Scrambleford Green was a small straggling village on the top of a somewhat
high hill, that divided the vale in which Jawleyford Court was situated
from the more fertile one of Farthinghoe, in which Lord Scamperdale lived.
It was one of those out-of-the-way places at which the meet of the hounds,
and a love feast or fair, consisting of two fiddlers (one for each
public-house), a few unlicensed packmen, three or four gingerbread stalls,
a drove of cows and some sheep, form the great events of the year among a
people who are thoroughly happy and contented with that amount of gaiety.
Think of that, you 'used up' young gentlemen of twenty, who have exhausted
the pleasures of the world! The hounds did not come to Scrambleford Green
often, for it was not a favourite meet; and when they did come, Frosty and
the men generally had them pretty much to themselves. This day, however,
was the exception; and Old Tom Yarnley, whom age had bent nearly double,
and who hobbled along on two sticks, declared that never in the course of
his recollection, a period extending over the best part of a century, had
he seen such a 'sight of red coats' as mustered that morning at
Scrambleford Green.
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