CHAPTER XXL 



THE ESSEX FOXHOUNDS. 



* ' The melancholy days are come 

 The saddest of the year, 

 Of wailing winds, and naked woods, 

 And meadows brown and sere." 



UCH were the reflections that crossed my 

 mind when I started at the ghastly hour 

 of six in the morning, in order to travel 

 by train to attend the meet of the Essex 

 Foxhounds at Pirgo Park Lodge, near Havering-at- 

 ye-Bower, a few miles from Romford. I had several 

 reasons for desiring to revisit these parts, and as I 

 rode to cover, I thought of the words of an old song, 

 as being peculiarly apposite to the time — " Scenes 

 of my youth, once more I behold you ; home of my 

 childhood from thee I have roamed," for it is now 

 close upon half a century since first I hunted the 

 identical cover which the Essex were to draw on 

 Monday last. 



The pack I hunted in those days was not an im- 

 posing one, certainly, though useful. Two couples 

 and a half of harriers, drafts from the pack of Sir 

 James Urmstone, one beagle, a fox terrier, and a 

 spaniel. To a boy of ten years of age such a lot 



