19991	----	The FOX jumps over the PARSON'S GATE FREDERICK WARNE & CO. LTD. R. CALDECOTT'S PICTURE BOOKS THE FOX JUMPS OVER THE PARSON'S GATE The Huntsman blows his horn in the morn, When folks goes hunting, oh! When folks goes hunting, oh! When folks goes hunting, oh! The Huntsman blows his horn in the morn, When folks goes hunting, oh! The Fox jumps over the PARSON'S gate, And the Hounds all after him go, And the Hounds all after him go, And the Hounds all after him go. But all my fancy dwells on NANCY, So I'll cry, TALLY-HO! So I'll cry, TALLY-HO! Now the PARSON had a pair to wed As the Hounds came full in view; He tossed his surplice over his head, And bid them all adieu! But all my fancy dwelt on NANCY, So he cried, TALLY-HO! So he cried, TALLY-HO! Oh! never despise the soldier-lad Though his station be but low, Though his station be but low, Though his station be but low. But all my fancy dwells on NANCY, So I'll cry, TALLY-HO! Then pass around the can, my boys; For we must homewards go, For we must homewards go, For we must homewards go. And if you ask me of this song The reason for to shew, I don't exactly know-ow-ow I don't exactly know But all my fancy dwells on NANCY, So I'll sing, TALLY-HO! So I'll sing, TALLY-HO! But all my fancy dwells on NANCY, So I'll sing, =TALLY-HO=! RANDOLPH CALDECOTT'S PICTURE BOOKS "The humour of Randolph Caldecott's drawings is simply irresistible, no healthy-minded man, woman, or child could look at them without laughing." _In square crown 4to, picture covers, with numerous coloured plates._ 1 John Gilpin 2 The House that Jack Built 3 The Babes in the Wood 4 The Mad Dog 5 Three Jovial Huntsmen 6 Sing a Song for Sixpence 7 The Queen of Hearts 8 The Farmer's Boy 9 The Milkmaid 10 Hey-Diddle-Diddle and Baby Bunting 11 A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go 12 The Fox Jumps over the Parson's Gate 13 Come Lasses and Lads 14 Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross, &c. 15 Mrs. Mary Blaize 16 The Great Panjandrum Himself _The above selections are also issued in Four Volumes, square crown 4to, attractive binding. Each containing four different books, with their Coloured Pictures and innumerable Outline Sketches._ 1 R. Caldecott's Picture Book No. 1 2 R. Caldecott's Picture Book No. 2 3 Hey-Diddle-Diddle-Picture Book 4 The Panjandrum Picture Book RANDOLPH CALDECOTT'S Collection of Pictures and Songs No. 1 containing the first 8 books listed above with their Colour Pictures and numerous Outline Sketches RANDOLPH CALDECOTT'S Collection of Pictures and Songs No. 2 containing the second 8 books listed above with their Colour Pictures and numerous Outline Sketches Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd. London & New York _The Published Prices of the above Picture Books can be obtained of all Booksellers or from the Illustrated Catalogue of the Publishers._ ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY EDMUND EVANS, LTD., 154 CLERKENWELL ROAD, LONDON, E.C.1. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
30243	----	ABC OF FOX HUNTING consisting of 26 coloured illustrations. BY THE LATE SIR JOHN DEAN PAUL BART LONDON J. MITCHELL ROYAL LIBRARY, BOND STREET. [Illustration: A. was Andrews my man, who was A.1. his art in.] [Illustration: B. my Buckskins & Boots, ready for me to start in.] [Illustration: C. The Cover-Hack, giving my Lord's drag the go by.] [Illustration: D. The Slap up Dog-Cart, which the driver you know by.] [Illustration: E. was the Earth-stopper, early and willing.] [Illustration: F. were the Fox-hounds, so far famed for killing.] [Illustration: G. was the Gorse-Cover, certain for foxes.] [Illustration: H. were the Hunters, just fresh from their boxes.] [Illustration: I. was the Inn-keeper, filling snobs' glasses.] [Illustration: J. was the jumping lot taking the grasses.] [Illustration: K. was the Keeper, all foxes the foe of.] [Illustration: L. were the Little Boys, bound for the "throw off".] [Illustration: M. was the Master, who gave the "View Holloa!"] [Illustration: N. was the Nobody, craning to follow.] [Illustration: O. was the Old Whipper-in, lifting tail hounds.] [Illustration: P. was the Parson, ne'er known yet to fail hounds.] [Illustration: Q. was the queer place, which puzzled the craners.] [Illustration: R. was the Racing-pace, pumping complainers.] [Illustration: S. was the Stile and ditch, we jumped in clover.] [Illustration: T. was the tumble, which turned my Lord over.] [Illustration: U. was the Upland, where we viewed the Fox in.] [Illustration: V. was the very last field--just five frocks in.] [Illustration: W. worry him, whoo whoop, can't Joe shout it.] [Illustration: X. X.X. Who can go home without it?] [Illustration: Y. were the Yeomen--each yarning his story.] [Illustration: Z. was the Zany, all alone in his glory.] Transcriber's Note Punctuation has been standardized. 
38052	----	REYNARD THE FOX [Illustration: Publisher's emblem] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO [Illustration: Frontispiece: First colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] REYNARD THE FOX BY JOHN MASEFIELD NEW EDITION WITH EIGHT PLATES IN COLOUR AND MANY ILLUSTRATIONS BY CARTON MOOREPARK [Illustration: Ex libris Reynards] New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1919 AND 1920, BY JOHN MASEFIELD. New illustrated edition, October, 1920. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. INTRODUCTION I have been asked to write why I wrote this poem of "Reynard the Fox." As a man grows older, life becomes more interesting but less easy to know; for, late in life, even the strongest yields to the habit of his compartment. When he cannot range through all society, from the court to the gutter, a man must go where all society meets, as at the Pilgrimage, the Festival or the Game. Here in England the Game is both a festival and an occasion of pilgrimage. A man wanting to set down a picture of the society of England will find his models at the games. What are the English games? The man's game is Association football; the woman's game, perhaps, hockey or lacrosse. Golf I regard more as a symptom of a happy marriage than a game. Cricket, which was once widely popular among both sexes has lost its hold, except among the young. The worst of all these games is that few can play them at a time. But in the English country, during the autumn, winter and early spring of each year, the main sport is fox hunting, which is not like cricket or football, a game for a few and a spectacle for many, but something in which all who come may take a part, whether rich or poor, mounted or on foot. It is a sport loved and followed by both sexes, all ages and all classes. At a fox hunt, and nowhere else in England, except perhaps at a funeral, can you see the whole of the land's society brought together, focussed for the observer, as the Canterbury pilgrims were for Chaucer. This fact made the subject attractive. The fox hunt gave an opportunity for a picture or pictures of the members of an English community. Then to all Englishmen who have lived in a hunting country, hunting is in the blood, and the mind is full of it. It is the most beautiful and the most stirring sight to be seen in England. In the ports, as at Falmouth, there are ships under sail, under way, coming or going, beautiful unspeakably. In the country, especially on the great fields on the lower slopes of the Downland, the teams of the ploughmen may be seen bowing forward on a sky-line, and this sight can never fail to move one by its majesty of beauty. But in neither of these sights of beauty is there the bright colour and swift excitement of the hunt, nor the thrill of the horn, and the cry of the hounds ringing into the elements of the soul. Something in the hunt wakens memories hidden in the marrow, racial memories, of when one hunted for the tribe, animal memories, perhaps, of when one hunted with the pack, or was hunted. Hunting has always been popular here in England. In ancient times it was necessary. Wolves, wild boar, foxes and deer had to be kept down. To hunt was then the social duty of the mounted man, when he was not engaged in war. It was also the opportunity of all other members of the community to have a good time in the open, with a feast or a new fur at the end, to crown the pleasure. Since arms of precision were made, hunting on horseback with hounds has perhaps been unnecessary everywhere, but it is not easy to end a pleasure rooted in the instincts of men. Hunting has continued, and probably will continue, in this country and in Ireland. It is rapidly becoming a national sport in the United States. Some have written, that hunting is the sport of the wealthy man. Some wealthy men hunt, no doubt, but they are not the backbone of the sport, so much as those who love and use horses. Parts of this country, of Ireland and of the United States are more than ordinarily good pasture, fitted for the breeding of horses, beyond most other places in the world. Hardly anywhere else is the climate so equable, the soil so right for the feet of colts and the grass so good. Where these conditions exist, men will breed horses and use them. Men who breed good horses will ride, jump and test them, and will invent means of riding, jumping and testing them, the steeplechase, the circus, the contests at fairs and shows, the point-to-point meeting, and they will preserve, if possible, any otherwise dying sport which offers such means. I have mentioned several reasons why fox hunting should be popular: (_a_) that it is a social business, at which the whole community may and does attend in vast numbers in a pleasant mood of goodwill, good humour and equality, and during which all may go anywhere, into ground otherwise shut to them; (_b_) that it is done in the winter, at a season when other social gatherings are difficult, and in country districts where no buildings, except the churches, could contain the numbers assembled; (_c_) that it is most beautiful to watch, so beautiful that perhaps very few of the acts of men can be so lovely to watch nor so exhilarating. The only thing to be compared with it, in this country, is the sword dance, the old heroical dancing of the young men, still practised, in all its splendour of wild beauty, in some country places; (_d_) that we are a horse-loving people who have loved horses as we have loved the sea, and have made, in the course of generations, a breed of horse, second to none in the world, for beauty and speed. But besides all these reasons, there is another that brings many out hunting. This is the delight in hunting, in the working of hounds, by themselves, or with the huntsmen, to find and kill their fox. Though many men and women hunt in order to ride, many still ride in order to hunt. Perhaps this delight in hunting was more general in the mid-eighteenth century, when hounds were much slower than at present. Then, the hunt was indeed a test of hounds and huntsman. The fox was not run down but hunted down. The great run then was that in which hounds and huntsman kept to their fox. The great run now is perhaps that in which some few riders keep with the hounds. The ideal run of 1750 might have been described thus:-- "Being in the current of Writing, I cannot but acquaint your Lorp of ye great Hunt there was, this Tuesday last there was a a Week. Sure so great a day has not been seen here since The Day your Lorp's Father broke his Collar Bone at ye Park Wall. As Milton says:-- "Well have we speeded, and o'er Hill and Dale Forest and Field and Flood ... As far as Indus east, Euphrates west." "We had but dismle Weather of it, and so cold, as made Sir Harry observe, that it was an ill wind blew no-one any good. We met at ye Tailings. I had out my brown Horse. There was present Sir Anthony Smoaker; Mr. Jarvis of Copse Stile; William Travis; John Hawbuck; your Lorp's Friend, Dick Fancowe, and two of ye Red Coats from ye Barracks. Ye fair Sex was dismayed, it was said, by ye rudeness of ye Elements; they did not venture it. "On coming to draw Tailings Wood, Glider spoke to it, and Tom viewed him away for the Valley, being the old Dog Fox, with the white Mask, that beat us at Fubb's Field, the day your Lorp road Bluebell. "Now spoke the chearful Horn; and tuneful Hounds Echoed, and Red Coats gallopped; stirring Scean, Rude Health and Manly Wit together strive. "We went with the extream of Violence from Tailings Wood to ye small Coppice at Nap Hill where a Fellow put him from his Point, which gave Occasion to Sir Anthony to correct him. Ye little magpie Hound made it out in ye bog at ye back of ye Coppice, when again Hounds went at head through Long Stone Pastures as far as Tainton. Here we was delayed in ye Dear Park, the effluvia of ye Dear being extream strong and doubtless puzzling to the Noses of ye Hounds. And here I cannot but remark the skill with which ye Hounds worked it out till they had hit it off, a sight, as Mr. Jarvis remarked to me, worthy of the Admiration of an antient Philosopher, and of the eloquence of a most elegant Wit, or Poet. Leaving ye Dear Park, He made for Norton Cross, which he left on his left Hand, as though deciding for ye Hill. Crossing ye Hill, in Spite of ye Sheep, he was a little staggered by his being run by one of ye Shepherd's Doggs, a part of Creation that should not be tolerated, except in ye vision of ye Poet, as in a Pastoral or so. Here Joe Phillips, our Huntsman, made unavailing Casts, but by lifting to the Vineyard recovered him, when Hounds run him to Cow's Crookham, on your Lorp's Aston Estate. "By this Time, your Lorp will understand our Distress. Dick Fancowe was in ye Brook at Norton, Mr. Jarvis' grey Horse had cast a Shoe, and one of ye Red Coats had broak his Liver in falling at a Fence. For a time we went about to recover him:-- "Now with attentive Nose the restless Hound Endeavours on the Scent, now here, now there, Scorning adulterat scents of lesser Prey. Now gloomy care invades the Huntsman's Face; And Sportsmen (jovial erst) on weary steeds Sit pensive." Here might well be seen the Advantages of a judicious Breeding in Hounds, that neglects not the intellectual Part, but aims rather at a complete Animal than alone at Sinews and Corporeal Structure. That Blood of the Old Berkshire Glorious, which your Lorp's Father was wont to observe, was what he most stood by, next to our Constitution and the Protestant Succession, here stood us in good stead, for it was to Glorious ye Ninth, as well as to Growler and Glider (all of ye same royal strain) that we was indebted to ye happy Conclusion. They pushed him out of ye Stubbings at Cow's Crookham, where it seems he had taken Refuge in the Hollow of a decayed Tree. We chac't him thence upon ye Grass to Shepherd's Hey. Here he began to run short, being not a little apprehensive, lest his Foes should triumph, and snatch from him that Life, which he had so long nefariously pampered. On courtly Cock with all his household Train Of Hens obsequious, by the Hen Wife mourned. "The Sun, coming out from among ye Clouds, where he had been too long hid, made (as was elegantly pretended by Sir Anthony), a Brightness, animating indeed to us, who carried the Sword of Justice, but, to the Criminal of our Pursuit, infinitely distressing. Then had your Lorp seen the gay Ardor of the Pack, as they came to the View, which they did about Stonepits, your Lorp would have said with the late elegant Poet: "Now o'er the glittering grass the sinewy Hound Shakes from his Feet the Dew and makes ye Woods resound." "To be brief, we killed in the Back Yard of ye Rummer and Glass after two and three quarters Hours of a Hunt such as (all are agreed) is not lightly to be parallelled. There was present at ye Death, beside Joe Phillips and Tom, Sir A. Smoaker, Mr. Wm. Travis and myself, all so extream distresst, Men and Beasts, that it was observed, it was a Marvel ye Horses were not dead. Such an Hunt, it was agreed, should be celebrated by an annual Dinner, at which the Toast of ye Chase might be rendered more than ordinary. Ye Hunt was upwards of Fifteen Miles in Length, and hath been the Subject of a Song, by a Member of Ye Hunt, which, as it would take long to transcribe, I forbear, hoping that we may sing it to your Lorp before (as ye Poet says) "Ye vixen hath laid up her Cubs In snuggest Cave secure, when balmy Spring Wakens ye Meadows." "But to pass now from Celestial Pleasures to Worldly Cares, I have to acquaint your Lorp that your Lorp's Sister's Son, Mr. Parracombe, hath been killed by a Fall from his Horse, after Dinner with some Gentlemen, his particular Friends, an Affliction indeed great, humanly regarded, were it not also considered, how much happier his Lot must be, than in this Vale of Tears, etc. Ye Young Hounds thrive apace, and it is thought the forward Season will be very favourable for their future Prey. I am, your Lorp's most obedient, Charles Cothill." Perhaps the ideal run of the present time would be described as follows:-- "A large field attended the Templecombe on Tuesday last at the popular meet at Heydigates. Will Mynors, late of the Parratts, carried the horn, in place of Tom Carling, now with Mr. Fletchers. A little time was spent in running through the shrubberies in the garden at Heydigates and then the word was given for the Cantlows. Will had no sooner put hounds into this famous cover than the dog pack proclaimed the joyous news. The fox, a traveller, was at once viewed away for the Three Oaks, across the rather heavy going of the pasture land. Coming to the Knock Brook, he swam it near Parson's Pleasure, going at a pace that let the knowing ones know that they were in for something out of the common. Keeping Snib's Farm on his right, he ran dead straight for Gallow's Wood, where some woodmen with their teams disturbed him. Swinging to his left, he went up the hill, through Bloody Lane, as though towards Dinsmore, but was again deflected by woodmen. Turning down the hill, he ran for the valley, passing Enderton Schoolhouse, the scholars of which were much cheered by the near prospect of the hunt. It was now evident that he was going for the Downs. Some of the less daring began to express the hope that he might be headed. "Scent from the first was burning and the pace a cracker. After leaving Enderton he made straight for the Danesway, past Snub's Titch and the Curlews, the green meadows of the pasture being sprinkled for miles with the relics of the field. He crossed the Roman Road at Orm's Oak and at once entered the Danesway, going at a pace which all thought could not last. "At the summit of the Danesway, known as the Gallows Point, hounds were brought to their noses, owing to the crossing of the line by sheep. A man working nearby was able to give the line and Will, lifting beyond the Lynchets, at once hit him off, and the hounds resumed their rush. From this point, they went almost exactly straight from the head of the Danesway to the fir copse by Arthur's Table. All this part of the run being across a rolling grass land, was at top speed, such as no horse could live with. At Arthur's Table, he was put from his earth by shooters who were netting the warren. As he could not get through them nor across the highway, then busy with traffic, He doubled down across the Starvings, where Will, the only man up at this point, although now three hundred yards behind hounds, caught sight of him on the opposite slope, romping away from hounds as though he would never grow old. On coming to the level, past Spinney's End, some of those who had been left at the Lynchets were able to rejoin, but were soon again cast out by the extreme violence of the going, which continued back across the Downs on a line obliquely parallel with his former track though a mile further to the south. It was supposed that he was going for the main earth in Bloody Acre Copse. Some workers in the strip at the edge of the copse headed him from this point. He swung left-handed past Staves acre, and so down to the valley by the shelving ground near Monk's Charwell. Here, for some unaccountable reason, the scent, which had been breast high, became catchy, and hounds lost their fox in the Osier cars at Charwell Springs. Later in the afternoon, while jogging home, a second fox was chopped in Mr. Parsloe's cover at Prince's Charwell. Hounds then went home. "The run from the Cantlows was not remarkable for any quality of hunting, but extremely so for pace and length. The distance run, from Cantlows Wood to the Osiers cannot have been less than thirteen miles, most of it indeed on the best going in the world, but at a racing pace, with nothing that can be called a check, the whole way. Some wished that the hounds might have been rewarded and others that Will Mynors might have crowned his opening gallop with a kill, but the general feeling was one of satisfaction that so game a fox escaped." My own interest in fox hunting began at a very early age. I was born in a good hunting country, partly woodland, partly pasture. My home, during my first seven years, was within half a mile of the kennels. I saw hounds on most days of my life. Hounds and hunting filled my imagination. I saw many meets, each as romantic as a circus. The huntsman and whipper-in seemed, then, to be the greatest men in the world, and those mild slaves, the hounds, the loveliest animals. Often, as a little child, I saw and heard hounds hunting in and near a covert within sight of my old home. Once, when I was, perhaps, five years old, the fox was hunted into our garden, and those glorious beings in scarlet, as well as the hounds, were all about my lairs, like visitants from Paradise. The fox, on this occasion, went through a woodshed and escaped. Later in my childhood, though I lived less near to the kennels, I was still within a mile of them, and saw hounds frequently at all seasons. In that hunting country, hunting was one of the interests of life; everybody knew about it, loved, followed, watched and discussed it. I went to many meets, and followed many hunts on foot. Each of these occasions is now distinct in my mind, with the colour and intensity of beauty. I saw many foxes starting off upon their runs, with the hounds close behind them. It was then that I learned to admire the ease and beauty of the speed of the fresh fox. That leisurely hurry, which romps away from the hardest trained and swiftest fox hounds without a visible effort, as though the hounds were weighted with lead, is the most lovely motion I have seen in an animal. No fox was the original of my Reynard, but as I was much in the woods as a boy I saw foxes fairly often, considering that they are night-moving animals. Their grace, beauty, cleverness, and secrecy always thrilled me. Then that kind of grin which the mask wears made me credit them with an almost human humour. I thought the fox a merry devil, though a bloody one. Then he is one against many, who keeps his end up, and lives, often snugly, in spite of the world. The pirate and the nightrider are nothing to the fox, for romance and danger. This way of life of his makes it difficult to observe him in a free state at close quarters. Once in the early spring in the very early morning, I saw a vixen playing with her cubs in the open space below a beech tree. Once I came upon a big dog-fox in a wheel-wright's yard, and watched him from within a few paces for some minutes. Twice I have watched half-grown cubs stalking rabbits. Twice out hunting, the fox has broken cover within three yards of me. These are the only free foxes which I have seen at close quarters. Foxes are night-moving animals. To know them well one should have cat's eyes and foxes' habits. By the imagination alone can men know foxes. When I was about halfway through my poem, I found a dead dog-fox in a field near Cumnor Hurst. He was a fine full-grown fox in perfect condition; he must have picked up poison, for he had not been hunted, nor shot. On the pads of this dead fox, I noticed for the first time, the length and strength of a fox's claws. Some have asked, whether the Ghost Heath Run is founded on any recorded run of any real Hunt. It is not. It is an imaginary run, in a country made up of many different pieces of country, some of them real, some of them imaginary. These real and imaginary fields, woods and brooks are taken as they exist, from Berkshire, where the fox lives, from Herefordshire where he was found, from Trapalanda, Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Berkshire, where he ran, from Trapalanda, where he nearly died, and from a wild and beautiful corner in Berkshire where he rests from his run. Some have asked when the poem was written. It was written between January 1 and May 20, 1919. Some have asked, whether hunting will soon be abolished. I cannot tell, but I think it unlikely. People do not willingly resign their pleasures; men who breed horses will want to gallop them across country; hunting is a pleasure, as well as an opportunity to gallop; it is also an instinct in man. Some have thought that if "small holdings," that is "produce gardens," intensively cultivated, of about an acre apiece, became common, so that the country became more rigidly enclosed than at present, hunting would be made almost impossible. The small holding is generally the property of the small farmer (like the French cultivateur) who fences permanently with wire and cannot take down the wire during the hunting season, as most English farmers do at present. Small holdings will probably increase in number near towns, but farmers seem agreed that they can never become the national system of farming. The big farm, that can treat the great tract with machines, seems likely to be the farm of the future. Even if the small holdings system were to prevail, it would hardly prevail over the sporting instincts of the race. Beauty and delight are stronger than the will to work. I am pretty sure that a pack of hounds, coming feathery by, at the heels of a whip's horse, while the field takes station and the huntsman, drawing his horn, prepares to hunt, would shake the resolve of most small holders, digging in their lots with thrift, industry and self-control. And then, if the huntsman were to blow his horn, and the hounds to feather on it and give tongue, and find, and go away at head, I am pretty sure that most of the small holders of this race would follow them. It is in this race to hunt. I will conclude with a portrait of old Baldy Hill, the earth-stopper, who in the darkness of the early morning gads about on a pony, to "stop" or "put to" all earths, in which a hard-pressed fox might hide. In the poem, he enters when the hunt is about to start, but he is an important figure in a hunting community, and deserves a portrait. He may come here, at the beginning, for Baldy Hill is at the beginning of all fox hunts. He dates from the beginning of Man. I have seen many a Baldy Hill in my life; he never fails to give me the feeling that he is Primitive Man survived. Primitive Man lived like that, in the woods, in the darkness, outwitting the wild things, while the rain dripped, and the owl cried, and the ghost came out from the grave. Baldy Hill stole the last litter of the last she-wolf to cross them with the King's hounds. He was in at the death of the last wild-boar. Sometimes, in looking at him, I think that his ashen stake must have a flint head, with which, on moony nights, he still creeps out, to rouse, it may be, the mammoth in his secret valley, or a sabretooth tiger, still caved in the woods. Life may and does shoot out into exotic forms, which may and do flower and perish. Perhaps when all the other forms of English life are gone, the Baldy Hill form, the stock form, will abide, still striding, head bent, with an ashen stake, after some wild thing, that has meat, or fur, or is difficult or dangerous to tackle. Old Baldy Hill, the game old cock, Still wore knee-gaiters and a smock. He bore a five foot ashen stick All scarred and pilled from many a click Beating in covert with his sons To drive the pheasants to the guns. His face was beaten by the weather To wrinkled red like bellows leather He had a cold clear hard blue eye. His snares made many a rabbit die. On moony nights he found it pleasant To stare the woods for roosting pheasant Up near the tree-trunk on the bough. He never trod behind a plough. He and his two sons got their food From wild things in the field and wood, By snares, by ferrets put in holes, By ridding pasture-land of moles; By keeping, beating, trapping, poaching And spaniel-and-retriever-coaching. He and his sons had special merits In breeding and in handling ferrets Full many a snaky hob and jill Had bit the thumbs of Baldy Hill. He had no beard, but long white hair. He bent in gait. He used to wear Flowers in his smock, gold-clocks and peasen; And spindle-fruit in hunting season. I hope that he may live to wear spindle-fruit for many seasons to come. Hunting makes more people happy than anything I know. When people are happy together, I am quite certain that they build up something eternal, something both beautiful and divine, which weakens the power of all evil things upon this life of men and women. LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY CARTON MOOREPARK PAGE The stables were alive with din 5 An old man with a gaunt, burnt face 16 All sport, from bloody war to craps 80 The Godsdown Tigress with her cub 96 A sea of moving heads, and sterns 120 His chief delight 128 He had a welcome and salute 144 The scarlet coats twixt tree and spray 153 And now they gathered to the gamble 162 He saw the farms where the dogs were barking 172 There he slept in the mild west weather 182 The boy's sweet whistle and dog's quick yaps 185 He faced the fence and put her through it 222 A white horse rising a dark horse flying 256 Then down the slope and up the road 291 He ran the sheep that their smell might check 295 With a cracking whip and "Hoik, Hoik, Hoik, Forrard" 303 He saw it now as a redness topped 313 And man to man with a gasp for breath 330 For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam 336 COLOR PLATES First colored plate _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Second colored plate 28 Third colored plate 86 Fourth colored plate 150 Fifth colored plate 210 Sixth colored plate 236 Seventh colored plate 250 Eighth colored plate 338 PART I THE MEET REYNARD THE FOX, OR THE GHOST HEATH RUN The meet was at "The Cock and Pye By Charles and Martha Enderby," The grey, three-hundred-year-old inn Long since the haunt of Benjamin The highwayman, who rode the bay. The tavern fronts the coaching way, The mail changed horses there of old. It has a strip of grassy mould In front of it, a broad green strip. A trough, where horses' muzzles dip, Stands opposite the tavern front, And there that morning came the hunt, To fill that quiet width of road As full of men as Framilode Is full of sea when tide is in. The stables were alive with din From dawn until the time of meeting. A pad-groom gave a cloth a beating, Knocking the dust out with a stake. Two men cleaned stalls with fork and rake, And one went whistling to the pump, The handle whined, ker-lump, ker-lump, The water splashed into the pail, And, as he went, it left a trail, Lipped over on the yard's bricked paving. Two grooms (sent on before) were shaving There in the yard, at glasses propped On jutting bricks; they scraped and stropped, And felt their chins and leaned and peered, A woodland day was what they feared (As second horsemen), shaving there. Then, in the stalls where hunters were, Straw rustled as the horses shifted, The hayseeds ticked and haystraws drifted From racks as horses tugged their feed. Slow gulping sounds of steady greed Came from each stall, and sometimes stampings, Whinnies (at well-known steps) and rampings To see the horse in the next stall. [Illustration: The stables were alive with din From dawn until the time of meeting.] Outside, the spangled cock did call To scattering grain that Martha flung. And many a time a mop was wrung By Susan ere the floor was clean. The harness room, that busy scene, Clinked and chinked from ostlers brightening Rings and bits with dips of whitening, Rubbing fox-flecks out of stirrups, Dumbing buckles of their chirrups By the touch of oily feathers. Some, with stag's bones rubbed at leathers, Brushed at saddle-flaps or hove Saddle linings to the stove. Blue smoke from strong tobacco drifted Out of the yard, the passers snifft it, Mixed with the strong ammonia flavour Of horses' stables and the savour Of saddle-paste and polish spirit Which put the gleam on flap and tirrit. The grooms in shirts with rolled-up sleeves, Belted by girths of coloured weaves, Groomed the clipped hunters in their stalls. One said, "My dad cured saddle galls, He called it Doctor Barton's cure; Hog's lard and borax, laid on pure." And others said, "Ge' back, my son," "Stand over, girl; now, girl, ha' done." "Now, boy, no snapping; gently. Crikes, He gives a rare pinch when he likes." "Drawn blood? I thought he looked a biter." "I give 'em all sweet spit of nitre For that, myself: that sometimes cures." "Now, Beauty, mind them feet of yours." They groomed, and sissed with hissing notes To keep the dust out of their throats. [Illustration: The grooms in shirts with rolled-up sleeves] There came again and yet again The feed-box lid, the swish of grain, Or Joe's boots stamping in the loft, The hay-fork's stab and then the soft Hay's scratching slither down the shoot. Then with a thud some horse's foot Stamped, and the gulping munch again Resumed its lippings at the grain. The road outside the inn was quiet Save for the poor, mad, restless pyat Hopping his hanging wicker-cage. No calmative of sleep or sage Will cure the fever to be free. He shook the wicker ceaselessly Now up, now down, but never out On wind-waves, being blown about, Looking for dead things good to eat. His cage was strewn with scattered wheat. At ten o'clock, the Doctor's lad Brought up his master's hunting pad And put him in a stall, and leaned Against the stall, and sissed, and cleaned The port and cannons of his curb. He chewed a sprig of smelling herb. He sometimes stopped, and spat, and chid The silly things his master did. THE PLOUGHMAN At twenty past, old Baldock strode His ploughman's straddle down the road. An old man with a gaunt, burnt face; His eyes rapt back on some far place, Like some starved, half-mad saint in bliss In God's world through the rags of this. He leaned upon a stake of ash Cut from a sapling: many a gash Was in his old, full-skirted coat. The twisted muscles in his throat Moved, as he swallowed, like taut cord. His oaken face was seamed and gored. He halted by the inn and stared On that far bliss, that place prepared Beyond his eyes, beyond his mind. [Illustration: An old man with a gaunt, burnt face; His eyes rapt back on some far place.] Then Thomas Copp, of Cowfoot's Wynd Drove up; and stopped to take a glass. "I hope they'll gallop on my grass," He said, "My little girl does sing To see the red coats galloping. It's good for grass, too, to be trodden Except they poach it, where it's sodden." Then Billy Waldrist, from the Lynn, With Jockey Hill, from Pitts, came in And had a sip of gin and stout To help the jockey's sweatings out. "Rare day for scent," the jockey said. A pony, like a feather bed On four short sticks, took place aside. The little girl who rode astride Watched everything with eyes that glowed With glory in the horse she rode. At half-past ten, some lads on foot Came to be beaters to a shoot Of rabbits at the Warren Hill. Rough sticks they had, and Hob and Jill, Their ferrets, in a bag, and netting. They talked of dinner-beer and betting; And jeered at those who stood around. They rolled their dogs upon the ground And teased them: "Rats," they cried; "go fetch." "Go seek, good Roxer; 'z bite, good betch. What dinner-beer'll they give us, lad? Sex quarts the lot last year we had. They'd ought to give us seven this. Seek, Susan; what a betch it is." THE CLERGYMAN [Illustration: The clergyman from Condicote] A pommle cob came trotting up, Round-bellied like a drinking-cup, Bearing on back a pommle man Round-bellied like a drinking-can. The clergyman from Condicote. His face was scarlet from his trot, His white hair bobbed about his head As halos do round clergy dead. He asked Tom Copp, "How long to wait?" His loose mouth opened like a gate To pass the wagons of his speech, He had a mighty voice to preach, Though indolent in other matters, He let his children go in tatters. His daughter Madge on foot, flushed-cheekt, In broken hat and boots that leakt, With bits of hay all over her, Her plain face grinning at the stir (A broad pale face, snub-nosed, with speckles Of sandy eyebrows sprinkt with freckles) Came after him and stood apart Beside the darling of her heart, Miss Hattie Dyce from Baydon Dean; A big young fair one, chiselled clean, Brow, chin, and nose, with great blue eyes, All innocence and sweet surprise, And golden hair piled coil on coil Too beautiful for time to spoil. They talked in undertones together Not of the hunting, nor the weather. Old Steven, from Scratch Steven Place (A white beard and a rosy face), Came next on his stringhalty grey, "I've come to see the hounds away," He said, "And ride a field or two. We old have better things to do Than breaking all our necks for fun." He shone on people like the sun, And on himself for shining so. Three men came riding in a row:-- John Pyn, a bull-man, quick to strike, Gross and blunt-headed like a shrike Yet sweet-voiced as a piping flute; Tom See, the trainer, from the Toot, Red, with an angry, puzzled face And mouth twitched upward out of place, Sucking cheap grapes and spitting seeds; And Stone, of Bartle's Cattle Feeds, A man whose bulk of flesh and bone Made people call him Twenty Stone. He was the man who stood a pull At Tencombe with the Jersey bull And brought the bull back to his stall. [Illustration: Three men came riding in a row] Some children ranged the tavern-wall, Sucking their thumbs and staring hard; Some grooms brought horses from the yard. Jane Selbie said to Ellen Tranter, "A lot on 'em come doggin', ant her?" "A lot on 'em," said Ellen, "look There'm Mister Gaunt of Water's Hook. They say he" ... (whispered). "Law," said Jane. Gaunt flung his heel across the mane, And slithered from his horse and stamped. "Boots tight," he said, "my feet are cramped." A loose-shod horse came clicking clack; Nick Wolvesey on a hired hack Came tittup, like a cup and ball. One saw the sun, moon, stars, and all The great green earth twixt him and saddle; Then Molly Wolvesey riding straddle, Red as a rose, with eyes like sparks. Two boys from college out for larks Hunted bright Molly for a smile But were not worth their quarry's while. [Illustration: Second colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] Two eyeglassed gunners dressed in tweed Came with a spaniel on a lead And waited for a fellow gunner. The parson's son, the famous runner, Came dressed to follow hounds on foot. His knees were red as yew tree root From being bare, day in day out; He wore a blazer, and a clout (His sweater's arms) tied round his neck. His football shorts had many a speck And splash of mud from many a fall Got as he picked the slippery ball Heeled out behind a breaking scrum. He grinned at people, but was dumb, Not like these lousy foreigners. The otter-hounds and harriers From Godstow to the Wye all knew him. THE PARSON And with him came the stock which grew him-- The parson and his sporting wife, She was a stout one, full of life With red, quick, kindly, manly face. She held the knave, queen, king, and ace In every hand she played with men. She was no sister to the hen, But fierce and minded to be queen. She wore a coat and skirt of green, Her waistcoat cut of bunting red, Her tie pin was a fox's head. The parson was a manly one, His jolly eyes were bright with fun. His jolly mouth was well inclined To cry aloud his jolly mind To everyone, in jolly terms. He did not talk of churchyard worms, But of our privilege as dust To box a lively bout with lust Ere going to Heaven to rejoice. He loved the sound of his own voice. His talk was like a charge of horse; His build was all compact, for force, Well-knit, well-made, well-coloured, eager, He kept no Lent to make him meagre. He loved his God, himself and man. He never said "Life's wretched span; This wicked world," in any sermon. This body, that we feed the worm on, To him, was jovial stuff that thrilled. He liked to see the foxes killed; But most he felt himself in clover To hear "Hen left, hare right, cock over," At woodside, when the leaves are brown. Some grey cathedral in a town Where drowsy bells toll out the time To shaven closes sweet with lime, And wall-flower roots drive out of the mortar All summer on the Norman Dortar, Was certain some day to be his. Nor would a mitre go amiss To him, because he governed well. His voice was like the tenor bell When services were said and sung. And he had read in many a tongue, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Greek. "JILL AND JOAN" Two bright young women, nothing meek, Rode up on bicycles and propped Their wheels in such wise that they dropped To bring the parson's son to aid. Their cycling suits were tailor-made, Smart, mannish, pert, but feminine. The colour and the zest of wine Were in their presence and their bearing; Like spring, they brought the thought of pairing. The parson's lady thought them pert. And they could mock a man and flirt, Do billiard tricks with corks and pennies, Sing ragtime songs and win at tennis The silver-cigarette-case-prize. They had good colour and bright eyes, Bright hair, bright teeth and pretty skin, On darkened stairways after dances, Which many lads had longed to win. Their reading was the last romances, And they were dashing hockey players. Men called them, "Jill and Joan, the slayers." They were as bright as fresh sweet-peas. FARMER BENNETT [Illustration: Old Farmer Bennett upon his big-boned savage black] Old Farmer Bennett followed these Upon his big-boned savage black Whose mule-teeth yellowed to bite back Whatever came within his reach. Old Bennett sat him like a leech. The grim old rider seemed to be As hard about the mouth as he. The beaters nudged each other's ribs With "There he goes, his bloody Nibs. He come on Joe and Anty Cop, And beat 'em with his hunting crop Like tho' they'd bin a sack of beans. His pickers were a pack of queans, And Joe and Anty took a couple, He caught 'em there, and banged 'em supple. Women and men, he didn't care (He'd kill 'em some day, if he dare), He beat the whole four nearly dead. 'I'll learn 'ee rabbit in my shed, That's how my ricks get set afire.' That's what he said, the bloody liar; Old oaf, I'd like to burn his ricks, Th' old swine's too free with fists and sticks. He keeps that Mrs. Jones himselve." Just like an axehead on its helve Old Bennett sat and watched the gathering. He'd given many a man a lathering In field or barn, and women, too. His cold eye reached the women through With comment, and the men with scorn. He hated women gently born; He hated all beyond his grasp; For he was minded like the asp That strikes whatever is not dust. THE GOLDEN AGE Charles Copse, of Copse Hold Manor, thrust Next into view. In face and limb The beauty and the grace of him Were like the golden age returned. His grave eyes steadily discerned The good in men and what was wise. He had deep blue, mild-coloured eyes, And shocks of harvest-coloured hair, Still beautiful with youth. An air Or power of kindness went about him; No heart of youth could ever doubt him Or fail to follow where he led. He was a genius, simply bred, And quite unconscious of his power. He was the very red rose flower Of all that coloured countryside. Gauchos had taught him how to ride. He knew all arts, but practised most The art of bettering flesh and ghost In men and lads down in the mud. He knew no class in flesh and blood. He loved his kind. He spent some pith Long since, relieving Ladysmith. Many a horse he trotted tame, Heading commandos from their aim, In those old days upon the veldt. THE SQUIRE [Illustration: His daughters, Carrie, Jane, and Lu, rode with him] An old bear in a scarlet pelt Came next, old Squire Harridew, His eyebrows gave a man the grue So bushy and so fierce they were; He had a bitter tongue to swear. A fierce, hot, hard, old, stupid squire, With all his liver made of fire, Small brain, great courage, mulish will. The hearts in all his house stood still When someone crossed the squire's path. For he was terrible in wrath, And smashed whatever came to hand. Two things he failed to understand, The foreigner and what was new. His daughters, Carrie, Jane and Lu, Rode with him, Carrie at his side. His son, the ne'er-do-weel, had died In Arizona, long before. The Squire set the greatest store By Carrie, youngest of the three, And lovely to the blood was she; Blonde, with a face of blush and cream, And eyes deep violet in their gleam, Bright blue when quiet in repose. She was a very golden rose. And many a man when sunset came Would see the manor windows flame, And think, "My beauty's home is there." Queen Helen had less golden hair, Queen Cleopatra paler lips, Queen Blanche's eyes were in eclipse, By golden Carrie's glancing by. She had a wit for mockery And sang mild, pretty senseless songs Of sunsets, Heav'n and lover's wrongs, Sweet to the Squire when he had dined. A rosebud need not have a mind. A lily is not sweet from learning. Jane looked like a dark lantern, burning. Outwardly dark, unkempt, uncouth, But minded like the living truth, A friend that nothing shook nor wearied. She was not "Darling Jan'd," nor "dearie'd," She was all prickles to the touch, So sharp, that many feared to clutch, So keen, that many thought her bitter. She let the little sparrows twitter. She had a hard ungracious way. Her storm of hair was iron-grey, And she was passionate in her heart For women's souls that burn apart, Just as her mother's had, with Squire. She gave the sense of smouldering fire. She was not happy being a maid, At home, with Squire, but she stayed Enduring life, however bleak, To guard her sisters who were weak, And force a life for them from Squire. And she had roused and stood his fire A hundred times, and earned his hate, To win those two a better state. Long years before the Canon's son Had cared for her, but he had gone To Klondyke, to the mines, for gold, To find, in some strange way untold A foreign grave that no men knew. No depth, nor beauty, was in Lu, But charm and fun, for she was merry, Round, sweet and little like a cherry, With laughter like a robin's singing; She was not kittenlike and clinging, But pert and arch and fond of flirting, In mocking ways that were not hurting, And merry ways that women pardoned. Not being married yet she gardened. She loved sweet music; she would sing Songs made before the German King Made England German in her mind. She sang "My lady is unkind," "The Hunt is up," and those sweet things Which Thomas Campion set to strings, "Thrice toss," and "What," and "Where are now?" The next to come was Major Howe Driv'n in a dog-cart by a groom. The testy major was in fume To find no hunter standing waiting; The groom who drove him caught a rating, The groom who had the horse in stable, Was damned in half the tongues of Babel. The Major being hot and heady When horse or dinner was not ready. He was a lean, tough, liverish fellow, With pale blue eyes (the whites pale yellow), Mustache clipped toothbrush-wise, and jaws Shaved bluish like old partridge claws. When he had stripped his coat he made A speckless presence for parade, New pink, white cords, and glossy tops New gloves, the newest thing in crops, Worn with an air that well expressed His sense that no one else was dressed. THE DOCTOR [Illustration: Came Doctor Frome of Quickemshow] Quick trotting after Major Howe Came Doctor Frome of Quickemshow, A smiling silent man whose brain Knew all of every secret pain In every man and woman there. Their inmost lives were all laid bare To him, because he touched their lives When strong emotions sharp as knives Brought out what sort of soul each was. As secret as the graveyard grass He was, as he had need to be. At some time he had had to see Each person there, sans clothes, sans mask, Sans lying even, when to ask Probed a tamed spirit into truth. Richard, his son, a jolly youth Rode with him, fresh from Thomas's, As merry as a yearling is In maytime in a clover patch. He was a gallant chick to hatch Big, brown and smiling, blithe and kind, With all his father's love of mind And greater force to give it act. To see him when the scrum was packt, Heave, playing forward, was a sight. His tackling was the crowd's delight In many a danger close to goal. The pride in the three quarter's soul Dropped, like a wet rag, when he collared. He was as steady as a bollard, And gallant as a skysail yard. He rode a chestnut mare which sparred. In good St. Thomas' Hospital, He was the crown imperial Of all the scholars of his year. The Harold lads, from Tencombe Weir, Came all on foot in corduroys, Poor widowed Mrs. Harold's boys, Dick, Hal and Charles, whose father died. (Will Masemore shot him in the side By accident at Masemore Farm. A hazel knocked Will Masemore's arm In getting through a hedge; his gun Was not half-cocked, so it was done And those three boys left fatherless.) Their gaitered legs were in a mess With good red mud from twenty ditches Hal's face was plastered like his breeches, Dick chewed a twig of juniper. They kept at distance from the stir Their loss had made them lads apart. Next came the Colway's pony cart From Coln St. Evelyn's with the party, Hugh Colway jovial, bold and hearty, And Polly Colway's brother, John (Their horses had been both sent on) And Polly Colway drove them there. Poor pretty Polly Colway's hair. The grey mare killed her at the brook Down Seven Springs Mead at Water Hook, Just one month later, poor sweet woman. THE SAILOR Her brother was a rat-faced Roman, Lean, puckered, tight-skinned from the sea, Commander in the _Canace_, Able to drive a horse, or ship, Or crew of men, without a whip By will, as long as they could go. His face would wrinkle, row on row, From mouth to hair-roots when he laught He looked ahead as though his craft Were with him still, in dangerous channels. He and Hugh Colway tossed their flannels Into the pony-cart and mounted. Six foiled attempts the watchers counted, The horses being bickering things, That so much scarlet made like kings, Such sidling and such pawing and shifting. THE MERCHANT'S SON When Hugh was up his mare went drifting Sidelong and feeling with her heels For horses' legs and poshay wheels, While lather creamed her neat clipt skin. Hugh guessed her foibles with a grin. He was a rich town-merchant's son, A wise and kind man fond of fun, Who loved to have a troop of friends At Coln St. Eves for all week-ends, And troops of children in for tea, He gloried in a Christmas Tree. And Polly was his heart's best treasure, And Polly was a golden pleasure To everyone, to see or hear. Poor Polly's dying struck him queer, He was a darkened man thereafter, Cowed silent, he would wince at laughter And be so gentle it was strange Even to see. Life loves to change. Now Coln St. Evelyn's hearths are cold The shutters up, the hunters sold, And green mould damps the locked front door. But this was still a month before, And Polly, golden in the chaise, Still smiled, and there were golden days, Still thirty days, for those dear lovers. SPORTSMAN The Riddens came, from Ocle Covers, Bill Ridden riding Stormalong, (By Tempest out of Love-me-long) A proper handful of a horse, That nothing but the Aintree course Could bring to terms, save Bill perhaps. All sport, from bloody war to craps, Came well to Bill, that big-mouthed smiler; They nick-named him "the mug-beguiler," For Billy lived too much with horses In coper's yards and sharper's courses, To lack the sharper-coper streak. He did not turn the other cheek When struck (as English Christians do), He boxed like a Whitechapel Jew, And many a time his knuckles bled Against a race-course-gipsy's head. For "hit him first and argue later" Was truth at Billy's alma mater, Not love, not any bosh of love. His hand was like a chamois glove And riding was his chief delight. He bred the chaser Chinese-white, From Lilybud by Mandarin. And when his mouth tucked corners in, And scent was high and hounds were going, He went across a field like snowing And tackled anything that came. [Illustration: All sport, from bloody war to craps, Came well to Bill, that big-mouthed smiler.] His wife, Sal Ridden, was the same, A loud, bold, blonde abundant mare, With white horse teeth and stooks of hair, (Like polished brass) and such a manner It flaunted from her like a banner. Her father was Tom See the trainer; She rode a lovely earth-disdainer Which she and Billy wished to sell. [Illustration: Behind them rode her daughter Bell] Behind them rode her daughter Bell, A strange shy lovely girl whose face Was sweet with thought and proud with race, And bright with joy at riding there. She was as good as blowing air But shy and difficult to know. The kittens in the barley-mow, The setter's toothless puppies sprawling, The blackbird in the apple calling, All knew her spirit more than we, So delicate these maidens be In loving lovely helpless things. The Manor set, from Tencombe Rings, Came, with two friends, a set of six. Ed Manor with his cockerel chicks, Nob, Cob and Bunny as they called them, (God help the school or rule which galled them; They carried head) and friends from town. [Illustration: The Manor set, from Tencombe Rings] Ed Manor trained on Tencombe Down. He once had been a famous bat, He had that stroke, "the Manor-pat," Which snicked the ball for three, past cover. He once scored twenty in an over, But now he cricketed no more. He purpled in the face and swore At all three sons, and trained, and told Long tales of cricketing of old, When he alone had saved his side. Drink made it doubtful if he lied, Drink purpled him, he could not face The fences now, nor go the pace He brought his friends to meet; no more. His big son Nob, at whom he swore, Swore back at him, for Nob was surly, Tall, shifty, sullen-smiling, burly, Quite fearless, built with such a jaw That no man's rule could be his law Nor any woman's son his master. Boxing he relished. He could plaster All those who boxed out Tencombe way. A front tooth had been knocked away Two days before, which put his mouth A little to the east of south. And put a venom in his laughter. Cob was a lighter lad, but dafter; Just past eighteen, while Nob was twenty. Nob had no nerves but Cob had plenty So Cobby went where Nobby led. He had no brains inside his head, Was fearless, just like Nob, but put Some clog of folly round his foot, Where Nob put will of force or fraud; He spat aside and muttered Gawd When vext; he took to whiskey kindly And loved and followed Nobby blindly, And rode as in the saddle born. Bun looked upon the two with scorn. He was the youngest, and was wise. He too was fair, with sullen eyes, He too (a year before) had had A zest for going to the bad, With Cob and Nob. He knew the joys Of drinking with the stable-boys, Or smoking while he filled his skin With pints of Guinness dashed with gin And Cobby yelled a bawdy ditty, Or cutting Nobby for the kitty, And damning peoples' eyes and guts, Or drawing evening-church for sluts, He knew them all and now was quit. [Illustration: Third colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] Sweet Polly Colway managed it. And Bunny changed. He dropped his drink (The pleasant pit's seductive brink), He started working in the stable, And well, for he was shrewd and able. He left the doubtful female friends Picked up at Evening-Service ends, He gave up cards and swore no more. Nob called him "the Reforming Whore," "The Soul's Awakening," or "The Text," Nob being always coarse when vext. Ed Manor's friends were Hawke and Sladd, Old college friends, the last he had, Rare horsemen, but their nerves were shaken By all the whiskey they had taken. Hawke's hand was trembling on his rein. His eyes were dead-blue like a vein, His peaked sad face was touched with breeding, His querulous mind was quaint from reading, His piping voice still quirked with fun. Many a mad thing he had done, Riding to hounds and going to races. A glimmer of the gambler's graces, Wit, courage, devil, touched his talk. [Illustration: Ed Manor's friends were Hawke and Sladd] Sladd's big fat face was white as chalk, His mind went wondering, swift yet solemn, Twixt winning-post and betting column, The weights and forms and likely colts. He said "This road is full of jolts. I shall be seasick riding here. O damn last night with that liqueur." Len Stokes rode up on Peterkin; He owned the Downs by Baydon Whin; And grazed some thousand sheep; the boy Grinned round at men with jolly joy At being alive and being there. His big round face and mop of hair Shone, his great teeth shone in his grin, The clean blood in his clear tanned skin Ran merry, and his great voice mocked His young friends present till they rocked. Steer Harpit came from Rowell Hill, A small, frail man, all heart and will, A sailor as his voice betrayed. He let his whip-thong droop and played At snicking off the grass-blades with it, John Hankerton, from Compton Lythitt, Was there with Pity Hankerton, And Mike, their good-for-little son, Back, smiling, from his seventh job. Joan Urch was there upon her cob. Tom Sparsholt on his lanky grey. John Restrop from Hope Goneaway. And Vaughan, the big black handsome devil, Loose-lipped with song and wine and revel All rosy from his morning tub THE EXQUISITE The Godsdown tigress with her cub (Lady and Tommy Crowmarsh) came. The great eyes smouldered in the dame, Wit glittered, too, which few men saw. There was more beauty there than claw. Tommy in bearing, horse and dress Was black, fastidious, handsomeness, Choice to his trimmed soul's fingertips. Heredia's sonnets on his lips. A line undrawn, a plate not bitten, A stone uncut, a phrase unwritten, That would be perfect, made his mind. A choice pull, from a rare print, signed, Was Tommy. He collected plate, (Old sheffield) and he owned each state Of all the Meryon Paris etchings. [Illustration: The Godsdown Tigress with her cub (Lady and Tommy Crowmarsh) came.] Colonel Sir Button Budd of Fletchings Was there; Long Robert Thrupp was there, (Three yards of him men said there were), Long as the King of Prussia's fancy. He rode the longlegged Necromancy, A useless racehorse that could canter. George Childrey with his jolly banter Was there, Nick Childrey, too, come down The night before from London town, To hunt and have his lungs blown clean. The Ilsley set from Tuttocks Green Was there (old Henry Ilsley drove), Carlotta Ilsley brought her love A flop-jowled broker from the city. Men pitied her, for she was pretty. Some grooms and second horsemen mustered. A lot of men on foot were clustered Round the inn-door, all busy drinking, One heard the kissing glasses clinking In passage as the tray was brought. Two terriers (which they had there) fought There on the green, a loud, wild whirl. Bell stopped them like a gallant girl. The hens behind the tavern clucked. THE SOLDIER [Illustration: Came Minton-Price of th' Afghan border] Then on a horse which bit and bucked (The half-broke four-year-old Marauder) Came Minton-Price of th' Afghan border, Lean, puckered, yellowed, knotted, scarred, Tough as a hide-rope twisted hard, Tense tiger-sinew knit to bone. Strange-wayed from having lived alone With Kafir, Afghan and Beloosh In stations frozen in the Koosh Where nothing but the bullet sings. His mind had conquered many things, Painting, mechanics, physics, law, White-hot, hand-beaten things to draw Self-hammered from his own soul's stithy, His speech was blacksmith-sparked and pithy. Danger had been his