92 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



Short, soon restored me to health, and I succeeded in 

 takmg liarrold Hall, pleasantly situated on the river 

 Ouse, and in the very midst of my cub-hunting 

 woodland. What a splendid woodland I thought it, 

 and think it so still ! From Salsey Forest, through 

 Yardley Chase, to Snelson, Lavenden, the Harrold 

 and Odell Woods, on by Puddington Hayes, Col- 

 worth, Knotting Fox, Melchbourne, Swineshead, 

 and Kimbolton, I should think was in its varied 

 line not much' under seventeen miles of magnificent 

 forest, chase, and woodland, with but an intervention 

 of a few fields ; the stock of foxes ample, and much 

 of it good scenting ground. On settling to take 

 Harrold Hall, and the shooting and pike-fishing that 

 belonged to it, I at once appointed a keeper to pre- 

 serve foxes and game, laid out a kennel to be made 

 from the farm-buildings and sheds at Harrold, and 

 then returned to Cranford to form my pack and 

 prepare for a final departure. My hounds that I 

 used for stag were all clear-bred foxhounds of the 

 best blood, and of the best size for work, neither too 

 large nor too small, and every hound as much at- 

 tached to me as a parlour dog. The seventeen 

 couples of them which I selected, I well knew had 

 no fault, and would run a fox, at my bidding, as 

 steady from hare and fallow deer as any foxhounds 

 in the world, if I could put them on the fox's line. 

 This was but a small foundation on which to build 

 a pack for four days a week, in a tremendously 

 heavy woodland, resolved as I was to raise it to 

 sixty or seventy couples ; and I determined to seek 

 aid from masters of hounds, with whom I was 

 personally acquainted. I therefore applied to them 

 for any old, crippled, or almost worn-out hounds, 



