176 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



heels in the midst of hares without running them. At one of 

 the Greenway meetings, when the hares in five courses out of 

 six were beating the dogs, I offered to back Brenda single- 

 handed against a hare. The match was made for a particular 

 field, where there were known good ones, and as she was to go 

 loose at my horse's heels, my adversaries counted also on a wild 

 hare and a long start. They did not know that unless I bade 

 her to go, Brenda, on the slightest sign from me, would remain 

 steady. I therefore took very good care that the hare she saw 

 had no advantage; and one jumping up at a fair distance, 

 Brenda killed her single-handed, and I pocketed a good many 

 half-crowns and agricultural shillings. The annual festival of 

 the Greenway is the only semi-public meeting which I now 

 attend. There the stakes are within a limited means, and the 

 betting as low as the betters please ; we cannot hurt each other, 

 while at the same time enough interest is kept up in the com- 

 petition for prizes to make the meeting most agreeable. The 

 squire keeps open house for all his halls and stables will hold on 

 that occasion, and many of my happiest hours have been spent 

 beneath the Greenway roof. As long as a greyhound is left me, 

 it shall always help to fill up the list of those stakes, for it is a 

 meeting, a county meeting I may call it, so pleasing to gentle- 

 man and yeoman, squire and tenant, that for the good of local 

 society every friend of Mr. Lawrence should do his best to keep 

 it up. Between whiles at the coursing meeting, it is pleasing 

 to any man fond of farming to see in the Greenway farmyard 

 as clever a cow and pig as any agriculturist can wish to arrive 

 at. There is a good deal of fim in the round of beef and the leg 

 of pork the Greenway table affords on a cold day, after coursing ! 

 Having had two years' experience of hunting and coiu'sing in 

 Wiltshii'e, and some wild-fowl shooting, the latter, as I enjoyed 

 it there, is also worthy of notice. In passing the lake at Font- 

 hill, and also in the water in front of Mr. Penruddock's house, 

 still nearer to Teffont, I had observed the various sorts of wild- 

 fowl, and in hard weather I had killed some in the river over 

 which I shot. Upon this I fenced in the little lake on the lawn 



