t Edgehill. At Edgehill the
whole village consisted of three or four cottages; but there was a
small old church, with an old grey tower, and a narrow, green, almost
dark, churchyard, surrounded by elm-trees. The road from Roebury to
the meet passed by the church stile, and turning just beyond it came
upon the gate which led into the little field in which the hounds
felt themselves as much at home as in their kennels. There might be
six or seven acres in the field, which was long and narrow, so that
the huntsman had space to walk leisurely up and down with the pack
clustering round him, when he considered that longer sitting might
chill them. The church tower was close at hand, visible through the
trees, and the field itself was green and soft, though never
splashing with mud or heavy with holes.

Edgehill was a favourite meet in that country, partly because foxes
were very abundant in the great wood adjacent, partly because the
whole country around is grass-land, and partly, no doubt, from the
sporting propensities of the neighbouring population. As regards my
own taste, I do not know that I do like beginning a day with a great
wood,--and if not beginning it, certainly not ending it. It is hard
to come upon the cream of hunting, as it is upon the cream of any
other delight. Who can always drink Lafitte of the finest, can always
talk to a woman who is both beautiful and witty, or can always find
the right spirit in the poetry he reads? A man has usually to work
through much mud before he gets his nugget. It is so certainly in
hunting, and a big wood too frequently afflicts the sportsman, as the
mud does the miner. The small gorse cover is the happy, much-envied
bit of ground in which the gold is sure to show itself readily. But
without the woods the gorse would not hold the foxes, and without the
mud the gold would not have found its resting-place.

But, as I have said, Edgehill was a popular meet, and, as regarded
the meet itself, was eminently picturesque. On the present occasion
the little field was full of horsemen, moving about slowly, chatting
together, smoking cigars, getting off from their hacks and mounting
their hunters, giving orders to their servants, and preparing for the
day. There were old country gentlemen there, greeting each other from
far sides of the county; sporting farmers who love to find themselves
alongside their landlords, and to feel that the pleasures of the
country are common to both; men d