194 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. [1859 



Curiously enough, he can see quite well to shoot any- 

 thing which passes over his head without them. 



Another thing which he saw very well, too, was the 

 great Sudbury run of 1873. Hounds got away from him 

 a little, when they swooped down at such a pace into the 

 Dove Valley from Marston Park, but he remembered 

 how, on the previous Monday, Captain Cotton had put 

 a fox out of a willow tree by the Dove, and had run him 

 very fast to Sudbury Coppice, when the hounds were 

 stopped. Thinking this might be the same fox, he dashed 

 down by the willow tree, and caught sight of hounds 

 streaming up the opposite hill by Dove Leys. Crossing 

 the river by the railway bridge, he caught them beyond 

 his own house, where they checked. Miss Mildred Fitz- 

 Herbert and Mr. C. W. Lyon, now living at Doveridge, 

 were with him, and saw the fox killed at Wootton. 



In 1878 he married Miss Goodwin, who used to be one 

 of the four or five ladies who hunted with the Meynell in 

 those days. By her he had one daughter, who is hunting 

 with us now. None of his sons cared much about riding, 

 though they are keen enough with rod and gun. The 

 eldest. Captain Harry Dawson, distinguished himself in 

 the South African campaign at Vaal Krantz, where he 

 was exposed, with the others in the 78th Battery, R.A., 

 to a withering fire, and continued to stand by his gun 

 after his foot had been carried away by a shell or a 

 portion of one. For this he was accorded a grand 

 reception on his arrival home, being presented by the 

 neighbourhood with a silver bowl as a mark of their 

 appreciation of his gallant conduct. Of this he himself. 

 Englishman-like, makes light, saying that he only did his 

 duty until he was hit, and, after that, stood still because 

 he could not move about on one foot ! 



1859. 

 In this year the Hoar Cross diary recommences, and 

 the very first entry is a curious one. " October 25th. 

 Hounds stopped by frost." It only deals with the regular 



