74 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



and I proceeded to look out for a residence. While in search of 

 a house I was attacked by the measles, and confined to my bed 

 at the inn, but the kind as well as clever attentions of my 

 medical adviser, Mr. Short, soon restored me to health, and I 

 succeeded in taking Harrold 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, Laven- 

 den, the Harrold and Odell woods, on by Puddington Hayes, 

 Col worth, Knotting Fox, Melchbourne, Swineshead, and Kim- 

 bolton, 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 preserve 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 attached 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, who were drafted on 

 account of misfortune or years, and not for any fault ; by this 

 means to avoid the importation at least of vice ; the complement 

 of hounds to be thereafter filled up by unentered puppies. Cub- 

 hunting in the Oakley or Bedfordshire country had, from time 

 immemorial, commenced in the first week in July, the stump- 



