Sandhurst. We turn off the moor into the shadow
of the fir avenue that leads half a mile up to the park-gates. The
ground, covered with a soft carpet of pine-needles and burrowed
everywhere by the roots of the trees, gives off a hollow echo to the
horses' clattering hoofs. The sombre avenue is alive in unwonted fashion
to-day. Now we pass a group of pedestrians from the village; now a young
farmer comes by on a half-broken colt which is to make its first
acquaintance with the hounds; then a break with a big party from a
country-house in Miss Mitford's village passes us with a gay greeting as
it rattles on. A tiny nutshell of a pony-carriage full of babies comes
trotting along, and its driver, poor Sheldon Williams, will make notes
of the scene and put them into one of his clever hunting-pictures,
little dreaming of the day when his early death will leave those babies
penniless. Now a group of the redcoats we saw on the Welsh Ride
overtakes us, and Sintram plunges and dances as a wild little
thorough-bred comes up to our side. His master, who has already gained
his Victoria Cross twice--first as a little lad in the trenches at
Sevastopol, and again for desperate deeds of valor in the Indian
mutiny--is to win yet further glory in 1879 at the head of the "flying
column" in Zululand--Evelyn Wood, the most gallant and humane of all
that gallant band.

The white park-gate is held wide open by a poor ne'er-do-weel in a
shabby old red coat--John Ellis by name. How he gets his living no one
knows, but if there is a meet of fox-hounds anywhere within ten miles,
there he is sure to be, holding people's horses or ready at a gate for
stray pennies and sixpences. There is usually such a hanger-on to every
pack of hounds in England--one who travels immense distances on foot to
turn up in unexpected places and get a few hard-earned shillings as his
reward. We jog along under the magnificent silver firs, only to be
equalled by those in the duke of Wellington's park at Strathfieldsaye,
hard by; then up the lime avenue which borders the cricket-ground, where
thirty years ago the most famous matches in Hampshire were played; and
as we reach the iron gates leading up to the house our little knot of
riders has swelled into a veritable cavalcade.

Down the drive we trot, past the stables, where the watch-dogs strain
angrily at their chains and a little green monkey jibbers with rage and
excitement, and in another moment we turn under the sha