two or three limping
hounds and a huntsman on foot, while every rider in the field had been
pounded. As the port circulated the runs became longer and more
apocryphal, until we had the whips inquiring their way and failing to
understand the dialect of the people who answered them. The foxes, too,
became mere eccentric, and we had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which
were dragged by the tail out of horses' mangers, and foxes which had
raced through an open front door and gone to ground in a lady's
bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall reminiscences, and when
he cleared his throat for another we were all curious, for he was a bit
of an artist in his way, and produced his effects in a _crescendo_
fashion. His face wore the earnest, practical, severely accurate
expression which heralded some of his finest efforts.

"It was before I was master," said he. "Sir Charles Adair had the
hounds at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and
then to me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over,
but my strong impression is that it was in Adair's time. That would be
early in the seventies--about seventy-two, I should say.

"The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name--Walter
Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son
of old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came
into a very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the _Magna
Charta_ foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few
hundred acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great
days of farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without
a mortgage was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came.
Foreign wheat and barbed wire--those are the two curses of this country,
for the one spoils the farmer's work and the other spoils his play.

"This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come,
when so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a
year or two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking
set in the neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among
them; and, being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were
doing, he very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for
him. As a r