brother bred; The stones had often been his bed In bickers with the border-thieves. THE COUNTRY'S HOPE A chestnut mare with swerves and heaves Came plunging, scattering all the crowd, She tossed her head and laughed aloud And bickered sideways past the meet. From pricking ears to mincing feet She was all tense with blood and quiver, You saw her clipt hide twitch and shiver Over her netted cords of veins. She carried Cothill, of the Sleins; A tall, black, bright-eyed handsome lad. Great power and great grace he had. Men hoped the greatest things of him, His grace made people think him slim, But he was muscled like a horse A sculptor would have wrought his torse In bronze or marble for Apollo. He loved to hurry like a swallow For miles on miles of short-grassed sweet Blue-harebelled downs where dewy feet Of pure winds hurry ceaselessly. He loved the downland like a sea, The downland where the kestrels hover; The downland had him for a lover. And every other thing he loved In which a clean free spirit moved. So beautiful, he was, so bright. He looked to men like young delight Gone courting April maidenhood, That has the primrose in her blood, He on his mincing lady mare. COUNTRYMEN [Illustration: Ock Gurney and old Pete were there] Ock Gurney and old Pete were there, Riding their bonny cobs and swearing. Ock's wife had giv'n them both a fairing, A horse-rosette, red, white and blue. Their cheeks were brown as any brew, And every comer to the meet Said "Hello, Ock," or "Morning, Pete; Be you a going to a wedding?" "Why, noa," they said, "we'm going a bedding; Now ben't us, uncle, ben't us, Ock?" Pete Gurney was a lusty cock Turned sixty-three, but bright and hale, A dairy-farmer in the vale, Much like a robin in the face, Much character in little space, With little eyes like burning coal. His mouth was like a slit or hole In leather that was seamed and lined. He had the russet-apple mind That betters as the weather worsen. He was a manly English person, Kind to the core, brave, merry, true; One grief he had, a grief still new, That former Parson joined with Squire In putting down the Playing Quire, In church, and putting organ in. "Ah, boys, that was a pious din That Quire was; a pious praise The noise was that we used to raise; I and my serpent, George with his'n, On Easter Day in He is Risen, Or blessed Christmas in Venite; And how the trombone came in mighty, In Alleluias from the heart. Pious, for each man played his part, Not like 'tis now." Thus he, still sore For changes forty years before, When all (that could) in time and tune, Blew trumpets to the newë moon. He was a bachelor, from choice. He and his nephew farmed the Boyce Prime pasture land for thirty cows. Ock's wife, Selina Jane, kept house, And jolly were the three together. Ock had a face like summer weather, A broad red sun, split by a smile. He mopped his forehead all the while, And said "By damn," and "Ben't us, Unk?" His eyes were close and deeply sunk. He cursed his hunter like a lover, "Now blast your soul, my dear, give over. Woa, now, my pretty, damn your eyes." Like Pete he was of middle size, Dean-oak-like, stuggy, strong in shoulder, He stood a wrestle like a boulder, He had a back for pitching hay. His singing voice was like a bay. In talk he had a sideways spit, Each minute, to refresh his wit. He cracked Brazil nuts with his teeth. He challenged Cobbett of the Heath (Weight-lifting champion) once, but lost. Hunting was what he loved the most, Next to his wife and Uncle Pete. With beer to drink and cheese to eat, And rain in May to fill the grasses, This life was not a dream that passes To Ock, but like the summer flower. THE HOUNDS But now the clock had struck the hour, And round the corner, down the road The bob-bob-bobbing serpent flowed With three black knobs upon its spine; Three bobbing black-caps in a line. A glimpse of scarlet at the gap Showed underneath each bobbing cap, And at the corner by the gate, One heard Tom Dansey give a rate, "Hep, Drop it, Jumper; have a care," There came a growl, half-rate, half-swear, A spitting crack, a tuneful whimper And sweet religion entered Jumper. There was a general turn of faces, The men and horses shifted places, And round the corner came the hunt, Those feathery things, the hounds, in front, Intent, wise, dipping, trotting, straying, Smiling at people, shoving, playing, Nosing to children's faces, waving Their feathery sterns, and all behaving, One eye to Dansey on Maroon. Their padding cat-feet beat a tune, And though they trotted up so quiet Their noses brought them news of riot, Wild smells of things with living blood, Hot smells, against the grippers good, Of weasel, rabbit, cat and hare, Whose feet had been before them there, Whose taint still tingled every breath; But Dansey on Maroon was death, So, though their noses roved, their feet Larked and trit-trotted to the meet. Bill Tall and Ell and Mirtie Key (Aged fourteen years between the three) Were flooded by them at the bend, They thought their little lives would end, For grave sweet eyes looked into theirs, Cold noses came, and clean short hairs And tails all crumpled up like ferns, A sea of moving heads and sterns, All round them, brushing coat and dress; One paused, expecting a caress. The children shrank into each other, Shut eyes, clutched tight and shouted "Mother" With mouths wide open, catching tears. [Illustration: A sea of moving heads and sterns, All round them, brushing coat and dress.] Sharp Mrs. Tall allayed their fears, "Err out the road, the dogs won't hurt 'ee. There now, you've cried your faces dirty. More cleaning up for me to do. What? Cry at dogs, great lumps like you?" She licked her handkerchief and smeared Their faces where the dirt appeared. The hunt trit-trotted to the meeting, Tom Dansey touching cap to greeting, Slow-lifting crop-thong to the rim, No hunter there got more from him Except some brightening of the eye. He halted at the Cock and Pye, The hounds drew round him on the green, Arrogant, Daffodil and Queen, Closest, but all in little space. Some lolled their tongues, some made grimace, Yawning, or tilting nose in quest, All stood and looked about with zest, They were uneasy as they waited. Their sires and dams had been well-mated, They were a lovely pack for looks; Their forelegs drumsticked without crooks, Straight, without overtread or bend, Muscled to gallop to the end, With neat feet round as any cat's. Great chested, muscled in the slats, Bright, clean, short-coated, broad in shoulder, With stag-like eyes that seemed to smoulder. The heads well-cocked, the clean necks strong; Brows broad, ears close, the muzzles long; And all like racers in the thighs; Their noses exquisitely wise, Their minds being memories of smells; Their voices like a ring of bells; Their sterns all spirit, cock and feather; Their colours like the English weather, Magpie and hare, and badger-pye, Like minglings in a double dye, Some smutty-nosed, some tan, none bald; Their manners were to come when called, Their flesh was sinew knit to bone, Their courage like a banner blown. Their joy, to push him out of cover, And hunt him till they rolled him over. They were as game as Robert Dover. THE WHIP Tom Dansey was a famous whip Trained as a child in horsemanship. Entered, as soon as he was able, As boy at Caunter's racing stable; There, like the other boys, he slept In stall beside the horse he kept, Snug in the straw; and Caunter's stick Brought morning to him all too quick. He learned the high quick gingery ways Of thoroughbreds; his stable days Made him a rider, groom and vet. He promised to be too thickset For jockeying, so left it soon. Now he was whip and rode Maroon. [Illustration: His chief delight Was hunting fox from noon to night.] He was a small, lean, wiry man With sunk cheeks weathered to a tan Scarred by the spikes of hawthorn sprays Dashed thro', head down, on going days, In haste to see the line they took. There was a beauty in his look, It was intent. His speech was plain. Maroon's head, reaching to the rein, Had half his thought before he spoke. His "gone away," when foxes broke, Was like a bell. His chief delight Was hunting fox from noon to night. His pleasure lay in hounds and horses, He loved the Seven Springs water-courses, Those flashing brooks (in good sound grass, Where scent would hang like breath on glass). He loved the English countryside; The wine-leaved bramble in the ride, The lichen on the apple-trees, The poultry ranging on the lees, The farms, the moist earth-smelling cover, His wife's green grave at Mitcheldover, Where snowdrops pushed at the first thaw. Under his hide his heart was raw With joy and pity of these things. The second whip was Kitty Myngs, Still but a lad but keen and quick (Son of old Myngs who farmed the Wick), A horse-mouthed lad who knew his work. He rode the big black horse, the Turk, And longed to be a huntsman bold. He had the horse-look, sharp and old, With much good-nature in his face. His passion was to go the pace His blood was crying for a taming. He was the Devil's chick for gaming, He was a rare good lad to box. He sometimes had a main of cocks Down at the Flags. His job with hounds At present kept his blood in bounds From rioting and running hare. Tom Dansey made him have a care. He worshipped Dansey heart and soul. To be a huntsman was his goal. To be with hounds, to charge full tilt Blackthorns that made the gentry wilt Was his ambition and his hope. He was a hot colt needing rope, He was too quick to speak his passion To suit his present huntsman's fashion. THE HUNTSMAN [Illustration: He smiled and nodded and saluted to those who hailed him] The huntsman, Robin Dawe, looked round, He sometimes called a favourite hound, Gently, to see the creature turn Look happy up and wag his stern. He smiled and nodded and saluted, To those who hailed him, as it suited. And patted Pip's, his hunter's neck. His new pink was without a speck; He was a red-faced smiling fellow, His voice clear tenor, full and mellow, His eyes, all fire, were black and small. He had been smashed in many a fall. His eyebrow had a white curved mark Left by the bright shoe of The Lark, Down in a ditch by Seven Springs. His coat had all been trod to strings, His ribs laid bare and shoulder broken Being jumped on down at Water's Oaken, The time his horse came down and rolled. His face was of the country mould Such as the mason sometimes cutted On English moulding-ends which jutted Out of the church walls, centuries since. And as you never know the quince, How good he is, until you try, So, in Dawe's face, what met the eye Was only part, what lay behind Was English character and mind. Great kindness, delicate sweet feeling, (Most shy, most clever in concealing Its depth) for beauty of all sorts, Great manliness and love of sports, A grave wise thoughtfulness and truth, A merry fun, outlasting youth, A courage terrible to see And mercy for his enemy. He had a clean-shaved face, but kept A hedge of whisker neatly clipt, A narrow strip or picture frame (Old Dawe, the woodman, did the same), Under his chin from ear to ear. THE MASTER But now the resting hounds gave cheer, Joyful and Arrogant and Catch-him, Smelt the glad news and ran to snatch him, The Master's dogcart turned the bend. Damsel and Skylark knew their friend; A thrill ran through the pack like fire, And little whimpers ran in quire. The horses cocked and pawed and whickered, Young Cothill's chaser kicked and bickered, And stood on end and struck out sparks. Joyful and Catch-him sang like larks, There was the Master in the trap, Clutching old Roman in his lap, Old Roman, crazy for his brothers, And putting frenzy in the others, To set them at the dogcart wheels, With thrusting heads and little squeals. The Master put old Roman by, And eyed the thrusters heedfully, He called a few pet hounds and fed Three special friends with scraps of bread, Then peeled his wraps, climbed down and strode Through all those clamourers in the road, Saluted friends, looked round the crowd, Saw Harridew's three girls and bowed, Then took White Rabbit from the groom. [Illustration: He had a welcome and salute For all, on horse or wheel or foot.] He was Sir Peter Bynd, of Coombe; Past sixty now, though hearty still, A living picture of good-will, An old, grave soldier, sweet and kind, A courtier with a knightly mind, Who felt whatever thing he thought. His face was scarred, for he had fought Five wars for us. Within his face Courage and power had their place, Rough energy, decision, force. He smiled about him from his horse. He had a welcome and salute For all, on horse or wheel or foot, Whatever kind of life each followed. His tanned, drawn cheeks looked old and hollowed, But still his bright blue eyes were young, And when the pack crashed into tongue, And staunch White Rabbit shook like fire, He sent him at it like a flier, And lived with hounds while horses could. "They'm lying in the Ghost Heath Wood, Sir Peter," said an earth-stopper, (Old Baldy Hill), "You'll find 'em there. 'Z I come'd across I smell 'em plain. There's one up back, down Tuttock's drain, But, Lord, it's just a bog, the Tuttocks, Hounds would be swallered to the buttocks. Heath Wood, Sir Peter's best to draw." THE START Sir Peter gave two minutes' law For Kingston Challow and his daughter; He said, "They're late. We'll start the slaughter. Ghost Heath, then, Dansey. We'll be going." Now, at his word, the tide was flowing Off went Maroon, off went the hounds, Down road, then off, to Chols Elm Grounds, Across soft turf with dead leaves cleaving And hillocks that the mole was heaving. Mild going to those trotting feet. After the scarlet coats, the meet Came clopping up the grass in spate; They poached the trickle at the gate; Their horses' feet sucked at the mud; Excitement in the horses' blood, Cocked forward every ear and eye; They quivered as the hounds went by, They trembled when they first trod grass; They would not let another pass, They scattered wide up Chols Elm Hill. [Illustration: Fourth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] The wind was westerly but still; The sky a high fair-weather cloud, Like meadows ridge-and-furrow ploughed, Just glinting sun but scarcely moving. Blackbirds and thrushes thought of loving, Catkins were out; the day seemed tense It was so still. At every fence Cow-parsley pushed its thin green fern. White-violet-leaves shewed at the burn. [Illustration: Young Cothill let his chaser go round Chols Elm Field] Young Cothill let his chaser go Round Chols Elm Field a turn or so To soothe his edge. The riders went Chatting and laughing and content In groups of two or three together. The hounds, a flock of shaking feather, Bobbed on ahead, past Chols Elm Cop. The horses' shoes went clip-a-clop, Along the stony cart-track there. The little spinney was all bare, But in the earth-moist winter day The scarlet coats twixt tree and spray, The glistening horses pressing on, The brown faced lads, Bill, Dick and John, And all the hurry to arrive, Were beautiful, like Spring alive. The hounds melted away with Master The tanned lads ran, the field rode faster, The chatter joggled in the throats Of riders bumping by like boats, "We really ought to hunt a bye day." "Fine day for scent," "A fly or die day." "They chopped a bagman in the check, He had a collar round his neck." "Old Ridden's girl's a pretty flapper." "That Vaughan's a cad, the whipper-snapper." "I tell 'ee, lads, I seed 'em plain, Down in the Rough at Shifford's Main, Old Squire stamping like a Duke, So red with blood I thought he'd puke, In appleplexie, as they do. Miss Jane stood just as white as dew, And heard him out in just white heat, And then she trimmed him down a treat, About Miss Lou it was, or Carrie (She'd be a pretty peach to marry)." "Her'll draw up-wind, so us'll go Down by the furze, we'll see 'em so." [Illustration: The scarlet coats twixt tree and spray, The glistening horses pressing on, * * * * * And all the hurry to arrive, Were beautiful, like Spring alive.] "Look, there they go, lad." There they went, Across the brook and up the bent, Past Primrose Wood, past Brady Ride, Along Ghost Heath to cover side. The bobbing scarlet, trotting pack, Turf scatters tossed behind each back, Some horses blowing with a whinny, A jam of horses in the spinney, Close to the ride-gate; leather straining, Saddles all creaking; men complaining, Chaffing each other as they pass't, On Ghost Heath turf they trotted fast. Now as they neared the Ghost Heath Wood Some riders grumbled, "What's the good: It's shot all day and poached all night. We shall draw blank and lose the light, And lose the scent, and lose the day. Why can't he draw Hope Goneaway, Or Tuttocks Wood, instead of this? There's no fox here, there never is." [Illustration: Reynard the fox] But as he trotted up to cover, Robin was watching to discover What chance there was, and many a token Told him, that though no hound had spoken, Most of them stirred to something there. The old hounds' muzzles searched the air, Thin ghosts of scents were in their teeth, From foxes which had crossed the Heath Not very many hours before. "We'll find," he said, "I'll bet a score." Along Ghost Heath they trotted well, The hoof-cuts made the bruised earth smell, The shaken brambles scattered drops, Stray pheasants kukkered out of copse, Cracking the twigs down with their knockings And planing out of sight with cockings; A scut or two lopped white to bramble. "COVER" And now they gathered to the gamble At Ghost Heath Wood on Ghost Heath Down, The hounds went crackling through the brown Dry stalks of bracken killed by frost. The wood stood silent in its host Of halted trees all winter bare. The boughs, like veins that suck the air, Stretched tense, the last leaf scarcely stirred. There came no song from any bird; The darkness of the wood stood still Waiting for fate on Ghost Heath Hill. The whips crept to the sides to view; The Master gave the nod, and "Leu, Leu in, Ed-hoick, Ed-hoick, Leu in," Went Robin, cracking through the whin And through the hedge-gap into cover. The binders crashed as hounds went over, And cock-cock-cock the pheasants rose. Then up went stern and down went nose, And Robin's cheerful tenor cried, Through hazel-scrub and stub and ride, "O wind him, beauties, push him out, Yooi, onto him, Yahout, Yahout, O push him out, Yooi, wind him, wind him." The beauties burst the scrub to find him, They nosed the warren's clipped green lawn, The bramble and the broom were drawn, The covert's northern end was blank. [Illustration: And now they gathered to the gamble At Ghost Heath Wood on Ghost Heath Down.] They turned to draw along the bank Through thicker cover than the Rough Through three-and-four-year understuff Where Robin's forearm screened his eyes. "Yooi, find him, beauties," came his cries. "Hark, hark to Daffodil," the laughter Faln from his horn, brought whimpers after, For ends of scents were everywhere. He said, "This Hope's a likely lair. And there's his billets, grey and furred. And George, he's moving, there's a bird." A blue uneasy jay was chacking. (A swearing screech, like tearing sacking) From tree to tree, as in pursuit, He said "That's it. There's fox afoot. And there, they're feathering, there she speaks. Good Daffodil, good Tarrybreeks, Hark there, to Daffodil, hark, hark." The mild horn's note, the soft flaked spark Of music, fell on that rank scent. From heart to wild heart magic went. The whimpering quivered, quavered, rose. "Daffodil has it. There she goes. O hark to her." With wild high crying From frantic hearts, the hounds went flying To Daffodil for that rank taint. A waft of it came warm but faint, In Robin's mouth, and faded so. "First find a fox, then let him go," Cried Robin Dawe. "For any sake. Ring, Charley, till you're fit to break." He cheered his beauties like a lover And charged beside them into cover. PART TWO--THE FOX [Illustration: Reynard the fox] [Illustration: And there on the night before my tale he trotted out] On old Cold Crendon's windy tops Grows wintrily Blown Hilcote Copse, Wind-bitten beech with badger barrows, Where brocks eat wasp-grubs with their marrows, And foxes lie on short-grassed turf, Nose between paws, to hear the surf Of wind in the beeches drowsily. There was our fox bred lustily Three years before, and there he berthed Under the beech-roots snugly earthed, With a roof of flint and a floor of chalk And ten bitten hens' heads each on its stalk, Some rabbits' paws, some fur from scuts, A badger's corpse and a smell of guts. And there on the night before my tale He trotted out for a point in the vale. He saw, from the cover edge, the valley Go trooping down with its droops of sally To the brimming river's lipping bend, And a light in the inn at Water's End. He heard the owl go hunting by And the shriek of the mouse the owl made die, And the purr of the owl as he tore the red Strings from between his claws and fed; The smack of joy of the horny lips Marbled green with the blobby strips. He saw the farms where the dogs were barking, Cold Crendon Court and Copsecote Larking; The fault with the spring as bright as gleed, Green-slash-laced with water weed. A glare in the sky still marked the town, Though all folk slept and the blinds were down, The street lamps watched the empty square, The night-cat sang his evil there. The fox's nose tipped up and round Since smell is a part of sight and sound. Delicate smells were drifting by, The sharp nose flaired them heedfully: Partridges in the clover stubble, Crouched in a ring for the stoat to nubble. Rabbit bucks beginning to box; A scratching place for the pheasant cocks; A hare in the dead grass near the drain, And another smell like the spring again. A faint rank taint like April coming, It cocked his ears and his blood went drumming, For somewhere out by Ghost Heath Stubs Was a roving vixen wanting cubs. [Illustration: He saw the farms where the dogs were barking, Cold Crendon Court and Copsecote Larking.] THE ROVING Over the valley, floating faint On a warmth of windflaw came the taint, He cocked his ears, he upped his brush, And he went up wind like an April thrush. By the Roman Road to Braiches Ridge Where the fallen willow makes a bridge, Over the brook by White Hart's Thorn, To the acres thin with pricking corn. Over the sparse green hair of the wheat, By the Clench Brook Mill at Clench Brook Leat, Through Cowfoot Pastures to Nonely Stevens, And away to Poltrewood St. Jevons. Past Tott Hill Down all snaked with meuses, Past Clench St. Michael and Naunton Crucis, Past Howle's Oak Farm where the raving brain Of a dog who heard him foamed his chain, Then off, as the farmer's window opened, Past Stonepits Farm to Upton Hope End; Over short sweet grass and worn flint arrows, And the three dumb hows of Tencombe Barrows; And away and away with a rolling scramble, Through the blackthorn and up the bramble, With a nose for the smells the night wind carried, And his red fell clean for being married. For clicketting time and Ghost Heath Wood Had put the violet in his blood. [Illustration: A dog who heard him foamed his chain] At Tencombe Rings near the Manor Linney, His foot made the great black stallion whinny, And the stallion's whinny aroused the stable And the bloodhound bitches stretched their cable, And the clink of the bloodhound's chain aroused The sweet-breathed kye as they chewed and drowsed, And the stir of the cattle changed the dream Of the cat in the loft to tense green gleam. The red-wattled black cock hot from Spain Crowed from his perch for dawn again, His breast-pufft hens, one-legged on perch, Gurgled, beak-down, like men in church, They crooned in the dark, lifting one red eye In the raftered roost as the fox went by. By Tencombe Regis and Slaughters Court, Through the great grass square of Roman Fort, By Nun's Wood Yews and the Hungry Hill, And the Corpse Way Stones all standing still, By Seven Springs Mead to Deerlip Brook, And a lolloping leap to Water Hook. Then with eyes like sparks and his blood awoken Over the grass to Water's Oaken, And over the hedge and into ride In Ghost Heath Wood for his roving bride. Before the dawn he had loved and fed And found a kennel and gone to bed On a shelf of grass in a thick of gorse That would bleed a hound and blind a horse. There he slept in the mild west weather With his nose and brush well tucked together, He slept like a child, who sleeps yet hears With the self who needs neither eyes nor ears. [Illustration: There he slept in the mild west weather With his nose and brush well tucked together.] He slept while the pheasant cock untucked His head from his wing, flew down and kukked, While the drove of the starlings whirred and wheeled Out of the ash-trees into field. While with great black flags that flogged and paddled The rooks went out to the plough and straddled, Straddled wide on the moist red cheese Of the furrows driven at Uppat's Leas. Down in the village, men awoke, The chimneys breathed with a faint blue smoke, The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches, Due to his dreams, ran down his flitches. [Illustration: The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches] The cows were milked and the yards were sluict, And the cocks and hens let out of roost, Windows were opened, mats were beaten, All men's breakfasts were cooked and eaten, But out in the gorse on the grassy shelf, The sleeping fox looked after himself. Deep in his dream he heard the life Of the woodland seek for food or wife, The hop of a stoat, a buck that thumped, The squeal of a rat as a weasel jumped, The blackbird's chackering scattering crying, The rustling bents from the rabbits flying, Cows in a byre, and distant men, And Condicote church-clock striking ten. At eleven o'clock a boy went past, With a rough-haired terrier following fast. The boy's sweet whistle and dog's quick yap Woke the fox from out of his nap. [Illustration: The boy's sweet whistle and dog's quick yap Woke the fox from out of his nap.] SCENT He rose and stretched till the claws in his pads Stuck hornily out like long black gads, He listened a while, and his nose went round To catch the smell of the distant sound. The windward smells came free from taint They were rabbit, strongly, with lime-kiln, faint, A wild-duck, likely, at Sars Holt Pond, And sheep on the Sars Holt Down beyond. The lee-ward smells were much less certain For the Ghost Heath Hill was like a curtain, Yet vague, from the lee-ward, now and then, Came muffled sounds like the sound of men. He moved to his right to a clearer space, And all his soul came into his face, Into his eyes and into his nose, As over the hill a murmur rose. His ears were cocked and his keen nose flaired, He sneered with his lips till his teeth were bared, He trotted right and lifted a pad Trying to test what foes he had. SOUND On Ghost Heath turf was a steady drumming Which sounded like horses quickly coming, It died as the hunt went down the dip, Then Malapert yelped at Myngs's whip. A bright iron horseshoe clinkt on stone, Then a man's voice spoke, not one alone, Then a burst of laughter, swiftly still, Muffled away by Ghost Heath Hill. Then, indistinctly, the clop, clip, clep, On Brady Ride, of a horse's step. Then silence, then, in a burst, much clearer, Voices and horses coming nearer, And another noise, of a pit-pat beat On the Ghost Hill grass, of foxhound feet. He sat on his haunches listening hard, While his mind went over the compass card, Men were coming and rest was done, But he still had time to get fit to run; He could outlast horse and outrace hound, But men were devils from Lobs's Pound. Scent was burning, the going good The world one lust for a fox's blood, The main earths stopped and the drains put-to, And fifteen miles to the land he knew. But of all the ills, the ill least pleasant Was to run in the light when men were present. Men in the fields to shout and sign For a lift of hounds to a fox's line. Men at the earth at the long point's end, Men at each check and none his friend, Guessing each shift that a fox contrives, But still, needs must when the devil drives. [Illustration: Men at the earth at the long point's end] He readied himself, then a soft horn blew, Then a clear voice carolled "Ed-hoick. Eleu." Then the wood-end rang with the clear voice crying And the crackle of scrub where hounds were trying. [Illustration: He trotted down with his nose intent] Then, the horn blew nearer, a hound's voice quivered, Then another, then more, till his body shivered, He left his kennel and trotted thence With his ears flexed back and his nerves all tense. He trotted down with his nose intent For a fox's line to cross his scent, It was only fair (he being a stranger) That the native fox should have the danger. Danger was coming, so swift, so swift, That the pace of his trot began to lift The blue-winged Judas, a jay, began Swearing, hounds whimpered, air stank of man. He hurried his trotting, he now felt frighted, It was his poor body made hounds excited, He felt as he ringed the great wood through That he ought to make for the land he knew. Then the hounds' excitement quivered and quickened, Then a horn blew death till his marrow sickened Then the wood behind was a crash of cry For the blood in his veins; it made him fly. They were on his line; it was death to stay, He must make for home by the shortest way, But with all this yelling and all this wrath And all these devils, how find a path? He ran like a stag to the wood's north corner, Where the hedge was thick and the ditch a yawner, But the scarlet glimpse of Myngs on Turk, Watching the woodside, made him shirk. He ringed the wood and looked at the south. What wind there was blew into his mouth. But close to the woodland's blackthorn thicket Was Dansey, still as a stone, on picket. At Dansey's back were a twenty more Watching the cover and pressing fore. [Illustration: The fox drew in] The fox drew in and flaired with his muzzle. Death was there if he messed the puzzle. There were men without and hounds within, A crying that stiffened the hair on skin, Teeth in cover and death without, Both deaths coming, and no way out. FOUND His nose ranged swiftly, his heart beat fast, Then a crashing cry rose up in a blast, Then horse hooves trampled, then horses' flitches Burst their way through the hazel switches, Then the horn again made the hounds like mad, And a man, quite near, said "Found, by Gad," And a man, quite near, said "Now he'll break. Lark's Leybourne Copse is the line he'll take." And the men moved up with their talk and stink And the traplike noise of the horseshoe clink. Men whose coming meant death from teeth In a worrying wrench with him beneath. The fox sneaked down by the cover side, (With his ears flexed back) as a snake would glide, He took the ditch at the cover-end, He hugged the ditch as his only friend. The blackbird cock with the golden beak Got out of his way with a jabbering shriek, And the shriek told Tom on the raking bay That for eighteen pence he was gone away. [Illustration: The blackbird got out of his way with a jabbering shriek] He ran in the hedge in the triple growth Of bramble and hawthorn, glad of both, Till a couple of fields were past, and then Came the living death of the dread of men. Then, as he listened, he heard a "Hoy," Tom Dansey's horn and "Awa-wa-woy." Then all hounds crying with all their forces, Then a thundering down of seventy horses. Robin Dawe's horn and halloos of "Hey Hark Hollar, Hoik" and "Gone away," "Hark Hollar Hoik," and the smack of a whip, A yelp as a tail hound caught the clip. "Hark Hollar, Hark Hollar"; then Robin made Pip go crash through the cut-and-laid, Hounds were over and on his line With a head like bees upon Tipple Tine. The sound of the nearness sent a flood Of terror of death through the fox's blood. He upped his brush and he cocked his nose, And he went up wind as a racer goes. AWAY [Illustration: The hounds went romping with delight] Bold Robin Dawe was over first, Cheering his hounds on at the burst; The field were spurring to be in it, "Hold hard, sirs, give them half a minute," Came from Sir Peter on his white. The hounds went romping with delight Over the grass and got together; The tail hounds galloped hell-for-leather After the pack at Myngs's yell; A cry like every kind of bell Rang from these rompers as they raced. The riders thrusting to be placed, Jammed down their hats and shook their horses, The hounds romped past with all their forces, They crashed into the blackthorn fence; The scent was heavy on their sense, So hot it seemed the living thing, It made the blood within them sing, Gusts of it made their hackles rise, Hot gulps of it were agonies Of joy, and thirst for blood, and passion. [Illustration: Fifth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] "Forrard," cried Robin, "that's the fashion." He raced beside his pack to cheer. The field's noise died upon his ear, A faint horn, far behind, blew thin In cover, lest some hound were in. Then instantly the great grass rise Shut field and cover from his eyes, He and his racers were alone. "A dead fox or a broken bone," Said Robin, peering for his prey. The rise, which shut his field away, Shewed him the vale's great map spread out, The downs' lean flank and thrusting snout, Pale pastures, red-brown plough, dark wood, Blue distance, still as solitude, Glitter of water here and there, The trees so delicately bare. The dark green gorse and bright green holly. "O glorious God," he said, "how jolly." And there, down hill, two fields ahead, The lolloping red dog-fox sped Over Poor Pastures to the brook. He grasped these things in one swift look Then dived into the bulfinch heart Through thorns that ripped his sleeves apart And skutched new blood upon his brow. "His point's Lark's Leybourne Covers now," Said Robin, landing with a grunt, "Forrard, my beautifuls." The hunt Followed down hill to race with him, White Rabbit with his swallow's skim, Drew within hail, "Quick burst, Sir Peter." "A traveller. Nothing could be neater. Making for Godsdown clumps, I take it?" "Lark's Leybourne, sir, if he can make it. Forrard." THE FIELD Bill Ridden thundered down; His big mouth grinned beneath his frown, The hounds were going away from horses. He saw the glint of water-courses, Yell Brook and Wittold's Dyke ahead, His horse shoes sliced the green turf red. Young Cothill's chaser rushed and passt him, Nob Manor, running next, said "Blast him, That poet chap who thinks he rides." Hugh Colway's mare made straking strides Across the grass, the Colonel next: Then Squire volleying oaths and vext, Fighting his hunter for refusing: Bell Ridden like a cutter cruising Sailing the grass, then Cob on Warder, Then Minton Price upon Marauder; Ock Gurney with his eyes intense, Burning as with a different sense, His big mouth muttering glad "by damns"; Then Pete crouched down from head to hams, Rapt like a saint, bright focussed flame. Bennett with devils in his wame Chewing black cud and spitting slanting; Copse scattering jests and Stukely ranting; Sal Ridden taking line from Dansey; Long Robert forcing Necromancy; A dozen more with bad beginnings; Myngs riding hard to snatch an innings, A wild last hound with high shrill yelps, Smacked forrard with some whip-thong skelps. Then last of all, at top of rise, The crowd on foot all gasps and eyes The run up hill had winded them. They saw the Yell Brook like a gem Blue in the grass a short mile on, They heard faint cries, but hounds were gone A good eight fields and out of sight Except a rippled glimmer white Going away with dying cheering And scarlet flappings disappearing, And scattering horses going, going, Going like mad, White Rabbit snowing Far on ahead, a loose horse taking, Fence after fence with stirrups shaking, And scarlet specks and dark specks dwindling. [Illustration: Far on ahead, a loose horse taking fence after fence] Nearer, were twigs knocked into kindling, A much bashed fence still dropping stick, Flung clods, still quivering from the kick, Cut hoof-marks pale in cheesy clay, The horse-smell blowing clean away. Birds flitting back into the cover. One last faint cry, then all was over. The hunt had been, and found, and gone. [Illustration: He faced the fence and put her through it Shielding his eyes lest spikes should blind him.] At Neakings Farm, three furlongs on, Hounds raced across the Waysmore Road, Where many of the riders slowed To tittup down a grassy lane, Which led as hounds led in the main And gave no danger of a fall. There, as they tittupped one and all, Big Twenty Stone came scattering by, His great mare made the hoof-casts fly. "By leave," he cried. "Come on. Come up, This fox is running like a tup; Let's leave this lane and get to terms. No sense in crawling here like worms. Come, let me past and let me start, This fox is running like a hart, And this is going to be a run. Come on. I want to see the fun. Thanky. By leave. Now, Maiden; do it." He faced the fence and put her through it Shielding his eyes lest spikes should blind him, The crashing blackthorn closed behind him. Mud-scatters chased him as he scudded. His mare's ears cocked, her neat feet thudded. THE RUN The kestrel cruising over meadow Watched the hunt gallop on his shadow, Wee figures, almost at a stand, Crossing the multi-coloured land, Slow as a shadow on a dial. [Illustration: Some horses, swerving at a trial] Some horses, swerving at a trial, Baulked at a fence: at gates they bunched. The mud about the gates was dunched. Like German cheese; men pushed for places, And kicked the mud into the faces Of those who made them room to pass. The half-mile's gallop on the grass, Had tailed them out, and warmed their blood. [Illustration: At gates they bunched] "His point's the Banner Barton Wood." "That, or Goat's Gorse." "A stinger, this." "You're right in that; by Jove it is." "An up-wind travelling fox, by George." "They say Tom viewed him at the forge." "Well, let me pass and let's be on." They crossed the lane to Tolderton, The hill-marl died to valley clay, And there before them ran the grey Yell Water, swirling as it ran, The Yell Brook of the hunting man. The hunters eyed it and were grim. They saw the water snaking slim Ahead, like silver; they could see (Each man) his pollard willow tree Firming the bank, they felt their horses Catch the gleam's hint and gather forces; They heard the men behind draw near. Each horse was trembling as a spear Trembles in hand when tense to hurl, They saw the brimmed brook's eddies curl. The willow-roots like water-snakes; The beaten holes the ratten makes, They heard the water's rush; they heard Hugh Colway's mare come like a bird; A faint cry from the hounds ahead, Then saddle-strain, the bright hooves' tread, Quick words, the splash of mud, the launch, The sick hope that the bank be staunch, Then Souse, with Souse to left and right. Maroon across, Sir Peter's white Down but pulled up, Tom over, Hugh Mud to the hat but over, too, Well splashed by Squire who was in. With draggled pink stuck close to skin, The Squire leaned from bank and hauled His mired horse's rein; he bawled For help from each man racing by. "What, help you pull him out? Not I. What made you pull him in?" they said. Nob Manor cleared and turned his head, And cried "Wade up. The ford's upstream." Ock Gurney in a cloud of steam Stood by his dripping cob and wrung The taste of brook mud from his tongue And scraped his poor cob's pasterns clean. "Lord, what a crowner we've a been, This jumping brook's a mucky job." He muttered, grinning, "Lord, poor cob. Now sir, let me." He turned to Squire And cleared his hunter from the mire By skill and sense and strength of arm. FULL CRY Meanwhile the fox passed Nonesuch Farm, Keeping the spinney on his right. Hounds raced him here with all their might Along the short firm grass, like fire. The cowman viewed him from the byre Lolloping on, six fields ahead, Then hounds, still carrying such a head, It made him stare, then Rob on Pip, Sailing the great grass like a ship, Then grand Maroon in all his glory Sweeping his strides, his great chest hoary With foam fleck and the pale hill-marl. They strode the Leet, they flew the Snarl, They knocked the nuts at Nonesuch Mill, Raced up the spur of Gallows Hill And viewed him there. The line he took Was Tineton and the Pantry Brook, Going like fun and hounds like mad. Tom glanced to see what friends he had Still within sight, before he turned The ridge's shoulder; he discerned, One field away, young Cothill sailing Easily up. Pete Gurney failing, Hugh Colway quartering on Sir Peter, Bill waiting on the mare to beat her, Sal Ridden skirting to the right. A horse, with stirrups flashing bright Over his head at every stride, Looked like the Major's; Tom espied Far back, a scarlet speck of man Running, and straddling as he ran. Charles Copse was up, Nob Manor followed, Then Bennett's big-boned black that wallowed Clumsy, but with the strength of ten. Then black and brown and scarlet men, Brown horses, white and black and grey Scattered a dozen fields away. The shoulder shut the scene away. [Illustration: Sixth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] From the Gallows Hill to the Tineton Copse There were ten ploughed fields like ten full stops, All wet red clay where a horse's foot Would be swathed, feet thick, like an ash-tree root. The fox raced on, on the headlands firm, Where his swift feet scared the coupling worm, The rooks rose raving to curse him raw He snarled a sneer at their swoop and caw. Then on, then on, down a half ploughed field Where a ship-like plough drave glitter-keeled, With a bay horse near and a white horse leading, And a man saying "Zook" and the red earth bleeding. He gasped as he saw the ploughman drop The stilts and swear at the team to stop. The ploughman ran in his red clay clogs Crying "Zick un, Towzer; zick, good dogs." A couple of wire-haired lurchers lean Arose from his wallet, nosing keen; With a rushing swoop they were on his track, Putting chest to stubble to bite his back. He swerved from his line with the curs at heel, The teeth as they missed him clicked like steel, With a worrying snarl, they quartered on him, While the ploughman shouted "Zick; upon him." The lurcher dogs soon shot their bolt, And the fox raced on by the Hazel Holt, Down the dead grass tilt to the sandstone gash Of the Pantry Brook at Tineton Ash. The loitering water, flooded full, Had yeast on its lip like raddled wool, It was wrinkled over with Arab script Of eddies that twisted up and slipt. The stepping stones had a rush about them So the fox plunged in and swam without them. [Illustration: He swerved from his line with the curs at heel] He crossed to the cattle's drinking shallow Firmed up with rush and the roots of mallow, He wrung his coat from his draggled bones And romped away for the Sarsen Stones. A sneaking glance with his ears flexed back, Made sure that his scent had failed the pack, For the red clay, good for corn and roses, Was cold for scent and brought hounds to noses. He slackened pace by the Tineton Tree, (A vast hollow ash-tree grown in three), He wriggled a shake and padded slow, Not sure if the hounds were on or no. A horn blew faint, then he heard the sounds Of a cantering huntsman, lifting hounds, The ploughman had raised his hat for sign, And the hounds were lifted and on his line. He heard the splash in the Pantry Brook, And a man's voice: "Thiccy's the line he took," And a clear "Yoi doit" and a whimpering quaver, Though the lurcher dogs had dulled the savour. The fox went off while the hounds made halt, And the horses breathed and the field found fault, But the whimpering rose to a crying crash By the hollow ruin of Tineton Ash. Then again the kettle drum horse hooves beat, And the green blades bent to the fox's feet And the cry rose keen not far behind Of the "Blood, blood, blood" in the fox-hounds' mind. [Illustration: Reynard the fox] The fox was strong, he was full of running, He could run for an hour and then be cunning, But the cry behind him made him chill, They were nearer now and they meant to kill. They meant to run him until his blood Clogged on his heart as his brush with mud, Till his back bent up and his tongue hung flagging, And his belly and brush were filthed from dragging. Till he crouched stone still, dead-beat and dirty, With nothing but teeth against the thirty. And all the way to that blinding end He would meet with men and have none his friend. Men to holloa and men to run him, With stones to stagger and yells to stun him, Men to head him, with whips to beat him, Teeth to mangle and mouths to eat him. And all the way, that wild high crying, To cold his blood with the thought of dying, The horn and the cheer, and the drum-like thunder, Of the horse hooves stamping the meadows under. He upped his brush and went with a will For the Sarsen Stones on Wan Dyke Hill. [Illustration: Reynard the fox] As he ran the meadow by Tineton Church, A christening party left the porch, They stood stock still as he pounded by, They wished him luck but they thought he'd die. The toothless babe in his long white coat Looked delicate meat, the fox took note; But the sight of them grinning there, pointing finger, Made him put on steam till he went a stinger. Past Tineton Church over Tineton Waste, With the lolloping ease of a fox's haste, The fur on his chest blown dry with the air, His brush still up and his cheek-teeth bare. Over the Waste where the ganders grazed, The long swift lilt of his loping lazed, His ears cocked up as his blood ran higher, He saw his point, and his eyes took fire. The Wan Dyke Hill with its fir tree barren, Its dark of gorse and its rabbit warren. The Dyke on its heave like a tightened girth, And holes in the Dyke where a fox might earth. He had rabbitted there long months before, The earths were deep and his need was sore, The way was new, but he took a vearing, And rushed like a blown ship billow-sharing. Off Tineton Common to Tineton Dean, Where the wind-hid elders pushed with green; Through the Dean's thin cover across the lane, And up Midwinter to King of Spain. Old Joe at digging his garden grounds, Said "A fox, being hunter; where be hounds? O lord, my back, to be young again, 'Stead a zellin zider in King of Spain. O hark, I hear 'em, O sweet, O sweet. Why there be redcoat in Gearge's wheat. And there be redcoat, and there they gallop. Thur go a browncoat down a wallop. Quick, Ellen, quick, come Susan, fly. Here'm hounds. I zeed the fox go by, Go by like thunder, go by like blasting, With his girt white teeth all looking ghasting. Look there come hounds. Hark, hear 'em crying. Lord, belly to stubble, ain't they flying. There's huntsmen, there. The fox come past (As I was digging) as fast as fast. He's only been gone a minute by; A girt dark dog as pert as pye." Ellen and Susan came out scattering Brooms and dustpans till all was clattering; They saw the pack come head to foot Running like racers nearly mute; Robin and Dansey quartering near, All going gallop like startled deer. A half dozen flitting scarlets shewing In the thin green Dean where the pines were growing. Black coats and brown coats thrusting and spurring Sending the partridge coveys whirring, Then a rattle up hill and a clop up lane, It emptied the bar of the King of Spain. Tom left his cider, Dick left his bitter, Ganfer James left his pipe and spitter, Out they came from the sawdust floor, They said, "They'm going." They said "O Lor." The fox raced on, up the Barton Balks, With a crackle of kex in the nettle stalks, Over Hammond's grass to the dark green line Of the larch-wood smelling of turpentine. Scratch Steven Larches, black to the sky, A sadness breathing with one long sigh, Grey ghosts of treen under funeral plumes, A mist of twig over soft brown glooms. As he entered the wood he heard the smacks, Chip-jar, of the fir pole feller's axe, He swerved to the left to a broad green ride, Where a boy made him rush for the further side. He swerved to the left, to the Barton Road, But there were the timberers come to load. Two timber carts and a couple of carters With straps round their knees instead of garters. He swerved to the right, straight down the wood, The carters watched him, the boy hallooed. He leaped from the larch wood into tillage, The cobbler's garden of Barton village. The cobbler bent at his wooden foot, Beating sprigs in a broken boot; He wore old glasses with thick horn rim, He scowled at his work for his sight was dim. His face was dingy, his lips were grey, From primming sparrowbills day by day; As he turned his boot he heard a noise At his garden-end and he thought, "It's boys." He saw his cat nip up on the shed, Where her back arched up till it touched her head, He saw his rabbit race round and round Its little black box three feet from ground. His six hens cluckered and flucked to perch, "That's boys," said cobbler, "so I'll go search." He reached his stick and blinked in his wrath, When he saw a fox in his garden path. The fox swerved left and scrambled out Knocking crinked green shells from the Brussels Sprout, He scrambled out through the cobbler's paling, And up Pill's orchard to Purton's Tailing, Across the plough at the top of bent, Through the heaped manure to kill his scent, Over to Aldams, up to Cappells, Past Nursery Lot with its white-washed apples, Past Colston's Broom, past Gaunts, past Sheres, Past Foxwhelps Oasts with their hooded ears, Past Monk's Ash Clerewell, past Beggars Oak, Past the great elms blue with the Hinton smoke, Along Long Hinton to Hinton Green, Where the wind-washed steeple stood serene With its golden bird still sailing air, Past Banner Barton, past Chipping Bare, Past Maddings Hollow, down Dundry Dip, And up Goose Grass to the Sailing Ship. [Illustration: Seventh colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] The three black firs of the Ship stood still On the bare chalk heave of the Dundry Hill, The fox looked back as he slackened past The scaled red-hole of the mizzen-mast. VIEW HALLOO There they were coming, mute but swift, A scarlet smear in the blackthorn rift, A white horse rising, a dark horse flying, And the hungry hounds too tense for crying. Stormcock leading, his stern spear-straight, Racing as though for a piece of plate, Little speck horsemen field on field; Then Dansey viewed him and Robin squealed [Illustration: A white horse rising, a dark horse flying.] At the View Halloo the hounds went frantic, Back went Stormcock and up went Antic, Up went Skylark as Antic sped It was zest to blood how they carried head. Skylark dropped as Maroon drew by, Their hackles lifted, they scored to cry. The fox knew well, that before they tore him, They should try their speed on the downs before him, There were three more miles to the Wan Dyke Hill, But his heart was high, that he beat them still. The wind of the downland charmed his bones So off he went for the Sarsen Stones. The moan of the three great firs in the wind, And the Ai of the foxhounds died behind, Wind-dapples followed the hill-wind's breath On the Kill Down gorge where the Danes found death; Larks scattered up; the peewits feeding Rose in a flock from the Kill Down Steeding. The hare leaped up from her form and swerved Swift left for the Starveall harebell-turved. On the wind-bare thorn some longtails prinking Cried sweet, as though wind blown glass were chinking. Behind came thudding and loud halloo Or a cry from hounds as they came to view. The pure clean air came sweet to his lungs, Till he thought foul scorn of those crying tongues, In a three mile more he would reach the haven In the Wan Dyke croaked on by the raven, In a three mile more he would make his berth On the hard cool floor of a Wan Dyke earth, Too deep for spade, too curved for terrier, With the pride of the race to make rest the merrier. In a three mile more he would reach his dream, So his game heart gulped and he put on steam. Like a rocket shot to a ship ashore, The lean red bolt of his body tore, Like a ripple of wind running swift on grass, Like a shadow on wheat when a cloud blows past, Like a turn at the buoy in a cutter sailing, When the bright green gleam lips white at the railing, Like the April snake whipping back to sheath, Like the gannet's hurtle on fish beneath, Like a kestrel chasing, like a sickle reaping, Like all things swooping, like all things sweeping, Like a hound for stay, like a stag for swift, With his shadow beside like spinning drift. Past the gibbet-stock all stuck with nails, Where they hanged in chains what had hung at jails, Past Ashmundshowe where Ashmund sleeps, And none but the tumbling peewit weeps, Past Curlew Calling, the gaunt grey corner Where the curlew comes as a summer mourner, Past Blowbury Beacon shaking his fleece, Where all winds hurry and none brings peace, Then down, on the mile-long green decline Where the turf's like spring and the air's like wine, Where the sweeping spurs of the downland spill Into Wan Brook Valley and Wan Dyke Hill. [Illustration: Reynard the fox] On he went with a galloping rally Past Maesbury Clump for Wan Brook Valley, The blood in his veins went romping high, "Get on, on, on to the earth or die." The air of the downs went purely past, Till he felt the glory of going fast, Till the terror of death, though there indeed, Was lulled for a while by his pride of speed; He was romping away from hounds and hunt, He had Wan Dyke Hill and his earth in front, In a one mile more when his point was made, He would rest in safety from dog or spade; Nose between paws he would hear the shout Of the "gone to earth" to the hounds without, The whine of the hounds, and their cat feet gadding. Scratching the earth, and their breath pad-padding, He would hear the horn call hounds away, And rest in peace till another day. In one mile more he would lie at rest So for one mile more he would go his best. He reached the dip at the long droop's end And he took what speed he had still to spend. So down past Maesbury beech clump grey, That would not be green till the end of May, Past Arthur's Table, the white chalk boulder, Where pasque flowers purple the down's grey shoulder, Past Quichelm's Keeping, past Harry's Thorn To Thirty Acre all thin with corn. As he raced the corn towards Wan Dyke Brook, The pack had view of the way he took, Robin hallooed from the downland's crest, He capped them on till they did their best. The quarter mile to the Wan Brook's brink Was raced as quick as a man can think. And here, as he ran to the huntsman's yelling, The fox first felt that the pace was telling, His body and lungs seemed all grown old, His legs less certain, his heart less bold, The hound-noise nearer, the hill slope steeper, The thud in the blood of his body deeper, His pride in his speed, his joy in the race Were withered away, for what use was pace? He had run his best, and the hounds ran better. Then the going worsened, the earth was wetter. Then his brush drooped down till it sometimes dragged, And his fur felt sick and his chest was tagged With taggles of mud, and his pads seemed lead, It was well for him he'd an earth ahead. Down he went to the brook and over, Out of the corn and into the clover, Over the slope that the Wan Brook drains, Past Battle Tump where they earthed the Danes, Then up the hill that the Wan Dyke rings Where the Sarsen Stones stand grand like kings. [Illustration: Then his brush drooped down till it sometimes dragged] Seven Sarsens of granite grim, As he ran them by they looked at him; As he leaped the lip of their earthen paling The hounds were gaining and he was failing. He passed the Sarsens, he left the spur, He pressed up hill to the blasted fir, He slipped as he leaped the hedge; he slithered; "He's mine," thought Robin. "He's done; he's dithered." At the second attempt he cleared the fence, He turned half right where the gorse was dense, He was leading hounds by a furlong clear. He was past his best, but his earth was near. He ran up gorse, to the spring of the ramp, The steep green wall of the dead men's camp, He sidled up it and scampered down To the deep green ditch of the dead men's town. Within, as he reached that soft green turf, The wind, blowing lonely, moaned like surf, Desolate ramparts rose up steep, On either side, for the ghosts to keep. He raced the trench, past the rabbit warren, Close grown with moss which the wind made barren, He passed the spring where the rushes spread, And there in the stones was his earth ahead. One last short burst upon failing feet, There life lay waiting, so sweet, so sweet, Rest in a darkness, balm for aches. The earth was stopped. It was barred with stakes. LAST HOPE [Illustration: A mask] With hounds at head so close behind He had to run as he changed his mind. This earth, as he saw, was stopped, but still There was one earth more on the Wan Dyke Hill. A rabbit burrow a furlong on, He could kennel there till the hounds were gone. Though his death seemed near he did not blench He upped his brush and he ran the trench. He ran the trench while the wind moaned treble, Earth trickled down, there were falls of pebble. Down in the valley of that dark gash The wind-withered grasses looked like ash. Trickles of stones and earth fell down In that dark valley of dead men's town. A hawk arose from a fluff of feathers, From a distant fold came a bleat of wethers. He heard no noise from the hounds behind But the hill-wind moaning like something blind. He turned the bend in the hill and there Was his rabbit-hole with its mouth worn bare, But there with a gun tucked under his arm Was young Sid Kissop of Purlpits Farm, With a white hob ferret to drive the rabbit Into a net which was set to nab it. And young Jack Cole peered over the wall And loosed a pup with a "Z'bite en, Saul," The terrier pup attacked with a will, So the fox swerved right and away down hill. Down from the ramp of the Dyke he ran To the brackeny patch where the gorse began, Into the gorse, where the hill's heave hid The line he took from the eyes of Sid He swerved down wind and ran like a hare For the wind-blown spinney below him there. He slipped from the Gorse to the spinney dark (There were curled grey growths on the oak tree bark) He saw no more of the terrier pup. But he heard men speak and the hounds come up. He crossed the spinney with ears intent For the cry of hounds on the way he went, His heart was thumping, the hounds were near now, He could make no sprint at a cry and cheer now, He was past his perfect, his strength was failing, His brush sag-sagged and his legs were ailing. He felt as he skirted Dead Men's Town, That in one mile more they would have him down. [Illustration: Reynard the fox] CHECKED [Illustration: They had ceased to run, they had come to check] Through the withered oak's wind-crouching tops He saw men's scarlet above the copse, He heard men's oaths, yet he felt hounds slacken In the frondless stalks of the brittle bracken. He felt that the unseen link which bound His spine to the nose of the leading hound, Was snapped, that the hounds no longer knew Which way to follow nor what to do; That the threat of the hound's teeth left his neck, They had ceased to run, they had come to check, They were quartering wide on the Wan Hill's bent. The terrier's chase had killed his scent. He heard bits chink as the horses shifted, He heard hounds cast, then he heard hounds lifted, But there came no cry from a new attack, His heart grew steady, his breath came back. He left the spinney and ran its edge, By the deep dry ditch of the blackthorn hedge, Then out of the ditch and down the meadow, Trotting at ease in the blackthorn shadow Over the track called Godsdown Road, To the great grass heave of the gods' abode, He was moving now upon land he knew Up Clench Royal and Morton Tew, The Pol Brook, Cheddesdon and East Stoke Church, High Clench St. Lawrence and Tinker's Birch, Land he had roved on night by night, For hot blood suckage or furry bite, The threat of the hounds behind was gone; He breathed deep pleasure and trotted on. While young