IN EPPING FOREST 



265 



Hall. Oh, Mr. William Pearson, what were you doing- there ? 

 Why, oh why, were you not attending- to matters horticultural,* 

 instead of affairs venatic, for they say that you headed the fox, 

 and back from the open fields he sought safety in the forest's 

 pathless wilds ? And so the day wore on. Occasionally a 

 babbling note, as hounds feathered the line of one of the four 

 foxes that had in vain sought refuge in the forest earths, when 

 its sylvan glades were echoing again and again to the melody 



Epping in summer dress and yet not a bicycle to be seen 



of hounds' full cry, but nothing but a red-hot scent would have 

 served on such a day over the brown carpet of leaves that 

 thickly covered the ground, filling up every hole to a common 

 level, just as drifting snow smooths out the hollows on the 

 bleak moorland — makino- it dangerous to ride straioht ahead 

 without due caution, for any moment you might have found 

 yourself girth deep in the withered leaves. 



Once more near the earth a stentorian holloa rang out, was 

 repeated, and rang out again. The first put Master, hounds, 

 and fields on the qui vive, the second on the move, the third on 



* Mr. Pearson, of Redgrove, Epping, held the post of Hon. Secretary 

 of the Horticultural Show at the Essex Agricultural Society's meeting at 

 Epping in the summer of 1899. — Ed. 



