Greshamsbury Park was very large; it lay on the outside of the angle formed by the village street, and stretched away on two sides without apparent limit or boundaries visible from the village road or house.  Indeed, the ground on this side was so broken up into abrupt hills, and conical-shaped, oak-covered excrescences, which were seen peeping up through and over each other, that the true extent of the park was much magnified to the eye.  It was very possible for a stranger to get into it and to find some difficulty in getting out again by any of its known gates; and such was the beauty of the landscape, that a lover or scenery would be tempted thus to lose himself.

I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give me an opportunity of describing here one especial episode, a long episode, in the life of the existing squire.

He had once represented his county in Parliament, and when he ceased to do so he still felt an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way with that county’s greatness; he still desired that a Gresham of Greshamsbury should be something more in East Barsetshire, than Jackson of the Grange, or Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Annesgrove.  They were all his friends, and very respectable country gentlemen; but Mr Gresham of Greshamsbury should be more than this:  even he had enough ambition to be aware of such a longing.  Therefore, when an opportunity occurred he took to hunting the county.

For this employment he was in every way well suited;—­unless it was in the matter of finance.  Though he had in his very earliest manly years given such great offence by indifference to his family politics, and had in a certain degree fostered the ill-feeling by contesting the county in opposition to the wishes of his brother squires, nevertheless, he bore a loved and popular name.  Men regretted that he should not have been what they wished him to be, that he should not have been such as was the old squire; but when they found that such was the case, that he could not be great among them as a politician, they were still willing that he should be great in any other way if there were county greatness for which he was suited.  Now he was known as an excellent horseman, as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in dogs, and tender-hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young foxes; he had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, and had a fine voice for a view-hallo, knew every hound by name, and could wind a horn with sufficient music for all hunting purposes; moreover, he had come to his property, as was well known through all Barsetshire, with a clear income of fourteen thousand a year.

Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground, about a year after Mr Gresham’s last contest for the county, it seemed to all parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that the hounds should go to Greshamsbury.  Pleasant, indeed, to all except the Lady Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire himself.