Sid Kissop thrashed the pup, Robin on Pip came heaving up, And found his pack spread out at check. "I'd like to wring your terrier's neck," He said, "You see? He's spoiled our sport. He's killed the scent." He broke off short, And stared at hounds and at the valley. No jay or magpie gave a rally Down in the copse, no circling rooks Rose over fields; old Joyful's looks Were doubtful in the gorse, the pack Quested both up and down and back. He watched each hound for each small sign. They tried, but could not hit the line, The scent was gone. The field took place Out of the way of hounds. The pace Had tailed them out; though four remained: Sir Peter, on White Rabbit stained Red from the brooks, Bill Ridden cheery, Hugh Colway with his mare dead weary. The Colonel with Marauder beat. They turned towards a thud of feet; Dansey, and then young Cothill came (His chestnut mare was galloped tame). "There's Copse, a field behind," he said. "Those last miles put them all to bed. They're strung along the downs like flies." Copse and Nob Manor topped the rise. "Thank God, a check," they said, "at last." [Illustration: "Thank God, a check," they said, "at last." "They cannot own it; you must cast."] "They cannot own it; you must cast," Sir Peter said. The soft horn blew, Tom turned the hounds up wind; they drew Up wind, down hill, by spinney side. They tried the brambled ditch; they tried The swamp, all choked with bright green grass And clumps of rush and pools like glass, Long since, the dead men's drinking pond. They tried the White Leaved Oak beyond, But no hound spoke to it or feathered. The horse heads drooped like horses tethered, The men mopped brows. "An hour's hard run. Ten miles," they said, "we must have done. It's all of six from Colston's Gorses." The lucky got their second horses. The time ticked by. "He's lost," they muttered. A pheasant rose. A rabbit scuttered. Men mopped their scarlet cheeks and drank. They drew down wind along the bank, (The Wan Way) on the hill's south spur, Grown with dwarf oak and juniper Like dwarves alive, but no hound spoke. The seepings made the ground one soak. They turned the spur; the hounds were beat. Then Robin shifted in his seat Watching for signs, but no signs shewed. "I'll lift across the Godsdown Road, Beyond the spinney," Robin said. Tom turned them; Robin went ahead. Beyond the copse a great grass fallow Stretched towards Stoke and Cheddesdon Mallow, A rolling grass where hounds grew keen. "Yoi doit, then; this is where he's been," Said Robin, eager at their joy. "Yooi, Joyful, lad, yooi, Cornerboy. They're on to him." [Illustration: Reynard the fox] "ON" At his reminders The keen hounds hurried to the finders. The finding hounds began to hurry, Men jammed their hats prepared to skurry, The Ai Ai of the cry began. Its spirit passed to horse and man, The skirting hounds romped to the cry. Hound after hound cried Ai Ai Ai, Till all were crying, running, closing, Their heads well up and no heads nosing, Joyful ahead with spear-straight stern. They raced the great slope to the burn. Robin beside them, Tom behind, Pointing past Robin down the wind. For there, two furlongs on, he viewed On Holy Hill or Cheddesdon Rood Just where the ploughland joined the grass, A speck down the first furrow pass, A speck the colour of the plough. "Yonder he goes. We'll have him now," He cried. The speck passed slowly on, It reached the ditch, paused, and was gone. Then down the slope and up the Rood, Went the hunt's gallop. Godsdown Wood Dropped its last oak-leaves at the rally. Over the Rood to High Clench Valley The gallop led; the red-coats scattered, The fragments of the hunt were tattered Over five fields, ev'n since the check. [Illustration: Then down the slope and up the Rood, Went the hunt's gallop.] "A dead fox or a broken neck," Said Robin Dawe, "Come up, the Dane." The hunter leant against the rein, Cocking his ears, he loved to see The hounds at cry. The hounds and he The chiefs in all that feast of pace. The speck in front began to race. The fox heard hounds get on to his line, And again the terror went down his spine, Again the back of his neck felt cold, From the sense of the hound's teeth taking hold. But his legs were rested, his heart was good, He had breath to gallop to Mourne End Wood, It was four miles more, but an earth at end, So he put on pace down the Rood Hill Bend. [Illustration: The fox heard hounds get on to his line] Down the great grass slope which the oak trees dot With a swerve to the right from the keeper's cot, Over High Clench brook in its channel deep, To the grass beyond, where he ran to sheep. The sheep formed line like a troop of horse, They swerved, as he passed, to front his course From behind, as he ran, a cry arose, "See the sheep, there. Watch them. There he goes." He ran the sheep that their smell might check The hounds from his scent and save his neck, But in two fields more he was made aware That the hounds still ran; Tom had viewed him there. [Illustration: He ran the sheep that their smell might check The hounds from his scent and save his neck.] Tom had held them on through the taint of sheep, They had kept his line, as they meant to keep, They were running hard with a burning scent, And Robin could see which way he went. The pace that he went brought strain to breath, He knew as he ran that the grass was death. He ran the slope towards Morton Tew That the heave of the hill might stop the view, Then he doubled down to the Blood Brook red, And swerved upstream in the brook's deep bed. He splashed the shallows, he swam the deeps, He crept by banks as a moorhen creeps, He heard the hounds shoot over his line, And go on, on, on towards Cheddesdon Zine. In the minute's peace he could slacken speed, The ease from the strain was sweet indeed. Cool to the pads the water flowed, He reached the bridge on the Cheddesdon road. As he came to light from the culvert dim, Two boys on the bridge looked down on him; They were young Bill Ripple and Harry Meun, "Look, there be squirrel, a-swimmin', see 'un." "Noa, ben't a squirrel, be fox, be fox. Now, Hal, get pebble, we'll give en socks." "Get pebble, Billy, dub un a plaster; There's for thy belly, I'll learn ee, master." [Illustration: He raced from brook in a burst of shies] The stones splashed spray in the fox's eyes, He raced from brook in a burst of shies, He ran for the reeds in the withy car, Where the dead flags shake and the wild-duck are. He pushed through the reeds which cracked at his passing, To the High Clench Water, a grey pool glassing, He heard Bill Ripple in Cheddesdon road Shout, "This way, huntsman, it's here he goed." THE LIFTING HORN The Leu Leu Leu went the soft horn's laughter, The hounds (they had checked) came romping after, The clop of the hooves on the road was plain, Then the crackle of reeds, then cries again. A whimpering first, then Robin's cheer, Then the Ai Ai Ai; they were all too near; His swerve had brought but a minute's rest, Now he ran again, and he ran his best. With a crackle of dead dry stalks of reed The hounds came romping at topmost speed, The redcoats ducked as the great hooves skittered The Blood Brook's shallows to sheets that glittered; With a cracking whip and a "Hoik, Hoik, Hoik, Forrard," Tom galloped. Bob shouted "Yoick." Like a running fire the dead reeds crackled The hounds' heads lifted, their necks were hackled. Tom cried to Bob as they thundered through, "He is running short, we shall kill at Tew." Bob cried to Tom as they rode in team, "I was sure, that time, that he turned up-stream. As the hounds went over the brook in stride, I saw old Daffodil fling to side, So I guessed at once, when they checked beyond." The ducks flew up from the Morton Pond. The fox looked up at their tailing strings, He wished (perhaps) that a fox had wings. Wings with his friends in a great V straining The autumn sky when the moon is gaining; For better the grey sky's solitude, Than to be two miles from the Mourne End Wood With the hounds behind, clean-trained to run, And your strength half spent and your breath half done. Better the reeds and the sky and water Than that hopeless pad from a certain slaughter. At the Morton Pond the fields began, Long Tew's green meadows; he ran; he ran. [Illustration: With a cracking whip and a "Hoik, Hoik, Hoik, Forrard," Tom galloped. Bob shouted "Yoick."] First the six green fields that make a mile, With the lip-full Clench at the side the while, With the rooks above, slow-circling, shewing The world of men where a fox was going; The fields all empty, dead grass, bare hedges, And the brook's bright gleam in the dark of sedges. To all things else he was dumb and blind, He ran, with the hounds a field behind. MOURNE END WOOD At the sixth green field came the long slow climb, To the Mourne End Wood as old as time Yew woods dark, where they cut for bows, Oak woods green with the mistletoes, Dark woods evil, but burrowed deep With a brock's earth strong, where a fox might sleep. He saw his point on the heaving hill, He had failing flesh and a reeling will, He felt the heave of the hill grow stiff, He saw black woods, which would shelter-- If-- Nothing else, but the steepening slope, And a black line nodding, a line of hope, The line of the yews on the long slope's brow, A mile, three-quarters, a half-mile now. A quarter-mile, but the hounds had viewed, They yelled to have him this side the wood; Robin capped them, Tom Dansey steered them With a "Yooi, Yooi, Yooi," Bill Ridden cheered them. Then up went hackles as Shatterer led, "Mob him," cried Ridden, "the wood's ahead. Turn him, damn it; Yooi, beauties, beat him. O God, let them get him; let them eat him. O God," said Ridden, "I'll eat him stewed, If you'll let us get him this side the wood." But the pace, uphill, made a horse like stone, The pack went wild up the hill alone. Three hundred yards, and the worst was past, The slope was gentler and shorter-grassed, The fox saw the bulk of the woods grow tall On the brae ahead like a barrier-wall. He saw the skeleton trees show sky, And the yew trees darken to see him die, And the line of the woods go reeling black, There was hope in the woods, and behind, the pack. Two hundred yards, and the trees grew taller, Blacker, blinder, as hope grew smaller Cry seemed nearer, the teeth seemed gripping Pulling him back, his pads seemed slipping. He was all one ache, one gasp, one thirsting, Heart on his chest-bones, beating, bursting, The hounds were gaining like spotted pards And the wood-hedge still was a hundred yards. The wood-hedge black was a two year, quick Cut-and-laid that had sprouted thick Thorns all over, and strongly plied, With a clean red ditch on the take-off side. He saw it now as a redness, topped With a wattle of thorn-work spiky cropped, Spiky to leap on, stiff to force, No safe jump for a failing horse, But beyond it, darkness of yews together, Dark green plumes over soft brown feather, Darkness of woods where scents were blowing Strange scents, hot scents, of wild things going, Scents that might draw these hounds away. So he ran, ran, ran to that clean red clay. [Illustration: He saw it now as a redness, topped With a wattle of thorn-work spiky cropped.] Still, as he ran, his pads slipped back, All his strength seemed to draw the pack, The trees drew over him dark like Norns, He was over the ditch and at the thorns. He thrust at the thorns, which would not yield, He leaped, but fell, in sight of the field, The hounds went wild as they saw him fall, The fence stood stiff like a Bucks flint wall. He gathered himself for a new attempt, His life before was an old dream dreamt, All that he was was a blown fox quaking, Jumping at thorns too stiff for breaking, While over the grass in crowd, in cry, Came the grip teeth grinning to make him die, The eyes intense, dull, smouldering red, The fell like a ruff round each keen head, The pace like fire, and scarlet men Galloping, yelling, "Yooi, eat him, then." He gathered himself, he leaped, he reached The top of the hedge like a fish-boat beached, He steadied a second and then leaped down To the dark of the wood where bright things drown. He swerved, sharp right, under young green firs. Robin called on the Dane with spurs, He cried "Come, Dansey: if God's not good, We shall change our fox in this Mourne End wood." Tom cried back as he charged like spate, "Mine can't jump that, I must ride to gate." Robin answered, "I'm going at him. I'll kill that fox, if he kills me, drat him. We'll kill in covert. Gerr on, now, Dane." He gripped him tight and he made it plain, He slowed him down till he almost stood While his hounds went crash into Mourne End Wood. Like a dainty dancer with footing nice, The Dane turned side for a leap in twice. He cleared the ditch to the red clay bank, He rose at the fence as his quarters sank, He barged the fence as the bank gave way And down he came in a fall of clay. Robin jumped off him and gasped for breath; He said, "That's lost him, as sure as death. They've over-run him. Come up, the Dane, But I'll kill him yet, if we ride to Spain." He scrambled up to his horse's back, He thrust through cover, he called his pack, He cheered them on till they made it good, Where the fox had swerved inside the wood. The fox knew well, as he ran the dark, That the headlong hounds were past their mark. They had missed his swerve and had overrun. But their devilish play was not yet done. "DONE" For a minute he ran and heard no sound, Then a whimper came from a questing hound, Then a "This way, beauties," and then "Leu Leu," The floating laugh of the horn that blew. Then the cry again and the crash and rattle Of the shrubs burst back as they ran to battle. Till the wood behind seemed risen from root, Crying and crashing to give pursuit, Till the trees seemed hounds and the air seemed cry, And the earth so far that he needs but die, Die where he reeled in the woodland dim With a hound's white grips in the spine of him; For one more burst he could spurt, and then Wait for the teeth, and the wrench, and men. He made his spurt for the Mourne End rocks, The air blew rank with the taint of fox; The yews gave way to a greener space Of great stones strewn in a grassy place. And there was his earth at the great grey shoulder, Sunk in the ground, of a granite boulder A dry deep burrow with rocky roof, Proof against crowbars, terrier-proof, Life to the dying, rest for bones. The earth was stopped; it was filled with stones. Then, for a moment, his courage failed, His eyes looked up as his body quailed, Then the coming of death, which all things dread, Made him run for the wood ahead. [Illustration: There were foxes there] The taint of fox was rank on the air, He knew, as he ran, there were foxes there. His strength was broken, his heart was bursting, His bones were rotten, his throat was thirsting, His feet were reeling, his brush was thick From dragging the mud, and his brain was sick. He thought as he ran of his old delight In the wood in the moon in an April night, His happy hunting, his winter loving, The smells of things in the midnight roving; The look of his dainty-nosing, red Clean-felled dam with her footpad's tread, Of his sire, so swift, so game, so cunning With craft in his brain and power of running, Their fights of old when his teeth drew blood. Now he was sick, with his coat all mud. He crossed the covert, he crawled the bank, To a meuse in the thorns and there he sank, With his ears flexed back and his teeth shown white, In a rat's resolve for a dying bite. PRIZE And there, as he lay, he saw the vale, That a struggling sunlight silvered pale, The Deerlip Brook like a strip of steel, The Nun's Wood Yews where the rabbits squeal, The great grass square of the Roman Fort, And the smoke in the elms at Crendon Court. And above the smoke in the elm-tree tops, Was the beech-clump's blue, Blown Hilcote Copse, Where he and his mates had long made merry In the bloody joys of the rabbit-herry. And there as he lay and looked, the cry Of the hounds at head came rousing by; He bent his bones in the blackthorn dim. But the cry of the hounds was not for him, Over the fence with a crash they went, Belly to grass, with a burning scent, Then came Dansey, yelling to Bob, "They've changed, O damn it, now here's a job." And Bob yelled back, "Well, we cannot turn 'em, It's Jumper and Antic, Tom; we'll learn 'em. We must just go on, and I hope we kill." They followed hounds down the Mourne End Hill. The fox lay still in the rabbit-meuse, On the dry brown dust of the plumes of yews. In the bottom below a brook went by, Blue, in a patch, like a streak of sky. There, one by one, with a clink of stone, Came a red or dark coat on a horse half blown. And man to man with a gasp for breath Said, "Lord, what a run. I'm fagged to death." [Illustration: And man to man with a gasp for breath Said, "Lord, what a run. I'm fagged to death."] After an hour, no riders came, The day drew by like an ending game; A robin sang from a pufft red breast, The fox lay quiet and took his rest. A wren on a tree-stump carolled clear, Then the starlings wheeled in a sudden sheer, The rooks came home to the twiggy hive In the elm-tree tops which the winds do drive. Then the noise of the rooks fell slowly still, And the lights came out in the Clench Brook Mill Then a pheasant cocked, then an owl began With the cry that curdles the blood of man. The stars grew bright as the yews grew black, The fox rose stiffly and stretched his back. He flaired the air, then he padded out To the valley below him dark as doubt, Winter-thin with the young green crops, For Old Cold Crendon and Hilcote Copse. HOME [Illustration: Reynard the fox] As he crossed the meadows at Naunton Larking, The dogs in the town all started barking, For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam, The hounds and the hunt were limping home: Limping home in the dark, dead-beaten, The hounds all rank from a fox they'd eaten, Dansey saying to Robin Dawe, "The fastest and longest I ever saw." And Robin answered, "O Tom, 'twas good, I thought they'd changed in the Mourne End Wood, But now I feel that they did not change. We've had a run that was great and strange; And to kill in the end, at dusk, on grass. We'll turn to the Cock and take a glass, For the hounds, poor souls, are past their forces. And a gallon of ale for our poor horses, And some bits of bread for the hounds, poor things, After all they've done (for they've done like kings), Would keep them going till we get in. We had it alone from Nun's Wood Whin." Then Tom replied, "If they changed or not, There've been few runs longer and none more hot, We shall talk of to-day until we die." [Illustration: For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam, The hounds and the hunt were limping home.] The stars grew bright in the winter sky, The wind came keen with a tang of frost, The brook was troubled for new things lost, The copse was happy for old things found, The fox came home and he went to ground. And the hunt came home and the hounds were fed, They climbed to their bench and went to bed, The horses in stable loved their straw. "Good-night, my beauties," said Robin Dawe. Then the moon came quiet and flooded full Light and beauty on clouds like wool, On a feasted fox at rest from hunting, In the beech wood grey where the brocks were grunting. [Illustration: Eighth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] The beech wood grey rose dim in the night With moonlight fallen in pools of light, The long dead leaves on the ground were rimed. A clock struck twelve and the church-bells chimed. Printed in the United States of America. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Words surrounded by _ are italicized. All author's punctuations retained. All apparent printer's errors and variable spellings retained, including variable usage of hyphen (e.g. "goodwill" and "good-will") and any other variable spellings. Descriptions added to captionless illustrations. 
39160	----	MR. PUNCH IN THE HUNTING FIELD PUNCH LIBRARY OF HUMOUR Edited by J. A. HAMMERTON Designed to provide in a series of volumes, each complete in itself, the cream of our national humour, contributed by the masters of comic draughtsmanship and the leading wits of the age to "Punch," from its beginning in 1841 to the present day. [Illustration] * * * * * [Illustration: DISILLUSIONED Awful predicament of young Fitz-Brown, who, having undertaken to see a young lady safely home after a day with the Seaborough Harriers, has lost his way, and has climbed up what he takes to be a sign-post.] * * * * * MR. PUNCH IN THE HUNTING FIELD AS PICTURED BY JOHN LEECH, CHARLES KEENE, PHIL MAY, RANDOLPH CALDECOTT, L. RAVEN-HILL, G. D. ARMOUR, G. H. JALLAND, ARTHUR HOPKINS, REGINALD CLEAVER, CECIL ALDIN, TOM BROWNE, W. L. HODGSON AND OTHERS. [Illustration] _WITH 173 ILLUSTRATIONS_ PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE PROPRIETORS OF "PUNCH" THE EDUCATIONAL BOOK CO. LTD. * * * * * PUNCH LIBRARY OF HUMOUR _Twenty-five volumes, crown 8vo, 192 pages fully illustrated_ LIFE IN LONDON COUNTRY LIFE IN THE HIGHLANDS SCOTTISH HUMOUR IRISH HUMOUR COCKNEY HUMOUR IN SOCIETY AFTER DINNER STORIES IN BOHEMIA AT THE PLAY MR. PUNCH AT HOME ON THE CONTINONG RAILWAY BOOK AT THE SEASIDE MR. PUNCH AFLOAT IN THE HUNTING FIELD MR. PUNCH ON TOUR WITH ROD AND GUN MR. PUNCH AWHEEL BOOK OF SPORTS GOLF STORIES IN WIG AND GOWN ON THE WARPATH BOOK OF LOVE WITH THE CHILDREN * * * * * EDITOR'S NOTE [Illustration] From his earliest days MR. PUNCH has been an enthusiast for the Hunting Field. But in this he has only been the faithful recorder of the manners of his countrymen, as there is no sport more redolent of "Merrie England" than that of the Horse and Hound. At no time in MR. PUNCH'S history has he been without an artist who has specialised in the humours of the hunt. First it was the inimitable Leech, some of whose drawings find a place in the present collection, and then the mantle of the sporting artist would seem to have descended to feminine shoulders, as Miss Bowers (Mrs. Bowers-Edwards) wore it for some ten years after 1866. That lady is also represented in the present work, at pages 49 and 111. Later came Mr. G. H. Jalland, many of whose drawings we have chosen for inclusion here. Perhaps the most popular of his hunting jokes was that of the Frenchman exclaiming, "Stop ze chasse! I tomble, I faloff! _Stop ze fox!!!_" (see page 141). To-day, of course, it is Mr. G. D. Armour whose pencil is devoted chiefly to illustrating the humorous side of hunting; but now, as formerly, most of the eminent artists whose work lies usually in other fields, delight at times to find a subject associated with the hunt. Thus we are able to present examples of Mr. Cecil Aldin and Mr. Raven-Hill in sportive mood, while such celebrities of the past as Randolph Caldecott and Phil May are here drawn upon for the enriching of this, the first book of hunting humour compiled from the abundant chronicles of MR. PUNCH. * * * * * [Illustration: 'ARRY OUT WITH THE 'OUNDS] * * * * * MR. PUNCH IN THE HUNTING FIELD THE HUNTING SEASON (_By Jorrocks Junior_) The season for hunting I see has begun, So adieu for a time to my rod and my gun; And ho! for the fox, be he wild or in bag, As I follow the chase on my high-mettled nag. * * * * * [Illustration: "WEATHER PERMITTING,"--MR. PUNCH DRIVES TO THE FIRST MEET.] * * * * * I call him high-mettled, but still I must state, He hasn't a habit I always did hate, He doesn't walk sideways, like some "gees" you meet, Who go slantindicularly down the street. He's steady and well broken in, for, of course, I can't risk my life on an unbroken horse; You might tie a torpedo or two on behind, And though they exploded that horse wouldn't mind. My strong point is costume, and oft I confess I've admired my get-up in a sportsmanlike dress; Though, but for the finish their lustre confers, I would much rather be, I declare, without spurs. They look very well as to cover you ride, But I can't keep the things from the animal's side; And the mildest of "gees," I am telling no fibs, Will resent having liberties ta'en with his ribs. Then hie to the cover, the dogs are all there, And the horn of the hunter is heard on the air; I've a horn of my own, which in secret I stow, For, oddly enough, they don't like me to blow. We'll go round by that gate, my good sir, if you please, I'm one of your sportsmen who rides at his ease; And I don't care to trouble my courser to jump, For whenever he does I fall off in a lump. Then haste to the meet! The Old Berkeley shall find, If I don't go precisely as fast as the wind, If they'll give my Bucephalus time to take breath, We shall both of us, sometimes, be in at the death! * * * * * [Illustration: A LION IN THE PATH? Oh dear no! Merely the "_first open day_" after a long frost, and a tom-tit has been inconsiderate enough to fly suddenly out of the fence on the way to covert!] * * * * * [Illustration: TRIALS OF A NOVICE _Unsympathetic Bystander._ "Taking 'im back to 'is cab, guv'nor?"] * * * * * [Illustration: HOW THE LAST RUN OF THE WOPSHIRE HOUNDS WAS SPOILT.] * * * * * PROVERBS FOR THE TIMID HUNTSMAN _Dressing_ There's no toe without a corn. If the boot pinches--bear it. _Breakfast_ A snack in time, saves nine. Faint hunger never conquered tough beef-steak. _Mounting_ You can't make a hunter out of a hired hack. The nearer the ground the safer the seat. _In the Field_ Take care of the hounds, but the fence may take care of itself. Too many brooks spoil the sport. One pair of spurs may bring a horse to the water, but twenty will not make him jump. It is the howl that shows the funk. Fools break rails for wise men to go over. Snobs and their saddles are soon parted. _At Luncheon_ A flask in the hand is worth a cask in the vault. Cut your sandwiches according to your stomach. _Coming Home_ The nearer the home, the harder the seat. _Bed-time_ It's a heavy sleep that has no turning. * * * * * [Illustration: REALLY PLEASANT! Six miles from home, horse dead lame, awfully tender feet, and horribly tight boots.] * * * * * [Illustration: "Now, if I jump it, I shall certainly fall off; and if I dismount to open it, I shall never get on again."] * * * * * [Illustration: This is Jones, who thought to slip down by the rail early in the morning, and have a gallop with the fox hounds. On looking out of the window, he finds it is a clear frosty morning. He sees a small boy sliding--actually sliding on the pavement opposite!! and--doesn't he hate that boy--and doesn't he say it is a beastly climate!!] * * * * * [Illustration: NEW SPORTING DICTIONARY OF FAMILIAR LATIN PHRASES. (1) Labour omnia vincit. (Labor overcomes everything.)] [Illustration: (2) Ars est celare artem. "Après vous, mademoiselle!"] [Illustration: (3) Exeunt Omnes. (They all go off.)] * * * * * A GENUINE SPORTSWOMAN _Mrs. Shodditon_ (_to Captain Forrard, on a cub-hunting morning_). "I do hope you'll have good sport, and find plenty of foxes." _Captain Forrard._ "Hope so. By the way, how is that beautiful collie of yours that I admired so much?" _Mrs. Shodditon._ "Oh! Fanny! poor dear! Our keeper shot it by mistake for a fox!" * * * * * [Illustration: _Short-sighted Party_ (_thrown earlier, after weary tramp, thinks he sees mount on ploughed upland, and approaches bush coaxingly_). "Whoa, my beauty! Steady, my gal, steady then," &c.] [Illustration: _Same Short-sighted Party arrived at thornbush, discovers error, and reflects_--"Five miles from station, perhaps ten--fifty miles from town, missed express, missed dinner, lost mount, wet through, getting dusk, and, by the way, where am I?" [_Left reflecting_. ] * * * * * [Illustration: _Gorgeous Stranger._ "I say, Huntsman, would you mind blowing your horn two or three times? I want my fellow, who has my flask, to know where we are, don't you know!"] * * * * * DIARY OF THE MODERN HUNT SECRETARY "Capping all non-subscribers is pretty generally resorted to, this season, not only in the shires, but also with provincial packs."--_Daily Press._] _Monday._--Splendid gallop after non-subscriber. Spotted the quarry on good-looking chestnut, whilst we were drawing big covert. Edged my horse over in his direction, but non-subscriber very wary--think he must have known my face as "collector of tolls." Retired again to far side of spinney and disguised myself in pair of false whiskers, which I always keep for these occasions. Craftily sidled up, and finally got within speaking distance, under cover of the whiskers, which effectually masked my battery. "Beg pardon, sir," I began, lifting my hat, "but I don't think I have the pleasure of knowing your name as a subscri----" But he was off like a shot. Went away over a nice line of country, all grass, and a good sound take-off to most of the fences. Non-subscriber had got away with about a three lengths lead of me, and that interval was fairly maintained for the first mile and a half of the race. Then, felt most annoyed to see that my quarry somewhat gained on me as we left the pasture land and went across a holding piece of plough. Over a stiff post and rails, and on again, across some light fallow, towards a big dry ditch. The hunted one put his horse resolutely at it--must say he rode very straight, but what _won't_ men do to avoid "parting?"--horse jumped short and disappeared from view together with his rider. Next moment I had also come a cropper at ditch, and rolled down on top of my prey. "Excuse me," I said, taking out my pocket-book and struggling to my knees in six inches of mud, "but when you rather abruptly started away from covertside, I was just about to remark that I did not think you were a subscriber, and that I should have much pleasure in taking the customary 'cap'--thank you." And he paid up quite meekly. We agreed, as we rode back together, in the direction in which we imagined hounds to be, that even if they had got away with a good fox, the field would not be likely to have had so smart a gallop as he and I had already enjoyed. Lost my day's hunting, of course. _Thursday._--Got away after another non-subscriber, led him over four fields, after which he ran me out of sight. Lost my day's hunting again, but was highly commended by M.F.H. for my zeal. _Saturday._--M.F.H. pointed out five non-subscribers, and I at once started off to "cap" them. Lost another day with hounds--shall send in my resignation. * * * * * [Illustration: _Gent_ (_who has just executed a double somersault and is somewhat dazed_). "Now where the dickens has that horse gone to?"] * * * * * [Illustration: ON EXMOOR _Gent_ (_very excited after his first gallop with staghounds_). "Hi, mister, don't let the dogs maul 'im, and I'll take the 'aunch at a bob a pound!"] * * * * * [Illustration: COOKED ACCOUNTS _Extract from old Fitzbadly's letter to a friend, describing a run in the Midlands:_--"I was well forward at the brook, but lost my hat, and had to dismount."] * * * * * [Illustration: "Hup--yer beast!"] [Illustration: "Hup!!--yer brute!"] [Illustration: "Hup!!!--yer infernal, confounded ---- Hover!!!"] [Illustration: And "Hover" it was!] * * * * * [Illustration: SOMETHING LIKE A NOSE. _Whip_ (_after galloping half a mile to a holloa_). "Where did you see him?" _Yokel._ "Can't zay as 'ow I 'zactly _zeed_ 'un, but I think I _smelled_ 'un!"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Second Horseman No. 1._ "Ulloah, Danny, what are you lookin' for?" _Second Horseman No. 2._ "Perkisites. Guv'nor's just been over 'ere. 'E jumps so much 'igher than 'is 'orse, there's always some small change or summat to be picked up!"] * * * * * THE NEW NIMROD [Mr. Pat O'Brien, M.P., was first in at the death on one occasion with the Meath Hounds on his bicycle, and was presented with the brush.] Air--"_The Hunting Day_" "What a fine hunting day"-- 'Tis an old-fashioned lay That I'll change to an up-to-date pome; Old stagers may swear That the pace isn't fair, But they're left far behind us at home! See cyclists and bikes on their way, And scorchers their prowess display; Let us join the glad throng That goes wheeling along, And we'll all go a-hunting to-day! New Nimrods exclaim, "Timber-topping" is tame, And "bull-finches" simply child's play; And they don't care a jot For a gallop or trot, Though they _will_ go a-hunting to-day. There's a fox made of clockwork, they say They'll wind him and get him away; He runs with a rush On rails with his brush, So we must go and chase him to-day. We've abolished the sounds Of the horn and the hounds-- 'Tis the bicycle squeaker that squeals And the pack has been stuffed, Or sent to old Cruft, Now the huntsmen have taken to wheels! Hairy country no more we essay, Five bars, too, no longer dismay, For we stick to the roads In the latest of modes, So we'll bike after Reynard to-day! * * * * * [Illustration: THE LANGUAGE OF SPORT. "Where the----! What the----!! Who the----!!! Why the----!!!!"] * * * * * [Illustration: COMFORTING, VERY! _Sportsman (who has mounted friend on bolting mare) shouts._ "You're all right, old chap! She's never been known to refuse water, and swims like a fish!"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Old Stubbles_ (_having pounded the swells_). "Aw--haw----! laugh away, but who be the roight side o' the fence, masters?"] * * * * * [Illustration: CUB HUNTING 1. "Ah, my boys," said Percy Johnson, "give me a good old hurry and scurry--Heigh O! gee whoa!--over the downs and through the brushwood after the cubs. So, early in the morning as you like. What can be more exhilarating?" 2. So, in happy anticipation of the morrow's meet, he retired.] [Illustration: 3. Later, at 4 a.m., the butler came to rouse him. "Sir!" A pause. "Sir, th' 'osses be very nigh ready!" Uncertain voice from within--"Eh? good-night! Remember to call me early in the morning!" 4. Snoring resumed _in infinitum_. Still, Percy looked rather sheepish later on, when the others pretended they had missed him on the road, and inquired whether he had found the morning as exhilarating as he had expected.] * * * * * MY LITTLE BROWN MARE (_A Song for the commencement of the Hunting Season_) She's rather too lean but her head's a large size, And she hasn't the average number of eyes; Her hind legs are not what you'd call a good pair, And she's broken both knees, has my little brown mare. You can find some amusement in counting each rib, And she bites when she's hungry like mad at her crib; When viewed from behind she seems all on the square, She's quite a Freemason--my little brown mare. Her paces are rather too fast, I suppose, For she often comes down on her fine Roman nose, And the way she takes fences makes hunting men stare, For she backs through the gaps does my little brown mare. She has curbs on her hocks and no hair on her knees; She has splints and has spavins wherever you please? Her neck, like a vulture's, is horribly bare, But still she's a beauty, my little brown mare. She owns an aversion to windmills and ricks, When passing a waggon she lies down and kicks; And the clothes of her groom she'll persistently tear-- But still she's no vice has my little brown mare. When turned down to grass she oft strays out of bounds; She always was famous for snapping at hounds; And even the baby has learnt to beware The too playful bite of my little brown mare. She prances like mad and she jumps like a flea, And her waltz to a brass band is something to see: No circus had ever a horse, I declare, That could go through the hoops like my little brown mare. I mount her but seldom--in fact, to be plain, Like the Frenchman, when hunting I "do not remain:" Since I've only one neck it would hardly be fair To risk it in riding my little brown mare! * * * * * [Illustration: TROUBLES OF A WOULD-BE SPORTSMAN _Huntsman_ (_to W.B.S._). "Just 'op across, would ye, sir, and turn those 'ounds to me, please."] * * * * * [Illustration: RESPICE FINEM _Excited Shepherd_ (_to careful Sportsman, inspecting fence with slight drop_). "Come on, sir! All right! Anywhere 'ere!" _Careful Sportsman._ "All very fine! You want to give me a fall, and get half-a-crown for catching my horse!"] * * * * * [Illustration: "WEEDS"] * * * * * [Illustration: "'WARE WIRE!" "Hallo, Jack! What's up?" "Don' know! I'm not!"] * * * * * MISPLACED ENERGY _Huntsman_ (_seeking a beaten fox_). "Now then, have you seen anything of him?" _Cockney Sportsman_ (_immensely pleased with himself_). "Well, rather! Why, I've just driven him into this drain for you!" * * * * * [Illustration: "WHILE YOU WAIT" "Here, my good man, just pull those rails down. Be as quick as you can!" "Take 'em down, miss! It'll be a good four hours' job, for I've been all the mornin' a-puttin' of 'em up!"] * * * * * [Illustration: ECHOES OF THE CHASE. BOXING DAY _Holiday Sportsman_ (_to Whip, who has been hollering_). "Where's the fox?" _Whip._ "Gone away, of course." _H. S._ "Gone away! Wotcher makin' all that noise for, then? I thought you'd caught 'im!"] * * * * * [Illustration: EASILY SATISFIED _Gent_ (_who all but dissolved partnership at the last fence_). "Thank goodness I've got hold of the reins again! If I could but get my foot into that confounded stirrup, I should be all right!"] * * * * * A Nice Prospect _Host_ (_to Perks, an indifferent horseman, who has come down for the hunting_). "Now, look here, Perks, old chap, as you're a light weight, I'll get you to ride this young mare of mine. You see, I want to get her qualified for our Hunt Cup, and she's not up to my weight, or I'd ride her myself. Perhaps I'd better tell you she hasn't been ridden to hounds before, so she's sure to be a bit nervous at first; and mind you steady her at the jumps, as she's apt to rush them; and I wouldn't take her too near other people, as she has a nasty temper, and knows how to use her heels; and, whatever you do, don't let her get you down, or she'll tear you to pieces. The last man that rode her is in hospital now. But keep your eye on her, and remember what I've said, and you'll be all right!" [_Consternation of Perks_ * * * * * 'ARRY ON 'ORSEBACK Our 'Arry goes 'unting and sings with a will, "The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill:" And oft, when a saddle looks terribly bare, The 'eels of our 'Arry are seen in the air! * * * * * [Illustration: 'W. STANDS FOR WIRE' "Hulloah, Jarge! Been puttin' up some wire to keep the fox-hunter away?" "Noa, I b'ain't put up no wire; but the 'unt they sends me a lot o' them boards with 'W' on um, so I just stuck 'em up all round the land, and they never comes nigh o' me now!"] * * * * * [Illustration: THE HUNTING SEASON _Rector._ "Is that the parcels post, James? He's early this morning, isn't he?" (_Noise without, baying of dogs, &c._) "What's all this----" _James_ (_excited_). "Yes, sir. Postman says as how the young 'ounds, a comin' back from cubbin', found 'im near the kennels, and runned 'im all the way 'ere. They was close on 'im when he got in! Thinks it was a packet o' red 'errins in the bag, sir! I see the run from the pantry window"--(_with enthusiasm_)--"a beautiful ten minutes' bu'st, sir!"] * * * * * [Illustration: "Duck, you fool! Duck!"] * * * * * HUNTING "DAY BY DAY" "The Mudsquashington Foxhounds had a good day's sport from Wotsisname Coverts (which were laid for a large number). They found in Thingamy Woods, rattled him round the Osier Beds, and then through the Gorse, just above Sumware. Leaving this and turning left-handed, he ran on as far as Sumotherplace, where he finally got to ground. Amongst the numerous field were Lord Foozle and Lady Frump, Messrs. Borkins, Poshbury, and Tomkyn-Smith."[A] [Footnote A: Half a dozen similar paragraphs cut out as being too exciting for the average reader's brain to bear.--ED.] * * * * * AT MELTON _First Sportsman._ "That crock of yours seems to be a bit of a songster." _Second Sportsman._ "Yes, he has always been like that since I lent him to a well-known English tenor." _First Sportsman_ (_drily_). "You should have taken him in exchange." * * * * * [Illustration: A NICE BEGINNING. The above is not a French bull-fight, but merely the unpleasant adventure Mr. Jopling experienced on our opening day, when a skittish Alderney crossed him at the first fence.] * * * * * [Illustration: 'ARRY ON 'ORSEBACK _'Arry_ (_in extremities_). "Well, gi' _me_ a _bike_!"] * * * * * [Illustration: CONVENIENCE OF A LIGHT-WEIGHT GROOM _Miss Ethel._ "Now, sit tight this time, Charles. How could you be so stupid as to let him go?"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Voice from the ditch._ "Don't jump here!" _Irish Huntsman._ "And what would ye be after down there? Wather-cresses?"] * * * * * RATHER "Is fox-hunting dangerous?" asks one of our daily papers. A fox informs us that it has its risks. * * * * * [Illustration: _Rough Rider_ (_to old Creeper, who will not let his horse jump_). "Now then, gov'nor, if you are quite sure you can't get under it, perhaps you'll let me 'ave a turn!"] * * * * * PROOF POSITIVE _Podson_ (_lately returned from abroad_). "Well, I hear you've been having a capital season, Thruster." _Thruster._ "Oh, rippin'! Why, I've had both collar-bones broken, left wrist sprained, and haven't got a sound horse left in my string!" * * * * * [Illustration: INEXPRESSIBLE _Master Jack_ (_son of M.F.H., much upset by hard weather_). "Go skating with you! Not if I know it. May be all very well for you women and those curate chaps--but we hunting men, by George!!!"] * * * * * BY THE COVERT SIDE _Fred_ (_a notorious funk_). "Bai Jove! Jack, I'm afraid I've lost my nerve this season!" _Jack._ "Have you? Doosid sorry for the poor beggar who finds it!" * * * * * [Illustration: _Elderly Sportsman._ "I wonder they don't have that place stopped. Why, I remember running a fox to ground there twenty years ago! Don't you?"] * * * * * [Illustration: THEORY AND PRACTICE; OR, WHY THE ENGAGEMENT WAS BROKEN OFF _Lady Di_ (_to Jack, whose vows of devotion have been interrupted by a fox being hollered away_). "Oh, Jack, my hair's coming down! Do stop and hold my horse. I won't be five minutes."] * * * * * [Illustration: AWFUL RESULT OF THE WAR! _A Dream of Mr. Punch's Sporting Correspondent_ ["Mr. Arthur Wilson, Master of the Holderness Hunt, has received an intimation from the War Office that, in consequence of the war with the Transvaal, ten of his horses will be required."--_Daily Paper._] ] * * * * * [Illustration: "NO FOLLOWERS ALLOWED"] * * * * * [Illustration: ROBBERY WITH VIOLENCE _Lady_ (_who has just jumped on fallen Sportsman_). "I'm awfully sorry! I hope we didn't hurt you?" _Fallen Sportsman._ "Oh, I'm all right, thanks. But--er--do you mind leaving me my hat?"] * * * * * IN THE MIDLANDS _Belated Hunting Man_ (_to Native_). "Can you kindly point out the way to the Fox and Cock Inn?" _Native._ "D'ye mean the Barber's Arms?" _B. H. M._ "No, the Fox and Cock!" _Native._ "Well, that's what we call the Barber's Arms." _B. H. M._ "Why so?" _Native_ (_with a hoarse laugh_). "Well, ain't the Fox and Cock the same as the Brush and Comb?" [_Vanishes into the gloaming, leaving the B. H. M. muttering those words which are not associated with benediction, while he wearily passes on his way._ * * * * * APPROPRIATE TO THE WINTER SEASON For sportsmen, the old song long ago popular, entitled "_There's a Good Time Coming, Boys_," if sung by a M.F.H. with a bad cold, as thus: "_There's a Good Tibe Cubbing, Boys!_" * * * * * [Illustration: Mr. Briggs's hunting cap comes home, but that is really a thing Mrs. Briggs _can_ not, and _will_ not put up with!] * * * * * [Illustration: Mr. Briggs goes out with the Brighton Harriers. He has a capital day. The only drawback is, that he is obliged to lead his horse _up_ hill to ease him--] * * * [Illustration: and _down_ hill because he is afraid of going over his head--so that he doesn't get quite so much horse exercise as he could wish!] * * * * * AT THE HUNT BALL (_The Sad Complaint of a Man in Black_) O MOLLY, dear, my head, I fear, is going round and round, Your cousin isn't in the hunt, when hunting men abound; A waltz for me no more you'll keep, the girls appear to think There's a law been made in favour of the wearing of the pink. Sure I met you in the passage, and I took you by the hand, And says I, "How many dances, Molly, darlint, will ye stand?" But your card was full, you said it with a most owdacious wink, And I'm "hanging" all your partners for the wearing of the pink! You'd a waltz for Charlie Thruster, but you'd divil a one for me, Though he dances like a steam-engine, as all the world may see; 'Tis an illigant divarsion to observe the crowd divide, As he plunges down the ball-room, taking couples in his stride. 'Tis a cropper you'll be coming, but you know your business best, Still, it's bad to see you romping round with Charlie and the rest; Now you're dancing with Lord Arthur--sure, he's had enough to dhrink-- And I'm "hanging" all your partners for the wearing of the pink! Your cruelty ashamed you'll be someday to call to mind, You'll be glad to ask my pardon, then, for being so unkind, The hunting men are first, to-night--well, let them have their whack-- You'll be glad to dance with me, someday--when all the coats are black! But, since pink's the only colour now that fills your pretty head, Bedad, I'll have some supper, and then vanish home to bed. 'Tis the most distressful ball-room I was ever in, I think, And I'm "hanging" all your partners for the wearing of the pink! * * * * * [Illustration: MR. BRIGGS HAS ANOTHER DAY WITH THE HOUNDS Mr. Briggs can't bear flying leaps, so he makes for a gap--which is immediately filled by a frantic Protectionist, who is vowing that he will pitchfork Mr. B. if he comes "galloperravering" over his fences--danged if he doant!] * * * * * [Illustration: A DOUBTFUL INFORMANT _Miss Connie_ (_to Gent in brook_). "Could you tell me if there is a bridge anywhere handy?"] * * * * * [Illustration: NOT TO BE BEATEN _Cissy._ "Why should they call the hare's tail the scut?" _Bobby_ (_with a reputation as an authority to keep up_). "Oh--er--why you see--oh, of course, because the hare scuttles, you know, when she is hunted."] * * * * * WHY HE WAITED "What's the matter with Jack's new horse? He won't start." "Don't know; but they say he's been in an omnibus. Perhaps he's waiting for the bell!" * * * * * [Illustration: THE PLEASURES OF HUNTING To get a toss in a snowdrift, and, while lying half-smothered, to be sworn at for not shouting to warn the man following you.] * * * * * SO CONSOLING _Lady_ (_whose mare has just kicked a member of the Hunt, who was following too closely_). "Oh, I'm so sorry! I do hope it didn't hurt you! She's such a gentle thing, and could only have done it in the merest play, you know." * * * * * [Illustration: POSITIVELY OSTENTATIOUS _Mr. Phunkstick_ (_quite put out_). "Talk about agricultural depression, indeed! Don't believe in it! Never saw fences kept in such disgustingly good order in my life!"] * * * * * IRISH HUNTING TIPPLE _Englishman_ (_having partaken of his friend's flask, feels as if he had swallowed melted lead_). "Terribly strong! Pure whiskey, is it not?" _Irishman._ "Faith! not at all! It's greatly diluted with gin!" * * * * * [Illustration: IN A SHOOTING COUNTRY _Railway Porter_ (_who has been helping lady to mount_). "I hope you'll 'ave a good day, ma'am." _Lady Diana._ "I just hope we'll find a fox." _Porter_ (_innocently_). "Oh, that's all right, ma'am. The fox came down by the last train!"] * * * * * [Illustration: INSULT TO INJURY _Fitz-Noodle's Harriers, after a capital run, have killed--a fox!_ _Incensed local M.F.H._ "Confound it, sir, you have killed one of my foxes!" _F. N._ "It's all right, old chap! You may kill one of my hares!"] * * * * * HUNTING SONG (_To be sung when the Hounds meet at Colney Hatch or Hanwell_) Tantivy! Anchovy! Tantara! The moon is up, the moon is up, The larks begin to fly, And like a scarlet buttercup Aurora gilds the sky. Then let us all a-hunting go, Come, sound the gay French horn, And chase the spiders to and fro, Amid the standing corn. Tantivy! Anchovy! Tantara! * * * * * UNCOMMONLY KEEN "Why, where's the horse, Miss Kitty? By Jove, you're wet through! What has happened?" "Oh, the stupid utterly refused to take that brook, so I left him and swam it. I couldn't miss the end of this beautiful thing!" * * * * * [Illustration: IN A BLIND DITCH _Sportsman_ (_to friend, whom he has mounted on a raw four-year-old for "a quiet morning's outing"_). "Bravo, Jack! Well done! That's just what the clumsy beggar wanted. Teach him to look where he's going!"] * * * * * [Illustration: DRY HUMOUR "Be'n't ye comin' over for 'im, mister?"] * * * * * [Illustration: WIREPROOF Sir Harry Hardman, mounted on "Behemoth," created rather a stir at the meet. He said he didn't care a hang for the barbed or any other kind of wire.] * * * * * [Illustration: A SKETCH FROM THE MIDLANDS "Hulloa, old chap! Not hurt, I hope?" "Oh, no, no! Just got off to have a look at the view."] * * * * * [Illustration: _Whip._ "Here, here! Hold hard! Come back!" _Tommy_ (_home for the holidays_). "No jolly fear! You want to get first start!"] * * * * * "BUSINESS FIRST" _Favourite Son of M.F.H._ (_to old huntsman_). "No, Smith, you won't see much more of me for the rest of the season; if at all." _Smith_ (_with some concern_). "Indeed, sir! 'Ow's that?" _Son of M.F.H._ "Well, you see, I'm reading hard." _Smith_ (_interrogatively_). "Readin' 'ard, sir?" _Son of M.F.H._ "Yes, I'm reading Law." _Smith._ "Well, I likes to read a bit o' them perlice reports myself, sir, now an' then; but I don't allow 'em to hinterfere with a honest day's 'untin'." * * * * * AN OMISSION BEST OMITTED _Brown_ (_on foot_). "Do you know what the total is for the season?" _Simkins_ (_somewhat new to country life_). "Fifteen pairs of foxes, the huntsman says. But he seems to have kept no count of rabbits or 'ares, and I know they've killed and eaten a lot of those!" * * * * * [Illustration: PUTTING IT NICELY _Young Lady_ (_politely, to old Gentleman who is fiddling with gap_). "I don't wish to hurry you, sir, but when you have quite finished your game of spilikins I should like to come!"] * * * * * [Illustration: TERPSICHOREAN _Sportsman_ (_to Dancing Man, who has accepted a mount_). "Hold on tight, sir, and she'll _waltz_ over with you."] * * * * * [Illustration: _Benevolent Stranger._ "Allow me, sir, to offer you a drink!" _Unfortunate Sportsman_ (_just out of brook_). "Thanks; but I've had a drop too much already!"] * * * * * [Illustration: THE MAGIC WORD _Huntsman_ (_having run a fox to ground, to yokel_). "Run away down and get some o' your fellows to come up with spades, will ye? Tell 'em we're after hidden treasure!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A CAPITAL DODGE Among his native banks Old Poddles takes a lot of beating. He says there's nothing easier when you know how to negotiate 'em.] * * * * * HUNTING EXTRAORDINARY Jobson, who edits a cheerful little weekly, said to me the other day: "You hunt, don't you?" I looked at him knowingly. Jobson interpreted my smile according to his preconceived idea. "I thought so," he continued. "Well, you might do me a bright little article--about half a column, you know--on hunting, will you?" Why should I hesitate? Jobson is safe for cash; and he had not asked me to give my own experiences of the hunting field. I replied warily, "I fancy I know the sort of thing you want." "Good," he said, and before we could arrive at any detailed explanation he had banged the door and dashed downstairs, jumped into his hansom and was off. This was the article:- THOUGHTS ON HUNTING. It is hardly possible to overrate the value of hunting as a National sport. Steeplechasing is a Grand-National sport, but it is the sport of the rich, whereas hunting is not. By judiciously dodging the Hunt Secretary, you can, in fact, hunt for nothing. Of course, people will come at me open-mouthed for this assertion, and say, "How about the keep of your horses?" To which I reply, "If you keep a carriage, hunt the carriage horse; if you don't, borrow a friend's horse for a long ride in the country, and accidentally meet the hounds." To proceed. This has been a season of poor scent. Of course, the horses of the present day have deteriorated as line hunters: they possess not the keen sense of smell which their grandsires had. But despite this the sport goes gaily on. There are plenty of foxes--but we cannot agree with the popular idea of feeding them on poultry. And yet, in every hunt, we see hunters subscribing to poultry funds. This is not as it should be: Spott's meat biscuit would be much better for foxes' food. But these be details: let us hie forrard and listen to the cheery voice of sly Reynard as he is winded from his earth. The huntsman blows his horn, and soon the welkin rings with a chorus of brass instruments; the tufters dash into covert, and anon the cheerful note of _Ponto_ or _Gripper_ gives warning that a warrantable fox is on foot--well, of course, he couldn't be on horseback, but this is merely a venatorial _façon de parler_. Away go the huntsmen, showing marvellous dexterity in cracking their whips and blowing their horns at the same moment. Last of all come the hounds, trailing after their masters--ah, good dogs, you cannot hope to keep up very far with the swifter-footed horses! Nevertheless, they strain at their leashes and struggle for a better place at the horses' heels. "Hike forrard! tally ho! whoo-hoop!" They swoop over the fields like a charge of cavalry. But after several hours' hard running a check is at hand: the fox falters, then struggles on again, its tail waving over its head. As its pursuers approach, it rushes up a tree to sit on the topmost branch and crack nuts. The panting horses arrive--some with their riders still in the saddle, though many, alas! have fallen by the wayside. Next come the hounds, at a long interval--poor _Fido_, poor _Vic_, poor _Snap_! you have done your best to keep up, but the horses have out-distanced you! The whipper-in immediately climbs the tree in which the little red-brown animal still peacefully cracks its nuts, its pretty tail curled well over its head. Its would-be captor carries a revolving wire cage, and, by sleight-of-hand movement, manages to get the quarry securely into it. Then he descends, places the cage in a cart and it is driven home. The "mort" is sounded by four green velvet-coated huntsmen, with horns wound round their bodies; a beautiful brush presented to the lady who was first up at the "take"; and then the field slowly disperse. Tally Ho-Yoicks! all is over for the day. * * * * * [Illustration: MANNERS IN THE FIELD Always be prepared to give the lead to a lady, even at some little personal inconvenience.] * * * * * [Illustration: THE PLEASURES OF HUNTING Having been cannoned and nearly brought down, to be asked if you are trying the American seat.] * * * * * [Illustration: HUNTING SKETCH The Cast Shoe, or Late for the Meat.] * * * * * [Illustration: A KINDLY VIEW OF IT _First Rustic_ (_to Second Ditto_). "Oh, I say! Ain't he fond of his horse!"] * * * * * [Illustration: _M.F.H._ "Hold hard! Hold hard, please!! Where _are_ you going with that brute?" _Diana_ (_plaintively_). "I wish I knew!"] * * * * * THE LAST DAY OF HUNTING (_Stanzas for the First of April_) Right day to bid a long farewell To the field's gladsome glee; To hang the crop upon its peg, The saddle on its tree. All Fools' the day, all Fools' the deed, That hunting's end doth bring-- With all those stinking violets, And humbug of the Spring! Good-bye to pig-skin and to pink, Good-bye to hound and horse! The whimpering music sudden heard From cover-copse and gorse; The feathering stems, the sweeping ears, The heads to scent laid low, The find, the burst, the "Gone-away!" The rattling "Tally-ho!" My horses may eat off their heads, My huntsman eat his heart; My hounds may dream of kills and runs In which they've borne their part, Until the season's bore is done, And Parliament set free, And cub-hunting comes back again To make a man of me! * * * * * [Illustration: "A-HUNTING WE WILL GO!" _Lady._ "You're dropping your fish!" _Irish Fish Hawker_ (_riding hard_). "Och, bad luck to thim! Niver moind. Sure we're kapin' up wid the gentry!"] * * * * * [Illustration: JUMPING POWDER (_Mr. Twentystun having a nip on his way to covert_) _Small Boy._ "Oh my, Billy, 'ere's a heighty-ton gun a chargin' of 'isself afore goin' into haction!"] * * * * * [Illustration: DRAWN BLANK _Huntsman._ "How is it you never have any foxes here now?" _Keeper_ (_who has orders to shoot them_). "Pheasants have eat 'em all!"] * * * * * THE ADVANTAGE OF EDUCATION _M.F.H._ (_who has had occasion to reprimand hard-riding Stranger_). "I'm afraid I used rather strong language to you just now." _Stranger._ "Strong language? A mere _twitter_, sir. You should hear _our_ Master!" * * * * * [Illustration: _Irate Non-sporting Farmer._ "Hi! you there! What the Duce do you mean by riding over my wheat!" _'Arry._ "'Ere, I say! What are yer givin' us? _Wheat!_ Why, it's only bloomin' _mud!_"] * * * * * "FOOT AND MOUTH" TROUBLE A valuable hunter, belonging to Mr. Durlacher, got its hind foot securely fixed in its mouth one day last week, and a veterinary surgeon had to be summoned to its assistance. This recalls the ancient Irish legend of the man who never opened his mouth without putting his foot into it. But that, of course, was a bull. * * * * * DECIDEDLY NOT _Nervous Visitor_ (_pulling up at stiff-looking fence_). "Are you going to take this hedge, sir?" _Sportsman._ "No. It can stop where it is, as far as I'm concerned." * * * * * UNGRATEFUL _The Pride of the Hunt_ (_to Smith, who, for the last ten minutes, has been gallantly struggling with obstinate gate_). "Mr. Smith, if you really _can't_ open that gate, perhaps you will kindly move out of the way, and allow me to _jump_ it!" * * * * * [Illustration: APT _Brown_ (_helping lady out of water_). "'Pon my word, Miss Smith, you remind me exactly of What's-her-name rising from the What-you-call!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A CHECK _M.F.H._ (_riding up to old Rustic, with the intention of asking him if he has seen the lost fox_). "How long have you been working here, master?" _Old Rustic_ (_not seeing the point_). "Nigh upon sixty year, mister!"] * * * * * [Illustration: "WHAT'S IN A NAME?" _Whip._ "_Wisdom!_ Get away there!! _Wisdom!! Wisdom!!!_ Ugh!--you always were the biggest fool in the pack!"] * * * * * [Illustration: SOMETHING THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY _Mrs. Brown_ (_being helped out of a brook by the gallant Captain, who has also succeeded in catching her horse_). "Oh, Captain Robinson! thank you _so_ much!" _Gallant, but somewhat flurried, Captain._ "Not at all--don't mention it." (_Wishing to add something excessively polite and appropriate._) "Only hope I may soon have another opportunity of doing the same again for you."] * * * * * REASSURING _Criticising friend_ (_to nervous man on new horse_). "Oh! now I recollect that mare. Smashem bought her of Crashem last season, and she broke a collar-bone for each of them." * * * * * [Illustration: "THE TIP OF THE MORNING TO YOU!" _First Whip thanks him, and hums to himself,_ "When other tips, and t'other parts, Then he remembers _me!_"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Giles_ (_indicating Sportsman on excitable horse, waiting his turn_). "Bless us all, Tumas, if that un beant a goin' to try it back'ards!"] * * * * * [Illustration: WITH THE HARDUP HARRIERS _Dismounted Huntsman_ (_to his mount_). "Whoa, you old brute! To think I went and spared yer from the biler only last week! You hungrateful old 'idebound 'umbug!"] * * * * * 'INTS ON 'UNTING, BY 'ARRY [Illustration: (1) ON CLOTHES.