264 Silk and Scarlet. 



the Parson seeing a fresh chance of distinction for his 

 terrier, stuck up for the lad ; and as it turned out that 

 the fox had got into the house, Impey, assisted by 

 Stormer, the best hound in the pack, eventually drew 

 him from his position under the stairs. This was in 

 October, and he proved to be only a cub. 

 ^, ^ , Jem Treadwell was but a lad of six, 



Mr. Farquharson. , -^ . . ^ -^i 1 • 1 .1 



playmg about with his younger brother 

 Charles in the pleasant Oxfordshire village of Stoke 

 Talmage, when his future master bade adieu to the 

 quadrangle of Christ Church, and commenced at two- 

 and-twenty as a master of hounds. Scorning harriers 

 as a start, he flung himself boldly into the fox-hunting 

 breach, set up two kennels, and hunted, at his own 

 expense, all Dorsetshire and part of Somersetshire, 

 six days a week from the outset, with thirty horses 

 and ninety couple of hounds. His first meet was in 

 the autumn of 1806 at Bondsley, a very extensive 

 gorse belonging to Mr. Beckford in the Houghton part 

 of the country. This fox-hunting Nestor was not 

 slow to impart to the young leader of the white col- 

 lars countless wrinkles about hounds and his new 

 country, which he had once hunted himself ; and as 

 fifty-two seasons proved, he had found an apt disciple. 

 Mr. Farquharson bought his first pack from Mr. 

 Wyndham of Dinton, and a clever lot they were, the 

 bitches being about twenty-one inches, and the dog- 

 hounds twenty-three ; and his kennel was further 

 strengthened by purchases from the Duke of Bridge- 

 water and Lord Petre, and drafts from the Duke of 

 Richmond. The style of Mr. Wyndham's continued 

 unaltered for many seasons, except that the bitches* 

 standard was raised an inch ; and it was not till much 

 later that the eye of " The Meynell of the West " 

 loved to rest upon a five-and-twenty inch hound. 

 Since then he has kept a large and a small pack, but 

 Jem Treadwell quite shared his weakness for the large, 

 which always went into the Vale, and thought that 



