I had a small pack of drag hounds, the farmers living round Rivenhall, where my mother lived, allowing me to take the Drag anywhere I liked, out of love of my father’s memory. One farmer in reply to my request to cross his fields, sent me a message, “Tell Muster Evelyn if there be any one field where he can do most damage, I hope he will go there.” Some of the younger ones assisted me by taking on the drag occasionally, so I hunted under favourable conditions, “Vagabond” and “Fractious” carrying me, or my sister, fifteen times in twenty-three successive days. I generally rode “Vagabond” with the Drag the day before I hunted him with the Stag Hounds, and saved him all I could by putting the horse in the train whenever it was possible; but as the kennels were five-and-twenty miles off, I could seldom get a short day. One day I rode him 19 miles to the meet, had a good run of two hours, and then 29 miles home, after taking the deer north of Bishop’s Stortford, and without putting him off his feed. I had a groom, excellent when he was sober; he came into my service in December 1865, and up to the end of 1866, when I was at Aldershot, had not given way to his besetting vice; but there the attractions of the canteens were too great, and he became troublesome. He should have arrived at my mother’s house with the horses some hours before I did on the 14th of February 1868, but did not appear till nightfall. When I went to the stable just before dinner, I found that the horses had apparently been fed and watered, but the man was drunk. Seeing his condition, I endeavoured to avoid him, especially as my mother’s coachman was also under the influence of liquor although not intoxicated; but the groom approached me rapidly, and as I thought with the intention of hitting me over the head with a lantern, so, knocking him down, I held him by the throat while I called the coachman to bring a halter and lash his legs. The groom had a keen sense of humour, and after the trembling coachman had tied his feet he pulled one out, observing, “Oh, you’re a blessed fool, to tie up a man!” and in drunken tones he apostrophised me and all my family, finishing up with the expression, “And you’re about the best of a d----d bad lot.” I was nervous of leaving the man over the stable for fear he might set fire to it, so putting him into a dog-cart my brother and I drove over to the Petty Sessions House at Witham, where we saw the Inspector of Police, who declined to take charge of him because he was not “drunk and incapable in the street.” I asked, “If you saw him drunk and incapable in the street would you then take charge of him for the night?” “Yes, certainly, but not while he is in your carriage.” I cast off the undergirth, and having tilted up the shafts, shot the groom into the roadway, calling to the Inspector, “Now you can properly take him up.” He reappeared next day, contrite, and remained with me two or