--"Why not employ local talent? Saves half the money, and no one can tell the difference."] [Illustration: (2) If the thong of your whip gets under your horse's tail, just try to pull it out!] [Illustration: (3) Don't buy a horse because he is described as being "Well known with the ---- Hounds." It might be true.] [Illustration: (4) If at a meet your horse should get a bit out of hand, just run him up against some one.] [Illustration: (5) If opening a gate for the huntsman, don't fall into the middle of the pack!] [Illustration: (6) Sit well back at your fences!] [Illustration: (7) Look before you leap.] [Illustration: (8) If you lose your horse, just tell the huntsman to catch it for you.] * * * * * EXCUSABLE _M.F.H._ (_justly irate, having himself come carefully round edge of seed-field_). "Blank it all, Rogerson, what's the good o' me trying to keep the field off seeds, and a fellow like you coming slap across 'em?" _Hard-Riding Farmer._ "It's all right. They're my own! Ar've just come ower my neighbour's wheat, and ar couldn't for vary sham(e) miss my own seeads!" * * * * * ANXIOUS TO SELL _Dealer_ (_to Hunting Man, whose mount has NOT answered expectations_). "How much do you want for that nag o' yours, sir?" _Hunting Man._ "Well, I'll take a hundred guineas." _Dealer._ "Make it _shillings_." _H. M._ (_delighted_). "He's yours!" * * * * * [Illustration: NOT A LADIES' DAY _Miss Scramble._ "Now, Charles, give me one more long hair-pin, and I shall do."] * * * * * CASUAL _Owner of let-out hunters_ (_to customer just returned from day's sport_). "Are you aware, sir, that ain't my 'orse?" _Sportsman._ "Not yours! Then, by Jove, I _did_ collar the wrong gee during that scrimmage at the brook!" * * * * * AT OUR OPENING MEET _Stranger from over the water._ "I guess you've a mighty smart bunch of dogs there, m'lord!" _Noble but crusty M.F.H._ "Then you guess wrong, sir. _This is a pack of hounds!_" * * * * * MUST BE HUNGRY "Wish you'd feed your horse before he comes out." "Eh--why--hang it!--what do you mean?" "He's always trying to eat my boots. He evidently thinks there's some chance of getting at a little corn!" * * * * * [Illustration: THE RETORT COURTEOUS (_A Reminiscence of the past Harrier Season_) _Major Topknot, M.H._ (_to butcher's boy_). "Hi! Hulloah! Have you seen my hare?" _Butcher's Boy._ "Ga-a-rn! 'Ave you seen my whiskers?"] * * * * * DISINTERESTED KINDNESS _Sportsman_ (_just come to grief, to Kindhearted Stranger who has captured horse_). "I say, I'm awfully obliged to you! I can get on all right, so please don't wait!" _Kindhearted Stranger._ "Oh, I'd rather, thanks! I want you to flatten the next fence for me!" * * * * * ENCOURAGING _Nervous Man_ (_who hires his hunters_). "Know anything about this mare? Ringbone tells me she's as clever as a man!" _Friend._ "Clever as a man? Clever as a woman more like it! Seen her play some fine old games with two or three fellows, I can tell you!" * * * * * [Illustration: NUNC AUT NUNQUAM _Voice from bottom of ditch._ "Hold hard a minute! My money has slipped out of my pockets, and it's all down here somewhere!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A REFORMED CHARACTER _John._ "Goin' to give up 'untin'! Deary! deary! An' 'ow's that, missie?" _Little Miss Di._ "Well, you see, John, I find my cousin Charlie, who is going to be a curate, does not approve of hunting women, so I intend to be a district visitor instead!"] * * * * * [Illustration: MOTTOES; OR, "WHO'S WHO?" Mrs. Prettyphat. Family Motto--"_Medici jussu_."] * * * * * SOMETHING LIKE A CHARACTER _Huntsman_ (_on being introduced to future wife of M.F.H._). "Proud to make your acquaintance, miss! Known the Capting, miss, for nigh on ten seasons, and never saw 'im turn 'is 'ead from hanything as was jumpable! Knows a 'oss and knows a 'ound! Can ride one and 'unt t'other; and if that ain't as much as can be looked for in a 'usband, miss, why, I'll be jiggered!" * * * * * A LIBERAL ALLOWANCE _Huntsman_ (_who has just drawn Mr. Van Wyck's coverts blank_). "Rather short of cubs, I'm afraid, sir!" _Mr. Van Wyck_ (_who has very recently acquired his country seat_). "Most extraordinary! Can't understand it at all! Why, I told my keeper to order a dozen only last week!" * * * * * [Illustration: STORIES WITHOUT WORDS How "the second horseman" went home.] * * * * * [Illustration: Scene--_As above._ Time--_Mid-day._ Sport--_None up to now._ _Stout Party_ (_about to leave_). "Most extr'ordinary thing. Whenever I go home, they always have a rattling good run." _Candid Friend._ "Then, for goodness' sake, _go home at once!_"] * * * * * [Illustration: MOST EXTRAORDINARY _Dismounted Sportsman._ "Now, how the deuce did my hat manage to get up there?"] * * * * * STRAIGHT _Huntsman_ (_to Boy, who is riding his second horse_). "Hi, there! What the doose are yer doin' of with that second 'oss?" _Boy_ (_Irish, and only just come to the Hunt stables from a Racing Establishment_). "Arrah thin, if oi roides oi roides to win! and divil a second is he goin' to be at all, at all!!" * * * * * FORBEARANCE _Member of Hunt_ (_to Farmer_). "I wouldn't ride over those seeds if I were you. They belong to a disagreeable sort of fellow, who might make a fuss about it." _Farmer._ "Well, sir, as him's me, he won't say nothing about it to-day." * * * * * [Illustration: (_Extract from a letter received by Mr. Shootall on the morning when hounds were expected to draw his covers_) _Leadenhall Market, Thursday._ Sir,--Your esteemed order to hand. We regret that we are quite out of foxes at present; but, as you mentioned they were for children's pets, we thought guinea pigs might do instead, so are sending half a dozen to-day. Hoping, &c., &c.] * * * * * TOO MUCH (_Pity the Sorrows of a poor Hunting Man!_) _Sportsman_ (_suffering from intense aberration of mind in consequence of the weather, in reply to wife of his bosom_). "Put out? Why, o' course I'm put out. Been just through the village, and hang me if at least half a dozen fools haven't told me that it's nice seasonable weather!" * * * * * AT THE HUNT BALL _Mr. Hardhit._ "Don't you think, Miss Highflier, that men look much better in pink--less like waiters?" _Miss Highflier._ "Yes, but more like ringmasters--eh?" [_Hardhit isn't a bit offended, but seizes the opportunity._ * * * * * [Illustration: HINTS TO BEGINNERS In mounting your horse, always stand facing his tail.] * * * * * [Illustration: The patent pneumatic tennis-ball hunting costume. Falling a pleasure.] * * * * * [Illustration: _Second Whip._ "G-aw-ne away!" _Middle-aged Diana._ "Go on away, indeed! Impertinence! I'll go just when I'm ready!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A CASE OF REAL DISTRESS _Fox-hunter._ "Here's a bore, Jack! The ground is half a foot thick with snow, and it's freezing like mad!"] * * * * * THE HUNTSMAN'S POINT OF VIEW. One of the best runs of the season. Good scent all the way. Sir Heavistone Stogdon unfortunately fell at a stiff bank and broke his collar-bone. At the last moment, I regret to say, the fox got away. * * * * * [Illustration: A FOX HUNT (_After a tapestry_) * * * * * [Illustration: BUGGLES WITH THE DEVON AND SOMERSET He encounters a "coomb," and wonders if it is soft at the bottom.] * * * * * [Illustration: WITH THE DEVON AND SOMERSET _Sportsman_ (_from the bog_). "Confound you, didn't you say there was a sound bottom here?" _Shepherd._ "Zo there be, maister; but thou 'aven't got down to un yet!"] * * * * * [Illustration: BUGGLES WITH THE DEVON AND SOMERSET How he found a "Warrantable Deer."] * * * * * [Illustration: BUGGLES WITH THE DEVON AND SOMERSET _In_ Devonshire.] * * * * * FOOLS AND THEIR MONEY-- _Jones_ (_who has been having a fair bucketing for the last half-hour, as he passes friend, in his mad career_). "I'd give a fiver to get off this brute!" _Friend_ (_brutal_). "Don't chuck your money away, old chap! You'll be off for less than that!" * * * * * WITH THE QUEEN'S _Leading Sportsman._ "Hold ha--rd! Here's some more of that confounded barbed wire! Dashed if I don't think this country is mainly inhabited by retired fishing-tackle makers!" [_Makes for nearest gate, followed by sympathetic field._ * * * * * HIS OPINION _Jenkinson_ (_to M.F.H., who dislikes being bothered_). "What do you think of this horse?" (_No answer._) "Bred him myself, you know!" _M.F.H._ (_looking at horse out of corner of his eye_). "Umph! I thought you couldn't have been such a silly idiot as to have _bought_ him!" * * * * * [Illustration: THE VOICE OF SPRING _Bibulous Binks._ "Gad, it's freezing again!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A BLANK--BLANK--DAY] * * * * * [Illustration: WHOSE FAULT? "He _can_ jump, but he _won't!_"] * * * * * [Illustration: A VIEW HALLOO (_Hounds at fault_) _Whip_ (_bustling up to young Hodge, who has just begun to wave his cap and sing out lustily_). "Now then, where is he?" _Young H._ "Yonder, sir! Acomin' across yonder!" _Whip._ "Get out, why there ain't no fox there stoopid!" _Young H._ "No, sir; but there be our Billy on his jackass!"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Miss Nelly_ (_to her Slave, in the middle of the best thing of the Season_). "Oh, Mr. Rowel, do you mind going back? I dropped my whip at the last fence!"] * * * * * SEVERE _M.F.H._ (_to Youth from neighbouring Hunt, who has been making himself very objectionable_). "Now, look here, young man. I go cub-hunting for the purpose of educating _my own_ puppies. As you belong to another pack, I'll thank you to take yourself home!" * * * * * [Illustration: HUNTING MEMORANDUM Appearance of things in general to a gentleman who has just turned a complete somersault! _* &c., &c., represent sparks of divers beautiful colours._] * * * * * [Illustration: "LE SPORTMAN" "Hi!! Hi!! Stop ze chasse! I tomble--I faloff! _Stop ze fox!_"] * * * * * [Illustration: "CUBBING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS" _Half-awakened un-enthusiastic Sportsman_ (_who wished to go out cub-hunting, but has entirely changed his mind, drowsily addressing rather astonished burglar_). "Awright, old boy. Can't come with you this morning. Too sleepy." [_Turns round and resumes deep sleep where he left off._ ] * * * * * [Illustration: A BROKEN PLEDGE _Sportsman on bank_ (_to Friend in brook_). "Hallo, Thompson, is that you? Why, I thought you had joined the 'No Drinks in between Meals' Party!"] * * * * * "IN THE DIM AND DISTANT FUTURE" _First Sportsman_ (_cantering along easily_). "I say, we shall see you at dinner on the nineteenth, shan't we?" _Second Ditto_ (_whose horse is very fresh, and bolting with him_). "If the beast goes on like this--hanged if you'll ever see me again." * * * * * [Illustration: THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET _Ex-M.F.H._ (_eighty-nine and paralytic_). "Fora-a-d! Fora-a-d! Fora-a-a-d!"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Huntsman_ (_making a cast for the line of the fox, near a railway_). "Hold hard, please! Don't ride over the line!" _Would-be Thrusters._ "Oh, no, we won't. There's a bridge farther on!"] * * * * * [Illustration: "RANK BLASPHEMY" _Squire Oldboy, M.H._ (_enjoying a long and very slow hunt_). "There she goes! Afraid it's a new hare though." _Bored Sportsman._ "How lucky! The other must be getting doosid old."] * * * * * [Illustration: A CHECK _Huntsman._ "Seen the fox, my boy?" _Boy._ "No, I ain't!" _Huntsman._ "Then, what are you hollarin' for?" _Boy_ (_who has been scaring rooks_). "'Cos I'm paid for it!"] * * * * * [Illustration: EASIER SAID THAN DONE _Sixteen-stone Sportsman (who has been nearly put down from a "rotten" landing, to little Bricks, 9st. 2lb.)_: "Do you mind putting me back in the saddle, sir?"] * * * * * [Illustration: THE TROUBLES OF AN M.F.H. _M.F.H._ (_to stranger, who is violently gesticulating to hounds_). "When you have done _feeding your chickens_, sir, perhaps you will allow me to hunt my hounds!"] * * * * * [Illustration: Nobody was near hounds in the big wood when they pulled down the cub except Mr. Tinkler and his inamorata. He rashly volunteers to secure the brush for her!] * * * * * [Illustration: "Morning, Tom. What a beastly day!" "It ain't a day, sir. I call it an interval between two bloomin' nights!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A BAD LOOK-OUT _Sportsman_ (_to Friend whom he has mounted_). "For goodness' sake, old chap, don't let her put you down! She's certain to savage you!"] * * * * * [Illustration: ECHOES OF THE CHASE _Huntsman_ (_who has been having a very bad ride_). "Either master wants some new 'orses or a new 'untsman!"] * * * * * [Illustration: HINTS ON HUNTING Always see that your bridle reins are sound. There are times when they have a considerable strain on 'em!] * * * * * [Illustration: SO FAR, NO FARTHER Extraordinary position assumed by Mr. Snoodle on the sudden and unexpected refusal of his horse.] * * * * * [Illustration: HARD LUCK _Small Child_ (_to Mr. Sparkin, who had come out at an unusually early hour in order to meet his inamorata at the guide-post, and pilot her out cub-hunting_). "I was to tell you she has such a bad cold she couldn't come. But I'm going with you instead, if you promise to take care of me. I'm her cousin, you know!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A PSEUDO-THRUSTER _Farmer_ (_to Sportsman, returning from the chase_). "Beg pardon, sir, but ain't you the gent that broke down that there gate of mine this morning?" _Mr. Noodel_ (_who never by any chance jumps anything--frightfully pleased_). "Er--did I? Well, how much is the damage?"] * * * * * [Illustration: THE WATER TEST _Whip_ (_bringing on tail hounds, in the rear of the field_). "Hulloah! Who've you got there?" _Runner_ (_who has just assisted sportsman out of a muddy ditch_). "Dunno. Can't tell till we've washed 'im down a bit!"] * * * * * [Illustration: MOST UNFORTUNATE Horrible catastrophe which happened to Captain Fussey (our ladies' man) on his arrival at the opening meet. New coat, new boots, new horse, new everything! Hard luck!] * * * * * [Illustration: A SEVERE TEST _Miss Sally_ (_who has just taken off her mackintosh--to ardent admirer_). "Look! they're away! Do just stuff this thing into your pocket. I'm sure I shan't want it again!"] * * * * * [Illustration: A STUDY IN EXPRESSION _Irate M.F.H._ (_who has had half an hour in the big gorse trying to get a faint-hearted fox away, galloping to "holloa" on the far side of covert_). _"Confound you and your pony, sir! Get out of my way!"_ [_Binks, who has been trying to keep out of people's way all day, thinks he can quite understand the feelings of the hunted fox._ ] * * * * * OUR HUNT "POINT TO POINT" Last week our Point to Point steeplechase came off. So did several of the riders: this merely _par parenthèse_. I offered to mark out the course, and, as I intended to escape the dread ordeal of riding by scratching my horse at the last moment, I thought it would be great fun to choose a very stiff, not to say bloodthirsty, line. Awful grumbling on the part of those unhappy ones who were to ride. Just as the bell rang for saddling, Captain Sproozer, ready dressed for the fray, came up to me with very long face, and said, "Beastly line this, you know, Phunker. I call it much too stiff." I smiled in pitying and superior manner. "Think so, my dear Sproozer? My horse can't run, worse luck, but I only wish _I_ were going to have the gallop over it." "So you shall, then!" cried a rasping voice, suddenly, from behind me. Sir Hercules Blizzard was the speaker, an awful man with an awful temper. "So you shall. My idiot of a jockey broke his collar-bone trying to jump one of the fences on this confounded course of yours to-day, so, as I am without a rider, you shall ride my mare Dinah." Swallowed lump in my throat as I thanked him for his offer, but thought I had better decline, as I didn't know the mare, and besides that, I---- "Oh! all right, I know what you are going to say: that you're not much good on a horse"--(nothing of the sort! I was not going to say any such thing, confound the man!) "Of course, I know all that, and that you're not much of a rider; but I can't help myself now. It's too late to get a decent horseman, so I shall have to make shift with you." Deuced condescending of him. I made a feeble effort to escape, and would cheerfully have paid a hundred pounds for the chance of doing so. Phil Poundaway, great friend of mine, came up and said (sympathetically, as I thought at first), "I should think you'd prefer to get off it, wouldn't you, Phunker?" Thought he would volunteer in my place, so was perfectly frank with him. "My dear Phil, I'd give a hundred to get off----" "Ah! you will, I expect, at the first fence, without paying the money!" he grinned, as he turned away. Murder was in my heart at that moment. I got on Dinah, and, feeling like death, rode down to the starting-post. Thoughts of a misspent youth, of home and friends and things, came o'er me. I seemed once more to see the little rose-covered porch, the---- "What on earth are you mooning about?" thundered the Blizzardian voice in my ear. "Take hold of her head tighter than that, or you'll be off!" The next moment the starter yelled "Go!" and away, like a whirlwind, we sped across the first field, towards a huge, thick blackthorn fence, the one I had thought to see such fun with. Fun! I never felt less funny in my life, as we approached it at the rate of two thousand miles an hour! The mare jumped high, but I jumped much higher, and seemed for a brief moment to be soaring through the blue empyrean. Somehow, the mare managed to evade me on the return journey earthwards, and, instead of alighting on the saddle, I found myself "sitting on the floor." A howl--it might have been of sympathy, but it didn't sound quite like that--arose from the crowd, and then I thought that I would go home on foot, instead of returning to explain matters to Sir Hercules. As a matter of fact, I don't much care for associating with old Blizzard, at all events, not just now. * * * * * [Illustration: AMENITIES OF SPORT _Huntsman_ (_to Whip, sent forward for a view_). "Haven't ye seen him, Tom?" _Whip._ "No, sir." _Huntsman._ "If he'd been in a pint pot, ye jolly soon would!"] * * * * * [Illustration: HIS LITTLE DODGE _First Hunting Man_ (_having observed the ticket with "K" on it in his friend's hat_). "I didn't know that old gee of yours was a kicker. He looks quiet enough." _Second Hunting Man._ "Well, he isn't really. I only wear the "K" to make people give me more room!"] * * * * * [Illustration: TRUE COURAGE _Whip._ "Hi, sir! Keep back! The fox may break covert there!" _Foreigner._ "Bah! I fear him not--your fox."] * * * * * [Illustration: THE FORCE OF HABIT _Spanner_ (_a great cyclist, whose horse has been startled by man on covert hack_). "Hi! confound you! Why the deuce don't you sound your bell!!"] * * * * * [Illustration: "THE CART WITHOUT THE HORSE" Scene--_Cub-hunting._ Time--_About one o'clock._ _Lady._ "Well, Count, what have you lost? Your lunch?" _The Count_ (_who breakfasted some time before six o'clock, a.m._). "No, no! Donner und wetter! I have him, but I have lost my teeth!"] * * * * * [Illustration: HORRIBLE PREDICAMENT _Gent_ (_on mettlesome hireling_). "'Elp! 'Elp! Somebody stop 'im! 'E's going to jump, and I can't!"] * * * * * [Illustration: MOST EMBARRASSING _Lady (hiding behind bush, to Mr. Spoodle, who has captured her horse)_. "Oh, thank you so much! But I hope to goodness you have found my skirt as well!" [_Nice position for Mr. Spoodle, who is very bashful, and has seen nothing of the garment_. ] * * * * * [Illustration: "DO NOT SPEAK TO THE MAN AT THE WHEEL" _'Arry_ (_puffing a "twopenny smoke," to huntsman, making unsuccessful cast_). "Very bad scent." _Huntsman._ "Shockin'! Smells like burnin' seaweed!"] * * * * * [Illustration: OBEYING ORDERS "It's all very well for master to say 'Keep close to Miss Vera, Miles'--but I want to know 'oo's going to take Miles to the 'orsepital?"] * * * * * [Illustration: GALLANTRY REWARDED _Lady_ (_having had a fall at a brook, and come out the wrong side,--to stranger who has caught her horse_). "Oh, I'm _so_ much obliged to you! Now, do you mind just bringing him over?"] * * * * * [Illustration: JUST OFF "Ride her on the snaffle, Tom! Don't ride her on the curb!" "Hang your curb and snaffle! I've enough to do to _ride her on the saddle!_"] * * * * * [Illustration: A Suggestion: No more trouble from wire, damage to fences, etc.] * * * * * [Illustration: THE TRIALS OF AN M.F.H. _M.F.H._ (_to misguided enthusiast who has been cheering hounds on a bad scent_). "Now then! Am I going to hunt the hounds or are you?" _Enthusiast_ (_sweetly_). "Just as you please, m'lord, just as you please."] * * * * * [Illustration: OFF HIS GUARD _Farmer_ (_just coming up_). "Young gentleman riding your brown horse, my lord, had nasty accident a field or two back. Barbed wire--very ugly cuts!" _My Lord._ "Tut--tut--tut! Dear--dear--dear! Not the horse, I hope?"] * * * * * [Illustration: "BON VOYAGE!" _Mossu (shot into a nice soft loam), exultingly._ "A--ha--a! I am safe o-vère! Now it is your turn, Meester Timbre Jompre! Come on, sare!"] * * * * * [Illustration: ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE EXMOOR HUNT--NO KILL THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE _Fair Huntress._ "What a pity the hounds let that splendid stag get away, Colonel, wasn't it?" _Colonel._ "Pity! Ha, if they'd only taken my advice we should have been up with him now, instead of being miles away on the wrong track!"] * * * * * [Illustration: _Distinguished Foreigner_ (_to good Samaritan who has caught his horse_). "Merci bien, monsieur! You save me much trouble. Before, I lose my horse--I lose him altogether, and I must put him in the newspaper!"] * * * * * [Illustration: VIVE LA CHASSE! _Foreign Visitor_ (_an enthusiastic "sportsman," viewing fox attempting to break_). "A-h-h-h! Halte-la! Halte! _You shall not escape!_"] * * * * * [Illustration: RATHER TOO MUCH _Lady_ (_having just cannoned Stranger into brook_). "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry I bumped you! Would you mind going in again for my hat?"] * * * * * THE END OF THE HUNTING SEASON (_By Our Own Novice_) Good-bye to the season! E'en gluttons Have had quite enough of the game, And if we returned to our muttons, Our horses are laid up and lame. We hunted straight on through the winter, And never were stopped by the frost, As I know right well from each splinter Of bone that my poor limbs have lost. Good-bye to the season! The "croppers" I got where the fences were tall, And Oh the immaculate "toppers" That always were crushed by my fall. Don't think though that I'm so stout-hearted As e'er to jump hedges or dikes, It's simply that after we've started, My "gee" gallivants as it likes. In vain I put on natty breeches, And tops like Meltonian swell, It ends in the blessed old ditches, I know like the Clubs in Pall Mall. And when from a "gee" that's unruly I fall with a terrible jar, I know that old _Jorrocks_ spoke truly, And hunting's "the image of war." And never for me "_Fair Diana_" Shall smile as we know that she can, With looks that are sweeter than manna, On many a fortunate man. It adds to the pangs that I suffer, When thrown at a fence in her track, To hear her "Ridiculous duffer!" When jumping slap over my back. I've fractured my ulnar, I'm aching Where over my ribs my horse rolled; Egad! the "Old Berkeley" is making One man feel uncommonly old. Good-bye to the season! I'm shattered And damaged in figure and face; But thankful to find I'm not scattered In pieces all over the place! * * * * * [Illustration: HINTS TO BEGINNERS Good hands will often make the most confirmed refuser jump.] * * * * * [Illustration: TRULY DELIGHTFUL! Galloping down the side of a field covered with mole-hills, on a weak-necked horse, with a snaffle bridle, one foot out of your stirrup, and a bit of mud in your eye!] * * * * * [Illustration: SELF-PRESERVATION _Tomlin_ (_who has been mounted by friend_). "It's all very well to shout 'Loose your reins,' but what the deuce _am_ I to hang on to?"] * * * * * SEASONABLE DISH FOR A SPORTSMAN.--A plate o' _f_ox-tail soup. * * * * * THE RULE OF THE HUNTING-FIELD.--Lex Tally-ho-nis. * * * * * FASHIONABLE FOOD FOR HORSES.--Hay _à la_ mowed. * * * * * [Illustration: QUOTATIONS GONE WRONG "Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last." _Cowper._ ] * * * * * [Illustration: ALL HER PLAY _Country Gentleman_ (_to nervous man, whom he has mounted_). "By Jove, old chap, never saw the mare so fresh! Take care you ain't off!" _Nervous Man_ (_heartily_). "W--w--wish to goodness I were!"] * * * * * [Illustration: HINTS TO BEGINNERS Always let your horse see that you are his master.] * * * * * [Illustration] THE END BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 
33384	----	[Illustration: THE STORY OF A RED-DEER] THE STORY OF A RED DEER [Illustration] [Illustration] THE STORY OF A RED DEER BY THE HON. J. W. FORTESCUE London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1897 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BUNGAY. TABLE OF CONTENTS EPISTLE DEDICATORY v CHAPTER I 1 CHAPTER II 11 CHAPTER III 24 CHAPTER IV 35 CHAPTER V 47 CHAPTER VI 63 CHAPTER VII 75 CHAPTER VIII 87 CHAPTER IX 103 CHAPTER X 117 CHAPTER XI 128 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. _To_ _MR. HUGH FORTESCUE_, _Honoured Sir_, _When in the spring of this present year you asked of me that I should write you a book, I was at the first not a little troubled; for of making of many books there is no end, and of making of good books but small beginning; and albeit there be many heroes of our noble county of Devon, whose lives, if worthily written, might exceed in value all other books (saving always those that are beyond price) that might be placed in the hands of the youth thereof for instruction and example, yet for such a task I deemed myself all too poorly fitted; for if men would write books to be read of the young, they must write them, not after particular study, but from the fulness and the overflowing of their knowledge of such things as they have dwelt withal and felt and loved beyond all others._ _So at the last I bethought me that there was no book that I could more profitably write for you than the life of one of our own red deer, which, as they be of the most beautiful of all creatures to the eye, so be also the most worthy of study by the mind for their subtlety, their nobility and their wisdom. For though I would have you love the stories of great men and take delight in the reading of good books, yet I would have you take no less delight in the birds and the beasts that share with you your home, and in the observance of their goings out and their comings in, of their friends and of their enemies, of their prosperities and of their perils; whereby you will gain not only that which the great Mr. Milton (in his tract of Education) hath called the helpful experiences of hunters, fowlers and fishermen, but such a love of God's creatures as will make the world the fuller of joys for you because the fuller of friends; and this not in one wise only, for I have ever noticed that they which be fondest of dumb creatures are given to be tenderest to their fellow-men._ _So here you have the life of a wild red deer, set down with such poor skill as I possess, even as the deer have told it to me in many a long ride and many a stirring chase, and as they have told it to all others that would listen, to such great hunters of old as the noble Count Gaston de Foix and the worthy Sieur Jacques du Fouilloux, and to many friends, of whom some indeed are passed away, but many yet remain, striving ever to hear more of the same story. And if my tale be short, yet blame me not, for it is for yourself by your own learning of the deer to enlarge and to enrich it; so that when your nine years are waxed to threescore and nine, you may take down this small volume and write it anew, out of the treasures of a fuller knowledge than mine own, for the generations that shall come after you in this our ancient and well-beloved home._ _And so not doubting of your kindly acceptance hereof, I bid you heartily farewell, being always_ _Your very loving kinsman and faithful friend to serve you,_ _J. W. F._ _Castle Hill. This 26th of September, 1897._ THE STORY OF A RED-DEER CHAPTER I Once upon a time there was a little Red-Deer Calf. You know what a Red-Deer is, for you of all boys have been brought up to know, though it may be that you have never seen a calf very close to you. A very pretty little fellow he was, downy-haired and white-spotted, though as yet his legs were rather long and his ears were rather large, for he was still only a very few weeks old. But he did not think himself a baby by any means, for he was an early calf and had been born in the second week in May; and a birthday in the second week in May is the greatest event that can occur in a Red-Deer's family. The first thing that he remembered was that he found himself lying very snug and warm in a patch of fern, with the most beautiful pair of brown eyes that ever were seen gazing straight down upon him. And soon he was aware that they were the eyes of the Hind his mother, that they followed him whereever he went, and watched over him whatever he did, and that, whatever he might want, she was there to provide it for him. She always had a cosy bed ready for him in grass or fern; she washed him clean and brushed his little coat with her tongue every morning; and she taught him but two lessons--to lie as still as a mouse, and to do just as he was bid. For every morning before dawn she had to go afield to feed herself, farther than the little Calf could travel with her; and as she had no nurse to leave in charge of him, she just tucked him up as closely as she could, and told him to lie still till she came back. And like a good little fellow he obeyed her; which was well for him, for if he had taken it into his head to jump up and look about him, some evil man or beast might have seen him and made away with him; and then this story would never have been written. Always just before the sun rose she came back, and every day she seemed to love him better, and every day he felt that she was more than the whole world to him. And morning after morning up rose the blessed sun, and drove the mist away, and sent a little ray forward through the fern to kiss him and bid him good-morrow. And the mist left a drop on every blade and blossom, and said, "Good-bye, my little fellow; I shall come back again this evening;" and the drops nodded and sparkled and twinkled, and kept whispering, "Yes, coming back this evening," over and over again, till the sun said that he could stand it no longer and was obliged to dry them all up. Then rose a hum of many wings as the flies woke up, and went out for their day's work; but the breeze moved like a sentry over the bed of the little Calf and said to them, "Move on, move on; this little Calf must not be disturbed;" and they dared not disobey, for they knew that, if they did, he was certain sooner or later to send for his big brother, the Westerly Gale, who would blow them away with a vengeance. And all through the day the breeze kept singing through the graceful, yielding grass and the stubborn wiry heather; while mingled with it came snatches of a little song from the brown peat-stream in the combe below him. He could not make out much of it except these words, which came over and over again: _Mother and child come here, come here,_ _I am the friend of the Wild Red-Deer_ For some time they moved but little distant from the place where he was born, for his legs could not yet carry him very far; but as he grew stronger they wandered farther, till at last one day he found himself on high ground, and saw the world that he was to live in, his heritage of Exmoor. You know it, for you have seen it, fold upon fold of grass and heather, slashed by deep combes and merry babbling streams, and bounded on the one hand by the blue sky and on the other by the blue sea. It was all his own, for he was a wild Red-Deer. And he looked upon it with his great round eyes, and pricked his ears and tossed his little head; for the sun was shining warm above him, and the soft west wind blew fresh and untainted over the sea and flew across the moor, catching up all that was sweetest on its way from grass and gorse and heather, and bearing it straight to his nostrils. And he threw his little nose into the air and snuffed up the full, rich breeze; for no creature has a finer scent than a deer; and he felt that this was life indeed. Then they went down, leaving the song of the wind ever fainter behind them; and in its stead rose the song of the peat-stream bidding them come down to it. So they went; and there it was trickling down as clear as crystal, though as yellow as amber. There was but little water in it that fine midsummer, but it hastened on none the less over the stones in a desperate hurry, as are all Exmoor streams, to get to the sea. And it whispered its song as it went, but so low that they heard no words. They passed by a little shallow, and there the Calf saw dozens of little fry, scurrying about from stone to stone; and just below the shallow they came to a little brown, oily pool in a basin of rock. The Calf looked into it, and there he saw his own little form, and behind it his mother's sweet eyes watching over him. And then for the first time he noticed that his own coat was spotted while his mother's was red. But while he was staring at the water a fly suddenly came, and began to dance a reel over it to show what a fine fellow he was, when all of a sudden a neat little body, all brown and gold and red spots, leaped up out of the water, seized the fly in his mouth and fell back with a splash which broke the pretty picture all to pieces. He shrank back, for he was rather startled, but his mother soon comforted him. "It was only a little Trout, my dear," she said, "only a greedy little Trout." "But he was such a pretty little fellow," he said, for he had quite got over his fright; "I wish he would jump again." But the Hind looked grave. "We are never unkind to the Trout," she said, "for they belong to the peat-stream, but you must never become familiar with them. Fallow-Deer, I believe, treat them as equals," and here she looked very proud, "but we do not. They are a lazy lot of fellows whose forefathers would not take the trouble to go down to the sea, whereby they might have grown into noble fish, with a coat as bright as the moon on the water. But they would not, and so they have remained small and ugly, and they never lose their spots. You must never be rude to them, for that would be unworthy of a Red-Deer, but you must never make great friends with them. You may talk to little Salmon when we see them, for they lose their spots, but not to the Trout." For the Hind was a great lady, with much pride of race, which though it made her civil to every one, taught her to be shy of idlers and low company. "But, mother," said the poor little Calf, "_I've_ got a spotted coat." "But you will lose it, my darling," she said tenderly. "No, no, my child will be a true Red-Deer." So they left the water, and presently stopped while his mother plucked at a tuft of sweet grass among the heather; when to his astonishment a little grey ball of fur came bounding out of a hole in the ground, and another at his heels, and three more after them. And they ran round and round and played like mad things. And presently another, far bigger than they, came up slowly out of another hole, sat up on her hind-legs, pricked her ears, and began to look about her. Then catching sight of the Calf she crouched down, and began in a very shrill voice: "Why, my dear tender heart" (for she was not only a Rabbit, but a Devonshire Rabbit, and of course spoke broad Devon), "if it isn't my little maister, and her ladyship too, begging your pardon, my lady. And sweetly pretty he is, my lady; and butiful you'm looking too, in your summer coat, so glossy as a chestnut, sure enough. And dear heart alive, how he groweth. Why, 'twas but a few days agone that my Bucky saith to me--I don't rightly remember how many days agone, but I mind 'twas the very day when the old Greyhen up to Badgworthy came to ask me if I had seen her poult--for she's lost a poult, my lady, hath the poor soul, as your ladyship knoweth. Well, my Bucky saith to me, 'Bunny,' saith he, 'you may depend that young maister will grow to be so fine a stag as ever was seen on Exmoor.'" Then without pausing an instant she called out at the top of her voice to one of the little rabbits: "Flossy-a! Come back, little bittlehead, come back, or the fox will catch 'ee!" The Hind listened very graciously to this long speech, for she loved to hear good words of her Calf, and she was just a _little_ pleased to hear of her own good looks. But she could not help looking beautiful, and she looked all the more so because she very seldom thought about it. So she returned the compliment by asking after Bunny and her family. "Oh! thank you, my lady," answered Bunny, "I reckon we'm well. There han't been no man this way this long time, thanks be; and there's plenty of meat, and not too much rain. And the family's well, my lady; look to mun playing all around, so gay; and my third family this spring, my lady--that I should say so! No, I reckon I can't complain; but oh, my lady! they foxes, and they weasels! They do tell me that the old vixen from Cornham Brake hath five cubs; and I can't abide a vixen--never could. And they weasels--they'm small, but they'm worse than foxes. Now there's my Bucky. He can't bide home, he saith, these fine days, but must go and lie out. I says to mun, 'Bucky,' I says, ''tis very well for the likes of her ladyship to lie out every day, but _you_ should bide home to bury.' But no, he would go. 'Well then, Bucky,' I says, 'I reckon that you'll grow a pair of horns like his lordship, brow, bay, and trey, Bucky,' I says, 'and turn to bay when the weasel's after 'ee.' And with that he layeth back his ears and away he goeth--Flossy-a, come back, will 'ee, or I'll give you what vor! Now there's that Flossy, my lady, so like to her father as my two ears. She won't bide close to bury; and they do tell me that the vixen to Cornham has moved this way. It won't do, my lady, it won't do. Oh dear, dear, dear!" And she stopped for want of breath. "Well, good evening, Bunny," said the Hind very kindly, "I must take my little son home. I shall see you again very soon." "And good evening to your ladyship," answered Bunny, "and good evening to you, my pretty dear. Ah! you'm his lordship's son sure enough. I mind the time----" But the Hind had moved on out of hearing, for when once an old Doe-Rabbit begins to talk she never stops. Then presently the Calf said: "Mother, who is his lordship?" And she answered: "He is your father, my darling. For the Red-Deer are lords of this forest, and he is the lord of them all. And brow, bay, trey is the coronet that every good Stag wears, and which you too shall wear in due time, when you grow up." And he said no more, for to his mind there was nothing on earth half so beautiful as she was, and he asked no better than to grow up to be such another. CHAPTER II Now the very next day the Hind led her Calf away from the combe where they lay; and after travelling some little way, they met the most beautiful bird that the Calf had ever seen. His plumage was all of glossy black, which shone blue and green and purple in the sun, while to set it off he had a patch of pure white on each wing, and a spot of red above each eye; his tail was forked and bent outwards in two graceful curves, and his legs were feathered to the very heel. He flew towards them some little way, with an easy noiseless flight, and lighted just in front of them, as handsome a fellow as you will see in a summer's day. "Well, good Master Blackcock," said the Hind, "has my lord not moved?" "Not a step, my lady," said the bird; "he lieth so quiet as my wife when she's sitting, though the flies do worrit mun terrible." "Then come along, son," she said. And she led him on and presently stopped and whispered, "Look." And there he saw such a sight as he had never dreamed of; a great Stag nearly twice the size of his mother, with horns half grown and the velvet black with flies, lying down motionless but for constant twitching of his head. The Calf could not see how big he was, till presently he rose on to his feet, and stretched himself, throwing his horns right back, with a mighty yawn. Then he stood for a minute or two blinking rather sleepily, but always shaking his head and wincing under the torment of the flies. His back was as broad as a bullock's and his coat shone with good living; and the little Calf, looked with all his eyes, for he had made up his mind then and there to stand just like that and to stretch himself just like that, when he had grown to be such a fine stag as that. But presently the Hind led him away and asked the Blackcock, "And where is my sister?" And the Blackcock led them on, and after a time, to the Calf's delight, they came in sight of two more Hinds and another little Calf. And all three caught the wind of them and came forward to meet them. One of the Hinds was very big and grey, and she had no Calf, but the other was smaller and bright red, and had at her foot as sweet a little Calf as ever you saw; and it was the smaller of the two Hinds that came to them first. Then both of the mothers laid their Calves down, and began to talk, but they had hardly exchanged a word, when the old grey Hind broke in. "So it's you, Tawny, is it?" she said; "and you have brought a Calf with you, I see. I suppose I must ask, is it a stag or a hind?" "A stag, Aunt Yeld," said the Lady Tawny (for that was the name of our Calf's mother); "do look at him for a minute. He does look so sweet in his bed." "A stag, is it?" said Aunt Yeld with a little sniff. "Well, I suppose if people must have calves they had better have stags. Ruddy's here is a hind, but I never could see the attraction of any calf myself." For Aunt Yeld, like some old maids (but by no means like all) that have no children of their own, thought it the right thing to look down on Calves; and indeed she was rather a formidable old lady. She had two very big tushes in her upper jaw, which she was constantly showing, and she made a great point (when she was not flurried) of closing the claws of her hoofs very tight, and letting her hind-feet fall exactly where her fore-feet had fallen, which she knew to be the way of a stag. "And now that you have brought your calves here," continued Aunt Yeld, "I may as well tell you that the sooner you take them away the better, for there is a Greyhen here with a brood, who never ceases to pester me with enquiries about a poult which she has lost. It's not my business to look after people's poults; if they can't take care of them themselves, they had better not have them, I say. The bird's an idiot, I think. I questioned her pretty closely, and she really seemed not very clear whether she had really lost a poult or not." But the two Mother-Hinds looked at their calves and said: "Poor thing;" and Ruddy's Calf which was feeling perhaps a little lonely, uttered a plaintive little bleat. "Ruddy," said Aunt Yeld severely, "if your child is going to make that noise, I really must request you to--bless my heart, there's that Greyhen again. No, bird, I have _not_ seen your poult." And there sure enough was the poor old Greyhen, looking sadly dowdy when compared with her mate, the Blackcock, with half a dozen fluffy little poults round her. She was evidently anxious, for she turned her head so quickly this way and that to keep them all in sight that it nearly made the Calves giddy. "Oh, I beg your pardon, my lady," she said very humbly, and turned round. But the Lady Tawny walked after her, and asked what was the matter. "Oh, my lady," said the Greyhen, "I didn't mean no harm, but do 'ee tell me, have 'ee seen my little poult? My lady Yeld axed me so many questions that I got fairly mazed, and I've counted my poults times and times till I hardly know how many they be. For I'm not so young as I was, my lady, and I've brought up many families. My first mate he was shot, if you mind, my lady; butiful bird he was too. And a pigeon passed just now and I axed him to count, but they never have but two eggs in their nestes, he saith, so he can't count more than two. And the old Bucky was nigh here, and I axed he. 'Bless your life, neighbour,' he saith, 'my Bunny has so many children that I've a given up counting.' But it's not for me to stand talking with your ladyship; though there's one poult missing, I'm sure of that." "Poor soul," said the Hind very gently, "I am afraid that I have not seen your poult. I am so sorry." "Ah! bless your ladyship's kind heart," said the Greyhen. "You was always--mercy on us, there 'a is. Stand over them, my lady, for mercy's sake, stand over them?" And she crouched close to the ground with abject terror in her eyes, while the poults, frightened to death, hid themselves all round her. For far above them against the glorious blue sky hung a little speck, with quick, nervous wings that fluttered and paused, and fluttered and paused. And it slanted down to right, and slanted back to left, as though it had been swung by a cord from the heavens; then it fluttered its wings and paused once more. But the Hind stood over the Greyhen and poults, so that they should not be seen; and all the time the Greyhen kept gasping out little broken words. "Oh, they blue Hawks! Oh, they blue Hawks! Oh, the roog! 'Twas he that did it--sure enough--Oh, the blue roog!" Then the little speck made a great lunge forward, fluttered for a moment, and passed away out of sight; and the Hind stepped back very gently, and said: "Quite safe now. Good-day, mistress. Take care of the poults." "Bless your kind heart, and good-day to your ladyship," answered the Greyhen. "I have six poults yet, I'm sure 'tis six now, and that's a many to wash and tend and feed; but when they'm grown you may depend they shall always help your ladyship, if I can teach them. Good-day, my lady, and thank you, and may you have good luck with your blessed little son." Now all this time you may be sure that the Hind had kept a constant eye towards the spot where her Calf was lying, the more so since she could see Aunt Yeld peering through the grass at him. So she went straight back to kiss him as soon as the Greyhen was gone, lest Aunt Yeld's grey face might have frightened him; but he wasn't frightened at her in the least. And Aunt Yeld for two whole steps quite forgot to walk like a stag, and said, "I must do you the justice to observe, Tawny, that he is a very handsome little fellow." Then she turned away, blowing out her lips to show her tushes and putting on the stag's gait as nearly as she could, and made a vicious bite at a little blade of grass, as she had seen Stags bite at a turnip; which did not become her pretty neck (for Hinds are always pretty, however old) half as much as the graceful nibble which was natural to her. But it was all make-believe, and if she had spoken her heart she would have said: "I think that your Calf is the greatest darling I ever saw, and oh, how I wish I were you!" Then Aunt Yeld turned round and said: "Now you two mustn't think of going. You are not fit to take care of yourselves, so you must stay with me, and I'll take care of you." You see she had quite forgotten what she said at first, for she had really a kind heart, though nothing could keep her from patronising every one. So for many days they lived together, and Aunt Yeld always posted herself up wind of them to keep watch over them; and if our soldiers in their red coats were sentries half as good as she, they would be the best in the world. Now and again, though very seldom, the great Stag would join them and lie by them all day, chewing the cud and shaking his great head, which grew bigger every day. But he never uttered a word, unless it was to say, "Very good that growing wheat was this morning, to be sure," to which the Hind would answer, "I am so glad, dearest;" or it would be, "The turnips on Yarner farm are not coming on well in this dry weather, I am told; it's very annoying, for I was looking forward to my turnips," and then the Hind would say, "I am so sorry, dearest. How I hope it will rain soon!" For old stags are perhaps rather too fond of their dinners. Once only he showed himself quite different, and that was when one day the Blackcock flew up to say that all the hills were coming down. Now the way the Blackcock got the idea into his head was this. He had been taking a bath in the dust at the foot of a great sheet of screes, the loose, flat stones on the hill-side which you have often seen on the moor, and had enjoyed it greatly, fluffing out his feathers and flapping his great wings. But while he was in the middle of it a Jackdaw came flying overhead, and seeing this great ball of feathers rolling about, pitched down upon the screes to see what strange thing it might be. And as he came hopping down to look at it closer, he displaced one little stone, which displaced another little stone, and that another, until quite a number of stones were set moving, and came rushing down for twenty feet like a tiny cataract, close to the Blackcock's ear. Whereupon the Jackdaw flapped off cawing with fright, and the Blackcock flew away screaming to tell the deer that all the hills were coming down. But when he came the old Stag stood up at once and said: "Lady Yeld, take the lead; Ruddy and Tawny, follow her. Steadily now, no hurrying!" Then they moved on a little way and stopped, the Stag always remaining behind them; for they could see that the hills were not coming down before them, and therefore they must have begun to fall behind them, if the Blackcock spoke truth. And that was why the Stag remained behind, to be nearest to the danger, as a gentleman should be. And some day, if you go into the army, you will learn that in a retreat the rearguard is the post of greatest danger; and you must read the story of the retreat of Sir John Moore's army to Corunna and Vigo, and see what great things Uncle Charlie's regiment did there. The Deer stopped for a time, and at last the Stag said: "I can see nothing, hear nothing, and wind nothing. Are you _quite_ sure the hills are all coming down, Blackcock? I think that you must have made some mistake." For the old Stag was a great gentleman, and always very civil and courteous. But Aunt Yeld, who was quick of temper, stamped on the ground, and said almost out loud: "Bah! I believe the bird's as great an idiot as his wife." The Blackcock looked very foolish, and was so much confused that he did not know what to answer; but the Lady Tawny said kindly: "Thank you, Blackcock, for coming. You mustn't let us keep you from your dinner." And though it was not his dinnertime, he was so glad of the excuse that he flew straight away to his wife, and told her all about it. But all she said was: "So you went and told his lordship, did 'ee; and what about me and my poults if the world cometh to an end? It's like 'ee, it is, to go disturbing her blessed ladyship and her sweet little son with your stories. But never a word for me, oh dear me no, who slave for the poults morning, noon, and night; oh dear, oh dear," and so on for half an hour, till the Blackcock almost made up his mind never to have a dust-bath again. For the poults had been rather troublesome that morning, and the Greyhen's temper was a little upset in consequence. Thus you see that the Blackcock had an unpleasant time of it; and perhaps it served him right. But except on this one occasion the Stag never bestirred himself; behaving very lazily, as I have told you, and never opening his mouth except to munch his food or talk of it. He never spoke a word to the Calf, for old stags are not very fond of calves; and you may be sure that the Calf never said a word to him, for he was terribly afraid of him; nor was he far wrong, for an old stag, while his head is growing, is almost as irritable as an old gentleman with a gouty toe. The only difference between the two is this, that the stag can eat and drink as much as he pleases, and do nothing but good to his head, while the more a gouty old gentleman eats and drinks, the worse for his toe. And it is just because they cannot eat and drink as much as they please that gouty old gentlemen are more irritable than stags; and I for one don't pity them, for a man is made to think of better things than his food and drink. But if he could not talk to the Stag, he made great friends with Ruddy's Calf, who was the sweetest, gentlest little thing that you can imagine. And though she was a little smaller than he was, she could do nearly everything that he could. They ran races, and they tried which could jump the higher and which could spring the farther, and she was as fast and as active as he was. But one day he must needs make her try which could butt the other the harder. So they butted each other gently two or three times, and he liked it so much that he took a great run and butted her hard, and hurt her, though he had not meant it. Then she cried, "Maa-a-a! You're very rude and rough. It's a shame to treat a little hind so; I shan't play any more." Of course they soon made it up again, but his mother told him to remember that she was only a little hind. And he remembered it, but he could not help thinking that it was far better to be a little stag. CHAPTER III One day they were lying out in the grass as usual, and our little Calf was having a great game of romps with the little Hind. The Stag was not with them, but Aunt Yeld was standing sentry, when all of a sudden she came back in a great fluster, not at all like a stag, as she was always trying to be. "Quick, quick, quick!" she said. "I can wind them and I can see them. Call your Calves and let us go. Quick, quick!" Then the two mothers rose up in a terrible fright. "Quick," said Aunt Yeld again. "Run away as fast as you can!" "But our Calves can't keep up if we go fast," pleaded the two mothers. "Bless the Calves, I never thought of that," said Aunt Yeld. "Wait a minute; look!" Then they looked down across the rolling waves of grass flecked by the shadows of the flying clouds, and a mile and a half away they saw a moving white mass, with a dark figure before it and another dark figure behind it. The mass stood in deep shadow, for a cloud hung over it; but the cloud passed away and then the sun flashed down upon it, and what the Deer saw (for they have far better eyes than you or I) was this. Twenty-five couples of great solemn hounds trotting soberly over the heather with a horseman in a white coat at their heads and another at their sterns, and the coats of hounds and horses shining as glossy as their own. A fresh puff of wind bore a wave of strange scent to the nostrils of the Deer, and our little Calf snuffed it and thought it the most unpleasant that he had ever tasted. "Remember it, my son," whispered his mother to him, "nasty though it be, and beware of it." But Aunt Yeld stood always a little in advance, talking to herself. "I passed just in front of the place where they are now on my way back from breakfast this morning," she murmured. "I trust that scent has failed by this time. Ah!" And as she spoke some of the hounds swung suddenly with one impulse towards them, but the horseman behind them galloped forward quick as thought, and turned them back; and there came on the wind the sound of a shrill yelp, which made all three of the Hinds to quiver again. Then the mass began to move faster than before, and the Deer watched it go further and further away from them till at last it settled down to its first pace and vanished out of sight. "Well, that is a mercy," said Aunt Yeld with a deep sigh. "I thought it was full early yet for those detestable creatures to begin their horrible work again. I think that we are safe now, but I'll just make sure in case of accidents." And with that she began to trot about in the strangest fashion. For she made a great circle to the track by which she had come back from feeding in the early morning, and ran back along it for some way, and then she turned off it, and after a time made another circle which brought her to a little stream. Then she ran up the water and made another circle which brought her back again. "There," she said, "if they do follow us, that will puzzle them." But the Lady Tawny had been looking at her Calf all the time, and now she spoke: "I am afraid to stay here any longer, Aunt Yeld. I will take my Calf far away to a quiet spot that I know of, and do you stop with sister and look after her." So they parted, and very sad they were at parting. She led her Calf away slowly, that he might not tire, but they had not gone very far when there ran past them a great Buck-Rabbit. He neither saw nor heard them, for his eyes were starting out of his head with fright; and he went on only for a little way and then lay down and squealed most miserably. Then they heard a faint sound rather like the yelp that they had heard from the hound, but much smaller; and presently there came five little bits of brown bodies, long, and lithe and slender, racing along on their tiny short legs far faster than you would have thought possible. They were following the line of the Rabbit, and the old mother Weasel led the way, speaking to the scent as loud as she could (and that was not very loud), "Forward, children, forward, forward," and the four little Weasels joined in chorus, "Forward, forward, forward"; then she cried, "Blood, children, blood," and they answered at the top of their pipes, "Blood, blood, blood, blood." And their fierce little eyes flashed, and their sharp little teeth gleamed as they dashed away through the grass; and I am afraid that the Buck-Rabbit had but a poor chance with them, though he was nearly as big as the whole five of them put together. For I suppose that, for its size, there is no creature on earth so fierce and bloodthirsty as a weasel; but remember, too, that he is also the pluckiest little beast that there is, and would fight you and me if we drove him too far. The Calf was very much puzzled. "Why doesn't the Rabbit run on, mother, if he is afraid of the Weasels?" he said. "I should have run on as far as I could. Will they leave him alone because he lies down and squeals?" But she answered sadly, "No, no! and, my son, if ever it should befall you that you must run for your life, as I fear may be only too likely, then keep up a brave heart and run on till you can run no more." And he answered, "Yes, mother," and thought to himself that he would fight to the end too; for he hoped one day to grow into a good stag and have horns to fight with; and besides he was a brave little fellow. And, for my part, I think that the Calf was right; and if (as I hope may never be) after you are grown up, disappointment should lie in wait for you at every turn, and fate and your own fault should hunt you to despair, then run on bravely, and when you can run no more, face them and dare them to do their worst; but never, never, never lie down and squeal. So they journeyed on for three whole days, often stopping that the Calf might rest. And on the third day as they were passing along one side of a combe, they saw another strange sight. For on the other side the rock came through the soil, and there at the foot of the rock stood a ruddy-coloured creature with a white throat, and prick ears, and a sharp nose, and a bushy tail that tapered to a point and ended in a white tag. She carried a rabbit in her mouth, and round her stood five little Cubs, jumping and scrambling and playing, and crying out, "Rabbit for dinner, rabbit for dinner!" For a time she looked at them with the rabbit still in her mouth while they danced around her, till presently one ran up behind one of his brothers and rolled him over, and the other lay on his back kicking and struggling while the first pretended to kill him; and then a third came up and caught one of them by the scruff of the neck and made him open his mouth so wide that you would have thought he could never have shut it again. And then the old Vixen laid the rabbit on the ground, and said, "Worry, worry, worry!" and the Cubs dashed at it and began biting at it and tearing, and pulling, and scratching, till they rent it all to pieces. Then one little fellow got hold of a whole hind-leg and ran away to eat it by himself, and the rest cried out, "Greedy, greedy!" and ran after him to take it from him; and they scuffled and worried and snarled till you would have thought that they meant to eat each other up as well as the rabbit. But it was only play, though rough play, for Foxes are rough fellows; and all the time the old Vixen sat on her haunches smiling and saying, "That's my little Cubs! that's my little Cubs!" Then the Hind and Calf passed on, and she led him into a great deep wood of oak-coppice, where there was hardly a tree that was not oak, except now and again a mountain-ash. And they passed through the bright silver stems of the young trees and under the heavy foliage of the old ones; till they saw a mountain-ash shake its golden berries over their heads, and came to a hollow where a tiny stream came trickling down, almost hidden among hart's-tongues. There she laid him down; and this wood was their new home. Soon after, the dry weather came to an end, and the South-West wind came laden with rain from the sea. But the Hind and Calf lay sheltered in the wood, and heard the wind singing above them, and saw the scud drifting slowly in great columns down the valley. They roamed far through the wood, for it seemed to cover the valley's side for miles, and he watched her as she looked about for ivy, which was her favourite food, and envied her when she reared up to pluck some tempting morsel hanging from the oak trees. Nor would he let her have all the good things to herself, for he would nuzzle at the green leaves between her lips and pretend to enjoy them greatly. A very happy peaceful life it was, for they were never disturbed, though occasionally they saw company. They had not been there but very few days, when very early in the morning they saw the old Vixen come stealing into the wood with a Cub in her mouth. She looked so weary and footsore, that though deer do not like rough, unmannerly creatures such as foxes, which feed on flesh, the Hind could not help saying, "Why, Mrs. Vicky, you look dreadfully tired." But the Vixen hardly turned her head, and then only to answer very roughly, "No, I am not tired, I am not tired," though after a time she added "thank you" in rather a surly tone; for in Devon nobody is altogether uncivil. And she went plodding on. "Have they been disturbing your earth?" asked the Hind. "I hope the Cubs are all well." Then the Vixen could not help stopping to say: "Yes, they'm well. This is the last of mun. Twenty mile and more have I gone back and 'vor with mun this blessed night. They was rather a late litter, you see, and I was obliged to carry mun. But I'm not tired, oh no, I am not tired--my lady." And she went on again doggedly with her Cub, though they could see that she was so tired that she could hardly move. And let me tell you that it was a great stretch of civility for the Vixen to call the Hind "my lady," for Foxes are very independent, and like a great many other people think that they must show their independence by being uncivil; whereby they only prevent others from seeing what brave, patient creatures they really are. The very next morning they saw a new visitor come in, a grey old person as big as the Vixen, with a long sharp nose, and a deal of white about his face, a very little short tail, and four short clumsy legs. He was waddling along slowly, and grumbling to himself: "'Tisn't often that I spake, but spake I will. 