30 



LEAVES P'ROM A HUNTING DIARY 



Cobbins brook, hounds ran fast to Warlies Park and over the Wahham 

 Road, Mr. Bambridge being the first to discover an assailable point in the 

 rail and ditch out of it ; a slight check, but two of the hounds never left 

 the line, and the rest of the pack coming up, they worked it out. 



Another road to Waltham was crossed, mostly in single file, the hedge 

 into the road being a thick one, and the one out thicker. After going about 

 a mile, the Forest was entered just below High Beech, a good four-mile 

 point as the crow flies. Hounds ran very well through the Forest for 

 about two miles, close up to Theydon Bois, never swerving an inch off the 



The Deacons on their favourite hunters 



line, although some of the wild forest deer crossed right in front of them. 

 It looked as if the fox meant going right through the Forest, but he pre- 

 ferred sticking to it, and ran hounds out of scent near Fairmead Bottom, 

 Next day so sharp a frost set in that on Christmas Day people were skating 

 not twelve miles from the kennels. However, a rapid thaw enabled hounds 

 to be out the following day, when they met at Weald Gullet. To hunt, 

 skate, and hunt again in less than one week has seldom, if ever, I should 

 think, been the fortune of Essex sportsmen before the Christmas week of 

 1881. 



" Stud Groom," a chestnut horse by " Lowlander," the late 

 Miss Deacon's favourite hunter, was well known to all followers 



