CHAPTER V 



" The whiles up-gazing still, 

 Our menials eye our steepy way, 

 Marvelling, perchance, what whim can stay 

 Our steps when eve is sinking grey 

 On this gigantic hill. 

 So think the vulgar — life and time 

 Ring all their joys in one dull chime 

 Of luxury and ease." — Scott. 



Having got together the hounds at Cranford, I set oiF to take 

 up my permanent residence at Harrold, and to hasten the com- 

 pletion of the kennel. "WTiat a freshness there seemed in all 

 around me ! the river Ouse, at the foot of my lawn, swept 

 swiftly past over the shallows through its gi'een meadows ; and 

 when I rode by the woods, or walked in those attached to 

 Harrold Hall, with my gun on my shoulder and Smoker behind 

 me, it seemed as if I were in a wilderness of wild animals, not 

 again to be thwarted, either by the follies, avarice, or ill-temper 

 of captious men. As the growth of population had driven Lord 

 Berkeley, his hounds, and " his thirty huntsmen in tawny coats,'' 

 from his kennel and country at the village of Charing, so had 

 that same tide of human beings gradually surrounded the manors 

 of Cranford, Cranford -le-Motte, and Cranford St. John, and 

 Harlington-cum-Shippeston, and the site of a preceptory of 

 Knights Templar, and sent me farther from its high -water 

 mark, a mark that every hour renders more uncertain. When 

 in those beautiful and solitary Harrold and Odell woods in the 

 early summer, it was marvellous to see the quantity of winged 