'Tis mortal hard that he should come and take my house. 'Tis my house, I made mun, and I digged mun. 'Tisn't right; 'tisn't rasonable." "What is it, old Grey?" said the Hind. The Badger looked up and stared. Then he said very slowly "Aw!" drawing out the word till he could collect his wits. "Well, look 'ee, 'tis like this. Two days agone,--I think 'twas two days--the old Dog-Fox--you know mun, he that hath so much white to his brush--well, he cometh to me, and saith he, 'Brocky,' he saith--that's a name he calleth me, Brocky, friendly like, though he warn't no friend o' mine that I know of--Well, he saith, 'Brocky, I know of so pretty a nest of Rabbits as a Badger could wish to see. I can't dig mun out,' he saith, 'but you can. Oh! what I would give to be able to dig like you, Brocky!' he saith. 'Come 'long wi' me, and I'll show 'ee.' Well, now I'll tell 'ee which way we went." "No, never mind that," said the Hind, "we musn't keep you, you know." "Aw!" said the Badger, "well, we come to the bury, and wonderful sweet they rabbits did smell, sure enough. 'Now,' he saith, 'I'll leave 'ee.' And I digged the rabbits out; I forget how many there was--eight or nine I think--I ate mun all up, I know, and very sweet they was, I won't deny that. And them I went 'oom, but bless your life, when I got there I couldn't go into mun. Oh! 'twas terrible sure enough; 'twas more than my poor nose could stand. And the old Fox he looketh out and saith, 'Tis wonderful kind of you, Brocky,' he saith, 'to give me your house. Mrs. Vicky liketh it wonderful, she doth. Ah! I wish I could dig like you, Brocky,' he saith. And he's taken my house, and here I be. 'Tisn't right; 'tisn't rasonable." And he waddled away growling out, "'Tisn't rasonable," for, being a Devonshire Badger, he was of course fond of long words, though he might not always understand their meaning. And the Calf could hardly help laughing as he saw the poor, stupid old fellow blundering on his way. But if he fared ill, the Vixen and her Cubs fared well enough. The Cubs grew so fast that they began to look after themselves, and they were often to be seen wandering about the wood, grubbing after beetles and gobbling up the fallen berries. And the Calf grew also, for he was now four months old, you must remember; and of all the months in his life, those first four were, I suspect, the happiest. CHAPTER IV Early one morning, it must have been almost the last week in September, the peace of the oak-coppice was disturbed by a terrible clamour. It began with a single deep "Ough, ough, ough!" then another voice chimed in with rather a shriller note, and then another and then another, and then a whole score more joined them in one thundering chorus. And the Hind started to her feet in alarm, and led the Calf out of the wooded valley to the open moor above. There they stood listening; while the whole valley was filled with the tumult, as if a hundred demons had been let loose into it. Now and again it ceased for a moment, and all was still; then it began again with "Ough, ough, ough!"; and it was hard to say exactly where the sound came from, for one side of the valley said it would hold it no longer, and tossed it over to the other, and the other said it wouldn't hold it either and tossed it back, so that the noise kept hovering between the two in the most bewildering way. But after a short time the clamour drew nearer to the Hind and Calf, and presently out came one of the Fox-cubs, with his tongue lolling and his back crooked, looking desperately weary and woe-begone. He went on for a little distance, as if to go away over the moor, but soon stopped and flung back with desperation into the covert. And the Hind trotted gently away, anxious but not alarmed. "They are not after us, my son, I think," she said. Then the noise drew closer and closer, and out bounded a whole pack of hounds, with bristles erect and gleaming eyes, throwing their tongues furiously on the line of the Cub. They flashed over the scent for fifty yards, still yelling with all their might, and then they fell silent and spread out in all directions. Presently they recovered the line of the Cub, and turned back into the covert yelling louder than ever; but meanwhile two wild puppies had crossed the scent of the Hind and Calf and started after them as fast as they could run. Then the Hind turned and fled and the Calf with her, as he had never fled before; but his poor little legs began speedily to tire, and he could not have held out for much longer, when suddenly he found himself poked down quick as thought by his mother's nose into a tuft of fern. "Lie still, my son, till I come back," she whispered; and so she left him. And there he lay panting, while the voices of the puppies came closer and closer to his hiding-place; but he never moved, for his mother had bid him lie still. Then they rushed past him with a wild cry, for his mother had waited to lead them after herself; and their voices died away, and all was silent. Presently he heard a dull sound, coming drum, drum, drum, louder and louder and louder; and then the earth began to shake, and a huge dark body seemed to be coming almost on to the top of him, but suddenly swerved aside just in time, and left him unharmed. Then the drumming died away, and after a time he heard a dismal yelping such as he had once heard before; but he did not know that it was a man and horse that had nearly galloped on to the top of him, and would have galloped quite on the top of him if the horse had not shied, nor that the man had given the puppies a thrashing for running a deer when they had been told to run a fox. He was beginning to hope that his mother would soon come back, when he heard two voices quite unlike any that he had ever heard before, and saw riding towards him two people. One was a man with fair hair and blue eyes, and a face burned brown by the sun, and the other a girl, a year or thereabout younger than the man. She, too, had bright blue eyes, and very fair hair, and a very pretty face--at least the man seemed to think so, for he was always looking at it--though of course the Calf, having never seen such creatures before, could not judge if they were pretty or ugly. They came on till they were only at a little distance from him, and the man pulled up and, pointing to him, said very low, "Look." And the girl whispered, "What a little duck! I wish I could take him home with me." But the man said, "No, no, no. His mother will come and take him home presently, and the sooner we leave him alone the better she will be pleased." So they rode away, and he could hear them talking as they rode, for they seemed to have a great deal to say to each other. But what they talked about, and how they came to stay alone on the hill when the hounds were running down in the valley, is more than I can tell you. Before very long his mother came back to him, and you may guess how glad he was to see her, and how she rejoiced to see him. After looking round to see that all was quiet, she led him away over the heather, and then down a very steep hill-side among stunted gorse and loose stones, hot and burning from the sun. "See, my son," she said, "this is the first time that you have been chased by hounds, but I fear that it may not be the last. Now, remember, no hound can run fast over this short gorse, for his feet are soft; while we do not mind it, for our feet are hard. And these loose stones are almost better for us than the gorse, for our scent hardly lies on them and they hurt a hound's feet almost as much as the gorse." So they went to the bottom of the hill, and there was a peat-stream singing its song; but all that the Calf could hear of it was this:-- _I carry no scent, come here, come here;_ _I am the friend of the wild Red-Deer._ The Hind led him up a shallow for a little way, and then she jumped out on to the opposite bank and followed it upwards for a little way, and then she jumped into the water again and went down for a full hundred yards till they came to a comfortable shady spot, where they both left the water and lay down together. "Now, my son," she said, "here is another little lesson for you to learn. The song of the water is true; it carries no scent, and no hound can follow us in it unless he can see us. But a hound will always try the bank to find out where we have left the water; if we enter it up the stream he will try upward, and if we enter it down the stream he will try downward. So always, if you have time, try to make them work upward when you mean to go down, and downward when you mean to go up, as I have shown you to-day." And like a wise little fellow he took care to remember what she taught him. They lay there together till the sun began to fall low, and then they rose and went down to the water to cross it. And there what should they see but a large shoal of little Fish with bright red spots, and bands, like the marks of a finger, striping their sides from gills to tail; for the stream was so clear that they could distinguish every mark upon them. The little Fish seemed to be very anxious about something, for they kept darting about, now spreading out and now all coming together again; and the Calf could hear them whispering, "Shall we ask her? Shall we, shall we?" And at last one little Fish rose, with a little splash, and said in a watery little voice: "Oh! please can you tell us how far it is to the sea?" "Why, my little fellow," said the Hind, "surely it isn't time for you to go to sea yet?" "Oh, no," said the little Salmon, "for we haven't got our silver jackets yet. But we are so looking forward to it. Will our silver jackets come soon, do you think?" "Not just yet, I expect," said the Hind kindly; "you must have patience, you know, for a little time, only for a little time." "Oh," said the little Salmon, in a sadly disappointed tone; and the whole shoal began to move away, but almost directly came back and began popping up to the surface of the water by dozens, saying, "Thank you," "thank you," "thank you." For little Salmon are not only very well-bred but very well-mannered besides, which all well-bred creatures ought to be, but unfortunately very often are not. So they left the little Salmon, and went their way to the cliffs that overhang the sea, where they made their home in a great plantation of Scotch firs, so closely cropped by wind and salt that they cannot grow up into trees but run along the ground almost like ivy. And let me warn you, by the way, when you ride fast through these stunted plantations, as I hope you may many times, to grip your saddle tight with your legs and keep your toes turned in, or you may find yourself on the ground on the broad of your back; which will not hurt you in the least, but may lose you your start in a good run. Well, here they lay, and very much the Calf liked his new home; but they had not been there for three days when one morning they heard faint sounds of a great trampling of hoofs. It lasted for a long time, but they lay quite still, though the Hind was very uneasy. Then suddenly they heard the voice of hounds rise from the coverts on the cliff below them, and a man screaming at the top of his voice. The sounds came nearer, and then there was a great clatter of branches, and the great Stag, whom they had known on the moor, came bounding leisurely through the thicket. His head was thrown back and his mouth wide open; and very proud and very terrible he looked as he cantered straight up to them. He jerked his head impatiently at them, and said very sternly, "Off with you! quick!" And the Hind jumped up in terror and the Calf with her; and as they ran off they could see the old Stag lie down in their place with his great horns laid back on his shoulders, and his chin pressed tight to the ground. But they had no time to lose, for the hounds were coming closer; so they bustled for a little way through the thicket, and then the Hind led the Calf into a path, because of course his little legs could not keep pace with hers in the tangle of the plantation. Thus they ran on for a little way, till they heard the sound of a horse coming towards them, when they turned into the thicket again and lay down. And presently a man in a red coat came trotting by with his eyes fixed on the ground, and meeting the hounds stopped them at once. Then he pulled out a horn, blew one single note, and trotted away with the hounds, just three couple of them, at his heels. But the Hind and Calf lay still; and presently they heard two more horses coming gently along the path, and two human voices chattering very fast. And who should ride by but the pretty girl whom he had seen looking at him a few days before! A man was riding with her, but not the man that he had seen with her before, for this one was dark, and besides he was rather older; but as they passed they saw her smile at him, and open her pretty eyes at him, in a way that seemed to please him very well. So they rode on till their chattering could be heard no more; and then another man came riding by on a grey horse, quite alone, whom the Calf recognised as the fair man that had been with the girl when first he saw her; and very doleful and miserable he seemed to be. For he stopped on the path opposite to them, looking down at the ground with a troubled face, and kept flicking savagely at the heather with his whip, till at last he flicked his poor horse on the nose by mistake, and was obliged to pat him and tell him how sorry he was. How long he might have stopped there no one knows; but all of a sudden the Hind and Calf heard a wild sound of men hallooing, and the horn sounding in quick, continuous notes. Then the man's face brightened up directly, and he caught hold of the grey horse by the head and galloped off as fast as he could go. Directly after this, the Deer heard a mighty rush of hoofs all hastening to the same spot, the sound growing gradually fainter and fainter until all was still. But they lay fast till a white Sea-gull flew high over their heads chirping out, "They're gone, they're gone," in a doleful voice; not, you know, because he was sorry that all the men and horses were gone, but because Sea-gulls, for some reason, can never say anything cheerfully. And then the Hind arose and led the Calf cautiously out of the plantation to the open moor; and as they went they saw a long string of horses, reaching for two or three miles, toiling painfully one after the other; while far ahead the hounds, like white specks, kept creeping on and on and on, with a larger speck close to them which could be nothing else than a grey horse. So the Hind led the Calf on to a quiet combe, and there they lay down in peace. And when the sun began to sink they saw, far away, the hounds and a very few horses with them, returning slowly and wearily home. But presently they were startled by voices much closer to them, and they saw the fair man on the grey horse and the pretty girl, riding side by side. The Hind was a little alarmed at first, but there was no occasion for it; for the pair were riding very close together, so close that his hand was on her horse's neck, and they seemed to be far too much occupied with each other to think of anything else. So they passed on; and after they were gone there came a loose horse, saddled and bridled, but covered all over with mire, and with a stirrup missing from the saddle. And presently he lay down and rolled over and over till the girths parted with a crack and left the saddle on the ground; then he got up, hung up one hind-leg in the reins, and kicked himself free; then he lay down again, and rubbed his cheeks against the heather until he had forced the bridle over his head; then he gave himself a great shake to make quite sure that he had got rid of everything, and at last he went down to the water and drank, and wandered off grazing as happy as could be. Last of all came a man tramping wearily over the heather, with a stirrup in his hand; but the Calf hardly recognised him as the dark man whom he had seen in the morning, for his hat was crushed in, and his clothes caked with mire from head to foot. And he toiled on, looking round him on all sides, till he caught his foot in a tussock of grass, and fell on his nose; and what he said when he got up I don't know, though I might guess, for he looked very cross. So he too passed out of sight, and the sun went down, and the mist stole over the face of the moor, and the Hind and Calf were left alone with the music of the flowing water to sing them to sleep. But they never saw that old Stag again. CHAPTER V And now the grass of the forest turned fast from green to yellow, the blossom faded off the heather, and the leaves of the woods turned to gold and to russet and to brown, and fluttered down to the kind earth which had raised them up in the spring. The nights too grew chillier and chillier; but the Hind and Calf did not mind that, for their coats only grew the thicker and warmer to protect them. But what was far more terrible was the hideous roaring that continued all night long in all quarters of the moor. It was some days before the Calf found out what it was, for his mother seemed always dreadfully frightened unless he were well hidden away. But once when she had left him for a short time snugly tucked away on a combe's side, he saw a great Stag come down the combe driving a little herd of half a dozen Hinds before him. The Calf was astonished at the sight of him, for the Stag was quite different now from any that he had seen in the summer. The glossy coat was gone, and the great round body was lean, ragged, and tucked up, and stained with half-dried mud. His neck again was twice its usual size and looked still bigger under its great shaggy mane; and his face was not noble and calm, but fierce and restless and furrowed by two deep dark lines, so that altogether he was a most disreputable-looking old fellow. Presently he stopped at a little boggy spot by the water's side; and there he reared up, and plunging his great antlers into the ground he tore it up, and sent the black mire flying over his head. Then he threw himself down into the bog and rolled in it and wallowed in it, churning it up with horn and hoof, like a thing possessed. At last he got up, all dripping and black, and stretching out his great neck, till the hair of his mane hung straight and lank with the black drops running from it, he roared and roared again with a voice so terrible and unearthly that the Calf in his hiding-place shook with fright. And no wonder, for I think that even you will be startled the first time that you hear a big Stag belling. Very soon an answering roar came from a distance, and another Stag, as thin and fierce-looking as the first, but not quite so big, came belling up the combe. And the great Stag left the Hinds and went forward to meet him, looking very stately and grand. For he walked on tip-toe, loftily and slowly, with his head thrown back, and his chin high in air, while his eyes rolled with rage, and his breath spurted forward in jets of steam through the cold, damp air, as he snorted defiance. Then presently both Stags dropped their heads and made for each other; and they fought with locked horns, shoving and straining and struggling, backward and forward and round and round, till the smaller Stag could fight no longer but turned and fled limping away, with the blood flowing from a deep thrust in his flank. Then the great Stag threw up his head and belled again with triumph, and huddling the Hinds together once more, he drove them on before him. For three weeks and more this roaring and fighting continued; for Deer, you must know, put all the quarrelling of the year into a single month; which sounds like a curious arrangement, but may after all be better than that of certain other creatures, which fight the whole year round. All this while the Calf's mother kept him carefully out of the way of stags; but none the less he had visitors. For one day a little brown bird with a long beak came flapping rather crookedly up the combe as if uncertain whither to go next, and then suddenly making up her mind, came down and lighted in front of the Calf's very nose. He was a little astonished, but his mother gave the little bird her kindest glance and said: "Welcome back to Exmoor, Mistress Woodcock. How have you fared this dry summer, and what passage had you over the sea?" And the little bird answered with somewhat of a foreign accent and in rather a sad voice, "I am safe and sound, my lady Hind, for we had good weather; but there were a few that started before me, and are not yet come, and I greatly fear that they were blown into the sea by a storm. And the summer was so dry that many springs failed, and many times I had to catch up my chicks and carry them one by one to new feeding-grounds over the pine-forests and across the blue fiords. Ah! you think much of Exmoor, but you have never seen Norway, where your highest hills would be lost among our mountains, and your broadest streams a trickle beside our rivers. We do not duck and dive there, my lady Hind; we fly high and straight, and chirp for joy in our flight, but in this grey England we have not the heart to chirp." And rising with a _flip flap_ of her wings she flew silently and sadly away. At length one day the Hind said: "Son, it is time for you to see some more of your relations." So they set out together; and as they went they passed by all the places which the Calf had known so well when he was but a few weeks old. But they saw no deer, and when they looked about for the Greyhen they could not see her either; nor would they have heard anything of them, if the Hind had not bethought her of going to see old Bunny. And they found her as usual sitting in front of her bury, looking quite happy and comfortable, with her head a little on one side. "Why, my lady, you'm quite a stranger," she said when they greeted her. "Lady Yeld and Lady Ruddy was axing for 'ee but two days agone, and says they, 'Tell her we'm going to Dunkery'; and that's where you'm going, I reckon, my lady. And Lady Ruddy's Calf is grown wonderful, and a sweet, pretty little thing she is, but not so pretty as yours, my lady. Look to mun, now, in his little brown coat, a proper little buty. 'Tis just what I was saying to the old Greyhen--let's see, what day was it?--well, I don't rightly mind the day, but says I, 'Neighbour, her ladyship's little son--'" "But where is the Greyhen gone, Bunny?" said the Hind. "Well, I don't rightly know, my lady," answered Bunny. "She comed to me a good whiles back, and she saith, 'Neighbour, the men's been here shooting again, and I shall go.' But it was a good whiles back; I think 'twas when I was rearing my fourth family,--for I have had two more families since I seed your ladyship last, aye, and fine ones too. And I've got a new mate, my lady. You mind my Bucky, my lady, he that was always lying out--well, he went out one day and he never comed home again, and I reckon the weasels catched mun. He was a good mate was the old Bucky, but he was the half of a fule--that I should say so--wouldn't never mind what I told mun. And what was I to do, my lady? So I tooked another mate. 'Twas not a long courting, for he comes to me, and, saith he--" "But where did you say that the Greyhen was gone?" asked the Hind, kindly. "I think Clog's Down was the place that she said, my lady. But, bless your life, she'll come back here, you may depend. For she's getting up an old bird, my lady,--" "And there's no place like home, Bunny," said the Hind. "Aye," said Bunny, "and that's just what I was saying only yesterday to the old Woodcock when she comed telling to me about Norway. 'Get along with 'ee and your Norwayses,' I says; 'isn't Exmoor good enough for 'ee? Many's the fine brood of Woodcocks that I've seen reared on Exmoor, without never crossing the sea. Look at me,' I says; '_I_ don't go crossing the sea, and look to the broods I've reared.' And now, let me think, how many broods is it?--" But she took such a long time counting, that, though the Hind was longing to hear, they were obliged to bid her good-day and go on their way. Besides, to tell truth, the Calf was so much pleased when he heard her speak of his brown coat that he was dying to find some one to whom he could show it. And in the very first water that they crossed he saw the little Salmon come hurrying towards them, and called out to them, "Come and look at my brown coat." But they answered all together, "Come and look at our silver jackets. We've got our silver jackets, we've got our silver jackets! And the rain will come down to-night, and we'll be off to the sea to-morrow--hurrah!" And they leaped out of the water and turned head over tail with joy, taking no more notice of the Calf's brown coat than if it had been a rag of green weed. So he passed on with his mother, a little disappointed, and away from the yellow grass of the forest to the brown heather of Dunkery. And there the heath was full of great stones, unlike any ground that he had ever travelled over before, so that he had to be careful at first how he trod. But he soon found that it was easy enough for him after he had gone a little distance; and his mother led him slowly so that he should have time to learn his way. So on they went to the very top of the ridge, and there where the heather and grass grow tuft by tuft among the brown turf-pits, in the heart of the bog, they found a herd of Deer. Such a number of them there were as he had never dreamed of. Great Stags, with three and four on top, like those that he had seen fighting, were lying down, four and five together, in perfect peace, and younger Stags with lighter heads and fewer points, and Two-year-olds, proud as Punch of their first brow-antlers, and Prickets, ever prouder of their first spires than the Two-year-olds, and a score or more of Hinds, nearly all of them with Calves at foot; and standing sentry over all was old Aunt Yeld. "Come along, my dears," she said patronisingly, "the more the merrier. You'll find a few dry beds still empty in the wet ground, where Ruddy and her Calf are lying; but I warn you that you will have to move before nightfall." So they went, and found Ruddy and her Calf and lay down by them, for you may be sure that mothers and Calves had a great deal to say to each other. But as the evening began to close they heard a faint, low, continuous hum from the westward, and all the hinds with one accord left the bog, and went down into a deep, snug, sheltered combe, clothed thick with dwarf oak-coppice, while the stags went to their own chosen hiding-places. Soon the hum grew louder and louder, and presently the rain began to fall in heavy drops, as the little Salmon had foretold (though how they could foretell it, I know no more than you); and then the hum changed to a roar as the Westerly Gale came up in all his might and swept across the moor. And presently an old Dog-Fox came in and shook himself and lay down not far from them on one side, and a Hare came in and crouched close to them on the other, and little birds driven from their own roosting-places flew trembling into the branches above them; but not one dared to speak except in a whisper, and then only to say, "What a terrible night!" For all night long the gale roared furiously over their heads and the rain and scud flew screaming before it; and once they heard something whistle over their heads, crying wildly in a voice not unlike a sea-gull's, "Mercy, mercy, mercy!" Then the little stream below them in the combe began to swell and pour down fuller and fuller; and all round the hill a score of other little streams swelled likewise, and came tearing down the hill, adding their roar to the roar of the gale; so you may be sure that the Salmon had a fine flood to carry them down to the sea. When the Deer moved out in the morning they found the rain and wind raging as furiously as ever, and the air full of salt from the spray of the sea; and a few hundred yards to leeward of the combe they came upon a little sooty Sea-bird, quite a stranger to them, lying gasping on the ground. The poor little fellow could only say, "Mercy, mercy, where is the sea, where is the sea? Where are my brother Petrels?" Then he flapped one little wing feebly, for the other had been dashed by the gale against a branch and broken, and gasped once more and lay quite still; nor, though the deer gazed at him for long, did he ever speak or move again. So when they had fed, the deer moved back to the shelter of the combe and lay down there once more; and as the morning grew the rain ceased, though the wind blew nearly as hard as ever. But it was still a good hour before noon when the Hare suddenly jumped up and stole out of the combe. A minute after her the Fox stood up, listened for a moment, and stole out likewise, and almost directly after him the deer all sprang to their feet; for they heard the deep note of the hounds and saw their white bodies dashing into the combe full of eagerness and fire. And if any one tells you that it is incredible that Deer, Fox, and Hare should all be lying together as I have said, you may tell him from me that I saw them with my own eyes leave the combe one after another by the same path, on just such a wild morning as I have described. The deer moved quickly on to the hill and began to run away together; but presently Aunt Yeld, and Ruddy and her Calf, and our Hind and her Calf separated from the rest, and went away at a steady pace, for as old Aunt Yeld said, "No hound can travel fast over Dunkery stones." And, indeed, so fond was the old lady of these stones that, when she got to the edge of them, she turned back over them again and took Ruddy with her. But our Hind and her Calf moved away a mile or two towards the forest, and finding no hounds in chase of them stopped and rested. But after half an hour or more Aunt Yeld came galloping up to them alone, very anxious though not the least tired, and said, "I can't shake them off. Come along quick!" Then they found that the hounds were hard at their heels, and away they went, in the teeth of the gale, at their best pace. And the Calf kept up bravely, for he was growing strong, but they were pressed so hard that presently Aunt Yeld left them and turned off by herself. Then by bad luck some of the hounds forsook her line for that of his mother and himself, and drove them so fast that for the first time in their lives they were obliged to part company, and he was left quite alone. So on he ran by himself till he came to a familiar little peat-stream, which was boiling down over the stones like a torrent of brown ale; and in he jumped and ran down, splashing himself all over. Before he had gone down it fifty yards he felt so much refreshed that he quite plucked up heart, so he followed the water till it joined a far bigger stream, crossed the larger stream, climbed up almost to the top of the opposite side of the combe, and lay down. And when he had lain there for more than an hour he saw Aunt Yeld coming down to the water two or three hundred yards above the place where he lay, with her neck bowed and her grey body black with sweat, looking piteously tired and weak. She jumped straight into the flooded water and came plunging down; and only a few minutes behind her came the hounds. The moment that they reached the water some of them leaped in and swam to the other side, and they came bounding down both banks, searching diligently as they ran. Then he saw Aunt Yeld stop in a deep pool, and sink her whole body under the water, leaving nothing but her head above it. She had chosen her place cunningly, where the bank was hollowed out and the water was overhung by a little thorn bush that almost hid her head from view. And he watched the hounds try down and down; and he now saw that two horsemen were coming down the combe's side after them, the men bending low over their saddles, hardly able to face the gale, and the horses with staring eyes and heaving flanks, almost as much distressed as Aunt Yeld herself. The men seemed to be encouraging the hounds, though in the howling of the wind he could hear nothing. But the pack tried down and down by themselves, till at last they came to the place where Aunt Yeld was lying; and there two of them stopped as if puzzled; but she only sank her head a little deeper in the water and lay as still as death, with her ears pressed back tight upon her neck. Then at last the hounds passed on, though they were loth to leave the spot, and followed the bank down below her. But presently the Calf became aware, to his terror, that some of them were pausing at the place where he himself had left the water, and, what was more, were unwilling to leave it. And then a great black and tan hound carried the line very, very slowly a few yards away from the bank up the side of the combe, and said, "Ough!" and the hounds on the opposite side of the stream no sooner heard him than they jumped in and swam across to him; so that in half a minute every one of them was working slowly up towards his hiding-place. He was so much terrified that he hardly knew whether to lie still or to fly; but presently the black and tan hound said "Ough!" once more with such a full, deep, awful note that he could stand it no longer, but jumped up at once and bounded up over the hill. And then every hound threw up his head and yelled in a way which brought his heart into his mouth, but he was soon out of their view over the crest of the hill, and turning round set his head backward for Dunkery. And as he went he saw the horsemen come struggling up the hill, trying to call the hounds off, but unable to catch them. But he soon felt that he had not the strength to carry him to Dunkery, so he swung round again with the gale in his face, and then by great good luck he caught the wind of other deer, and running on found that it was Ruddy and her Calf. By the time that he had joined them the men had stopped the hounds, and were taking them back to try down the water again after Aunt Yeld. But you may be sure that Aunt Yeld had not waited for them. On the contrary, she had made the best of her time, for she had run up the big water again, and turned from it up a smaller stream, and having run up that, was lying down in the fervent hope that she was safe. And safe she was; for as luck would have it the wind backed to the south-east and began blowing harder than ever, with torrents of rain, so that after another hour the Calf saw horsemen and hounds travelling slowly and wearily home, as drenched and draggled and miserable as a deer could wish to see them. And a little later his mother came and found him, and though she too was terribly tired, she cared nothing about herself in the joy of seeing him. Then after a time Aunt Yeld came up too and joined them, and quite forgetting that it was not at all like a stag to be soft-hearted, she came up to him and fondled him, and said, "My brave little fellow, you have saved my life to-day." So they made their way to the nearest shelter and curled up together to keep each other warm, banishing all thought of the day's adventures in their joy that they were safe. CHAPTER VI After this they were left in peace for a short time, but week after week the hounds came to Dunkery or to the forest, and though the Deer were not always obliged to run their hardest, yet it was seldom that they had not to fly, at any rate for a time, for their lives. So after a few weeks the Hind led the Calf back to the wood where they had made the acquaintance of the Vixen and the Badger; and there they were left alone. For there came a hard frost which covered the moor with white rime, and, though it sometimes sent them far afield for food, still saved them from annoyance by hounds. But the poor Blackbirds and Thrushes suffered much, for they were weak for want of food; and often the Calf would see them in the hedges crawling over the dead leaves, unable to fly. And then the old Vixen would come round (for she was still there, though all her Cubs were scattered), and pick up the poor struggling little birds, and make what meal she could of them, though there was little left of them but skin and bone; for she too was ravenous with hunger. But at last the frost broke up and the warm rain came, and the days grew longer, and the sun gathered strength. So after a time they began to wander over the skirt of the moor again, and thus one day they saw a curious sight. For in the midst of the heather stood a number of Greyhens, looking very sober, and modest and respectable, and round them, in a ring worn bare by the trampling of their feet, a number of Blackcocks were dancing like mad creatures, with their beautiful plumage fluffed out and their wings half spread, to show what handsome fellows they were. While they watched them one splendid old Cock came waltzing slowly round, with his feathers all gleaming in the chill sunshine, and all the time looking out of the corner of his eye at one of the Hens. And as generally happens when people look one way and go another, particularly if they chance to be waltzing, he ran full against another Cock, who was just in front of him, and nearly knocked him over. Whereupon he asked the other Cock very angrily, "Now then, where be coming to?" But the other answered quite as angrily: "If you come knacking agin me again like that, you old dumphead, I'll spoil your plumes for 'ee, I will." Then the old bird shook out all his feathers in a towering passion, and said: "_You_ spoil my plumes, you little, miser'ble, dirty-jacketed roog! You spoil my plumes! If you dare to come anigh me, I'll give 'ee such a dressing as you won't get over this side midsummer. I'll teach 'ee to call me dumphead!" But the other was quite as quarrelsome, and answered very rudely: "You give me a dressing? I'd like to see 'ee try it. Git out of the way, and don't come here telling of your dressings. I bean't afeard to call 'ee dumphead. Now then, dumphead, dumphead, dumphead!" And with that they flew at each other, and pecked and scratched and ruffled, and beat each other with their wings, till all the ground was covered with their feathers. And all the time the Greyhens kept whispering to each other, "He's down--no, he's up--no, he's down again. He's too strong for mun. Dear, dear, but the old bird's sarving mun bad!" And so he was, for after a hard fight the old Cock came back breathless and crowed with triumph, screaming, "Now, then, who's the better bird?" And the Greyhens answered in chorus: "Why, you be, my dear. Ah! you'm a rare bird, sure enough. Get your breath, my dear, for 'tis sweetly pretty to see 'ee dance." So the Deer left them dancing and fighting, and making their way over the moor again to Dunkery, went down into Horner Wood. And they found the wood quiet and peaceful as if no hound had ever been near it; and above their heads the oak-buds were swelled and ripe almost to bursting, while under their feet was a carpet of glossy green and blue, picked out with stars of pale yellow, for the bluebells and primroses had thrust their heads through the dead leaves to welcome the spring. The gorse, too, was flaming with yellow blossom, the thorns were gay in their new green leaves, and the bracken was thrusting up its green coils, impatient to uncurl and make a shelter for the deer. They rarely saw an old stag, though they met a young one or two, and they did not even see many hinds, though they frequently met and talked to Ruddy. And the Calf now became better friends than ever with Ruddy's daughter, for, having both of them seen a great deal of the world after a life of one whole year, they had plenty to talk about. One day she told him, as a great secret, that her mother had promised her a little brother before many months should be past; but all that he did was to make her promise that she would still like him best. And the truth is that he began to think himself rather too fine a fellow to be interested in calves when there were older male deer to associate with. For as soon as the ash began to sprout, all the male deer in Horner formed clubs to go and eat the young shoots, for there is nothing that they love so much to eat; and he of course went among them and nibbled away as greedily as any, though not being the biggest deer he did not of course get the biggest share. Besides, not long after the ash was in leaf, he began to feel rather a pain in his head; and although a headache is not generally a pleasant thing, yet this was so slight and at the same time so interesting, that he did not much mind it. For on each side of the crown of his head there appeared a little swelling, very hot and tender, which grew into a little knob of black velvet, and which he thought very handsome, though you and I perhaps might not think so. But he was so proud of it that he always looked at it in the water, when he went down to drink of an evening, to see how it was growing. And the best of it was, that not one of the big stags now had much more on their heads than he had, for they had lost their horns, and were looking very foolish with their great necks and manes and nothing to carry on them. He saw the big stags so very seldom now that he could hardly find an opportunity of asking them what had happened; and when at last he got a chance of putting the question to a huge old fellow, whom he came upon one day with his mouth full of ivy, he was in such a hurry that I am afraid he must have seemed inquisitive. For the old Stag stared at him for a minute with the ivy sticking out of his lips, and then said very gruffly, "Go away, and mind your own business. Little calves should be seen and not heard." And our Deer was so much vexed at being called a little Calf, whereas he was really a Pricket, that he slunk away down to the water to have a look at his velvet; but it was getting on so beautifully that he felt quite comforted, and was glad that, although the Stag had been so unkind, he had not said, "You're another," or something rude and disrespectful of that kind, which would have been most unbecoming in a Red-Deer. A few days later the matter was partly explained to him. For early one morning when he was out at feed in a growing corn-field with a number of young male deer, a four-year-old came galloping up the hedge trough with a sheep-dog racing after him. The four-year-old was in such a flurry that he jumped the fence at the corner of the field without noticing an overhanging branch, and thump! down fell both of his horns on one side of the hedge, while he galloped on, leaving them behind him, on the other. The rest of the deer also went off in a hurry, you may be sure, after such a scare, for they did not expect a sheep-dog to be out so early; and, indeed, it is quite possible that the sheep-dog had no business to be out. His mother looked very grave when our Pricket told her about it; and that very night they set out across the moor, pointing straight for the covert where they had hidden themselves during the last summer. And there they found all their old friends; for the Badger had dug himself a new earth and was quite happy, and the Vixen had found his old house so convenient that she had turned it into a nursery; and, as they passed, three little Cubs poked their heads out of one of the holes, and winked at them like so many little vulgar boys. But on the very day after they arrived they heard loud yapping, as of a little dog, about the earth, and crossing to the other side of the valley, they could faintly hear men's voices and the constant clink of iron against stones. And when night came and they ventured to come nearer, they found the old Vixen running about like one distracted, crying for her Cubs; for the earth was all harried and destroyed, and there could be no doubt that the men had dug the Cubs out and taken them away. And the wailings of the poor old Vixen were so distressing that they left the wood and turned up again over the moor. Soon they began to pass over strange ground, which rose higher and higher before them. The little streams grew more plentiful, coming down from every side in deep clefts which they had dug through the turf to hasten their journey to the sea; the ground beneath their feet became softer and softer, though it was never so ill-mannered as to give way under their light step, and the water dripped incessantly down from the ragged edges of the turf above the clefts. But they went on higher and higher, till at last they stood on a dreary waste of rough grass, and miry pools, and turf-pits blanched by the white bog-flower. For they were on the great ridge whence the rivers of Exmoor take their source and flow down on all sides to the sea; and a wild treacherous tract it is. They passed a little bird no bigger than a thrush, who had his beak buried so deep in the mire that he could not speak; and the Hind said, "Good day, Master Snipe. Your wife and family are well, I hope?" Then the little bird hastily plucked a long bill out of the ground, though his mouth was so full of a big worm that he was obliged to be silent for a minute or two; nevertheless at last he gulped the worm down, washed his bill in a little pool of water, and piped out, "Very well, thank you, my lady, half-grown or more." "You couldn't tell me what there is over the hill?" asked the Hind. "Not very well, not to tell your ladyship what you want to know," said the Snipe, "but you'll find the old Wild-duck a bit farther on and she'll tell 'ee." And he began routling about in the mire again with his beak. So they lay down till evening among the turf-pits, and after travelling a little way farther they reached the very top of the hill and saw a new world. For before them the high land of the moor plunged down into a tangle of smaller hills, cut up by great green banks into innumerable little fields, and seamed and slashed by a hundred wooded valleys. Fifty miles before them the land rose high again and swelled up to the tors of Dartmoor, which stood stately and clear and blue against the sky. But on their right hand the moor seemed to leap at one bound many miles to the sea; and they saw the white line of the surf breaking on Bideford Bar, and beyond it Lundy, firm and solid in mid-sea, and far beyond Lundy the wicked rocky snout of Hartland Point, purple and gaunt beneath the sinking sun. The Hind looked anxiously at the wooded valleys beneath their feet, wondering which she should take; but presently they heard a loud "Quack, quack, quack," and down she went in the direction of the sound. And there in a pool of a little stream they found an old Duck, very prim and matronly, swimming about with her brood all round her, and the Mallard with them. Whereupon of course the Hind stopped in her civil way to ask after her and her little Flappers. "Why, bless 'ee, my lady, they'm getting 'most too big to be called Flappers," answered the Duck, "and I shall take mun out and down the river to see the world very soon. They do tell me that some ducks takes their broods straight to the big waters, but they must be strange birds, and I don't hold wi' such. 'Twas my Mallard was a-telling me. What was it you told me you saw down the river, my dear?" But the old Mallard was shy and silent; he only mumbled out something that they could not hear, and swam away apart. Then the old Duck went on in a whisper: "You see, my lady, he's just a-beginning to change his coat, and very soon he'll be so dingy as I be for a whole month, till his new coat cometh. Every year 'tis the same, and he can't abear it, my lady, for it makes folk think that he's a Duck and no Mallard. Not but that I think that a Duck's coat is beautiful, but a Mallard's more beautiful yet, I can't deny that; but you know, my lady, how vain these husbands be. But he did tell me about they ducks, and I say again I don't hold wi' mun. I reared my brood in the turf-pits and taught mun to swim, and bringed them down the little streams where they couldn't come to no harm till they was big enough to take care of theirselves. And I don't hold with no other way, for I'm not a-going to have my little ducks drownded." "And is the river quiet?" asked the Hind; "and could we live in the valley?" "The valley's so quiet as a turf-pit, my lady," said the old Duck, "beautiful great woods for miles down. Surely I've heard tell that your family lived there years agone." So they took leave of the Ducks, and going down into the strange valley found it as she had said. The woods ran down by the little river for miles; and though the valley left the moor far behind it, yet there were fields of grass, and corn, and turnips, full of good food whenever they might want it; so they decided to make themselves very comfortable there for the whole summer. CHAPTER VII One day when they were out at feed our Pricket caught sight of a little brown bird with a full dozen of little chicks cheeping all round her; and as he was always anxious to make new friends he trotted up to scrape acquaintance with the stranger. But what was his astonishment when the little bird fluffed out her wings and flew at him. "You dare to touch mun," she said furiously, "you dare to touch mun, and I'll peck out the eyes of 'ee." "But, my dear soul," he said, "I won't do you any harm." "Oh, beg your pardon," said the little bird, "I didn't see who it was, and I made sure that it was one of they sheep-dogs. But I don't mind ever to have seen one of you here; I thought you belonged farther down the valley." "But I come from the moor," he said. "I ha'n't never been on the moor," said the little bird, "but there's more of 'ee down the valley, at least I think there be, for, begging your honour's pardon, I don't rightly know who you be. Do 'ee want to know the way? Then follow down the river till you'm clear of the woods and then turn up over the fields, till you see another wood, and that will bring 'ee to the place where your friends be. And I beg your honour's pardon for mistaking your honour for a sheep-dog, for I've never seen the like of you before, but they sheep-dogs do worry us poor Partridges terrible." And she bustled away with her Chicks. But the Pricket was so much excited to hear of other Deer that he entreated his mother to go where the Partridge had told them. And they went just as she had said, over the fields and into the wood that she spoke of, but to their disappointment saw no sign of a deer there. So they passed on through the wood to the valley again, and then they came to a park with the river running through it, and great trees bigger than he had ever seen, beech and oak and lime and chestnut, some in rows and some in clumps, a beautiful expanse of green, all dripping in the morning dew. And there the Pricket saw deer, and he was so delighted that he ran on by himself to speak to them; but he was puzzled, for some of them were black, and some were white, and some were red, and the greater part were spotted; while not one was near so big as he was, though many of them had growing horns as big as his own and bigger. So he made sure that they must all be calves with some new description of horn, and going up to the biggest of them he said rather patronisingly, "Good morning, my little friend." But the other turned round and said, "Little friend! Do you know who I am, sir? I am the Master-Buck of this park, sir, and I'll trouble you not to call me your little friend." "But why don't you come to the woods and on to the moor?" said the Pricket, astonished. "I've never seen you there." "Did you hear me say that I was the Master-Buck of this park, sir?" said the Fallow-Buck, "and do you know what that means? I am lord of the whole of this herd, and master of everything inside this park-fence. What do I want with woods and moors, when I have all this beautiful green park for a kingdom, and all this grass to feed on in the summer, and hay, sir, hay brought to me in the winter? Do you get hay brought to you in the winter, sir?" "Why," broke in the Pricket, "do you mean to say that you can't feed yourself?" But here the Hind trotted up and fetched her son away. "They are only miserable little tame Fallow-Deer," she said. "You should never have lowered yourself to speak to them." "No, mother," he answered; "but fancy preferring to live in a wretched little park instead of wandering free through the woods and over the moor! Do let me go back and thrash him." But when the Fallow-Buck heard this he trotted away as quick as he could; and mother and son went back into the wood. And as they entered it a very handsome bird with a grey back and a rosy breast and bright blue on his wings fluttered over their heads screeching at the top of his voice. "Come in," he said, "please to come right in. But we Jays be put here to scritch when any stranger cometh into the wood, and scritch I must and scritch I shall." And certainly he did, in a most unpleasant tone, for he had been watching a brood of another bird's chicks instead of minding his proper business, and so had missed them when they first came in. So he screeched double to make up for lost time. Then presently there came towards them another bird, walking very daintily on the ground. He had a green neck and bright red round his eyes, and a coat which shone like burnished copper mixed with burnished gold. He stopped as they came up, and waiting till the Pricket had wandered a little way from his mother, he went up to him and said in a very patronising tone: "Welcome, young sir, welcome to my wood. I have not the pleasure of knowing who you are, but my name I expect is familiar to you. Phasianus Colchicus, ahem--" and he strutted about with great importance. "You have heard of me, no doubt." "I am afraid not," said the Pricket very civilly. "You see, I come from the moor. But I thought that I saw one or two birds like you as we passed through this wood." "Like me," said the bird suspiciously; "are you quite sure that they were like me, like me in every way?" "Well," said the Pricket hesitating, "they had pretty white rings round their necks--?" "What!" broke in the bird, "rings round their necks, and like me! Oh, the ignorance of young people nowadays. My dear young friend, you have a great deal to learn. Have I a white ring round my neck? No. Well, now I must ask your pardon if I turn my back upon you for one moment." And round he turned very slowly and ceremoniously and stood with his back to the Pricket, who stared at it not knowing what to say. "Well," said the bird, looking over his shoulder after a time. "You make no remark. Is it possible that you notice nothing? My dear young friend, let me ask you, do you see any green on my back?" "No," said the Pricket, and honestly he did not. "So," said the bird very tragically. "Look well at that back, for you will never see such another again, my young friend. I am one of the old English breed, the last of my race, the last of those that, coming centuries ago from the banks of the Phasis, made England their home and were, I may venture to say, her greatest ornament. But now a miserable race of Chinese birds has come in, and go where I will I see nothing but white-ringed necks and hideous green backs. My very children, now no more, took them for wives and husbands, and I alone am left of the old pure breed, the last of the true Pheasants, the last king of this famous wood, the last and the greatest--bless me, what's that? Kok, kok, kok, kok, kok." Thereupon he flipped up into a larch-tree and began at the top of his voice: "You wretched creature, how often have I forbidden you the woods? Go home and catch mice, go home. My dear young friend, let me entreat you to drive that wretch away." And the Pricket looking round saw a little black and white Cat slinking through the wood close by, a thing he had never seen before and did not at all like the sight of. She took not the least notice of the Pheasant till the Hind trotted down through the covert and said very sternly: "Go home, Pussy, go home. How dare you come out into the woods? Take care, or you'll come to a bad end." And the Cat ran away as fast as she could; and I may as well say that she did come to a bad end the very next week, for she was caught in a trap and knocked on the head, which last is the fate of all poaching cats sooner or later. So if ever you own a cat, be careful to keep it at home. "Ah!" said the old Cock-Pheasant, much relieved, as the Cat disappeared. "Is that your mother, my young friend? What an excellent person! You must introduce me some day, but really at this moment I feel quite unfit to leave this tree." So they left him sitting in the larch tree, not looking at all kingly, and wandered about the wood, finding it very much to their liking; for there was dry ground and wet ground, sunny beds and shady beds, warm places and cool places, and great quiet and repose. And that is why all wild animals love Bremridge Wood and always have loved it. Now some days after they had made their home there, the Pricket became troubled with a good deal of itching in the velvet on his head. He shook his head violently, but this did no good except to make the velvet fall down in little strips, so at last he picked out a neat little ash-tree and rubbed and scrubbed and frayed till all the velvet fell to the ground, and he was left with a clean little pair of smooth white horns. At this he was so pleased with himself that he must needs go down to the river to look at himself in the water; and after that he could not be satisfied till he had passed through the deer-park to let the Fallow-Deer see him. But here he was a little abashed, for the horns of the Bucks were many of them much bigger than his own, though flat, like your hand, and, as he thought, not nearly so handsome. The Hind now became restless and inclined to wander, so that they went the round of all the woods in the neighbourhood; and thus it was that one day they came upon ground covered with rhododendrons, and azaleas, and tall pine-trees of a kind that they had never seen before. They would hardly have ventured upon it if they had not heard the quacking of wild-ducks, which led them on till they came upon a little stream. They followed the water downward till they came to a waterfall, where they stopped for a minute in alarm; for at its foot lay the remains of three little ducks quite dead, little more indeed than heaps of wet feathers, only to be recognised by their poor little olive-green beaks. But they still heard quacking below, and going on they presently found a dozen Mallards and Ducks exactly like those that they had seen on the moor, all full-plumed and full-grown. The Hind went up to them at once, but they took not the least notice of her. She wished them good-morning, but still they took no notice; so then she said in her gentlest voice: "I am afraid that you have had a dreadful misfortune with your little Flappers." Then at last a little Duck turned round and said very rudely: "Ey? What yer s'yin'?" "Your little Ducklings which I saw lying dead by the fall," she said. "Well," said the Duck still more rudely, "let 'em lie there. I can't be bothered with 'em. Who asked you to come poking your nose into our water?" The Hind was very angry, for she had never been spoken to like this, and she remembered how very differently the Duck had talked to her on the moor. So instead of leaving these disgraceful little Ducks alone, which would perhaps have been wiser, she began to scold them. "What," she said, "do you mean to say that you let the poor little things drown for want of proper care? I never heard of such a thing. