Scarlet, 



297 



accordingly. The hall, which boasts of a beautiful 

 cedar, and a well 365 feet deep, is surrounded by a 

 little colony of snug cottages, which make up quire a 

 pleasant village, with Tom as patriarch. The chalk- 

 stone gout has used him rather ill of late ; and he 

 had had also a bad fall, which still makes it 

 difficult for him to raise his left arm to his head. 

 This is by no means the first of his misfortunes, as he 

 has broken both arms, three ribs (by falling on his 

 horn, in the days when they carried them slung), the 

 cup of his elbow in three or four bits, and his blade- 

 bone, as well. Gout, however, bothers him most, and 

 makes his action rather short, but still he gets along 

 as of old when he is once on his pigskin throne. It 

 was with reference to his woes in this way that he 

 said, when we observed that his eyes were rather shut 

 in a photograph, " Next time FIl have it taken zvhen 

 I've got the gout — that will make me open them fast 

 enough." Still we found him very cheery, seated in 

 his arm-chair, which the skin of his once honoured 

 dark chestnut Paddy has lined. 



The chairs in the room had all hound-skin cushions, 

 taken from nine of the best of the seven couple of 

 bitches which fell more than a hundred feet down a 

 cutting on the Brighton rail some years ago. Will 

 Long, Mr Davis, Mr. Haigh (an old master of the 

 pack) ; Squire Waring, with his Kent harriers ; John 

 Ward, with Betsy and Blue Ruin ; Lord Derby's stag- 

 hounds, with Jonathan Griffin on his grey; Brother 

 Jem (vv'ho whipped into him nine years), in the centre 

 of his Heythrop picture ; and the old Surrey Hunt, 

 after Barraud, lent lustre to the walls. Tom, as all 

 the world knows, is in the centre of the latter, on 

 Lounger ; while one of his sons is on Paddy ; and the 

 badger-pye Factor, by Old Surrey Factor out of 

 Dimple, of his most cherished sort, stands close up to 

 Lounger's foot. There was also an enormous fox in 

 a case, but he was not exactly brought to hand in 



