^294 mngs of tbe Ibunting^^ftelD 



away " from the " Crown " in the direction of Eastbury 

 by eight o'clock, to have a quiet hour on the flags before 

 the country stream set in ; but scarcely another soul 

 passed us in the next five miles. The first three were 

 along a dusty road, and it was not a little refreshing 

 to find ourselves on Pimperne Downs at last, and Percy's 

 string of five, with C and O on their sheets, returning 

 quietly from exercise, the leading object in the fore- 

 ground. Autocrat, in hound and not in horse shape, was 

 in our thoughts that day ; and leaving them to wend 

 their way inside the hedge to their stables, which stand 

 by the road side, some half mile nearer Blandford, we 

 struck across the downs to the left. Passing the 

 " Bushes," we soon struck into the deeply-wooded re- 

 cesses of Eastbury Park, amid a troop of browsing 

 Devons and some young hunting stock which at once 

 told the tale of " the old chestnut blood." Hard by 

 the kennels the whole of the seventeen puppies (eleven 

 of them brother and sister Autocrats) had politely 

 stretched themselves out for immediate inspection on a 

 straw-spread surface beneath an ash tree, and lay there 

 dreaming and curling themselves into many a fantastic 

 group over which Frank Grant or Landseer might have 

 lingered with delight. 



' As the lots were looked over, the}' were passed 

 through into the adjoining paddock ; and man}' a 

 Dorsetshire man gazed with bitter regret on this grand 

 pack as they " packed " for the last time under a large 

 white thorn. Oft had " The Thorn " been trolled at a 

 Dorsetshire fireside in their honour, and now, alas ! but 

 six short hours, and no blast from Treadwell could 

 summon his favourites more. 



' Five minutes' walk brought us to the house, a fine grey 