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves." And then all the Ducks broke out in chorus. "'Ow, I s'y, 'ere's an old party come to teach us 'ow to bring up our chicks," said one. "Shall I just step out and teach your little feller 'ow to run?" said another. "Look out, little 'un, or your 'orns will drop off," said a third; and this annoyed the Pricket very much, for how could his horns be dropping off, considering that they were only just clean of velvet? "The old 'un hasn't got no 'orns," said a fourth; "there's an old Cow in the next field. Shall I go and borrow a pair for you, mum? She'll be 'appy to lend 'em, I'm sure." And they all burst out laughing together, "Quar, quar, quar, quar!" And I am sorry to say that the Ducks laughed even louder than the Mallards. Altogether they were so rude, and impudent, and vulgar, and odious, that the Deer walked away with great dignity without saying another word. And as they went they saw an old grey Fox crouching down in the rushes by the water-side, as still as a stone, and quite hidden from view. Then the Hind turned to warn the Ducks, but she could hardly utter a word before they all came swimming down, laughing, "Quar, quar, quar," till she couldn't hear herself speak. Presently they turned to the bank, still laughing, and waddled ashore one after another; when all of a sudden up jumped the Fox, caught the foremost Mallard by the neck, threw him over his back, and trotted away laughing in his turn. And the rest of the ducks flew back to the water fast enough then, you may be sure, and were sorry when it was too late that they had been so rude. But the truth is, that these were not true wild-ducks, but what are called tame wild-ducks, which had been bought in Leadenhall Market. And this accounted for their bad manners, their ugly language, and their conceit; for like a great many other creatures that are bred in towns, they thought they knew everything, whereas in reality they could not take care of their children nor even of themselves. The Hind was very much disgusted, and began to think that she had wandered too far from the moor, as indeed she had. For on their way back to Bremridge Wood they were chased by a sheep-dog, and when they shook him off by jumping a hedge they found themselves in the middle of a lot of bullocks, which ran together and galloped after them and tried to mob them. So they decided to have no more to do with a country where there were so many tame things, but to go straight back to the moor. The Pricket thought that it might be pleasanter only to move up to their old home in the woods higher up the valley, but the Hind was impatient to return to the moor. There was no one to warn her not to go, and they set out that very same night. CHAPTER VIII They were glad to get on to the heather again, and to hear the breeze singing over the moor, and still more glad when they caught the wind of deer and found Aunt Yeld and Ruddy among them. And Lady Ruddy had kept her promise to her little Hind and had given her a little Stag for a brother, a fine little fellow, who was already beginning to shed his white spots and grow his brown coat. But almost directly after they arrived the stags began belling and fighting again, and there was no peace for nearly a month until they had tired themselves out and settled down to live quietly for another year. Then came a week of sharp frost, which made the ground too hard for the hounds to trouble them; and they really began to think that they might enjoy a quiet winter. Their winter-friends came flocking back to them, the Woodcock arriving one bright moonlight night with the whole of her own family and two or three more families besides. They all settled down above the cliffs where the springs were kept unfrozen by the sea, and night after night while the moon lasted the Pricket saw them grubbing in the soft ground with their long bills, and growing fatter and fatter. But at length one morning the Sea-gulls came in screaming from the sea to say that the west wind and the rain were coming; and that very night the frost vanished. Then came three days of endless grey clouds and mizzling rain, and then the sun and blue sky returned; and the Deer moved out of the covert to the open ground to enjoy St. Martin's summer. But one day while they were lying in the great grass tufts in the middle of the wet ground, they were startled by the approach of horses and hounds; and they leaped to their feet and made off in all haste. There were but two hounds after them, but for all that the Hind and the Pricket were never more alarmed, for scent as they knew was good, and the pace at which those two hounds flew after them was terrible. They had not run above a quarter of a mile when Aunt Yeld turned off in one direction, and Ruddy with her Yearling and her Calf in another; but the hounds let them go where they would, and raced after our Pricket and his mother as if they had been tied to them. They both ran their hardest, but they could not shake off those two hounds, and presently they parted company and fled on, each of them alone. The Pricket made for the cliffs, dashing across the peat-stream without daring to wait for a bath; and as he cantered up the hill towards the refuge that he had chosen, he caught sight of his mother racing over the yellow grass at her topmost speed, and no longer one couple but sixteen couples of hounds racing after her in compact order, not one of them gaining an inch on his neighbour. He saw her gallop up to a gate in a fence and fly over it like an arrow from the bow; and a few minutes after her the hounds also came to the same gate and flew over it likewise, without pausing for an instant, like a handful of white blossoms driven before the wind. Then he turned into the plantation, frightened out of his life, and ran down through them, leaping desperately over the stunted trees and scaring the Woodcocks out of their five wits. And from the plantation he ran down through the oak-woods on the cliff, and from thence to the beach, and then without pausing for a moment he ran straight into the sea and swam out over the waves as only a deer can swim. The cool water refreshed him; and presently he stopped swimming and turned round, floating quietly on the surface, to see if he was still in danger. But the woods were all silent, and there was no sign of hound or horse on the shore or on the cliff-paths; so after waiting for another quarter of an hour he swam back, and climbed up over the cliff again till he found a stream of fresh water. There he drank a good draught, and passing on came upon a Woodcock, one of those that he had frightened on his way down. The little bird was rather cross at having been disturbed in the middle of her day-dreams, for she said: "What on earth made you come tearing through this wood in that mad way just now? There was nobody hunting you, and nothing of any kind to frighten you. I was in the middle of a delightful dream about Norway, and you quite spoilt it." But he soon soothed her, for woodcocks are easy-going little creatures, and went away and lay down, very much relieved to know that he was unpursued. When evening came he went away to seek his mother, but he could not find her; and all next day he wandered about asking every deer that he met if they had seen her, but not one could tell him anything. He met Aunt Yeld and Ruddy, but they knew nothing, and he could not ask the hounds who might have told him; so at last very sorrowfully he gave up searching and made up his mind that she would never come back. And he was right, for she never did come back, and he never saw her again. But, after all, he was old enough to take care of himself, and it was time for him to be making his own way in the world. There were plenty of young deer of his own age to keep him company, and Aunt Yeld and Ruddy's little daughter were still left for old friends. So he settled down comfortably on Dunkery, and by good luck was little troubled the rest of the winter by the hounds. At last the spring came again and all was peace on the moor. The ash sent forth its green shoots, and as usual all the young male deer came crowding up to eat them; and our Deer got a larger share this spring, for he was bigger and stronger and could drive the yearlings away. But about the middle of April his head began to ache again, and not only to ache but to irritate him a great deal. It grew worse and worse every day, and one morning it got so troublesome on one side that he gave his head an extra violent shake; and lo and behold! the horn on that side began to totter, and before he could understand what had happened, it fell to the ground. For a minute or two he stood still trembling with pain, for the air struck cold on to the place from which the horn had dropped, and hurt him dreadfully. The pain soon got better, and he went away to hide himself, for he felt very much ashamed at having but one horn. But after a few hours the other side of his head grew as bad as the first, and he was wondering what on earth he should do, when who should come by but another Two-year-old, with both horns still on his head? Now this Two-year-old was rather smaller than our Deer, and rather disliked him because he took a larger share of the ash-sprouts; so thinking that this would be a fine opportunity of taking his revenge, he came at him at once with his head lowered. And our Deer ran away--what else could he do with only one horn against two?--and as he bounded under the oak bushes he knocked his remaining horn against a branch, and thump! off it came as suddenly as the other. But he was able to crow over the Two-year-old in a few days when he too had shed his horns, for our Deer had got the start of him in growing a new pair, and could show two inches of growing velvet where the other could only show one. So when the autumn came and the velvet began to peel, our Deer found that he had bigger horns than any other deer of his own age, brow, trey and upright, very strong and well-grown; such was his good luck in being an early calf and having had so good a mother. And when another year came (for the years, as you will find out to your cost some day, fly away much faster as one grows older) and he had shed his old horns and grown his new pair, he carried on each horn, brow, bay and trey, with two on top on one side and upright on the other, or nine points in all. Now towards the end of that summer a great big Stag came up to him and said, "My fine young fellow, it is time that you had nothing more to do with hinds and young things; you must come and be my squire." Now our Deer thought it a great compliment to be noticed by so splendid an old fellow, and went with him gladly enough. The pair of them were constantly together for several weeks; and our Deer found it not unpleasant, for the old Stag knew of all the best feeding grounds, and, though he took all the best of the food for himself, left plenty and to spare for the squire. But it was a shame to see how wasteful this greedy old fellow was. For if they went into a turnip-field he would only take a single bite out of a turnip, worry it out of the ground, and go on to another; while often he would pick up scores of roots and throw them over his head, from mere mischief and pride in the strength of his neck. Again, in the corn-fields he was so dainty that he would not take a whole ear of corn, but would bite off half of it and leave the rest to spoil. Now a hind, as our Deer knew from observing his mother, is far more thrifty. She will take four or five bites out of a turnip before she pulls it out of the ground and leaves it, and she takes the whole of an ear of corn instead of half. But I am sorry to say that our young Deer took example from the great Stag, and soon became as wasteful and mischievous as he was in his feeding; and indeed I never saw nor heard of a stag that had not learned this very bad habit. The only occasions on which the old Stag did not keep his squire with him was when he went to lie down in the covert for the day after feeding. The lazy old fellow was very particular about his bed, and was aware of all kinds of quiet places in the cliffs, where he knew that the hounds would be unlikely to find him. Or sometimes he would tell his squire to stop for a minute, and then he would make a gigantic bound of twenty feet or more into the midst of some dense thicket, and say to him quietly: "Now I am quite comfortable. Do you go on and lie down by yourself; but don't go too far, and keep to windward of me, so that I can find you if I want you." And our Deer used to go as he was told, never doubting that all was right; nor was it until late in the autumn that he found out his mistake. For one day while he was lying quietly in the short plantation above the cliffs he heard the familiar cry of hounds, and presently up came the old Stag. He jerked his head at him, just as the other old stag had done when he was a calf, and said very roughly: "Now, then, give me your bed, young fellow, and run instead of me. Look sharp." And our Deer jumped up at once, but he was so angry and astonished at being treated in this way now that he was grown up, that he quite forgot his manners, and said very shortly, "Sha'n't!" "How dare you? Go on at once," said the old Stag, quivering with rage and lowering his head, but our Deer lowered his head too and made ready to fight him, though he was but half of his size; and it would have gone hard with him, if just at that moment the hounds had not come up. Then the old Stag threw himself down into his bed with a wicked chuckle; and the hounds made a rush at our Deer and forced him to fly for his life. So there he was, starting alone before the hounds for the first time, and with only a few minutes to make up his mind whither he would go. But what other refuge should he seek but the wood where his mother had led him as a calf? So he left the covert at once and started off gallantly over the heather. He ran on for five or six miles, for he had been frightened by finding the hounds so close to him when the old Stag drove him out. But after a time he stopped and listened, for he had heard no voice of hounds behind him since he left the covert, and began to doubt whether they were chasing him after all. He pricked his ears intently, and turned round to find if the wind would bear him any scent of his enemies. No! there was not a sign of them. Evidently they were not following him, and he was safe. And this indeed was the case, for, though he did not know it, some men had seen the two deer turn and fight, and, marking the spot where the old Stag had lain down, had brought the hounds back and roused him again. But our Deer was too wary to make sure of his safety without the help of a peat-stream, so he cantered on to the next water and ran up it for a long way till it parted into three or four tiny threads, for he was now on the treacherous, boggy ground where the rivers rise. Then he left the stream and lay down in the tall, rank grass, meaning to wait there till night should come, if he were undisturbed. And lonely though it was, he felt that he was on friendly ground, for all round him the tiny brown streams were singing their song. _Through heather and woodland, through meadow and lea_ _We flow from the forest[1] away to the sea._ _In cloud and in vapour, in mist and in rain_ _We fly from the sea to the forest again._ _Oh! dear is the alder and dearer the fern,_ _And welcome are kingfisher, ousel and herne,_ _The swan from the tide-way, the duck from the mere,_ _But welcome of all is the wild Red-Deer._ _Turn down to the sea, turn up to the hill,_ _Turn north, turn south, we are with you still._ _Though fierce the pursuer, wherever you fly_ _Our voices will tell where a friend is nigh,_ _Your thirst to quench, and your strength to stay,_ _And to wash the scent of your feet away._ _Lie down in our midst and know no fear,_ _For we are the friends of the wild Red-deer._ [Footnote 1: A forest does not necessarily imply trees. There is not a tree on the forest of Exmoor.] So there he lay for two hours and more, never doubting but that he was safe, till suddenly to his dismay he thought he heard the voice of a hound, very faint and far away. He lay quite still, and after a time he thought he heard it again; but he could hardly think that the hounds could follow his line after so long a time. He waited and waited, distinctly hearing the sound come nearer, though very slowly, till presently a Blackcock came spinning up to him, whom he recognised as one of the old Greyhen's children. "Beware, my lord, beware," he said; "they'm coming slowly, but they'm a-coming, and I am bound to warn 'ee." "Are they come to the water?" he asked. "No," said the Blackcock, "but they'm almost come to it. Bide quiet, and I will keep watch. The old Stag managed to beat the hounds on the cliffs, and as they could not find mun again, the men after waiting a long time laid the pack on your line, and faint though scent was, they have followed it slowly, and follow it yet." So the Blackcock watched, and saw the hounds puzzling out the scent inch by inch with the greatest difficulty. There were but very few horsemen with them, though the moor was dotted in all directions with a hundred or more of them that had given up the chase and were going away. But a few still stuck to the hounds, which never ceased searching in all directions for the line of the Deer. At last after much puzzling the hounds carried the scent to the water, and there they were brought to their wits' end; but they tried up and up and up with tireless diligence till they came to a place where a huge tuft of grass jutted out high over the water from the bank, and there they stopped. "Oh, my lord, my lord," whispered the Blackcock, "you didn't never brush the grass as you passed, surely?" But while he spoke a hound reared up on his hind-legs and thrust his nose into the grass tuft, and said, "Ough! he has passed here;" and the Deer knew the voice as that of the black and tan hound that had led the way to his hiding-place once before when he was a calf. Yet he lay still, though trembling, while the hounds searched on closer and closer to him, albeit with little to guide them, for the scent was weak from the water that had run off his coat when he left the stream. At last, one after another, they gave up trying, and only the black and tan hound kept creeping on with his nose on the ground, till at last he caught the wind of the Deer in his bed, and stood rigid and stiff with ears erect and nostrils spread wide. Then the Blackcock rose and flew away crying, "Fly, my lord, fly," and the Deer jumped up and bounded off at the top of his speed. He heard every hound yell with triumph behind him, but he summoned all his courage, and set his face to go over the hill to the valley whither the Wild-Duck had guided him two years before. And he gained on the hounds, for he was fresh, whereas they had worked hard and travelled far to hunt him to his bed. So he cantered on in strength and confidence over bog and turf-pit till he gained the hilltop, and on down the long slope which led to the valley, and through the oak-coppice to the water. Then he jumped in and ran down, while the merry brown stream danced round him and leaped over his heated flanks, refreshing him and encouraging him till he felt that he could run on for ever. He followed it for full two miles and would have followed it still further, when all of a sudden a great Fish like a huge bar of silver came sculling up the stream to him and motioned him back. "What is it, my Lord Salmon?" he asked. "There are men on the bank not far below the bridge," answered the Fish. "Turn back, for your life. Do you know of a good pool within reach upward?" "Not one," said the Stag; "but hide yourself if you can, my Lord Salmon, for the hounds will be down presently." But for all the Salmon's warnings he went on yet a little further, for he knew that he should find another stream flowing into that wherein he stood, before he reached the bridge. So down he went till he reached it, and then without leaving the water he turned up this second stream for another mile. Then at last he went up into the covert, turning and twisting as he had seen old Aunt Yeld on the moor, and picking out every bit of stony ground, just as his mother had taught him. Meanwhile he heard the hounds trying down the other stream far beyond the spot where he had left it; and when at last they tried back up the water after him the evening was closing in, and the scent was so weak and all of them so tired that they could only hunt very slowly. So he, like a cunning fellow, kept passing backward and forward through the wood from one stream to the other, till at last he began to grow tired himself; when luckily he met the Salmon again, who led him down to a deep pool, where he sunk himself under the bank, as he had once seen Aunt Yeld sink herself. He lay there till night came and the valley was quiet and safe, and then he jumped out and lay down, very thankful to the friendly waters that had saved his life. CHAPTER IX Our Deer was so much pleased with himself after his escape that he began to look upon himself as quite grown up, and hastened back to the moor as soon as October came to find himself a wife. I needn't tell you that it was his old play-fellow, Ruddy's daughter, who had been born in the same year as himself, that he was thinking of; and he soon found that she wished for nothing better. But most unluckily the old Stag, whose squire he had been, had also fallen in love with her, and was determined to take her for himself. He would run after her all day, belling proposals at the top of his voice; and his lungs were so much more powerful than our Deer's that, do what he would, our friend could not get a word in edgeways. At last the Hind was so much bored by the noise and the worry that she made up her mind to steal away with our Deer quietly one night, and run off with him under cover of the darkness; which was what he had long been pressing her to do whenever he could find a chance. So off they started together for the quiet valley to which the Wild-Duck had shown him the way when he was still a yearling with his mother; for there he knew that they would be undisturbed and alone, which is a thing that newly-married couples particularly enjoy. And I may tell you that if ever you hear of a stag and hind that have strayed far away from their fellows to distant coverts, you may be quite sure that they are just such another young couple as this of our story. Of course he took her everywhere and showed her everything in the valley, explaining to her exactly how he had baffled the hounds there a few weeks before. And he tried hard to find the Salmon who had helped him so kindly, but he could not light upon him anywhere, nor find any one who knew where he was gone. The Wild-Ducks were gone to other feeding-grounds, and the only people whom he could think of who might have known were a pair of Herons that roosted in the valley; but they were so dreadfully shy that he never could get within speaking distance of them. Once he watched one of them standing on the river-bank as still as a post for a whole hour together, till all of a sudden his long beak shot down into the water, picked up a little wriggling trout, and stowed it away in two seconds. Then our Stag (for so we must call him now) making sure that he would be affable after meals, as people generally are, trotted down at once to talk to him. But the Heron was so much startled that he actually dropped the trout from his beak, mumbled out that he was in a dreadful hurry, and flew away. But, after they had lived in the valley a month or more, there came a bitter hard frost, and to their joy the Wild-Ducks came back to the river saying that their favourite feeding-ground was frozen up. The best chance of finding the Salmon, they said, was to follow the water upward as far as they could go. So up the two Deer went till the stream became so small that they could not imagine how so big a fish could keep afloat in it, but at last catching sight of what seemed to be two long black bars in the water they went closer to see what these might be. And there sure enough was the Salmon with another Fish beside him, but he was as different from his former self as a stag in October is from a stag in August. The bright silver coat was gone and had given place to a suit of dirty rusty red; his sides, so deep and full in the summer, were narrow and shrunken; and indeed the biggest part of him was his head, which ended in a great curved beak, not light and fine as they had seen it before, but heavy and clumsy and coarse. He seemed to be in low spirits and half ashamed of himself, but he was as courteous as ever. "Allow me to present you to my wife," he said, "though I am afraid that she is hardly fit to entertain visitors just at present." Then the other Fish made a gentle, graceful movement with her tail, but she looked very ill and weak, and though she had no great beak like her mate she seemed, like him, to be all head and no body. "But, my Lord Salmon," said the Stag, "what has driven you so far up the water?" "Well, you see," said the Salmon in a low voice, "that my wife is very particular about her nursery; nothing but the finest gravel will suit her to lay her eggs on. So we came up and up, and I am bound to say that we have found a charming gravel-bed, and that the eggs are doing as well as possible; but unfortunately the water has fallen low with this frost, and we cannot get down again till the rain comes. Only yesterday a man came by and tried to spear me and my wife with a pitchfork, but luckily he slipped on the frozen ground and fell into the water himself, so that we escaped. But she was very much frightened, and till the frost breaks we shall still be in danger. Do not stay here, for it is not safe; and besides I am ashamed to see visitors when we are in such a state." "But what about the eggs, my Lord Salmon?" said the Stag. "The stream will take care of them; and if a few are lost, what is that among ten thousand?" said the Salmon proudly. "But let me beg you not to wait." So the Deer went down the valley again, hoping that the West wind might soon come and drive away the frost, for the Salmon's sake as well as for their own. And a few days later they were surprised to meet the old Cock-Pheasant from Bremridge Wood, who came running towards them, very gorgeous in his very best winter plumage, but rather nervous and flurried. "Why, Sir Phasianus," said the Stag, "what brings you so far from home?" "Well, the fact is," said the Pheasant, "that I did not quite like the look of things this morning. Some men came round early while I was feeding in my favourite stubble, and began beating the hedges to drive me and all my companions back into my wood. Most of those foolish Chinese birds flew back as the men wanted them, but I have not lived all these years for nothing, so I flew up the valley and have been running on ever since. Hark! I thought that I was right." And as he spoke two faint reports came echoing up the valley; "pop! pop!" and then a pause and again "pop! pop!" a sound which was strange to the Deer. "That's the men with their guns," said the cunning old Bird, "they are beating my wood, and that's why I am here. To-morrow they will be there again, but the next day I shall return, and I hope to have the pleasure of receiving you there very shortly after." And he ran up into the covert and hid himself under a bramble bush on a heap of dead leaves, so that you could hardly tell his neck from the live leaves or his body from the dead. The Deer would not have thought of accepting his invitation, for they were very comfortable where they were, but that a few evenings later the air grew warmer and the South-West wind began to scream through the bare branches over their heads. Then the rain came down and the wind blew harder and harder in furious gusts, till far away from them at the head of the covert they just heard the sound of a crash; and not long after a score of terrified bullocks came plunging into the covert. For a beech-tree on the covert fence had come down, smashing the linhay in which the bullocks were lying, and tearing a great gap in the fence itself; which had not only scared them out of their senses but had driven them to seek shelter in the wood. And the Deer got up at once and moved away; for they do not like bullocks for companions, and guessed that, when the day came, there would be men and dogs wandering all over the covert to drive the bullocks back. So they went down the valley and into Bremridge Wood. The old Cock-Pheasant was fast asleep high up on a larch-tree when they came, but when the day broke he came fluttering down in spite of the rain, and begged them to make themselves at home. For the pompous old Bird was so full of his own importance that he still considered himself to be master of the whole wood and the Deer to be merely his guests. Of course they humoured him, though their ancestors had been lords of Bremridge Wood long before his; so the Stag complimented him on the beauty of his back, and the Hind told him that she had never seen so lovely a neck as his in her life. But still he seemed to want more compliments, though they could not think what more to say, until one day he turned the subject to dew-claws; and then he asked the Hind why her dew-claws were so much sharper than the Stag's and why they pointed straight downward, while the Stag's pointed outwards, right and left. Now these were personal questions that he had no business to put, and indeed would not have put if he had been _quite_ a gentleman. But before the Hind could answer (for she had to think how she should snub him without hurting his feelings _too_ much) he went on: "And by the way, talking of dew-claws I don't think I have ever showed you my spurs." And round he turned to display them. "You will agree with me, I think," he continued, "that they are a particularly fine pair, in fact I may say the finest that you are ever likely to see." And certainly they were very big for a pheasant, more than half an inch long, curved upward and sharp as a thorn. "I find them very useful," he added, "to keep my subjects of this wood in order. When the Chinese Cocks first invaded my kingdom they were inclined to be rebellious against my authority, but now I am happy to say that they know better." And he strutted about looking very important indeed. Now about a week after this there was a full moon, and there came flying into the wood a number of Woodcocks. The Deer thought nothing of it, for they had often seen as many, and were always delighted to watch the little brown birds digging in the soft ground and washing their beaks in the water. But on the second morning after their arrival a Jay came flying over their heads, screeching at the top of his voice that there were strangers in the covert, and presently the old Cock-Pheasant came running up in a terrible fluster, not at all like the king of a wood. "It's too bad," he said, "too bad. They have been here twice already, and they have no business to come again." And as he spoke there came the sound which they had once heard before, the pop! pop! of a double-barrelled gun, but this time much nearer to them, and much more alarming. The Stag jumped to his feet at once and called to the Hind to come away. "But you can't get away," said the old Pheasant, half angry, but almost ready to cry. "I have already tried to run out in half a dozen places, but wherever I went I met an odious imp of a Boy tapping two sticks together; and really a Boy tapping two sticks together is more than I can face. How I hate little Boys! But I won't stand it. I'll run back through the middle of them, and then I declare that I'll never enter this wood again. It's really past all bearing." And he turned and ran back, but soon came forward again. "It's no use," he said, "I shall run up over the hill and take my chance. But I vow that I'll never enter this wood again. It's high time that they should know that I won't stand it." So off he ran again, but the Deer waited and listened; and they could hear behind them a steady tapping of sticks along the whole hill-side, which came slowly closer and closer to them. And every creature in the wood came stealing forward round them, Rabbits and Cock-Pheasants and Hens and Blackbirds and Thrushes, and a score of other Birds, dodging this way and that, backward and forward, and listening with all their ears. The Deer went forward a little way, but presently a Cock-Pheasant came sailing high in the air over their heads. They watched him flying on, vigorous and strong, till all of a sudden his head dropped down, and his wings closed; and as he fell with a crash to the ground they heard the report of a gun ring out sharp and angry before them. Then they hesitated to go further, but other shots kept popping by ones and twos behind them, till at last they turned up the hill as the Cock-Pheasant had turned, and began to climb steadily through the oak-coppice. As they drew near the top of the hill they heard more tapping just above them, and going on a little further found the old Cock-Pheasant crouching down just below a broad green path. And on the path above him stood a little rosy-cheeked Boy in a ragged cap, with a coat far too big for him and a great comforter which hung down to his toes, beating two sticks together and grinning with delight. The Deer thought the Pheasant a great coward not to run boldly past so small a creature, but, as they waited, there came two more figures along the path and stood close to the Boy; and the Stag remembered them both, for they were the fair man and the pretty girl whom he had seen when he was a calf. The man looked a little older, for there was now a little fair hair, which was most carefully tended, on his upper lip, and he held himself very erect, with his shoulders well back and his chest thrown out. There he stood, tall and motionless, with his gun on his shoulder, watching for every movement and listening for every rustle, so still and silent that the Deer almost wondered whether he were alive. The girl stood behind him, as silent as he; and the Stag noticed as a curious thing, which he had never observed in them before, that both wore a scarf of green and black round their necks. But her face too had changed, for it was no longer that of a girl but of a beautiful woman, though just now it was sad and troubled. Her eyes never left the figure of the man before her except when now and again they filled with tears; and then she hastily brushed the tears away with something white that she held in her hand, and looked at him again. But all the time the tapping behind them came closer and closer, and the shots rang louder and louder, till at last the Deer could stand it no longer, and dashed across the path and up over the hill. As they passed they heard the man utter a loud halloo, and in an instant the old Cock-Pheasant was on the wing and flying over the trees to cross the valley. He rose higher and higher in the air, and presently from the valley below came the report of two shots, then again of two shots, and once more of two shots; and they heard the fair man laugh loud after each shot. But the old Bird took not the slightest notice, but flew on in the sight of the Deer till he reached the top of the opposite hill, where he lighted on the ground, and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. Then the Deer too crossed the valley further down, and stood in the covert watching. And they saw a line of men in white smocks beat through the covert to the very end, while the fair man and the girl waited for them in the field outside. But presently another man came riding up on a pony, and then all the men with guns came closing round the fair man and seemed unwilling to let him go. But after a short time he jumped on to the pony and trotted back along the path waving his hand to them, while they waved their hands to him. Presently he stopped to look back and wave his hand once more, and the girl waved her white handkerchief to him, and then he set the pony into a gallop and disappeared. But the other men went on, and the girl turned back by herself very slowly and sadly. Then the shots began to ring out again in the valley, and the Deer went away over the hill to the wood whence the bullocks had driven them, and finding all quiet made their home therein once more. CHAPTER X They had not been there many days when the old Cock-Pheasant came up to them and invited them back to Bremridge Wood. "I can assure you," he said very pompously, "that you shall not be disturbed again for at least a year." "Why, Sir Phasianus," said the Stag, "I thought you had vowed never to enter it again." "In a moment of haste I believe that I may have done so," said the old bird; "but I have thought it over, and I cannot conceive how my wood can get on without me. How should all those foolish, timid birds look after themselves without me, their king, to direct them? No! there I was hatched, and there I must stay till I end my days. And I shall feel proud if you will join me, and stay with me, and honour my wood with your presence on--ahem!--an interesting occasion." "Indeed?" said the Stag. "Yes," said the old Pheasant; "I had the misfortune to lose my wife when the wood was shot some weeks ago. She had not the courage to come here with me,"--(this, I am sorry to say, was not quite true, for he had run away alone to take care of himself without thinking of going to fetch her)--"and I am contemplating a new alliance--not directly, you understand--but in a couple of months I hope to have the pleasure of presenting you to my bride." The Stag was much tempted to ask how he could marry a Chinese; and the Hind hesitated for a moment, for, as you will find out some day, every mother is deeply interested in a wedding. But she and the Stag did not like to be disturbed, and they could not trust the Cock-Pheasant's assurance after all that had happened; besides, she had arrangements of her own to make for the spring. So they congratulated him and bade him good-bye; nor did they ever see him again. And if you ask me what became of him, I think that he must have died in a good old age, unless, indeed, he was that very big bird with the very long spurs that was shot by Uncle Archie last year. For he was such a bird as we never see nowadays, and, as he said himself, the last of his race. So the winter wore away peacefully in the valley, and the spring came again. The Stag shed his horns earlier than in the previous year, and began to grow a finer pair than any that he had yet worn. And a little later the Hind brought him a little Calf, so that there were now three of them in the valley, and a very happy family they were. So there they stayed till quite late in the summer, and indeed they might never have moved, if they had not met the Salmon again one day when they went down to the river. He was swimming upward slowly and gracefully, his silver coat brighter than ever, and his whole form broader and deeper and handsomer in every way. He jumped clean out of the water when he saw them, and the Stag welcomed him back and asked him where he had been. "Been?" said the Salmon, "why, down to the sea. We went down with the first flood after you left us, and merry it was in the glorious salt water. We met fish from half a dozen other rivers; and the little fellows that you saw in their silver jackets asked to be remembered to you, though you would hardly know them now, for they are grown into big Salmon. But we were obliged to part at last and go back to our rivers, and hard work it was climbing some of the weirs down below, I can tell you; indeed, my wife could not get over one of them, and I was obliged to leave her behind. Ah, there's no place like the sea! Is there, my little fellow?" he said, looking kindly at the little Calf. But the Hind was obliged to confess, with some shame, that her Calf had never seen the sea. "What! an Exmoor Deer, and never seen the sea?" exclaimed the Salmon; and though he said no more, both Stag and Hind bethought them that it was high time for their Calf to see not only the sea, but the moor. So they bade the Salmon good-bye, and soon after moved out of the valley to the forest, and over the forest to the heather. And the Stag could not resist the temptation of going to look for old Bunny, so away they went to her bury. But when he got there, though he saw other Rabbits, he could perceive no sign of her; nor was it till he had asked a great many questions that one of the Rabbits said: "Oh! you'm speaking of great-grandmother, my lord. She's in to bury, but she's got terrible old and tejious." And she popped into a hole, from which after a while old Bunny came out. Her coat was rusty, her teeth were very brown, and her eyes dim with age; and at first she hardly seemed to recognise the Stag; but she had not quite lost her tongue, for after a time she put her head on one side and began. "Good-day, my lord; surely it was you that my Lady Tawny brought to see me years agone, when you was but a little tacker. 'Tis few that comes to see old Bunny now. Ah! she was a sweet lady, my Lady Tawny, but her's gone. And Lady Ruddy was nighly so sweet, but her's gone. And the old Greyhen to Badgworthy, she was a good neighbour, but her's gone; and her poults be gone, leastways they don't never bring no poults to see me. And my last mate, he was caught in a net. I said to mun, 'Nets isn't nothing;' I says, 'When you find nets over a bury, bite a hole in mun and run through mun, as I've a-done many times.' But he was the half of a fule, as they all be; and he's gone. And there's my childer and childer's childer, many of them's gone, and those that be here won't hearken to my telling. And--" But here the other Rabbit cut in. "Let her ladyship spake to 'ee, grandmother. Please not to mind her, my lady, for she's mortal tejious." But old Bunny went on. "Is it my Lady Tawny or my Lady Ruddy? I'm sure I can't tell. I'm old, my lady, and they won't let me spake. But I wish you good luck with your little son. Ah! the beautiful calves that I've seen, and the beautiful poults, and my own beautiful childer. But there's hounds, and there's hawks, and there's weasels and there's foxes; and there's few lasts so long as the old Bunny, and 'tis 'most time for her to go." Then she crept back slowly into the hole, and they saw her no more. So they went on and found other deer; but Ruddy was gone, as old Bunny had said, and Aunt Yeld alone remained of the Stag's old friends. She too was now very old and grey, and her slots were worn down, and her teeth and tushes blunted with age. But the Hind and Calf were delighted to meet with deer again, and they soon made friends and were happy. But as the autumn passed away and winter began to draw on, the Stag grew anxious to return to the valley again, and would have had the Hind come too; but she begged so hard to be allowed to stay on the moor, that he could not say her no. She always lay together with other Hinds, and they gossiped so much about their calves that the Stag took to the company of other stags on Dunkery; but he always had a craving to get back to the valley for the winter, and after a few weeks he went back there by himself. And lucky it was for him, as it chanced, for in January there came a great storm of snow, which for three weeks covered the moor, blotting out every fence and every little hollow in an unbroken, trackless waste of white. The deer on the forest were hard put to it for food, and even our Stag in the valley was obliged to go far afield. But he soon found out the hay-mows where the fodder was cut for the bullocks, and helped himself freely; nor was he ashamed now and then to take some of the turnips that had been laid out for the sheep, when he could find them. So he passed well through the hard weather, and when the snow melted and the streams came pouring down in heavy flood, he saw the old Salmon come sailing down in his dirty red suit, and thought that, though both of them had been through hard times, he had got through them the better of the two. Then the spring came and he began to grow sleek and fat; and, when he shed his horns, the new ones began once more to grow far larger than ever before. So he settled down for a luxurious summer, and took the best of everything in the fields all round the coverts. And when the late summer came he found that he needed a big tree to help him to rub the velvet from his horns, so he chose a fine young oak and went round it so often, rubbing and fraying and polishing, that he fairly cut the bark off from all round the trunk and left the tree to die. One morning, soon after he had cleaned his head, he went out to feed in the fields as usual, and had just made his lair in the covert for the day, when he was aware of a man, who came along one of the paths with his eyes on the ground. The Stag waited till he was gone, and then quietly rose and left the valley for the open moor. For he had a shrewd suspicion that all was not right when a man came round looking for his slot in the early morning; and he was wise, for a few hours later the men and hounds came and searched for him everywhere. And he heard them from his resting place trying the valley high and low, and chuckled to himself when he thought how foolish the man was who thought to harbour him in such a fashion. But after this he left the valley for good, and went back to the coverts that overhung the sea, where he hid himself so cunningly day after day that he was never found during the whole of that season. And when October came and the deer began to herd together, he looked about for his wife, but he could not find her anywhere, and he had sad misgivings that the hounds might have driven her away, or worse, while he was away in the valley. His only comfort was the reflection that if he wished to marry again, and he and another stag should fancy the same bride, he could fight for her instead of stealing her away. All that winter he lay on Dunkery with other stags, as big as himself and bigger, for he was now a fine Deer, and began to take his place with the lords of the herd. And he grew cunning too, for he soon found out that hinds and not stags are hunted in the winter-time, and he did not distress himself by running hard when there was no occasion for it. He would hear the hounds chasing in the woods quite close to him and never move. One winter's day when he was lying in a patch of gorse with three others, he heard the hounds come running so directly towards him that in spite of himself he raised his head to listen. And immediately after, old Aunt Yeld came up in the greatest distress, and lay down close to them. An old stag next to her was just rising to drive her off, when a hound spoke so close to them that they all dropped their chins to the ground and lay like stones. And poor Aunt Yeld whispered piteously, "Oh! get up and run; I am so tired; do help me." But not a stag would move, and our Stag, I am sorry to say, lay as still as the rest. Then the hounds came within five yards of them, but still they lay fast, till poor Aunt Yeld jumped up in despair and ran off. "May you never know the day," she said, "when you shall ask for help and find none! But the brown peat-stream, I know, will be my friend." And she flung down the hill to the water in desperation, with the hounds hard after her; and they never saw her again. So the Stag lived on in the woods above the cliffs and on the forest for two years longer. Each year found his head heavier and bearing more points, his back broader, his body heavier and sleeker, and his slots greater and rounder and blunter. He knew of all the best feeding-grounds, so he was always well nourished, and he had learned of so many secure hiding-places in the cliff from the old stag whom he had served as squire, that he was rarely disturbed. More than once he was roused by the hounds in spite of all that he could do, but he would turn out every deer in the covert sooner than run himself; and when, notwithstanding all his tricks, he was one day forced into the open, he ran cunningly up and down the water as his mother had showed him, and so got a good start of the hounds. Then he cantered on till he caught the wind of a lot of hinds and calves and dashed straight into the middle of them, frightening them out of their lives. He never remembered how much he had disliked to be disturbed in this way when he was a calf; he only thought that the hounds would scatter in all directions after the herd. And so they did, while he cantered on to the old home where he had known the Vixen and the Badger, took a good bath, and then lay down chuckling at his own cleverness. A very selfish old fellow you will call him, and I think you are right; but unluckily stags do become selfish as they grow older. But he always kept to the chivalrous rule that the post of honour in a retreat is the rear-guard, and always ran behind the hinds when roused with a herd of them by the hounds. Still, selfish he was, and though he had profited by all of Aunt Yeld's early lessons, he forgot until too late the last words that she had spoken to him, even though as a calf he had once saved her life. CHAPTER XI One beautiful morning at the very end of September our Stag was lying in the short plantations above the cliffs in a warm sunny bed of which he had long been very fond, when his ear was disturbed, as had so often happened before, by the cry of hounds. He did not mind it so much now, for he knew that it meant at any rate that they were hunting some other deer than himself. And it was plain to him that they had found the stag that they wanted, for not two or three couple but seventeen or eighteen were speaking to the scent. Therefore he lay quite still, never doubting that before long they would leave the covert. And so it seemed that it would be, for presently the cry ceased, and he had good reason to hope that they had gone away. The only thing that disquieted him was that the horses seemed always to be moving all over the plantation, instead of galloping over the moor. He was still lying fast when he heard two horses come trotting up to within thirty yards of his lair; and peering carefully through the branches he saw them and recognised them. One of them was the fair man whom he had seen so often before, still riding the same grey horse, which was grown so light as to be almost white. But the man was greatly changed. His face was thin and hollow, and would have been pale if it had not been burnt brown; the tiny hair on the upper lip had grown to a great red moustache; and the blue eyes were sunk deep in his head. And he rode with his reins in his right hand, for his left was hung in a sling, so that he could hardly hold his whip. But for all that he was as quick and lively as ever, and his eyes never ceased roving over the plantation. And by him rode the beautiful girl whom he had seen with him before, her face aglow with happiness; and she seemed so proud of him that she never took her eyes off his face for an instant, except now and then to glance pityingly at his wounded hand. They pulled up not far from the Stag and waited. And presently a hind came up, cantering anxiously through the plantation, for she had laid her calf down and did not wish to go far from him. She blundered on so close to the Stag that he would have got up and driven her away if he had not been afraid of being seen. But she passed on, and very soon the hounds came up after her. Then the man brought the white horse across them, trying hard to stop them from her line, but he could not use his whip; and they only swerved past him, still running hard, straight to the bed of the Stag. And up he jumped, his glossy coat gleaming bright in the sun, and every hound leaped forward with a cry of exultation as he rose. He went off at the top of his speed straight through the plantation, for he knew that he had the better of the hounds through the thicket. But they ran harder than he had ever known since the day when they had driven him to sea as a yearling, and, as he could wind no other deer, he made up his mind to cross the moor for the friendly valley where he had lived so long. So turning his head from the sea he leaped out of the plantation, and ran down to the water below. He would gladly have taken a bath then and there, but the hounds were too close; so splashing boldly through it he cantered aslant up the steep hill beyond as though it had been level ground. And when he gained the top, he felt the West wind strike cool upon him, and saw the long waves of heather and grass rise before him till they met the sky. Then he set his face bravely for the highest point, for beyond it was the refuge that he sought. And on he went, and on and on, cantering steadily but very fast, for though he heard no sound of their tongues he knew that the hounds were racing after him, as mute as mice. The blackcock fled away screaming before him, the hawk high in air wheeled aside as he passed, but on he went through the sweet, pink heather, without pausing to notice them. Then the heather became sparse and thin, growing only in ragged tufts amid the rank red grass and sheets of white bog-flower. He had lain in this wet ground many times, but no deer was there to help him to-day. Then the wet ground was passed and the heather came again, sound and firm, sloping down to a brown peat-stream. Never had its song sounded so sweet in his ears, never had he longed more for a bath in the amber water, but the hounds were still racing and he dared not wait. So he splashed on through the stream and up another ridge, where the heather grew but thinly amid a wilderness of hot stones. The sun smote fiercely upon him, and the air was close as he cantered down from the ridge into the combe beyond it, but he cared not, for he knew that there again was water. He ran up it for a few yards, but only for a few yards, for the hounds were still running their hardest, and he must wait till the great slope of grass before him was past. So he breasted it gallantly, up, and up, and up. The grass was thick over the treacherous ground, but his foot was still too light to pierce it, and he cantered steadily on. His mouth was growing parched, but he still felt strong, and he knew that when the hill was crossed he would find more water to welcome him. At last he reached the summit, and there spread out before him were Dartmoor and the sea, and far, far below him the haven of his choice; and the cool breeze from the sea breathed upon his nostrils, and he gathered strength and hope. There was still one more hollow to be crossed before he reached the long slope down to the valley, but there was water in it, and he might have time for a hasty draught. So still he pressed on with the same steady stride, hoping that he might wait at any rate for a few minutes in the stream, for thirst and heat were growing upon him, and he longed for a bath. But no! it was dangerous to wait; and he turned away sick at heart from the sparkling ripple, and faced the ascent before him. And now the grass seemed to coil wickedly round his dew-claws as if striving to hold them down; and he tugged his feet impatiently from its grasp, though more than once he had half a mind to turn back to the water. But he had chosen his refuge, and he struggled gamely on. At last he was at the top, and only one long unbroken slope of heather lay between him and the valley that he knew so well; and he turned into a long, deep combe which ran down to it, that he might not be seen. Down, and down, and down he ran, steadying himself and recovering his breath. At every stride he saw the trickle of water from the head of the combe grow larger and larger as other trickles joined it from every side, and he knew that he was near his refuge at last. Presently he came upon a patch of yellow gorse, which had thrust up its flaming head through the heather, and he plunged heavily through it, knowing that it would check the hounds. Another few hundred yards and he was within the covert, in the cool deep shade of the oak-coppice, with the merry river brawling beneath him. And he scrambled down eagerly through the trees and plunged into the brown water. How delicious it was after that fierce race over the heather, running cool and full and strong under the shadow of the coppice! He hardly paused to drink, but ran straight down stream, for his heart misgave him that the hounds had gained on him while he was struggling up the last steep ascent. And the water carried him on, now racing down his dew-claws, now lapping round his hocks, now rising quiet and still almost to his mane, sometimes for a few seconds raising him off his weary legs and bearing him gently down. Only too soon he heard the deep voice of the hounds throwing their tongues as they entered the wood, but he kept running steadily down, refreshed at every step by the sweet, cool water, and screened from all view by the canopy of hazel and alder that overhung it. At last he left it, and turning up into the woods ran on through them down the valley. Once he tried to scale the hill to the next valley, but he found the air hot and stifling under the dense green leaves, and he felt so much distressed that he turned back and continued his way down. Presently there rose up faintly behind him the deep note that he knew so well of the old black and tan hound; then the voices of other hounds chimed in together with it, and he knew that they had hit the place at which he had left the water. He heard the sound of the horn come floating down the valley, and tried hard to mend his pace, but he could not; and at last he was fain to leave the wood and come back to the water. Again he ran down, and again the friendly stream coursed round him and revived him. So he splashed on for a time and then he sought the woods anew in hope of finding help, but he could not stay in them long, and returned once more to the water. At last, on turning round a bend in the stream, he came upon a Heron, standing watching for eels, and he cried out to him, "Oh! stand still. I won't hurt you. Stand still till the hounds come, and the men will think that I have not passed." But the Heron was too shy to listen, and flapped heavily away. Then he came to a bridge, where his passage was barred by a pole, but he threw his horns back and managed to jump between the pole and the arch, without touching anything, and though he could not help splashing the pole, he made his way down without leaving the water. At length he came to the end of the woods, and here he hesitated, longing for some one to tell him about the stream further down, for it was strange to him. And he remembered Aunt Yeld's words, "May you never know what it is to look for help and to find none." But he could hear nothing of the hounds, and almost began to hope that he might have beaten them. So at last he found a corner thickly overhung with branches, and there he lay down in the water. And then whom should he see but the Lady Salmon making her way slowly up the stream, the very friend who could tell him what he wanted to know. But before he could speak to her she said, "Beware of going further down, for there is a flood-gate across the stream which you cannot pass. Have you seen my husband?" And he told her, "Yes," and she swam on, while he lay still and made up his mind where he would go if the hounds came on. The hounds indeed had dropped behind him, for the men could not believe that the Deer could have leaped the pole under the bridge, and had taken them to try for him somewhere else. But the old black and tan hound had tried to walk along the pole to wind it before they came up, and having fallen into the water and been swept on past the bridge, was still trying downward by himself. And thus it was that while the Deer was lying in the water the old hound came up alone. He seemed to have made up his mind that the Stag was near, for he stopped and kept sniffing round him in all directions till at last he crept in under the bank, caught sight of him, and threw his head into the air with a loud triumphant bay. The Stag leaped to his feet in an instant and dashed at him, but the old hound shrank back and saved himself; and then the Stag broke out of the water, for he had made up his mind to breast the hill, and push on for Bremridge Wood. He knew the way, for it was that which the Partridge had shown him, and he felt that by a great effort he could reach it. And as he slanted painfully up the steep ascent he heard the old hound still baying with disappointment and rage; for he could not scramble up the steep bank so quickly as the Deer, and the more he bayed the further he was left behind. Further up the valley the Stag could hear the horn and hallooing of men, but he pressed on bravely and gained the top of the hill at last. But when he reached it his neck was bowed, his tongue was parched, and his legs staggered under him. Still he struggled on. He was in the enclosed country now, but he knew every field and every rack, and he scrambled over the banks and hurled himself over the gates as pluckily as if he had but just been roused. Thus at last he reached the familiar wood. A Jay flew screaming before him as he entered it, but he heeded her not. His head was beginning to swim, but he still knew the densest quarter of the covert and made his way to it. The brambles clutched at him and the branches tripped him at every step, yet he never paused, but shook them off and went crashing and blundering on, till at length with one gigantic leap he hurled himself into the thickest of the underwood and lay fast. After a time he heard the note of a hound entering the wood, and he knew the voice, but he lay still. Then other hounds came up speaking also, and he heard them working slowly towards his hiding-place. But as they drew near the thicket the voices were less numerous, and only a few hounds seemed to have strength and courage to face it. He caught the voice of the black and tan hound speaking fitfully as he came nearer and nearer, and more impatiently as he struggled with the brambles and binders that barred his way. At last it reached the place from which he had leaped into his refuge, and there it fell silent. Still the hound cast on, and from a path far above came the voice of a man encouraging him, and encouraging other hounds to help him. But the Deer lay like a stone, while the hounds tried all round within only a few yards of him, when all of a sudden the old hound caught the wind of him and made a bound at him where he lay. The Deer jumped to his feet and faced him, and the old hound bayed again with triumph, but dared not come within reach. So there they stood for two whole minutes till the other hounds came up all round him. Then one hound in his insolence came too near, and in an instant the Deer reared up, and plunging his antlers deep into his side, fairly pinned him to the ground, so that the hound never moved again. Then he broke through the rest of them, spurning them wide with horn and hoof, and crashed on through the covert towards the valley. And as he came to the edge of the wood he heard the song of the peat-stream rise before him, and knew that he had still one refuge left. Reeling and desperate he scrambled out of the wood and leaped down into the park at its foot. The Fallow-Deer were not to be seen, for they had heard the cry of the hounds in the wood and had hidden themselves in alarm among the trees, but the Stag heard the voice of the stream calling to him louder than he had ever heard it, and he heeded nought else. And he ran towards the place where he heard it call loudest, and found it rushing round a bend, very smoothly and quietly, but very swiftly. At every foot below it seemed to rush faster, till fifty yards down it struck against a bridge of three arches, through which it raced like a cataract and poured down with a thundering roar into a boiling pool beneath. And the Stag leaped in and set his back against some alders that grew on the opposite bank, choosing his place cunningly where he could stand but the hounds must swim. Then he clenched his teeth and threw back his head, and dared his enemies to do their worst. And the brown stream washed merrily round him, singing low, but as sweetly as he had ever heard it. "_Come down with me, come. Oh! merry and free_ _Is the race from the forest away to the sea._ _The pool is before me; I hark to its call_ _And I hasten my speed for the leap o'er the fall._ _The Salmon are waiting impatient below,_ _I feel them spring upward as over I go._ _Come down with me, come; why linger you here?