The Shropshire at HaivJcstone. 5 



SECOND WEEK, November 4 to 8. 



Sunday's rain came in tlie nick of time, for seldom has 

 a more glorious morning opened a hunting season than 

 that of Monday, the third of November, when nature 

 seemed to he decked in her most gorgeous garment to 

 welcome the Shropshire, under their new mastership, to 

 Hawkestone. How superb that premier seat of the county 

 looked ! Its dusky deer, matched by its silver grey and 

 black rabl)its, and its grand old fir- topped cliffs at " The 

 Grotto," its lustrous autumn-tinted foliage, its undulating 

 park, its lovely lake, its superb landscape of rich vale, 

 defying the eye to define its limits, and its sweet many- 

 coloured little guinea-pigs which fared sumptuously on 

 the velvet lawn, charms for the giithering spoi-tsmen such 

 as no other piece of grand old English mansion scenery 

 could have exceeded. But, as Jorrocks would have said, 

 " our business is of the chase, " and we must perforce 

 trot away with the hounds to the north lodge, and leave 

 these beauteous reflections but half told. It was hardly 

 a representative gathering of Shropshire, for Sir Watkin 

 had rival charms at Kednal to-day. There were some 

 Hills of course, (his lordship an enforced spectator), some 

 Percys, some Cottons, a Corbet, a Sandford, a Rocksavage, 

 a fair contingent from the Whitchurch side, a solitary 

 representative of the county town, and a few farmers, that 

 waited scarce three minutes in the road outside Wyrley 

 Eough for the welcome tallyho that set them ail 

 pushing through the narrow covert just in time to see 

 the hounds streaming away over the oj^en in glorious style. 

 Hearts had to be quickly hardened, for the fences looked 

 thick and uninviting, and there was no time for picking 

 places. The second had its votary in one of our best men, 

 and before half a dozen had been negotiated, those with 

 the hounds could be counted on the fingers. Twemlows 

 looked to be our fox's point, when alas, the inevitable 

 stumbling-block, in the shape of a turnip gatherer appeared, 

 and, " tallyho " back was the order of the day. Our fox 

 now became the scarecrow of the rearguard, amid whose 

 shouts he vanished into thin air, and our fun with him 

 for to-day was at an end. On such an amiable day a jog 

 to Losford Gorse was pleasant enough, and when there, 

 hound music soon told us to be on the qui vive, and away 

 went the cigars. He was no lingerer, and crossing to the 

 lower covert broke at the bottom for the brook of such 



