HUNTING 189 



The result might have been easily foretold. 

 The club exercised its delegated authority in 

 its own interests alone. It cut out, once and for 

 all, those rival packs of deerhounds that had 

 been squabbling and fighting among themselves, 

 and did so very rightly. It issued a permission 

 to be ratified, of course, by the Commissioner 

 of Woods to Mr. Lovell, the master of the 

 principal of these contesting packs, to hunt deer 

 for a very limited period in the spring, under the 

 most complicated restrictions, devised so as to 

 make it impossible for his hunting to be any- 

 thing but a temporary arrangement, with a 

 scratch pack; while for Mr. Mills, the master of 

 the only pack of harriers in the Forest, they 

 devised conditions and imaginary boundaries, by 

 lines drawn from this point to that on the map, 

 which were not to be crossed on this or the 

 other day of the week. 



All these were puerilities. In the case of 

 Mr. Mills they worked well enough, for neither 

 he nor anyone else paid the slightest attention 

 to them! But in the case of the deerhounds it 

 was different. The feud had gone on for many 

 years; all the country had taken sides one way 

 or another. Many people had ceased to speak 

 to each other over this wrangle. The battles of 

 the Montagus and Capulets were nothing to it, 



