146 The Bihdale Country. 



and went to ground. A most enjoyable run — so wild and 

 natural, the only drawback being the difficulty of riding over 

 such boggy ground. A warm, sunny day ; moderate scent. 

 We had to ride home from Limekiln House, at 5 o'clock, and 

 did not reach Hurworth till after 9 o'clock. 



Mr. Parrington had on this day gone into what is now 

 Bilsdale territory. Foxes seem to have been very short in the 

 Hurworth country about that time, and an additional reason 

 may have been that be the ground never so baked in the low 

 country and scent never so bad, hounds can still run a fox on 

 the heather, or " ling," as it is called in Yorkshire, and this 

 was possibly Mr. Parrington's raison d'etre for leaving his own 

 country. At the epoch of which we write the Bilsdale pack 

 was at a very low ebb. Squire Bell, of Thirsk, had been hunt- 

 ing the Hambleton side of their country and also a portion of 

 the Hurworth domains from 1853, and not till 1868 did the 

 Bilsdale get into full swing again. In the meantime Bobbie 

 Dawson, who was for over sixty years the whipper-in and 



Bobbie Dawson's writing and signature. 

 persona grata of the Bilsdale, kept one or two hounds in the 

 dale, and Lord Feversham, when master of the Bedale, used 

 to send a few of his puppies into Bilsdale to walk. With them 

 and Bobbie's hounds the moorland folk used to have impromptu 

 hunts, and so well did these young hounds enter when they 

 were sent in from their quarters that Lord Feversham, in 1868, 



