very reason that was urged against their existence; the fear of these
horned police kept the park free from strangers, and thereby saved him
half a dozen keepers.

That his determination in the matter was pig-headed and brutal, there is
no doubt; but the Squire's nature was far from exclusive, and the idea
of saving in any thing, it is certain, never entered into his head. The
time, indeed, was slowly but surely coming when the park should know no
more not only its wild-cattle, but many a rich copse and shadowy glade.
Not a stately oak nor far-spreading beech but was doomed, sooner or
later, to be cut down, to prop for a moment the falling fortunes of
their spendthrift owner; but at the time of which we speak there was no
visible sign of the coming ruin. It is recorded of a brother prodigal,
that after enormous losses and expenses, his steward informed him that
if he would but consent to live upon seven thousand a year for the next
ten years, the estate would recover itself. "Sir," returned he in anger,
"I would rather die than live on seven thousand a year." Our Carew would
have given the same reply had twice that income been suggested to him,
and been applauded for the gallant answer. The hint of any necessity for
curtailment would probably have caused him to double his expenditure
forthwith, though, indeed, that would have been difficult to effect. He
had already two packs of hounds, with which he hunted on alternate days,
and he had even endeavored to do so on the Sunday; but the obsequious
"county" had declined to go with him to that extent, and this anomaly of
the nineteenth century had been compelled to confine himself on the
seventh day to cock-fighting in the library. He kept a bear to bait (as
well as a chaplain to bully), and ferrets ran loose about Crompton as
mice do in other houses. He had a hunter for every week in the year, yet
he often rode his horses to death. He had a stud of racers, and it was
this, or rather his belief in their powers, which eventually drained his