Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park,
casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect
which it presented. Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of
it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the
roads grass-grown. It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers,
who used it as they pleased. As to the woods which studded it, "the man
must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!" Tatham
prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large
tracts of woodland in his own property were managed. But then he paid a
proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods,
with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser
is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.
Only once before in his life had he been within the park--on one of the
hunts of his boyhood, the famous occasion when the fox, started on the
other side of the river, had made straight for Threlfall, and, the gate
closing the private foot-bridge having been, by a most unusual chance,
left open, had slipped thereby into the park, with the hounds in full cry
after him. The hunt had momentarily paused, and then breaking loose from
all control had dashed through the yard of the Home Farm in joyous
pursuit, while the enraged Melrose, who with Dixon and another man had
rushed out with sticks to try and head them back, had to confine himself
and his followers to manning the enclosure round the house--impotent
spectators of the splendid run through the park--which had long remained
famous in Cumbrian annals.
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