CHAPTER VIII 



fc Grief's tearful frown upon the landscape lours ; 

 I've lost the comrades of my leisure hours." 



HAVING made the before - mentioned arrangement with Mr. 

 Wilkins, and seen my hounds depart for the Pytchley kennel, I 

 could not bear to look on the deserted doors at home. When, 

 after a time, I did go into the kennel, there were a thousand 

 remembrances to make me melancholy. Where were the rows 

 of attached and sensible faces that used to stand or sit in the 

 yard round the feeding-house door, each to wait till I called 

 them to their dinner ? every hound always on one particular 

 spot, and one at the door, kissing the whip in my hand, and 

 asking it to touch her head, to signal her in, but not attempt- 

 ing to pass as the door opened to some light feeder whom I had 

 called before her ; a hundred and twenty silent and submissive 

 creatures, every one knowing his or her particular name, and 

 distinguishing that name, though others had appellations that 

 sounded like it, and though hungry and full of animal anxiety 

 to feed, not one attempting to pass the constantly opening door 

 till called by name to do so. There was the bench on which 

 they slept so comfortably on their clean wheaten straw, lapped 

 the one over the other, like a Chinese puzzle made of hounds, 

 after they came home from hunting, and where, after cub- 

 hunting, having had my breakfast, I used to pay them a visit, 

 their coats scarcely dry of the woodland dew, and smelling so 

 sweetly of the aroma of the wild plants they had crushed in 

 forcing their way through the thickets at the brush of a fox. 



