284 The Leather Plater, 



The whole village wore a wild and desolate appearance ; and 

 even the summer's sun failed to shed any beauty on the bleak, 

 cheerless landscape round Holliwell. In the autumn and winter 

 the roads leading to and from the village were almost impassable j 

 and as to the Openfield — except just in the very height of summer, 

 the w^ater stood in pools in all the rushy furrows and low places j and 

 if by chance a fox broke away from the Hangers across the Open- 

 field, it was "bellows to mend" with a good many before they had 

 got even to the end of it ; for a bit of more dangerous or deeper 

 riding was not to be met with in our hunt. But, strange to say, on 

 the other side the Hangers a splendid rich, enclosed, agricultural and 

 hunting country stretched away for miles, and some of the best 

 runs with our hounds were from Holliwell Hangers. Whichever 

 side of the wood the fox broke from, there was sure to be a burning 

 scent ; and I have seen the hounds fly over the Holliwell Openfield 

 *' heads up and sterns down," and go right away from the horses, which 

 were floundering and squashing, in many places knee-deep, after 

 them. Holliwell Openfield was a noted place for plovers, and 

 thousands of plover eggs were yearly sent away from this spot to 

 the London markets j and if by chance you lost your way coming 

 home from hunting, and wandered after nightfall across this desolate 

 place, the melancholy, never-ceasing cry of the peewit, and the 

 scape of the snipe, as it rose under your horse's very nose, soon told 

 that you were in Holliwell Openfield. But that the land was not 

 altogether incapable of carrying crops, if only properly managed, 

 was proved by the fact that when this Openfield was enclosed and 

 drained some years after the date of my tale, and a new race of 

 men succeeded the original tenants of the soil, not a parish in the 

 country grew better or larger crops of wheat to the acre than this. 

 But at the time I speak of the Openfield was unenclosed, not an 

 acre of it drained, and the land was in the hands of the poorest 

 and slovenliest farmers in England. The best and most laconic 

 description which I ever heard of Holliwell was given by Charley, 

 our first whip, to a gentleman who asked him what place this was 

 as they rode through the village with the hounds one evening after 



