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and the first meet was at Bedford Purlieus ; but the 

 hounds kept changing their foxes, and his lordship de- 

 cided to have a turn at Sutton Wood. Tom rode 

 Thorney that day, and the decision with which he lifted 

 his hounds for five hundred yards over the plough, and 

 did not allow his fox to dwell for an instant in Abbot's 

 Wood, made the old hands say, " There's no mistake 

 about our new man." Monk's Wood and Bedford 

 Purlieus were latterly very different from what they had 

 been in the dykeless days of Will Deane, when horses 

 had fairly to skip from one sound bit of ground to 

 another in the Ridings, and Tom found no better place for 

 making hounds steady. Aversley Wood foxes had 

 always an honourable mention, and he looked upon 

 them as quite the wildest and the best. The Soke of 

 Peterborough, with its Castor Hanglands and Upton 

 Wood, was a very favourite place for his infant school in 

 the autumn. " When there w^as a scent," he used to say, 

 " hounds run as well there as anywhere ; " but, taking the 

 season through, he leant to Barnwell Wold. Of Morehay 

 Lawn he was also very fond, and it was there that he 

 entered George Carter to the country, three weeks 

 before the season closed, in the April of '45. 



'We loved to stroll out with the old man and the 

 hounds into Milton Park, and, by judiciously leading up 

 to her, induce him to talk of " Relish," a name which he 

 used to pronounce with as much unction as Robert Hall 

 was wont to throw into " Mesopotamia " ; and we mis- 

 chievously got him to say it for the last time, just 

 before we bade him good-bye on the show-ground at 

 Yarm. He was one of those fine sterling characters 

 which well repaid the study; and the whole place and 

 its accessories seemed so exactly in keeping with him. 



S 



