94 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



some little knowledge of how matters stand at the 

 present day, I cannot believe that there has been any 

 marked change. 



There certainly are far more subscription packs than 

 there were even twenty years ago, but the causes of 

 this increase must be sought elsewhere than in the 

 growing costliness of the sport. There are, for 

 instance, fewer wealthy noblemen who care, even if 

 expense be no object, for all the worry and trouble 

 entailed in managing a pack of their own. In this 

 pleasure-seeking age, too, rich men have many other 

 outlets for extravagance, not a few of which give 

 them "more fun for their money" than they would 

 in all probability derive from keeping a pack of hounds 

 at their own expense. 



Apart, indeed, from all question of outlay, it may be 

 questioned whether the pleasure of being a Master is 

 by any means what it was in those good old days when 

 wire was unheard of, when poultry claims were 

 reckoned by pounds instead of by hundreds, and when 

 you could hunt as you pleased from one end of the 

 county to the other without having to ask leave from 

 the shooting-tenant, then an almost unknown factor. 

 In those vanished times the Master would call on the 

 farmer's wife in the course of his morning's ride, drink 

 a glass or two of famous old home-brewed in her best 

 parlour, the while he lent a sympathetic ear to her 

 story of the loss of a few head of poultry, and eventually 

 made everything right by the present of a new silk 

 gown. 



How differently are all these affairs managed under 



