HARRIERS AND BEAGLES 273 



boots, and in a quiet, unpretentious fashion he showed 

 wonderful sport. He never spoke to us except when 

 he wanted '' leave " which he thought we might get for 

 him, but when we were stranded with a lame pony one 

 night near his house, he sent us home in his trap, after 

 having done the honours of his house amid almost 

 perfect silence. 



The other harrier pack which came our way were the 

 Newcastle and Gateshead Harriers, of which the late 

 Colonel Hawks and the late Mr. F. H. Lamb were then 

 joint masters. Their kennels were twenty miles away, 

 but hounds were brought to a farm named High 

 Woodside two or three times in the season, at that 

 period, and used to attract all the riff-raff, mounted and 

 on foot, of the country-side. This pack was also rather 

 of the scratch order. There was no uniformity as in 

 the Wolsingham, the masters being open to receive 

 gifts of undersized foxhounds. The consequence was 

 that there was a difference of six or seven inches 

 between the biggest and the smallest hounds, and 

 when they were running a hare the tail would be half a 

 mile long. The huntsman was one Siddle Dixon — 

 father of the better-known Siddle Dixon so long hunts- 

 man of the late Colonel Cowen's foxhounds — ^and like 

 Vasey he was a welter-weight, but he knew all about 

 harehunting, and if his pack had been a little more 

 even he would doubtless have shown better sport. As 

 it was he helped to make the pack very popular, and 

 his name was for long enough a household word in the 

 north of England. 



After leaving school we were with an easy-going 



tutor at Malvern, and when not hunting with the 



Ledbury, Lord Coventry's (now the Croome), or 



the Worcestershire, used to put in a considerable 



18 