_ _You know me, the friend of the wild Red-Deer._" Then the voice of the water was broken, for the black and tan hound came bounding down in advance of the rest over the grass to the water, caught view of the Deer where he stood, and throwing up his head bayed loud and deep and long. And other hounds came hurrying down through the wood, speaking quick and short, for they were mad with impatience; and bursting through the fence straight to the black and tan hound they joined their voices in exultation to his. Then a few, a very few, men came up hastening with what speed they might on their weary, hobbling horses, a man on a white horse leading them, and they added their wild yells to the baying of the hounds, while ever and anon the shrill tones of the horn rose high above them all in short, quick, jubilant notes. Soon some of the hounds grew tired of baying in front and flew round to the bank behind him, still yelling fiercely in impotent rage; and the maddening clamour rang far up the valley through the sweet, still evening. The Fallow-Deer huddled themselves close among the trees, and the pigeons hushed their cooing and flew swift and high in the air from the terror of the sound. But the Stag stood unmoved in the midst of the baying ring, with his noble head thrown back and his chin raised scornfully aloft, in all the pride and majesty of defiance. But all the while the stream kept pressing him downward inch by inch, very gently but very surely. Once a hound, in his impatience, burst through the branches and ran out on the stem of an alder almost on to his back, so that he was obliged to move down still lower. And there the stream pressed him still more strongly, though never unkindly, and he went downward faster than before; and he heard the full voice of the torrent, as it thundered over the fall, chanting to him grand and sonorous in a deep tone of command. "_Nay, tarry no longer; come down, come down_ _To the pool that invites you, still, peaceful, and brown._ _One plunge through the rush of the shivering spray_ _And the dark, solemn eddies shall bear you away_ _From the rustle of bubbles, the hissing of foam,_ _To a haven of rest, and a long, long home._ _Come down with me, come; your refuge is near;_ _I call you, the friend of the wild Red-Deer._" And he heard it and yielded. The water rose higher, and the strength of the current grew more urgent about him, till at length the stream lifted him gently off his weary feet and bore him silently down. For a moment he strove with all his might to stem the smooth, impetuous tide as it swept him on; then he gave himself up to the friendly waters, and throwing his head high in air in a last defiance, he went down swiftly over the fall. And the wild baying ceased; and he heard nothing but the chorus of the waters in his ears. Once he struggled to raise his head, and the great brown antlers came looming up for a moment through the eddies; but as he passed down to the deep, still pool beyond the fall, the water called to him so kindly that he could not but obey. "_From my wild forest-cradle, through deep and through shoal,_ _You have followed me far, and have reached to the goal._ _Now the gallop is ended, the chase it is run,_ _The struggle is over, the victory won._ _The fall is o'er-leaped and the rapids are passed,_ _Come rest on my bosom untroubled at last._ _Nay, raise not your head, come, bury it here;_ _No friend like the stream to the wild Red-Deer._" So the waters closed over the stern, sharp antlers, and he bowed his head and was at peace. Then men came and pulled the great still body out of the water; and they took his head and hung it up in memory of so great a run and so gallant a Stag. But their triumph was only over the empty shell of him, for his spirit had gone to the still brown pool. And indeed the stream has received many another wild deer besides him, which, I suspect, is the reason why ferns, that love the water, take the shape of stags' horns and of harts' tongues. So there he remains; for he had fought his fight and run his course; and he asks for nothing better than to hear the river sing to him all the day long. RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY * * * * * Transcriber's Note: The original edition did not contain a table of contents. A table of contents has been created for this electronic edition. Also, the following corrections were made to the original text. In Chapter III, "got old of a whole hind-leg" was changed to "got hold of a whole hind-leg". In Chapter VIII, "presently he stopped swiming" was changed to "presently he stopped swimming". In Chapter IX, a missing quotation mark was added before "Well, you see", and "The man looked a littlle older" was changed to "The man looked a little older". 
814	----	HUNTING SKETCHES by Anthony Trollope Contents: The Man who Hunts and Doesn't Like it The Man who Hunts and Does Like it The Lady who Rides to Hounds The Hunting Farmer The Man who Hunts and Never Jumps The Hunting Parson The Master of Hounds How to Ride to Hounds THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND DOESN'T LIKE IT. It seems to be odd, at first sight, that there should be any such men as these; but their name and number is legion. If we were to deduct from the hunting-crowd farmers, and others who hunt because hunting is brought to their door, of the remainder we should find that the "men who don't like it" have the preponderance. It is pretty much the same, I think, with all amusements. How many men go to balls, to races, to the theatre, how many women to concerts and races, simply because it is the thing to do? They have perhaps, a vague idea that they may ultimately find some joy in the pastime; but, though they do the thing constantly, they never like it. Of all such men, the hunting men are perhaps the most to be pitied. They are easily recognized by any one who cares to scrutinize the men around him in the hunting field. It is not to be supposed that all those who, in common parlance, do not ride, are to be included among the number of hunting men who don't like it. Many a man who sticks constantly to the roads and lines of gates, who, from principle, never looks at a fence, is much attached to hunting. Some of those who have borne great names as Nimrods in our hunting annals would as life have led a forlorn-hope as put a horse at a flight of hurdles. But they, too, are known; and though the nature of their delight is a mystery to straight-going men, it is manifest enough, that they do like it. Their theory of hunting is at any rate plain. They have an acknowledged system, and know what they are doing. But the men who don't like it, have no system, and never know distinctly what is their own aim. During some portion of their career they commonly try to ride hard, and sometimes for a while they will succeed. In short spurts, while the cherry-brandy prevails, they often have small successes; but even with the assistance of a spur in the head they never like it. Dear old John Leech! What an eye he had for the man who hunts and doesn't like it! But for such, as a pictorial chronicler of the hunting field he would have had no fame. Briggs, I fancy, in his way did like it. Briggs was a full-blooded, up-apt, awkward, sanguine man, who was able to like anything, from gin and water upwards. But with how many a wretched companion of Briggs' are we not familiar? men as to whom any girl of eighteen would swear from the form of his visage and the carriage of his legs as he sits on his horse that he was seeking honour where honour was not to be found, and looking for pleasure in places where no pleasure lay for him. But the man who hunts and doesn't like it, has his moments of gratification, and finds a source of pride in his penance. In the summer, hunting does much for him. He does not usually take much personal care of his horses, as he is probably a town man and his horses are summered by a keeper of hunting stables; but he talks of them. He talks of them freely, and the keeper of the hunting stables is occasionally forced to write to him. And he can run down to look at his nags, and spend a few hours eating bad mutton chops, walking about the yards and paddocks, and, bleeding halfcrowns through the nose. In all this there is a delight which offers some compensation for his winter misery to our friend who hunts and doesn't like it. He finds it pleasant to talk of his horses especially to young women, with whom, perhaps, the ascertained fact of his winter employment does give him some credit. It is still something to be a hunting man even yet, though the multiplicity of railways and the existing plethora of money has so increased the number of sportsmen, that to keep a nag or two near some well-known station, is nearly as common as to die. But the delight of these martyrs is at the highest in the presence of their tailors; or, higher still, perhaps, in that of their bootmakers. The hunting man does receive some honour from him who makes his breeches; and, with a well-balanced sense of justice, the tailor's foreman is, I think, more patient, more admiring, more demonstrative in his assurances, more ready with his bit of chalk, when handling the knee of the man who doesn't like the work, than he ever is with the customer who comes to him simply because he wants some clothes fit for the saddle. The judicious conciliating tradesman knows that compensation should be given, and he helps to give it. But the visits to the bootmaker are better still. The tailor persists in telling his customer how his breeches should be made, and after what fashion they should be worn; but the bootmaker will take his orders meekly. If not ruffled by paltry objections as to the fit of the foot, he will accede to any amount of instructions as to the legs and tops. And then a new pair of top boots is a pretty toy; Costly, perhaps, if needed only as a toy, but very pretty, and more decorative in a gentleman's dressing-room than any other kind of garment. And top boots, when multiplied in such a locality, when seen in a phalanx tell such pleasant lies on their owner's behalf. While your breeches are as dumb in their retirement as though you had not paid for them, your conspicuous boots are eloquent with a thousand tongues! There is pleasure found, no doubt, in this. As the season draws nigh the delights become vague, and still more vague; but, nevertheless, there are delights. Getting up at six o'clock in November to go down to Bletchley by an early train is not in itself pleasant, but on the opening morning, on the few first opening mornings, there is a promise about the thing which invigorates and encourages the early riser. He means to like it this year if he can. He has still some undefined notion that his period of pleasure will now come. He has not, as yet, accepted the adverse verdict which his own nature has given against him in this matter of hunting, and he gets into his early tub with acme glow of satisfaction. And afterwards it is nice to find himself bright with mahogany tops, buff-tinted breeches, and a pink coat. The ordinary habiliments of an English gentleman are so sombre that his own eye is gratified, and he feels that he has placed himself in the vanguard of society by thus shining in his apparel. And he will ride this year! He is fixed to that purpose. He will ride straight; and, if possible, he will like it. But the Ethiop cannot change his skin, nor can any man add a cubit to his stature. He doesn't like it, and all around him in the field know how it is with him; he himself knows how it is with others like himself, and he congregates with his brethren. The period of his penance has come upon him. He has to pay the price of those pleasant interviews with his tradesmen. He has to expiate the false boasts made to his female cousins. That row of boots cannot be made to shine in his chamber for nothing. The hounds have found, and the fox is away. Men are fastening on their flat-topped hats and feeling themselves in their stirrups. Horses are hot for the run, and the moment for liking it has come, if only it were possible! But at moments such as these something has to be done. The man who doesn't like it, let him dislike it ever so much, cannot check his horse and simply ride back to the hunting stables. He understands that were he to do that, he must throw up his cap at once and resign. Nor can he trot easily along the roads with the fat old country gentleman who is out on his rough cob, and who, looking up to the wind and remembering the position of adjacent coverts, will give a good guess as to the direction in which the field will move. No; he must make an effort. The time of his penance has come, and the penance must be borne. There is a spark of pluck about him, though unfortunately he has brought it to bear in a wrong direction. The blood still runs at his heart, and he resolves that he will ride, if only he could tell which way. The stout gentleman on the cob has taken the road to the left with a few companions; but our friend knows that the stout gentleman has a little game of his own which will not be suitable for one who intends to ride. Then the crowd in front has divided itself. Those to the right rush down a hill towards a brook with a ford. One or two, men whom he hates with an intensity of envy, have jumped the brook, and have settled to their work. Twenty or thirty others are hustling themselves through the water. The time for a judicious start on that side is already gone. But others, a crowd of others, are facing the big ploughed field immediately before them. That is the straightest riding, and with them he goes. Why has the scent lain so hot over the up-turned heavy ground? Why do they go so fast at this the very first blush of the morning? Fortune is always against him, and the horse is pulling him through the mud as though the brute meant to drag his arm out of the socket. At the first fence, as he is steadying himself, a butcher passes him roughly in the jump and nearly takes away the side of his top boot. He is knocked half out of his saddle, and in that condition scrambles through. When he has regained his equilibrium he sees the happy butcher going into the field beyond. He means to curse the butcher when he catches him, but the butcher is safe. A field and a half before him he still sees the tail hounds, and renews his effort. He has meant to like it to-day, and he will. So he rides at the next fence boldly, where the butcher has left his mark, and does it pretty well, with a slight struggle. Why is it that he can never get over a ditch without some struggle in his saddle, some scramble with his horse? Why does he curse the poor animal so constantly, unless it be that he cannot catch the butcher? Now he rushes at a gate which others have opened for him, but rushes too late and catches his leg. Mad with pain, he nearly gives it up, but the spark of pluck is still there, and with throbbing knee he perseveres. How he hates it! It is all detestable now. He cannot hold his horse because of his gloves, and he cannot get them off. The sympathetic beast knows that his master is unhappy, and makes himself unhappy and troublesome in consequence. Our friend is still going, riding wildly, but still keeping a grain of caution for his fences. He has not been down yet, but has barely saved himself more than once. The ploughs are very deep, and his horse, though still boring at him, pants heavily. Oh, that there might come a check, or that the brute of a fox might happily go to ground! But no! The ruck of the hunt is far away from him in front, and the game is running steadily straight for some well known though still distant protection. But the man who doesn't like it still sees a red coat before him, and perseveres in chasing the wearer of it. The solitary red coat becomes distant, and still more distant from him, but he goes on while he can yet keep the line in which that red coat has ridden. He must hurry himself, however, or he will be lost to humanity, and will be alone. He must hurry himself, but his horse now desires to hurry no more. So he puts his spurs to the brute savagely, and then at some little fence, some ignoble ditch, they come down together in the mud, and the question of any further effort is saved for the rider. When he arises the red coat is out of sight, and his own horse is half across the field before him. In such a position, is it possible that a man should like it? About four o'clock in the afternoon, when the other men are coming in, he turns up at the hunting stables, and nobody asks him any questions. He may have been doing fairly well for what anybody knows, and, as he says nothing of himself, his disgrace is at any rate hidden. Why should he tell that he had been nearly an hour on foot trying to catch his horse, that he had sat himself down on a bank and almost cried, and that he had drained his flask to the last drop before one o'clock? No one need know the extent of his miseries. And no one does know how great is the misery endured by those who hunt regularly, and who do not like it. THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND DOES LIKE IT. The man who hunts and does like it is an object of keen envy to the man who hunts and doesn't; but he, too, has his own miseries, and I am not prepared to say that they are always less aggravating than those endured by his less ambitious brother in the field. He, too, when he comes to make up his account, when he brings his hunting to book and inquires whether his whistle has been worth its price, is driven to declare that vanity and vexation of spirit have been the prevailing characteristics of his hunting life. On how many evenings has he returned contented with his sport? How many days has he declared to have been utterly wasted? How often have frost and snow, drought and rain, wind and sunshine, impeded his plans? for to a hunting man frost, snow, drought, rain, wind and sunshine, will all come amiss. Then, when the one run of the season comes, he is not there! He has been idle and has taken a liberty with the day; or he has followed other gods and gone with strange hounds. With sore ears and bitter heart he hears the exaggerated boastings of his comrades, and almost swears that he will have no more of it. At the end of the season he tells himself that the season's amusement has cost him five hundred pounds; that he has had one good day, three days that were not bad, and that all the rest have been vanity and vexation of spirit. After all, it may be a question whether the man who hunts and doesn't like it does not have the best of it. When we consider what is endured by the hunting man the wonder is that any man should like it. In the old days of Squire Western, and in the old days too since the time of Squire Western, the old days of thirty years since, the hunting man had his hunting near to him. He was a country gentleman who considered himself to be energetic if he went out twice a week, and in doing this he rarely left his house earlier for that purpose than he would leave it for others. At certain periods of the year he would, perhaps, be out before dawn; but then the general habits of his life conduced to early rising; and his distances were short. If he kept a couple of horses for the purpose he was well mounted, and these horses were available for other uses. He rode out and home, jogging slowly along the roads, and was a martyr to no ambition. All that has been changed now. The man who hunts and likes it, either takes a small hurting seat away from the comforts of his own home, or he locates himself miserably at an inn, or he undergoes the purgatory of daily journeys up and down from London, doing that for his hunting which no consideration of money-making would induce him to do for his business. His hunting requires from him everything, his time, his money, his social hours, his rest, his sweet morning sleep; nay, his very dinners have to be sacrificed to this Moloch! Let us follow him on an ordinary day. His groom comes to his bed-chamber at seven o'clock, and tells him that it has frozen during the night. If he be a London man, using the train for his hunting, he knows nothing of the frost, and does not learn whether the day be practicable or not till he finds himself down in the country. But we will suppose our friend to be located in some hunting district, and accordingly his groom visits him with tidings. "Is it freezing now?" he asks from under the bedclothes. And even the man who does like it at such moments almost wishes that the answer should be plainly in the affirmative. Then swiftly again to the arms of Morpheus he might take himself, and ruffle his temper no further on that morning! He desires, at any rate, a decisive answer. To be or not to be as regards that day's hurting is what he now wants to know. But that is exactly what the groom cannot tell him. "It's just a thin crust of frost, sir, and the s'mometer is a standing at the pint." That is the answer which the man makes, and on that he has to come to a decision! For half an hour he lies doubting while his water is getting cold, and then sends for his man again. The thermometer is still standing at the point, but the man has tried the crust with his heel and found it to be very thin. The man who hunts and likes it scorns his ease, and resolves that he will at any rate persevere. He tumbles into his tub, and a little before nine comes out to his breakfast, still doubting sorely whether or no the day "will do." There he, perhaps, meets one or two others like himself, and learns that the men who hunt and don't like it are still warm in their beds. On such mornings as these, and such mornings are very many, the men who hunt and do not like it certainly have the best of it. The man who hunts and does like it takes himself out to some kitchen-garden or neighbouring paddock, and kicks at the ground himself. Certainly there is a crust, a very manifest crust. Though he puts up in the country, he has to go sixteen miles to the meet, and has no means of knowing whether or no the hounds will go out. "Jorrocks always goes if there's a chance," says one fellow, speaking of the master. "I don't know," says our friend; "he's a deal slower at it than he used to be. For my part, I wish Jorrocks would go; he's getting too old." Then he bolts a mutton chop and a couple of eggs hurriedly, and submits himself to be carried off in the trap. Though he is half an hour late at the meet, no hounds have as yet come, and he begins to curse his luck. A non-hunting day, a day that turns out to be no day for hunting purposes, begun in this way, is of all days the most melancholy. What is a man to do with himself who has put himself into his boots and breeches, and who then finds himself, by one o'clock, landed back at his starting-point without employment? Who under such circumstances can apply himself to any salutary employment? Cigars and stable-talk are all that remain to him; and it is well for him if he can refrain from the additional excitement of brandy and water. But on the present occasion we will not presume that our friend has fallen into so deep a bathos of misfortune. At twelve o'clock Tom appears, with the hounds following slowly at his heels; and a dozen men, angry with impatience, fly at him with assurances that there has been no sign of frost since ten o'clock. "Ain't there?" says Tom; "you look at the north sides of the banks, and see how you'd like it." Some one makes an uncivil remark as to the north sides of the banks, and wants to know when old Jorrocks is coming. "The squire'll be here time enough," says Tom. And then there takes place that slow walking up and down of the hounds, which on such mornings always continues for half an hour. Let him who envies the condition of the man who hunts and likes it, remember that a cold thaw is going on, that our friend is already sulky with waiting, that to ride up and down for an hour and a half at a walking pace on such a morning is not an exhilarating pastime, and he will understand that the hunting man himself may have doubts as to the wisdom of his course of action. But at last Jorrocks is there, and the hounds trot off to cover. So dull has been everything on this morning that even that is something, and men begin to make themselves happier in the warmth of the movement. The hounds go into covert, and a period of excitement is commenced. Our friend who likes hunting remarks to his neighbour that the ground is rideable. His neighbour who doesn't like it quite so well says that he doesn't know. They remain standing close together on a forest ride for twenty minutes, but conversation doesn't go beyond that. The man who doesn't like it has lit a cigar, but the man who does like it never lights a cigar when hounds are drawing. And now the welcome music is heard, and a fox has been found. Mr. Jorrocks, gallopping along the ride with many oaths, implores those around him to hold their tongues and remain quiet. Why he should trouble himself to do this, as he knows that no one will obey his orders, it is difficult to surmise. Or why men should stand still in the middle of a large wood when they expect a fox to break, because Mr. Jorrocks swears at them, is also not to be understood. Our friend pays no attention to Mr. Jorrocks, but makes for the end of the ride, going with ears erect, and listening to the distant hounds as they turn upon the turning fox. As they turn, he returns; and, splashing through the mud of the now softened ground, through narrow tracks, with the boughs in his face, listening always, now hoping, now despairing, speaking to no one, but following and followed, he makes his way backwards and forwards through the wood, till at last, weary with wishing and working, he rests himself in some open spot, and begins to eat his luncheon. It is now past two, and it would puzzle him to say what pleasure he has as yet had out of his day's amusement. But now, while the flask is yet at his mouth, he hears from some distant corner a sound that tells him that the fox is away. He ought to have persevered, and then he would have been near them. As it is, all that labour of riding has been in vain, and he has before him the double task of finding the line of the hounds and of catching them when he has found it. He has a crowd of men around him; but he knows enough of hunting to be aware that the men who are wrong at such moments are always more numerous than they who are right. He has to choose for himself, and chooses quickly, dashing down a ride to the right, while a host of those who know that he is one of them who like it, follow closely at his heels, too closely, as he finds at the first fence out of the woods, when one of his young admirers almost jumps on the top of him. "Do you want to get into my pocket, sir?" he says, angrily. The young admirer is snubbed, and, turning away, attempts to make a line for himself. But though he has been followed, he has great doubt as to his own course. To hesitate is to be lost, so he goes on, on rapidly, looking as he clears every fence for the spot at which he is to clear the next; but he is by no means certain of his course. Though he has admirers at his heels who credit him implicitly, his mind is racked by an agony of ignorance. He has got badly away, and the hounds are running well, and it is going to be a good thing; and he will not see it. He has not been in for anything good this year, and now this is his luck! His eye travels round over the horizon as he is gallopping, and though he sees men here and there, he can catch no sign of a hound; nor can he catch the form of any man who would probably be with them. But he perseveres, choosing his points as he goes, till the tail of his followers becomes thinner and thinner. He comes out upon a road, and makes the pace as good as he can along the soft edge of it. He sniffs at the wind, knowing that the fox, going at such a pace as this, must run with it. He tells himself from outward signs where he is, and uses his dead knowledge to direct him. He scorns to ask a question as he passes countrymen in his course, but he would give five guineas to know exactly where the hounds are at that moment. He has been at it now forty minutes, and is in despair. His gallant nag rolls a little under him, and he knows that he has been going too fast. And for what; for what? What good has it all done him? What good will it do him, though he should kill the beast? He curses between his teeth, and everything is vanity and vexation of spirit. "They've just run into him at Boxall Springs, Mr. Jones," says a farmer whom he passes on the road. Boxall Springs is only a quarter of a mile before him, but he wonders how the farmer has come to know all about it. But on reaching Boxall Springs he finds that the farmer was right, and that Tom is already breaking up the fox. "Very good thing, Mr. Jones," says the squire in good humour. Our friend mutters something between his teeth and rides away in dudgeon from the triumphant master. On his road home he hears all about it from everybody. It seems to him that he alone of all those who are anybody has missed the run, the run of the season! "And killed him in the open as you may say," says Smith, who has already twice boasted in Jones's hearing that he had seen every turn the hounds had made. "It wasn't in the open," says Jones, reduced in his anger to diminish as far as may be the triumph of his rival. Such is the fate, the too frequent fate of the man who hunts and does like it. THE LADY WHO RIDES TO HOUNDS. Among those who hunt there are two classes of hunting people who always like it, and these people are hunting parsons and hunting ladies. That it should be so is natural enough. In the life and habits of parsons and ladies there is much that is antagonistic to hunting, and they who suppress this antagonism do so because they are Nimrods at heart. But the riding of these horsemen under difficulties, horsemen and horsewomen, leaves a strong impression on the casual observer of hunting; for to such an one it seems that the hardest riding is forthcoming exactly where no hard riding should be expected. On the present occasion I will, if you please, confine myself to the lady who rides to hounds, and will begin with an assertion, which will not be contradicted, that the number of such ladies is very much on the increase. Women who ride, as a rule, ride better than men. They, the women, have always been instructed; whereas men have usually come to ride without any instruction. They are put upon ponies when they are all boys, and put themselves upon their fathers' horses as they become hobbledehoys: and thus they obtain the power of sticking on to the animal while he gallops and jumps, and even while he kicks and shies; and, so progressing, they achieve an amount of horsemanship which answers the purposes of life. But they do not acquire the art of riding with exactness, as women do, and rarely have such hands as a woman has on a horse's mouth. The consequence of this is that women fall less often than men, and the field is not often thrown into the horror which would arise were a lady known to be in a ditch with a horse lying on her. I own that I like to see three or four ladies out in a field, and I like it the better if I am happy enough to count one or more of them among my own acquaintances. Their presence tends to take off from hunting that character of horseyness, of both fast horseyness and slow horseyness, which has become, not unnaturally, attached to it, and to bring it within the category of gentle sports. There used to prevail an idea that the hunting man was of necessity loud and rough, given to strong drinks, ill adapted for the poetries of life, and perhaps a little prone to make money out of his softer friend. It may now be said that this idea is going out of vogue, and that hunting men are supposed to have that same feeling with regard to their horses, the same and no more, which ladies have for their carriage or soldiers for their swords. Horses are valued simply for the services that they can render, and are only valued highly when they are known to be good servants. That a man may hunt without drinking or swearing, and may possess a nag or two without any propensity to sell it or them for double their value, is now beginning to be understood. The oftener that women are to be seen "out," the more will such improved feelings prevail as to hunting, and the pleasanter will be the field to men who are not horsey, but who may nevertheless be good horsemen. There are two classes of women who ride to hounds, or, rather, among many possible classifications, there are two to which I will now call attention. There is the lady who rides, and demands assistance; and there is the lady who rides, and demands none. Each always, I may say always, receives all the assistance that she may require; but the difference between the two, to the men who ride with them, is very great. It will, of course, be understood that, as to both these samples of female Nimrods, I speak of ladies who really ride, not of those who grace the coverts with, and disappear under the auspices of, their papas or their grooms when the work begins. The lady who rides and demands assistance in truth becomes a nuisance before the run is over, let her beauty be ever so transcendent, her horsemanship ever-so-perfect, and her battery of general feminine artillery ever so powerful. She is like the American woman, who is always wanting your place in a railway carriage, and demanding it, too, without the slightest idea of paying you for it with thanks; whose study it is to treat you as though she ignored your existence while she is appropriating your services. The hunting lady who demands assistance is very particular about her gates, requiring that aid shall be given to her with instant speed, but that the man who gives it shall never allow himself to be hurried as he renders it. And she soon becomes reproachful, oh, so soon! It is marvellous to watch the manner in which a hunting lady will become exacting, troublesome, and at last imperious, deceived and spoilt by the attention which she receives. She teaches herself to think at last that a man is a brute who does not ride as though he were riding as her servant, and that it becomes her to assume indignation if every motion around her is not made with some reference to her safety, to her comfort, or to her success. I have seen women look as Furies look, and heard them speak as Furies are supposed to speak, because men before them could not bury themselves and their horses out of their way at a moment's notice, or because some pulling animal would still assert himself while they were there, and not sink into submission and dog-like obedience for their behoof. I have now before my eyes one who was pretty, brave, and a good horse-woman; but how men did hate her! When you were in a line with her there was no shaking her off. Indeed, you were like enough to be shaken off yourself, and to be rid of her after that fashion. But while you were with her you never escaped her at a single fence, and always felt that you were held to be trespassing against her in some manner. I shall never forget her voice, "Pray, take care of that gate." And yet it was a pretty voice, and elsewhere she was not given to domineering more than is common to pretty women in general; but she had been taught badly from the beginning, and she was a pest. It was the same at every gap. "Might I ask you not to come too near me?" And yet it was impossible to escape her. Men could not ride wide of her, for she would not ride wide of them. She had always some male escort with her, who did not ride as she rode, and consequently, as she chose to have the advantage of an escort, of various escorts, she was always in the company of some who did not feel as much joy in the presence of a pretty young woman as men should do under all circumstances. "Might I ask you not to come too near me?" If she could only have heard the remarks to which this constant little request of hers gave rise. She is now the mother of children, and her hunting days are gone, and probably she never makes that little request. Doubtless that look, made up partly of offence and partly of female dignity, no longer clouds her brow. But I fancy that they who knew her of old in the hunting field never approach her now without fancying that they hear those reproachful words, and see that powerful look of injured feminine weakness. But there is the hunting lady who rides hard and never asks for assistance. Perhaps I may be allowed to explain to embryo Dianas, to the growing huntresses of the present age, that she who rides and makes no demand receives attention as close as is ever given to her more imperious sister. And how welcome she is! What a grace she lends to the day's sport! How pleasant it is to see her in her pride of place, achieving her mastery over the difficulties in her way by her own wit, as all men, and all women also, must really do who intend to ride to hounds; and doing it all without any sign that the difficulties are too great for her! The lady who rides like this is in truth seldom in the way. I have heard men declare that they would never wish to see a side-saddle in the field because women are troublesome, and because they must be treated with attention let the press of the moment be ever so instant. From this I dissent altogether. The small amount of courtesy that is needed is more than atoned for by the grace of her presence, and in fact produces no more impediment in the hunting-field than in other scenes of life. But in the hunting-field, as in other scenes, let assistance never be demanded by a woman. If the lady finds that she cannot keep a place in the first flight without such demands on the patience of those around her, let her acknowledge to herself that the attempt is not in her line, and that it should be abandoned. If it be the ambition of a hunting lady to ride straight, and women have very much of this ambition, let her use her eyes but never her voice; and let her ever have a smile for those who help her in her little difficulties. Let her never ask any one "to take care of that gate," or look as though she expected the profane crowd to keep aloof from her. So shall she win the hearts of those around her, and go safely through brake and brier, over ditch and dyke, and meet with a score of knights around her who will be willing and able to give her eager aid should the chance of any moment require it. There are two accusations which the more demure portion of the world is apt to advance against hunting ladies, or, as I should better say, against hunting as an amusement for ladies. It leads to flirting, they say, to flirting of a sort which mothers would not approve; and it leads to fast habits, to ways and thoughts which are of the horse horsey, and of the stable, strongly tinged with the rack and manger. The first of these accusations is, I think, simply made in ignorance. As girls are brought up among us now-a-days, they may all flirt, if they have a mind to do so; and opportunities for flirting are much better and much more commodious in the ball-room, in the drawing-room, or in the park, than they are in the hunting-field. Nor is the work in hand of a nature to create flirting tendencies, as, it must be admitted, is the nature of the work in hand when the floors are waxed and the fiddles are going. And this error has sprung from, or forms part of, another, which is wonderfully common among non-hunting folk. It is very widely thought by many, who do not, as a rule, put themselves in opposition to the amusements of the world, that hunting in itself is a wicked thing; that hunting men are fast, given to unclean living and bad ways of life; that they usually go to bed drunk, and that they go about the world roaring hunting cries, and disturbing the peace of the innocent generally. With such men, who could wish that wife, sister, or daughter should associate? But I venture to say that this opinion, which I believe to be common, is erroneous, and that men who hunt are not more iniquitous than men who go out fishing, or play dominoes, or dig in their gardens. Maxima debetur pueris reverentia, and still more to damsels; but if boys and girls will never go where they will hear more to injure them than they will usually do amidst the ordinary conversation of a hunting field, the maxima reverentia will have been attained. As to that other charge, let it be at once admitted that the young lady who has become of the horse horsey has made a fearful, almost a fatal mistake. And so also has the young man who falls into the same error. I hardly know to which such phase of character may be most injurious. It is a pernicious vice, that of succumbing to the beast that carries you, and making yourself, as it were, his servant, instead of keeping him ever as yours. I will not deny that I have known a lady to fall into this vice from hunting; but so also have I known ladies to marry their music-masters and to fall in love with their footmen. But not on that account are we to have no music-masters and no footmen. Let the hunting lady, however, avoid any touch of this blemish, remembering that no man ever likes a woman to know as much about a horse as he thinks he knows himself. THE HUNTING FARMER. Few hunting men calculate how much they owe to the hunting farmer, or recognize the fact that hunting farmers contribute more than any other class of sportsmen towards the maintenance of the sport. It is hardly too much to say that hunting would be impossible if farmers did not hunt. If they were inimical to hunting, and men so closely concerned must be friends or enemies, there would be no foxes left alive; and no fox, if alive, could be kept above ground. Fences would be impracticable, and damages would be ruinous; and any attempt to maintain the institution of hunting would be a long warfare in which the opposing farmer would certainly be the ultimate conqueror. What right has the hunting man who goes down from London, or across from Manchester, to ride over the ground which he treats as if it were his own, and to which he thinks that free access is his undoubted privilege? Few men, I fancy, reflect that they have no such right, and no such privilege, or recollect that the very scene and area of their exercise, the land that makes hunting possible to them, is contributed by the farmer. Let any one remember with what tenacity the exclusive right of entering upon their small territories is clutched and maintained by all cultivators in other countries; let him remember the enclosures of France, the vine and olive terraces of Tuscany, or the narrowly-watched fields of Lombardy; the little meadows of Switzerland on which no stranger's foot is allowed to come, or the Dutch pastures, divided by dykes, and made safe from all intrusions. Let him talk to the American farmer of English hunting, and explain to that independent, but somewhat prosaic husbandman, that in England two or three hundred men claim the right of access to every man's land during the whole period of the winter months! Then, when he thinks of this, will he realize to himself what it is that the English farmer contributes to hunting in England? The French countryman cannot be made to understand it. You cannot induce him to believe that if he held land in England, looking to make his rent from tender young grass-fields and patches of sprouting corn, he would be powerless to keep out intruders, if those intruders came in the shape of a rushing squadron of cavalry, and called themselves a hunt. To him, in accordance with his existing ideas, rural life under such circumstances would be impossible. A small pan of charcoal, and an honourable death-bed, would give him relief after his first experience of such an invasion. Nor would the English farmer put up with the invasion, if the English farmer were not himself a hunting man. Many farmers, doubtless, do not hunt, and they bear it, with more or less grace; but they are inured to it from their infancy, because it is in accordance with the habits and pleasures of their own race. Now and again, in every hunt, some man comes up, who is, indeed, more frequently a small proprietor new to the glories of ownership, than a tenant farmer, who determines to vindicate his rights and oppose the field. He puts up a wire-fence round his domain, thus fortifying himself, as it were, in his citadel, and defies the world around him. It is wonderful how great is the annoyance which one such man may give, and how thoroughly he may destroy the comfort of the coverts in his neighbourhood. But, strong as such an one is in his fortress, there are still the means of fighting him. The farmers around him, if they be hunting men, make the place too hot to hold him. To them he is a thing accursed, a man to be spoken of with all evil language, as one who desires to get more out of his land than Providence, that is, than an English Providence, has intended. Their own wheat is exposed, and it is abominable to them that the wheat of another man should be more sacred than theirs. All this is not sufficiently remembered by some of us when the period of the year comes which is trying to the farmer's heart, when the young clover is growing, and the barley has been just sown. Farmers, as a rule, do not think very much of their wheat. When such riding is practicable, of course they like to see men take the headlands and furrows; but their hearts are not broken by the tracks of horses across their wheat-fields. I doubt, indeed, whether wheat is ever much injured by such usage. But let the thoughtful rider avoid the new-sown barley; and, above all things, let him give a wide berth to the new-laid meadows of artificial grasses. They are never large, and may always be shunned. To them the poaching of numerous horses is absolute destruction. The surface of such enclosures should be as smooth as a billiard-table, so that no water may lie in holes; and, moreover, any young plant cut by a horse's foot is trodden out of existence. Farmers do see even this done, and live through it without open warfare; but they should not be put to such trials of temper or pocket too often. And now for my friend the hunting farmer in person, the sportsman whom I always regard as the most indispensable adjunct to the field, to whom I tender my spare cigar with the most perfect expression of my good will. His dress is nearly always the same. He wears a thick black coat, dark brown breeches, and top boots, very white in colour, or of a very dark mahogany, according to his taste. The hunting farmer of the old school generally rides in a chimney-pot hat; but, in this particular, the younger brethren of the plough are leaving their old habits, and running into caps, net hats, and other innovations which, I own, are somewhat distasteful to me. And there is, too, the ostentatious farmer, who rides in scarlet, signifying thereby that he subscribes his ten or fifteen guineas to the hunt fund. But here, in this paper, it is not of him I speak. He is a man who is so much less the farmer, in that he is the more an ordinary man of the ordinary world. The farmer whom we have now before us shall wear the old black coat, and the old black hat, and the white top boots, rather daubed in their whiteness; and he shall be the genuine farmer of the old school. My friend is generally a modest man in the field, seldom much given to talking unless he be first addressed; and then he prefers that you shall take upon yourself the chief burden of the conversation. But on certain hunting subjects he has his opinion, indeed, a very strong opinion, and if you can drive him from that, your eloquence must be very great. He is very urgent about special coverts, and even as to special foxes; and you will often find smouldering in his bosom, if you dive deep enough to search for it, a half-smothered fire of indignation against the master because the country has, according to our friend's views, been drawn amiss. In such matters the farmer is generally right; but he is slow to communicate his ideas, and does not recognize the fact that other men have not the same opportunities for observation which belong to him. A master, however, who understands his business will generally consult a farmer; and he will seldom, I think, or perhaps never, consult any one else. Always shake hands with your friend the farmer. It puts him at his ease with you, and he will tell you more willingly after that ceremony what are his ideas about the wind, and what may be expected of the day. His day's hunting is to him a solemn thing, and he gives to it all his serious thought. If any man can predicate anything of the run of a fox, it is the farmer. I had almost said that if any one knew anything of scent, it is the farmer; but of scent I believe that not even the farmer knows anything. But he knows very much as to the lie of the country, and should my gentle reader by chance have taken a glass or two of wine above ordinary over night, the effect of which will possibly be a temporary distaste to straight riding, no one's knowledge as to the line of the lanes is so serviceable as that of the farmer. As to riding, there is the ambitious farmer and the unambitious farmer; the farmer who rides hard, that is, ostensibly hard, and the farmer who is simply content to know where the hounds are, and to follow them at a distance which shall maintain him in that knowledge. The ambitious farmer is not the hunting farmer in his normal condition; he is either one who has an eye to selling his horse, and, riding with that view, loses for the time his position as farmer; or he is some exceptional tiller of the soil who probably is dangerously addicted to hunting as another man is addicted to drinking; and you may surmise respecting him that things will not go well with him after a year or two. The friend of my heart is the farmer who rides, but rides without sputtering; who never makes a show of it, but still is always there; who feels it to be no disgrace to avoid a run of fences when his knowledge tells him that this may be done without danger of his losing his place. Such an one always sees a run to the end. Let the pace have been what it may, he is up in time to see the crowd of hounds hustling for their prey, and to take part in the buzz of satisfaction which the prosperity of the run has occasioned. But the farmer never kills his horse, and seldom rides him even to distress. He is not to be seen loosing his girths, or looking at the beast's flanks, or examining his legs to ascertain what mischances may have occurred. He takes it all easily, as men always take matters of business in which they are quite at home. At the end of the run he sits mounted as quietly as he did at the meet, and has none of that appearance of having done something wonderful, which on such occasions is so very strong in the faces of the younger portion of the pink brigade. To the farmer his day's hunting is very pleasant, and by habit is even very necessary; but it comes in its turn like market-day, and produces no extraordinary excitement. He does not rejoice over an hour and ten minutes with a kill in the open, as he rejoices when he has returned to Parliament the candidate who is pledged to repeal of the malt-tax; for the farmer of whom we are speaking now, though he rides with constancy, does not ride with enthusiasm. O fortunati sua si bona norint farmers of England! Who in the town is the farmer's equal? What is the position which his brother, his uncle, his cousin holds? He is a shopkeeper, who never has a holiday, and does not know what to do with it when it comes to him; to whom the fresh air of heaven is a stranger; who lives among sugars and oils, and the dust of shoddy, and the size of new clothing. Should such an one take to hunting once a week, even after years of toil, men would point their fingers at him and whisper among themselves that he was as good as ruined. His