HADDON. 343 



Corner, and at Bosslngton. In fact, there is hard.ly 

 a place within a radius of twenty miles to which or 

 through which a Haddon deer has not led hounds in 

 recent years. 



Mr. Bissett had a curious experience at Haddon 

 when he killed his first big deer there in 1855. 

 They found in Huscombe Wood and ran by Aller's 

 Wood and Combe nearly to Anstey, and then took 

 a wide sweep round the enclosed country by Spurway 

 Mill, Highleigh, and Combeshead, back to Haddon, 

 where the old stag beat them in the water, but they 

 fresh found him by Hartford and ran him in the dark 

 up and down the water. They could only tell where 

 he was when hounds were at fault by the splashing 

 in the water, and they could do nothing without a 

 light ; so Mr. Froude Bellew volunteered to ride 

 down to a cottage and borrow a lantern, but the old 

 woman did not know him, and, as he had no money 

 with him, declined the loan of a candle, though she 

 eventually consented on his leaving his hunting-knife 

 •as a pledge for its safe return. 



There are few places where the habits of the deer 

 can be observed better than at Haddon, and it is 

 here that successive harbourers, from Jem Blackmore, 

 the elder, to Fred Goss, have studied their calling, 

 some of them learning much from old Jack Wensley, 

 the woodman at Hartford, who has lived among the 

 deer and studied them all his life. 



Some years ago there was a stag in Haddon lame in 

 the stifle joint, sometimes it affected him, sometimes 



