury's lambs were noted. The turmoil of a rough-and-tumble contested election just suited him, and when in fair public fight he licked the champion of the other side in five rounds he was soon at the top of the poll. Then he was High Sheriff of the county and officer in the Yeomanry and Hussars. His friends tried to give him a sound religious education, and he had a parson all for himself who lived in the house with him, but he rode his black pony upstairs into the parson's bedroom for prayers, and left it there all night. He also pushed his Reverence off the bridge into the pool, a prank the servants learnt to expect. So his religious instruction was abandoned and his education became purely secular, with random sporting unrestrained.

"It's the pace that kills," and no man could last his pace long. The blessing of death came to him at the early age of thirty-seven. "Distance lends enchantment to the view." His home remains, a scene of such tranquillity and beauty when we saw it on a bright day in June, that we could hardly credit it could have ever been the scene of so much wild and reckless wantonness. The house is a rather plain substantial building, about two hundred years old, with garden sloping gently