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CHAPTER V. 



" The whiles up-gazing still, 

 Our menials eye our steepy way, 

 Marvelling, perchance, what whim can stay 

 Our steps when eve is sinking grey 

 On this gigantic hill. 

 So think the vulgar — life and time 

 lling all their joys in one dull chime 

 Of luxury and ease." Scott. 



Having got together the hounds at Cranford, I set 

 off to take up my permanent residence at Harrold, 

 and to hasten the completion of the kenneL What a 

 freshness there seemed in all around me ! the river 

 Ouse, at the foot of my lawn, swept swiftly past over 

 the shallows through its green meadows ; and when I 

 rode by the woods, or walked in those attached to 

 Harrold Hall, with my gun on my shoulder and 

 Smoker behind me, it seemed as if I were in a wil- 

 derness of Avild animals, not again to be thwarted, 

 either by the follies, avarice, or ill-temper of captious 

 men. As the growth of population had driven Lord 

 Berkeley, his hounds, and " his thirty huntsmen in 

 tawny coats," from his kennel and country at the 

 village of Charing, so had that same tide of human 

 beings gradually surrounded the manors of Cranford, 

 Cranford-le-Motte, and Cranford St. John, and Har- 

 lington-cum-Shippeston, and the site of a preceptory 

 of Knights Templar, and sent me further from its 

 high-water mark, a mark that every hour renders 

 more uncertain. When in those beautiful and soli- 

 tary Harrold and Odell Woods in the early summer, 



