FORMING A PACK 75 



bred foxes by that time knowing as much country as an earth- 

 bred one does in October; and with the space for entry so 

 afforded, I hoped at least to have something like a pack to work 

 with by the first week in November. A body of hounds were 

 soon collected at the Cranford kennel : Colonel Wyndham, Sir 

 John Cope, and others, gave me old hounds, or I purchased 

 drafted young ones. The Vine also contributed to me, and so 

 did Lord Lonsdale. I also got, but I forget where I got them, 

 a hound named Proctor, and one called Stamford, with Sir 

 Richard Sutton's mark on the former, and I think on the latter. 

 Proctor had been evidently drafted from unsound action, and 

 Stamford from old age ; but they were useful to me from the 

 splendid way in which they both drew. Old Stamford's soft and . 

 prolonged note, when he found a fox, sweeps by my ear now ; 

 and often and often had I to cheer the young ones to him 

 throughout my first fox-hunting season. What he must have 

 been in his youth I am speaking of the years '29 or '30, I 

 can easily guess ; and if these pages meet the eye of the gentle- 

 man who bred him, he will accept this tribute to the memory of 

 as gallant, as sensible, and as attached and faithful a hound as 

 ever killed a fox. I am not quite sure that Stamford had the 

 " S " branded on his side ; but the mark, though scarred, looked 

 very like it. I shall never forget how proud that old hound 

 was when he found I petted him, and that he was still to be 

 treated with all the ceremony and usages of a well-ordered fox- 

 hound kennel; and when we began cub -hunting, his alert 

 dignity and industry was so great that he still more won my 

 heart. Among my old hounds were one or two who would not 

 draw ; and these at first were seduced into cover by the tongue 

 of riot among the young hounds ; they soon, however, distin- 

 guished truth from error, and the babbler from the never-failing 

 speaker ; old Stamford's challenge would make them dash away 

 from my horse's heels ; and at last, when the other hounds 

 began to draw and find a fox, old Voucher, a grey-pied hound, 

 I think from Colonel Wyndham, would listen a moment with a 

 curious ear, and head that turned from side to side till he satis- 



