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take a bit of air.” He said we would ride to the shooting grounds by a roundabout way so that I might get some exercise and taste the flavor of the neighborhood. “You will do well,” he said. “Just stay out of the way when the game appears.” I wish to God I had listened.
    When I arrived at the stables, Mr. Hobb, the master of the stables, introduced me to my mount. He apologized for the quality of the beast, but said she was “a good-tempered oldcreature who knew her business well enough.” I am no great judge of horseflesh, but I could see at once that in all his years of riding my father had never sat on so fine a horse. But such is the way of things at Petworth.
    The morning lived up to its promise, one of September’s gifts. We were a party of about five, with Egremont taking the lead, a number of servants bringing up the rear, and a cart following. In spite of his years, His Lordship took what seemed a young man’s delight in showing us how to ride. At one point we came to a low hedge that bounded a meadow. There was an easy path around, but Egremont, after glancing back at the rest of us, took the hedge with graceful confidence. I tried to remember what I knew about riding, but in truth the horse knew more than enough for both of us and I cleared the barrier with no bad outcome beyond a delicious pounding in my heart. It was a glorious morning to be alive.
    We rode on for about half an hour, sometimes at a gallop, sometimes at a walk, as Egremont pointed out some of the beauties of his English Paradise. Petworth Park is notable for the variety of its scenery: woods and forest, streams and ponds, glens and meadows and fields. Much of the park looks as cultivated as a city kitchen garden, but then you turn a corner and see a forest as wild and free as the farthest reaches of Canada. I half wished that the shooting would be put off for another day so that I could enjoy the riding uninterrupted.
    At length we arrived at the edge of what I was later told was the greatest stretch of forest on the estate. Towering trees that must have been planted at the time of the current lord’sfather’s father’s father came to the edge of a delightful and uncultivated meadow. Wildflowers of yellow and white dotted the soft green grass.
    Egremont and the others who had come to participate in the sport dismounted as their guns were brought forward. The shooters lined themselves up along the edge of the meadow, but I stayed on my horse to get a good view of the scene. Behind me the servants waited. Egremont pulled a watch from his pocket and studied it for a moment. At length he gave a signal and a gun behind me was fired into the air. We were all very still. After about a quarter of an hour we could hear the faint sound of human voices shouting in the distance. The sound grew louder and louder as a party of Egremont’s tenants approached. Soon I could hear the faint thundering, if you will allow the phrase, of the frightened deer as they fled toward us and their doom. Egremont and the others brought their guns to their shoulders. Excitement visible on their faces, they glanced toward the forest and then at each other. The sound of the hoof beats grew louder and then louder still, until all at once fifteen or twenty of the park’s famous deer exploded into the meadow. Egremont was the first to fire, and then there was a fusillade as the others followed suit. I watched in horror as first one, then a second, and then a third of the speeding creatures crumpled to the ground, their motion carrying them forward as they died. The shots continued, more deer fell, until a cloud of gun smoke hung like a curtain between me and the meadow.
    I turned my eyes away from the slaughter and toward the edge of the wood, where I saw one of God’s great creatures, anenormous stag, almost twice the size of his murdered cousins, standing just off the verge of the forest. For a moment, the stag’s eyes met mine and, I hardly know how to say