friends would tell him of his wife and children; and, indeed, would tell him truly, for his customers would fly from him. But nobody grudges the farmer his day's sport! No one thinks that he is cruel to his children and unjust to his wife because he keeps a nag for his amusement, and can find a couple of days in the week to go among his friends. And with what advantages he does this! A farmer will do as much with one horse, will see as much hunting, as an outside member of the hunt will do with four, and, indeed, often more. He is his own head-groom, and has no scruple about bringing his horse out twice a week. He asks no livery-stable keeper what his beast can do, but tries the powers of the animal himself, and keeps in his breast a correct record. When the man from London, having taken all he can out of his first horse, has ridden his second to a stand-still, the farmer trots up on his stout, compact cob, without a sign of distress. He knows that the condition of a hunter and a greyhound should not be the same, and that his horse, to be in good working health, should carry nearly all the hard flesh that he can put upon him. How such an one must laugh in his sleeve at the five hunters of the young swell who, after all, is brought to grief in the middle of the season, because he has got nothing to ride! A farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go, never throws out curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master, he is never showy. He does not paw, and prance, and arch his neck, and bid the world admire his beauties; but, like his master, he is useful; and when he is wanted, he can always do his work. O fortunatus nimium agricola, who has one horse, and that a good one, in the middle of a hunting country! THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND NEVER JUMPS. The British public who do not hunt believe too much in the jumping of those who do. It is thought by many among the laity that the hunting man is always in the air, making clear flights over five-barred gates, six-foot walls, and double posts and rails, at none of which would the average hunting man any more think of riding than he would at a small house. We used to hear much of the Galway Blazers, and it was supposed that in County Galway a stiff-built wall six feet high was the sort of thing that you customarily met from field to field when hunting in that comfortable county. Such little impediments were the ordinary food of a real Blazer, who was supposed to add another foot of stonework and a sod of turf when desirous of making himself conspicuous in his moments of splendid ambition. Twenty years ago I rode in Galway now and then, and I found the six-foot walls all shorn of their glory, and that men whose necks were of any value were very anxious to have some preliminary knowledge of the nature of the fabric, whether for instance it might be solid or built of loose stones, before they trusted themselves to an encounter with a wall of four feet and a half. And here, in England, history, that nursing mother of fiction, has given hunting men honours which they here never fairly earned. The traditional five-barred gate is, as a rule, used by hunting men as it was intended to be used by the world at large; that is to say, they open it; and the double posts and rails which look so very pretty in the sporting pictures, are thought to be very ugly things whenever an idea of riding at them presents itself. It is well that mothers should know, mothers full of fear for their boys who are beginning, that the necessary jumping of the hunting field is not after all of so very tremendous a nature; and it may be well also to explain to them and to others that many men hunt with great satisfaction to themselves who never by any chance commit themselves to the peril of a jump, either big or little. And there is much excellent good sense in the mode of riding adopted by such gentlemen. Some men ride for hunting, some for jumping, and some for exercise; some, no doubt, for all three of these things. Given a man with a desire for the latter, no taste for the second, and some partiality for the first, and he cannot do better than ride in the manner I am describing. He may be sure that he will not find himself alone; and he may be sure also that he will incur none of that ridicule which the non-hunting man is disposed to think must be attached to such a pursuit. But the man who hunts and never jumps, who deliberately makes up his mind that he will amuse himself after that fashion, must always remember his resolve, and be true to the conduct which he has laid down for himself. He must jump not at all. He must not jump a little, when some spurt or spirit may move him, or he will infallibly find himself in trouble. There was an old Duke of Beaufort who was a keen and practical sportsman, a master of hounds, and a known Nimrod on the face of the earth; but he was a man who hunted and never jumped. His experience was perfect, and he was always true to his resolution. Nothing ever tempted him to cross the smallest fence. He used to say of a neighbour of his, who was not so constant, "Jones is an ass. Look at him now. There he is, and he can't get out. Jones doesn't like jumping, but he jumps a little, and I see him pounded every day. I never jump at all, and I'm always free to go where I like." The Duke was certainly right, and Jones was certainly wrong. To get into a field, and then to have no way of getting out of it, is very uncomfortable. As long as you are on the road you have a way open before you to every spot on the world's surface, open, or capable of being opened; or even if incapable of being opened, not positively detrimental to you as long as you are on the right side. But that feeling of a prison under the open air is very terrible, and is rendered almost agonizing by the prisoner's consciousness that his position is the result of his own imprudent temerity, of an audacity which falls short of any efficacious purpose. When hounds are running, the hunting man should always, at any rate, be able to ride on, to ride in some direction, even though it be in a wrong direction. He can then flatter himself that he is riding wide and making a line for himself. But to be entrapped into a field without any power of getting out of it; to see the red backs of the forward men becoming smaller and smaller in the distance, till the last speck disappears over some hedge; to see the fence before you and know that it is too much for you; to ride round and round in an agony of despair which is by no means mute, and at last to give sixpence to some boy to conduct you back into the road; that is wretched: that is real unhappiness. I am, therefore, very persistent in my advice to the man who purposes to hunt without jumping. Let him not jump at all. To jump, but only to jump a little, is fatal. Let him think of Jones. The man who hunts and doesn't jump, presuming him not to be a duke or any man greatly established as a Nimrod in the hunting world, generally comes out in a black coat and a hat, so that he may not be specially conspicuous in his deviations from the line of the running. He began his hunting probably in search of exercise, but has gradually come to add a peculiar amusement to that pursuit; and of a certain phase of hunting he at last learns more than most of those who ride closest to the hounds. He becomes wonderfully skillful in surmising the line which a fox may probably take, and in keeping himself upon roads parallel to the ruck of the horsemen. He is studious of the wind, and knows to a point of the compass whence it is blowing. He is intimately conversant with every covert in the country; and, beyond this, is acquainted with every earth in which foxes have had their nurseries, or are likely to locate them. He remembers the drains on the different farms in which the hunted animal may possible take refuge, and has a memory even for rabbit-holes. His eye becomes accustomed to distinguish the form of a moving horseman over half-a-dozen fields; and let him see but a cap of any leading man, and he will know which way to turn himself. His knowledge of the country is correct to a marvel. While the man who rides straight is altogether ignorant of his whereabouts, and will not even distinguish the woods through which he has ridden scores of times, the man who rides and never jumps always knows where he is with the utmost accuracy. Where parish is divided from parish and farm from farm, has been a study to him; and he has learned the purpose and bearing of every lane. He is never thrown out, and knows the nearest way from every point to point. If there be a line of gates across from one road to another he will use them, but he will commit himself to a line of gates on the land of no farmer who uses padlocks. As he trots along the road, occasionally breaking into a gallop when he perceives from some sign known to him that the hunt is turning from him, he is generally accompanied by two or three unfortunates who have lost their way and have straggled from the hounds; and to them he is a guide, philosopher, and friend. He is good-natured for the moment, and patronizes the lost ones. He informs them that they are at last in the right way, and consoles them by assurances that they have lost nothing. "The fox broke, you know, from the sharp corner of Granby-wood," he says; "the only spot that the crowd had left for him. I saw him come out, standing on the bridge in the road. Then he ran up-wind as far as Green's barn." "Of course he did," says one of the unfortunates who thinks he remembers something of a barn in the early part of the performance. "I was with the three or four first as far as that." "There were twenty men before the hounds there," says our man of the road, who is not without a grain of sarcasm, and can use it when he is strong on his own ground. "Well, he turned there, and ran back very near the corner; but he was headed by a sheep-dog, luckily, and went to the left across the brook." "Ah, that's where I lost them," says one unfortunate. "I was with them miles beyond that," says another. "There were five or six men rode the brook," continues our philosopher, who names the four or five, not mentioning the unfortunate who had spoken last as having been among the number. "Well; then he went across by Ashby Grange, and tried the drain at the back of the farmyard, but Bootle had had it stopped. A fox got in there one day last March, and Bootle always stops it since that. So he had to go on, and he crossed the turnpike close by Ashby Church. I saw him cross, and the hounds were then full five minutes behind him. He went through Frolic Wood, but he didn't hang a minute, and right up the pastures to Morley Hall." "That's where I was thrown out," says the unfortunate who had boasted before, and who is still disposed to boast a little. But our philosopher assures him that he has not in truth been near Morley Hall; and when the unfortunate one makes an attempt to argue, puts him down thoroughly. "All I can say is, you couldn't have been there and be here too at this moment. Morley Hall is a mile and a half to our right, and now they're coming round to the Linney. He'll go into the little wood there, and as there isn't as much as a nutshell open for him, they'll kill him there. It'll have been a tidy little thing, but not very fast. I've hardly been out of a trot yet, but we may as well move on now." Then he breaks into an easy canter by the side of the road, while the unfortunates, who have been rolling among the heavy-ploughed ground in the early part of the day, make vain efforts to ride by his side. They keep him, however, in sight, and are comforted; for he is a man with a character, and knows what he is about. He will never be utterly lost, and as long as they can remain in his company they will not be subjected to that dreadful feeling of absolute failure which comes upon an inexperienced sportsman when he finds himself quite alone, and does not know which way to turn himself. A man will not learn to ride after this fashion in a day, nor yet in a year. Of all fashions of hunting it requires, perhaps, the most patience, the keenest observation, the strongest memory, and the greatest efforts of intellect. But the power, when achieved, has its triumph; it has its respect, and it has its admirers. Our friend, while he was guiding the unfortunates on the road, knew his position, and rode for a while as though he were a chief of men. He was the chief of men there. He was doing what he knew how to do, and was not failing. He had made no boasts which stern facts would afterwards disprove. And when he rode up slowly to the wood-side, having from a distance heard the huntsman's whoop that told him of the fox's fate, he found that he had been right in every particular. No one at that moment knows the line they have all ridden as well as he knows it. But now, among the crowd, when men are turning their horses' heads to the wind, and loud questions are being asked, and false answers are being given, and the ambitious men are congratulating themselves on their deeds, he sits by listening in sardonic silence. "Twelve miles of ground !" he says to himself, repeating the words of some valiant youngster; "if it's eight, I'll eat it." And then when he hears, for he is all ear as well as all eye, when he hears a slight boast from one of his late unfortunate companions, a first small blast of the trumpet which will become loud anon if it be not checked, he smiles inwardly, and moralizes on the weakness of human nature. But the man who never jumps is not usually of a benevolent nature, and it is almost certain that he will make up a little story against the boaster. Such is the amusement of the man who rides and never jumps. Attached to every hunt there will be always one or two such men. Their evidence is generally reliable; their knowledge of the country is not to be doubted; they seldom come to any severe trouble; and have usually made for themselves a very wide circle of hunting acquaintances by whom they are quietly respected. But I think that men regard them as they do the chaplain on board a man-of-war, or as they would regard a herald on a field of battle. When men are assembled for fighting, the man who notoriously does not fight must feel himself to be somewhat lower than his brethren around him, and must be so esteemed by others. THE HUNTING PARSON. I feel some difficulty in dealing with the character I am now about to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn the hunting parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his profession; and, for myself, I am not prepared to say that the world is wrong. Had my pastors and masters, my father and mother, together with the other outward circumstances of my early life, made a clergyman of me, I think that I should not have hunted, or at least, I hope that I might have abstained; and yet, for the life of me, I cannot see the reason against it, or tell any man why a clergyman should not ride to hounds. In discussing the subject, and I often do discuss it, the argument against the practice which is finally adopted, the argument which is intended to be conclusive, simply amounts to this, that a parish clergyman who does his duty cannot find the time. But that argument might be used with much more truth against other men of business, against those to whose hunting the world takes no exception. Indeed, of all men, the ordinary parish clergyman, is, perhaps, the least liable to such censure. He lives in the country, and can hunt cheaper and with less sacrifice of time than other men. His professional occupation does not absorb all his hours, and he is too often an idle man, whether he hunt or whether he do not. Nor is it desirable that any man should work always and never play. I think it is certainly the fact that a clergyman may hunt twice a week with less objection in regard to his time than any other man who has to earn his bread by his profession. Indeed, this is so manifestly the case, that I am sure that the argument in question, though it is the one which is always intended to be conclusive, does not in the least convey the objection which is really felt. The truth is, that a large and most respectable section of the world still regards hunting as wicked. It is supposed to be like the Cider Cellars or the Haymarket at twelve o'clock at night. The old ladies know that the young men go to these wicked places, and hope that no great harm is done; but it would be dreadful to think that clergymen should so degrade themselves. Now I wish I could make the old ladies understand that hunting is not wicked. But although that expressed plea as to the want of time really amounts to nothing, and although the unexpressed feeling of old ladies as to the wickedness of hunting does not in truth amount to much, I will not say that there is no other impediment in the way of a hunting parson. Indeed, there have come up of late years so many impediments in the way of any amusement on the part of clergymen, that we must almost presume them to be divested at their consecration of all human attributes except hunger and thirst. In my younger days, and I am not as yet very old, an elderly clergyman might play his rubber of whist whilst his younger reverend brother was dancing a quadrille; and they might do this without any risk of a rebuke from a bishop, or any probability that their neighbours would look askance at them. Such recreations are now unclerical in the highest degree, or if not in the highest, they are only one degree less so than hunting. The theatre was especially a respectable clerical resource, and we may still occasionally see heads of colleges in the stalls, or perhaps a dean, or some rector, unambitious of further promotion. But should a young curate show himself in the pit, he would be but a lost sheep of the house of Israel. And latterly there went forth, at any rate in one diocese, a firman against cricket! Novels, too, are forbidden; though the fact that they may be enjoyed in solitude saves the clergy from absolute ignorance as to that branch of our national literature. All this is hard upon men who, let them struggle as they may to love the asceticisms of a religious life, are only men; and it has a strong tendency to keep out of the Church that very class, the younger sons of country gentlemen, whom all Churchmen should wish to see enter it. Young men who think of the matter when the time for taking orders is coming near, do not feel themselves qualified to rival St. Paul in their lives; and they who have not thought of it find themselves to be cruelly used when they are expected to make the attempt. But of all the amusements which a layman may follow and a clergyman may not, hunting is thought to be by much the worst. There is a savour of wickedness about it in the eyes of the old ladies which almost takes it out of their list of innocent amusements even for laymen. By the term old ladies it will be understood, perhaps, that I do not allude simply to matrons and spinsters who may be over the age of sixty, but to that most respectable portion of the world which has taught itself to abhor the pomps and vanities. Pomps and vanities are undoubtedly bad, and should be abhorred; but it behooves those who thus take upon themselves the duties of censors to be sure that the practices abhorred are in truth real pomps and actual vanities, not pomps and vanities of the imagination. Now as to hunting, I maintain that it is of itself the most innocent amusement going, and that it has none of that Cider-Cellar flavour with which the old ladies think that it is so savoury. Hunting is done by a crowd; but men who meet together to do wicked things meet in small parties. Men cannot gamble in the hunting-field, and drinking there is more difficult than in almost any other scene of life. Anonyma, as we were told the other day, may show herself; but if so, she rides alone. The young man must be a brazen sinner, too far gone for hunting to hurt him, who will ride with Anonyma in the field. I know no vice which hunting either produces or renders probable, except the vice of extravagance; and to that, if a man be that way given, every pursuit in life will equally lead him A seat for a Metropolitan borough, or a love of ortolans, or a taste even for new boots will ruin a man who puts himself in the way of ruin. The same may be said of hunting, the same and no more. But not the less is the general feeling very strong against the hunting parson; and not the less will it remain so in spite of anything that I may say. Under these circumstances our friend the hunting parson usually rides as though he were more or less under a cloud. The cloud is not to be seen in a melancholy brow or a shamed demeanour; for the hunting parson will have lived down those feelings, and is generally too forcible a man to allow himself to be subjected to such annoyances; nor is the cloud to be found in any gentle tardiness of his motions, or an attempt at suppressed riding; for the hunting parson generally rides hard. Unless he loved hunting much he would not be there. But the cloud is to be perceived and heard in the manner in which he speaks of himself and his own doings. He is never natural in his self-talk as is any other man. He either flies at his own cloth at once, marring some false apology for his presence, telling you that he is there just to see the hounds, and hinting to you his own knowledge that he has no business to ride after them; or else he drops his profession altogether, and speaks to you in a tone which makes you feel that you would not dare to speak to him about his parish. You can talk to the banker about his banking, the brewer about his brewing, the farmer about his barley, or the landlord about his land; but to a hunting parson of this latter class, you may not say a word about his church. There are three modes in which a hunting parson may dress himself for hunting, the variations having reference solely to the nether man. As regards the upper man there can never be a difference. A chimney-pot hat, a white neckerchief, somewhat broad in its folds and strong with plentiful starch, a stout black coat, cut rather shorter than is common with clergymen, and a modest, darksome waistcoat that shall attract no attention, these are all matters of course. But the observer, if he will allow his eye to descend below these upper garments, will perceive that the clergyman may be comfortable and bold in breeches, or he may be uncomfortable and semi-decorous in black trowsers. And there is another mode of dress open to him, which I can assure my readers is not an unknown costume, a tertium quid, by which semi-decorum and comfort are combined. The hunting breeches are put on first, and the black trowsers are drawn over them. But in whatever garb the hunting parson may ride, he almost invariably rides well, and always enjoys the sport. If he did not, what would tempt him to run counter, as he does, to his bishop and the old ladies? And though, when the hounds are first dashing out of covert, and when the sputtering is beginning and the eager impetuosity of the young is driving men three at a time into the same gap, when that wild excitement of a fox just away is at its height, and ordinary sportsmen are rushing for places, though at these moments the hunting parson may be able to restrain himself, and to declare by his momentary tranquillity that he is only there to see the hounds, he will ever be found, seeing the hounds also, when many of that eager crowd have lagged behind, altogether out of sight of the last tail of them. He will drop into the running, as it were out of the clouds, when the select few have settled down steadily to their steady work; and the select few will never look upon him as one who, after that, is likely to fall out of their number. He goes on certainly to the kill, and then retires a little out of the circle, as though he had trotted in at that spot from his ordinary parochial occupations, just to see the hounds. For myself I own that I like the hunting parson. I generally find him to be about the pleasantest man in the field, with the most to say for himself, whether the talk be of hunting, of politics, of literature, or of the country. He is never a hunting man unalloyed, unadulterated, and unmixed, a class of man which is perhaps of all classes the most tedious and heavy in hand. The tallow-chandler who can talk only of candles, or the barrister who can talk only of his briefs, is very bad; but the hunting man who can talk only of his runs, is, I think, worse even than the unadulterated tallow-chandler, or the barrister unmixed. Let me pause for a moment here to beg young sportsmen not to fall into this terrible mistake. Such bores in the field are, alas, too common; but the hunting parson never sins after that fashion. Though a keen sportsman, he is something else besides a sportsman, and for that reason, if for no other, is always a welcome addition to the crowd. But still I must confess at the end of this paper, as I hinted also at the beginning of it, that the hunting parson seems to have made a mistake. He is kicking against the pricks, and running counter to that section of the world which should be his section. He is making himself to stink in the nostrils of his bishop, and is becoming a stumbling-block, and a rock of offence to his brethren. It is bootless for him to argue, as I have here argued, that his amusement is in itself innocent, and that some open-air recreation is necessary to him. Grant him that the bishops and old ladies are wrong and that he is right in principle, and still he will not be justified. Whatever may be our walk in life, no man can walk well who does not walk with the esteem of his fellows. Now those little walks by the covert sides, those pleasant little walks of which I am writing, are not, unfortunately, held to be estimable, or good for themselves, by English clergymen in general. THE MASTER OF HOUNDS. The master of hounds best known by modern description is the master of the Jorrocks type. Now, as I take it, this is not the type best known by English sportsmen, nor do the Jorrocks ana, good though they be, give any fair picture of such a master of hounds as ordinarily presides over the hunt in English counties. Mr. Jorrocks comes into a hunt when no one else can be found to undertake the work; when, in want of any one better, the subscribers hire his services as those of an upper servant; when, in fact, the hunt is at a low ebb, and is struggling for existence. Mr. Jorrocks with his carpet-bag then makes his appearance, driving the hardest bargain that he can, purposing to do the country at the lowest possible figure, followed by a short train of most undesirable nags, with reference to which the wonder is that Mr. Jorrocks should be able to induce any hunting servant to trust his neck to their custody. Mr. Jorrocks knows his work, and is generally a most laborious man. Hunting is his profession, but it is one by which he can barely exist. He hopes to sell a horse or two during the season, and in this way adds something of the trade of a dealer to his other trade. But his office is thankless, ill-paid, closely watched, and subject to all manner of indignities. Men suspect him, and the best of those who ride with him will hardly treat him as their equal. He is accepted as a disagreeable necessity, and is dismissed as soon as the country can do better for itself. Any hunt that has subjected itself to Mr. Jorrocks knows that it is in disgrace, and will pass its itinerant master on to some other district as soon as it can suit itself with a proper master of the good old English sort. It is of such a master as this, a master of the good old English sort, and not of an itinerant contractor for hunting, that I here intend to speak. Such a master is usually an old resident in the county which he hunts; one of those country noblemen or gentlemen whose parks are the glory of our English landscape, and whose names are to be found in the pages of our county records; or if not that, he is one who, with a view to hunting, has brought his family and fortune into a new district, and has found a ready place as a country gentleman among new neighbours. It has been said that no one should become a member of Parliament unless he be a man of fortune. I hold such a rule to be much more true with reference to a master of hounds. For his own sake this should be so, and much more so for the sake of those over whom he has to preside. It is a position in which no man can be popular without wealth, and it is a position which no man should seek to fill unless he be prepared to spend his money for the gratification of others. It has been said of masters of hounds that they must always have their hands in their pockets, and must always have a guinea to find there; and nothing can be truer than this if successful hunting is to be expected. Men have hunted countries, doubtless, on economical principles, and the sport has been carried on from year to year; but under such circumstances it is ever dwindling and becoming frightfully less. The foxes disappear, and when found almost instantly sink below ground. Distant coverts, which are ever the best because less frequently drawn, are deserted, for distance of course adds greatly to expense. The farmers round the centre of the county become sullen, and those beyond are indifferent; and so, from bad to worse, the famine goes on till the hunt has perished of atrophy. Grease to the wheels, plentiful grease to the wheels, is needed in all machinery; but I know of no machinery in which everrunning grease is so necessary as in the machinery of hunting. Of such masters as I am now describing there are two sorts, of which, however, the one is going rapidly and, I think, happily out of fashion. There is the master of hounds who takes a subscription, and the master who takes none. Of the latter class of sportsman, of the imperial head of a country who looks upon the coverts of all his neighbours as being almost his own property, there are, I believe, but few left. Nor is such imperialism fitted for the present age. In the days of old of which we read so often, the days of Squire Western, when fox-hunting was still young among us, this was the fashion in which all hunts were maintained. Any country gentleman who liked the sport kept a small pack of hounds, and rode over his own lands or the lands of such of his neighbours as had no similar establishments of their own. We never hear of Squire Western that he hunted the county, or that he went far afield to his meets. His tenants joined him, and by degrees men came to his hunt from greater distances around him. As the necessity for space increased, increasing from increase of hunting ambition, the richer and more ambitious squires began to undertake the management of wider areas, and so our hunting districts were formed. But with such extension of area there came, of course, necessity of extended expenditure, and so the fashion of subscription lists arose. There have remained some few great Nimrods who have chosen to be magnanimous and to pay for everything, despising the contributions of their followers. Such a one was the late Earl Fitzhardinge, and after such manner in, as I believe, the Berkeley hunt still conducted. But it need hardly be explained, that as hunting is now conducted in England, such a system is neither fair nor palatable. It is not fair that so great a cost for the amusement of other men should fall upon any one man's pocket; nor is it palatable to others that such unlimited power should be placed in any one man's hands. The ordinary master of subscription hounds is no doubt autocratic, but he is not autocratic with all the power of tyranny which belongs to the despot who rules without taxation. I doubt whether any master of a subscription pack would advertise his meets for eleven, with an understanding that the hounds were never to move till twelve, when he intended to be present in person. Such was the case with Lord Fitzhardinge, and I do not know that it was generally thought that he carried his power too far. And I think, too, that gentlemen feel that they ride with more pleasure when they themselves contribute to the cost of their own amusement. Our master of hounds shall be a country gentleman who takes a subscription, and who therefore, on becoming autocratic, makes himself answerable to certain general rules for the management of his autocracy. He shall hunt not less, let us say, than three days a week; but though not less, it will be expected probably that he will hunt oftener. That is, he will advertise three days and throw a byeday in for the benefit of his own immediate neighbourhood; and these byedays, it must be known, are the cream of hunting, for there is no crowd, and the foxes break sooner and run straighter. And he will be punctual to his time, giving quarter to none and asking none himself. He will draw fairly through the day, and indulge no caprices as to coverts. The laws, indeed, are never written, but they exist and are understood; and when they be too recklessly disobeyed, the master of hounds falls from his high place and retires into private life, generally with a broken heart. In the hunting field, as in all other communities, republics, and governments, the power of the purse is everything. As long as that be retained, the despotism of the master is tempered and his rule will be beneficent. Five hundred pounds a day is about the sum which a master should demand for hunting an average country, that is, so many times five hundred pounds a year as he may hunt days in the week. If four days a week be required of him, two thousand a year will be little enough. But as a rule, I think masters are generally supposed to charge only for the advertised days, and to give the byedays out of their own pocket. Nor must it be thought that the money so subscribed will leave the master free of expense. As I have said before, he should be a rich man. Whatever be the subscription paid to him, he must go beyond it, very much beyond it, or there will grow up against him a feeling that he is mean, and that feeling will rob him of all his comfort. Hunting men in England wish to pay for their own amusement; but they desire that more shall be spent than they pay. And in this there is a rough justice, that roughness of justice which pervades our English institutions. To a master of hounds is given a place of great influence, and into his hands is confided an authority the possession of which among his fellow-sportsmen is very pleasant to him. For this he is expected to pay, and he does pay for it. A Lord Mayor is, I take it, much in the same category. He has a salary as Lord Mayor, but if he do not spend more than that on his office he becomes a byword for stinginess among Lord Mayors To be Lord Mayor is his whistle, and he pays for it. For myself, if I found myself called upon to pay for one whistle or the other, I would sooner be a master of hounds than a Lord Mayor. The power is certainly more perfect, and the situation, I think, more splendid. The master of hounds has no aldermen, no common council, no liverymen. As long as he fairly performs his part of the compact, he is altogether without control. He is not unlike the captain of a man-of-war; but, unlike the captain of a man-of-war, he carries no sailing orders. He is free to go where he lists, and is hardly expected to tell any one whither he goeth. He is enveloped in a mystery which, to the young, adds greatly to his grandeur; and he is one of those who, in spite of the democratic tenderness of the age, may still be said to go about as a king among men. No one contradicts him. No one speaks evil of him to his face; and men tremble when they have whispered anything of some half-drawn covert, of some unstopped earth, some fox that should not have escaped, and, looking round, see that the master is within earshot. He is flattered, too, if that be of any avail to him. How he is flattered! What may be done in this way to Lord Mayors by common councilmen who like Mansion-house crumbs, I do not know; but kennel crumbs must be very sweet to a large class of sportsmen. Indeed, they are so sweet that almost every man will condescend to flatter the master of hounds. And ladies too, all the pretty girls delight to be spoken to by the master! He needs no introduction, but is free to sip all the sweets that come. Who will not kiss the toe of his boots, or refuse to be blessed by the sunshine of his smile? But there are heavy duties, deep responsibilities, and much true heart-felt anxiety to stand as makeweight against all these sweets. The master of hounds, even though he take no part in the actual work of hunting his own pack, has always his hands full of work. He is always learning, and always called upon to act on his knowledge suddenly. A Lord Mayor may sit at the Mansionhouse, I think, without knowing much of the law. He may do so without discovery of his ignorance. But the master of hounds who does not know his business is seen through at once. To say what that business is would take a paper longer than this, and the precept writer by no means considers himself equal to such a task. But it is multifarious, and demands a special intellect for itself. The master should have an eye like an eagle's, an ear like a thief's, and a heart like a dog's that can be either soft or ruthless as occasion may require. How he should love his foxes, and with what pertinacity he should kill them! How he should rejoice when his skill has assisted in giving the choice men of his hunt a run that they can remember for the next six years! And how heavy should be his heart within him when he trudges home with them, weary after a blank day, to the misery of which his incompetency has, perhaps, contributed! A master of hounds should be an anxious man; so anxious that the privilege of talking to pretty girls should be of little service to him. One word I will say as to the manners of a master of hounds, and then I will have done. He should be an urbane man, but not too urbane; and he should certainly be capable of great austerity. It used to be said that no captain of a man-of-war could hold his own without swearing. I will not quite say the same of a master of hounds, or the old ladies who think hunting to be wicked will have a handle against me. But I will declare that if any man could be justified in swearing, it would be a master of hounds. The troubles of the captain are as nothing to his. The captain has the ultimate power of the sword, or at any rate of the fetter, in his hands, while the master has but his own tongue to trust, his tongue and a certain influence which his position gives him. The master who can make that influence suffice without swearing is indeed a great man. Now-a-days swearing is so distasteful to the world at large, that great efforts are made to rule without it, and some such efforts are successful; but any man who has hunted for the last twenty years will bear me out in saying that hard words in a master's mouth used to be considered indispensable. Now and then a little irony is tried. "I wonder, sir, how much you'd take to go home?" I once heard a master ask of a red-coated stranger who was certainly more often among the hounds than he need have been. "Nothing on earth, sir, while you carry on as you are doing just at present," said the stranger. The master accepted the compliment, and the stranger sinned no more. There are some positions among mankind which are so peculiarly blessed that the owners of them seem to have been specially selected by Providence for happiness on earth in a degree sufficient to raise the malice and envy of all the world around. An English country gentleman with ten thousand a year must have been so selected. Members of Parliament with seats for counties have been exalted after the same unjust fashion. Popular masters of old-established hunts sin against their fellows in the same way. But when it comes to a man to fill up all these positions in England, envy and malice must be dead in the land if he be left alive to enjoy their fruition. HOW TO RIDE TO HOUNDS Now attend me, Diana and the Nymphs, Pan, Orion, and the Satyrs, for I have a task in hand which may hardly be accomplished without some divine aid. And the lesson I would teach is one as to which even gods must differ, and no two men will ever hold exactly the same opinion. Indeed, no written lesson, no spoken words, no lectures, be they ever so often repeated, will teach any man to ride to hounds. The art must come of nature and of experience; and Orion, were he here, could only tell the tyro of some few blunders which he may avoid, or give him a hint or two as to the manner in which he should begin. Let it be understood that I am speaking of fox-hunting, and let the young beginner always remember that in hunting the fox a pack of hounds is needed. The huntsman, with his servants, and all the scarlet-coated horsemen in the field, can do nothing towards the end for which they are assembled without hounds. He who as yet knows nothing of hunting will imagine that I am laughing at him in saying this; but, after a while, he will know how needful it is to bear in mind the caution I here give him, and will see how frequently men seem to forget that a fox cannot be hunted without hounds. A fox is seen to break from the covert, and men ride after it; the first man, probably, being some cunning sinner, who would fain get off alone if it were possible, and steal a march upon the field. But in this case one knave makes many fools; and men will rush, and ride along the track of the game, as though they could hunt it, and will destroy the scent before the hounds are on it, following, in their ignorance, the footsteps of the cunning sinner. Let me beg my young friend not to be found among this odious crowd of marplots. His business is to ride to hounds; and let him do so from the beginning of the run, persevering through it all, taking no mean advantages, and allowing himself to be betrayed into as few mistakes as possible; but let him not begin before the beginning. If he could know all that is inside the breast of that mean man who commenced the scurry, the cunning man who desires to steal a march, my young friend would not wish to emulate him. With nine-tenths of the men who flutter away after this ill fashion there is no design of their own in their so riding. They simply wish to get away, and in their impatience forget the little fact that a pack of hounds is necessary for the hunting of a fox. I have found myself compelled to begin with this preliminary caution, as all riding to hounds hangs on the fact in question. Men cannot ride to hounds if the hounds be not there. They may ride one after another, and that, indeed, suffices for many a keen sportsman; but I am now addressing the youth who is ambitious of riding to hounds. But though I have thus begun, striking first at the very root of the matter, I must go back with my pupil into the covert before I carry him on through the run. In riding to hounds there is much to do before the straight work commences. Indeed, the straight work is, for the man, the easiest work, or the work, I should say, which may be done with the least previous knowledge. Then the horse, with his qualities, comes into play; and if he be up to his business in skill, condition, and bottom, a man may go well by simply keeping with others who go well also. Straight riding, however, is the exception and not the rule. It comes sometimes, and is the cream of hunting when it does come; but it does not come as often as the enthusiastic beginner will have taught himself to expect. But now we will go back to the covert, and into the covert if it be a large one. I will speak of three kinds of coverts, the gorse, the wood, and the forest. There are others, but none other so distinct as to require reference. As regards the gorse covert, which of all is the most delightful, you, my disciple, need only be careful to keep in the crowd when it is being drawn. You must understand that if the plantation which you see before you, and which is the fox's home and homestead, be surrounded, the owner of it will never leave it. A fox will run back from a child among a pack of hounds, so much more terrible is to him the human race even than the canine. The object of all men of course is that the fox shall go, and from a gorse covert of five acres he must go very quickly or die among the hounds. It will not be long before he starts if there be space left for him to creep out, as he will hope, unobserved. Unobserved he will not be, for the accustomed eye of some whip or servant will have seen him from a corner. But if stray horsemen roaming round the gorse give him no room for such hope, he will not go. All which is so plainly intelligible, that you, my friend, will not fail to understand why you are required to remain with the crowd. And with simple gorse coverts there is no strong temptation to move about. They are drawn quickly, and though there be a scramble for places when the fox has broken, the whole thing is in so small a compass that there is no difficulty in getting away with the hounds. In finding your right place, and keeping it when it is found, you may have difficulty; but in going away from a gorse the field will be open for you, and when the hounds are well out and upon the scent, then remember your Latin; Occupet extremum scabies. But for one fox found in a gorse you will, in ordinary countries, see five found in woods; and as to the place and conduct of a hunting man while woods are being drawn, there is room for much doubt. I presume that you intend to ride one horse throughout the day, and that you wish to see all the hunting that may come in your way. This being so, it will be your study to economize your animal's power, and to keep him fresh for the run when it comes. You will hardly assist your object in this respect by seeing the wood drawn, and galloping up and down the rides as the fox crosses and recrosses from one side of it to another. Such rides are deep with mud, and become deeper as the work goes on; and foxes are very obstinate, running, if the covert be thick, often for an hour together without an attempt at breaking, and being driven back when they do attempt by the horsemen whom they see on all sides of them. It is very possible to continue at this work, seeing the hounds hunt, with your ears rather than your eyes, till your nag has nearly done his day's work. He will still carry you perhaps throughout a good run, but he will not do so with that elasticity which you will love; and then, after that, the journey home is, it is occasionally something almost too frightful to be contemplated. You can, therefore, if it so please you, station yourself with other patient long-suffering, mindful men at some corner, or at some central point amidst the rides, biding your time, consoling yourself with cigars, and not swearing at the vile perfidious, unfoxlike fox more frequently than you can help. For the fox on such occasions will be abused with all the calumnious epithets which the ingenuity of angry men can devise, because he is exercising that ingenuity the possession of which on his part is the foundation of fox-hunting. There you will remain, nursing your horse, listening to chaff, and hoping. But even when the fox does go, your difficulties may be but beginning. It is possible he may have gone on your side of the wood; but much more probable that he should have taken the other. He loves not that crowd that has been abusing him, and steals away from some silent distant corner. You, who are a beginner, hear nothing of his going; and when you rush off, as you will do with others, you will hardly know at first why the rush is made. But some one with older eyes and more experienced ears has seen signs and heard sounds, and knows that the fox is away. Then, my friend, you have your place to win, and it may be that the distance shall be too great to allow of your winning it. Nothing but experience will guide you safely through these difficulties. In drawing forests or woodlands your course is much clearer. There is no question, then, of standing still and waiting with patience, tobacco, and chaff for the coming start. The area to be drawn is too large to admit of waiting, and your only duty is to stay as close to the hounds as your ears and eyes will permit, remembering always that your ears should serve you much more often than your eyes. And in woodland hunting that which you thus see and hear is likely to be your amusement for the day. There is "ample room and verge enough" to run a fox down without any visit to the open country, and by degrees, as a true love of hunting comes upon you in place of a love of riding, you will learn to think that a day among the woodlands is a day not badly spent. At first, when after an hour and a half the fox has been hunted to his death, or has succeeded in finding some friendly hole, you will be wondering when the fun is going to begin. Ah me! how often have I gone through all the fun, have seen the fun finished, and then have wondered when it was going to begin; and that, too, in other things besides hunting! But at present the fun shall not be finished, and we will go back to the wood from which the fox is just breaking. You, my pupil, shall have been patient, and your patience shall be rewarded by a good start. On the present occasion I will give you the exquisite delight of knowing that you are there, at the spot, as the hounds come out of the covert. Your success, or want of success, throughout the run will depend on the way in which you may now select to go over the three or four first fields. It is not difficult to keep with hounds if you can get well away with them, and be with them when they settle to their running. In a long and fast run your horse may, of course, fail you. That must depend on his power and his condition. But, presuming your horse to be able to go, keeping with hounds is not difficult when you are once free from the thick throng of the riders. And that thick throng soon makes itself thin. The difficulty is in the start, and you will almost be offended when I suggest to you what those difficulties are, and suggest also that such as they are even they may overcome you. You have to choose your line of riding. Do not let your horse choose it for you instead of choosing it for yourself. He will probably make such attempts, and it is not at all improbable that you should let him have his way. Your horse will be as anxious to go as you are, but his anxiety will carry him after some other special horse on which he has fixed his eyes. The rider of that horse may not be the guide that you would select. But some human guide you must select. Not at first will you, not at first does any man, choose for himself with serene precision of confident judgment the line which he will take. You will be flurried, anxious, self-diffident, conscious of your own ignorance, and desirous of a leader. Many of those men who are with you will have objects at heart very different from your object. Some will ride for certain points, thinking that they can foretell the run of the fox. They may be right; but you, in your new ambition, are not solicitous to ride away to some other covert because the fox may, perchance, be going there. Some are thinking of the roads. Others are remembering that brook which is before them, and riding wide for a ford. With none such, as I presume, do you wish to place yourself. Let the hounds be your mark; and if, as may often be the case, you cannot see them, then see the huntsman; or, if you cannot see him, follow, at any rate, some one who does. If you can even do this as a beginner, you will not do badly. But, whenever it be possible, let the hounds themselves be your mark, and endeavour to remember that the leading hounds are those which should guide you. A single hound who turns when he is heading the pack should teach you to turn also. Of all the hounds you see there in the open, probably not one-third are hunting. The others are doing as you do, following where their guides lead them. It is for you to follow the real guide, and not the followers, if only you can keep the real guide in view. To keep the whole pack in view and to ride among them is easy enough when the scent is slack and the pace is slow. At such times let me counsel you to retire somewhat from the crowd, giving place to those eager men who are breaking the huntsman's heart. When the hounds have come nearer to their fox, and the pace is again good, then they will retire and make room for you. Not behind hounds, but alongside of them, if only you can achieve such position, it should be your honour and glory to place yourself; and you should go so far wide of them as in no way to impede them or disturb them, or even to remind them of your presence. If thus you live with them, turning as they turn, but never turning among them, keeping your distance, but losing no yard, and can do this for seven miles over a grass country in forty-five minutes, then you can ride to hounds better than nineteen men out of every twenty that you have seen at the meet, and will have enjoyed the keenest pleasure that hunting, or perhaps, I may say, that any other amusement, can give you. 
15387	----	Proofreading Team. Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities Robert Surtees CONTENTS I. THE SWELL AND THE SURREY II. THE YORKSHIREMAN AND THE SURREY III. SURREY SHOOTING: MR. JORROCKS IN TROUBLE IV. MR. JORROCKS AND THE SURREY STAGHOUNDS V. THE TURF: MR. JORROCKS AT NEWMARKET VI. A WEEK AT CHELTENHAM: THE CHELTENHAM DANDY VII. AQUATICS: MR. JORROCKS AT MARGATE VIII. THE ROAD: ENGLISH AND FRENCH IX. MR. JORROCKS IN PARIS X. SPORTING IN FRANCE XI. A RIDE TO BRIGHTON ON "THE AGE" XII. MR. JORROCKS'S DINNER PARTY XIII. THE DAY AFTER THE FEAST: AN EPISODE BY THE YORKSHIREMAN I. THE SWELL AND THE SURREY What true-bred city sportsman has not in his day put off the most urgent business--perhaps his marriage, or even the interment of his rib--that he might "brave the morn" with that renowned pack, the Surrey subscription foxhounds? Lives there, we would ask, a thoroughbred, prime, bang-up, slap-dash, break-neck, out-and-out artist, within three miles of the Monument, who has not occasionally "gone a good 'un" with this celebrated pack? And shall we, the bard of Eastcheap, born all deeds of daring to record, shall we, who so oft have witnessed--nay, shared--the hardy exploits of our fellow-cits, shall we sit still, and never cease the eternal twirl of our dexter around our sinister thumb, while other scribes hand down to future ages the paltry feats of beardless Meltonians, and try to shame old Father Thames himself with muddy Whissendine's foul stream? Away! thou vampire, Indolence, that suckest the marrow of imagination, and fattenest on the cream of idea ere yet it float on the milk of reflection. Hence! slug-begotten hag, thy power is gone--the murky veil thou'st drawn o'er memory's sweetest page is rent! Harp of Eastcheap, awake! Our thoughts hark back to the cover-side, and our heart o'erflows with recollections of the past, when life rode the pace through our veins, and the bark of the veriest mongrel, or the bray of the sorriest costermonger's sorriest "Jerusalem," were far more musical sounds than Paganini's pizzicatos or Catalani's clamorous caterwaulings. And, thou, Goddess of the Silver Bow--chaste Diana--deign to become the leading star of our lucubrations; come perch upon our grey goose quill; shout in our ear the maddening Tally-ho! and ever and anon give a salutary "refresher" to our memory with thy heaven-wrought spurs--those spurs old Vulcan forged when in his maddest mood--whilst we relate such feats of town-born youths and city squires, as shall "harrow up the souls" of milk-sop Melton's choicest sons, and "fright their grass-galloping garrons from their propriety." But gently, Pegasus!--Here again, boys, and "let's to business," as they say on 'Change. 'Twere almost needless to inform our readers, that such portion of a county as is hunted by any one pack of hounds is technically denominated their country; and of all countries under the sun, that of the Surrey subscription foxhounds undoubtedly bears the bell. This superiority arises from the peculiar nature of the soil--wretched starvation stuff most profusely studded with huge sharp flints--the abundance of large woods, particularly on the Kent side, and the range of mountainous hills that run directly through the centre, which afford accommodation to the timid, and are unknown in most counties and unequalled in any. One of the most striking features in the aspect of this chosen region of fox-hunting, is the quiet easy manner in which the sportsmen take the thing. On they go--now trotting gently over the flints--now softly ambling along the grassy ridge of some stupendous hill--now quietly following each other in long-drawn files, like geese, through some close and deep ravine, or interminable wood, which re-echoes to their never-ceasing holloas--every man shouting in proportion to the amount of his subscription, until day is made horrible with their yelling. There is no pushing, jostling, rushing, cramming, or riding over one another; no jealousy, discord, or daring; no ridiculous foolhardy feats; but each man cranes and rides, and rides and cranes in a style that would gladden the eye of a director of an insurance office. The members of the Surrey are the people that combine business with pleasure, and even in the severest run can find time for sweet discourse, and talk about the price of stocks or stockings. "Yooi wind him there, good dog, yooi wind him."--"Cottons is fell."--"Hark to Cottager! Hark!"--"Take your bill at three months, or give you three and a half discount for cash." "Eu in there, eu in, Cheapside, good dog."--"Don't be in a hurry, sir, pray. He may be in the empty casks behind the cooper's. Yooi, try for him, good bitch. Yooi, push him out."--"You're not going down that bank, surely sir? Why, it's almost perpendicular! For God's sake, sir, take care--remember you are not insured. Ah! you had better get off--here, let me hold your nag, and when you're down you can catch mine;--that's your sort but mind he doesn't break the bridle. He won't run away, for he knows I've got some sliced carrots in my pocket to reward him if he does well.--Thank you, sir, and now for a leg up--there we are--that's your sort--I'll wait till you are up also, and we'll be off together." It is this union of the elegant courtesies and business of life with the energetic sports of the field, that constitutes the charm of Surrey hunting; and who can wonder that smoke-dried cits, pent up all the week, should gladly fly from their shops to enjoy a day's sport on a Saturday? We must not, however, omit to express a hope that young men, who have their way to make in the world, may not be led astray by its allurements. It is all very well for old-established shopkeepers "to do a bit of pleasure" occasionally, but the apprentice or journeyman, who understands his duties and the tricks of his trade, will never be found capering in the hunting field. He will feel that his proper place is behind the counter; and while his master is away enjoying the pleasures of the chase, he can prig as much "pewter" from the till as will take both himself and his lass to Sadler's Wells theatre, or any other place she may choose to appoint. But to return to the Surrey. The town of Croydon, nine miles from the standard in Cornhill, is the general rendezvous of the gallant sportsmen. It is the principal market town in the eastern division of the county of Surrey; and the chaw-bacons who carry the produce of their acres to it, instead of to the neighbouring village of London, retain much of their pristine barbarity. The town furnishes an interesting scene on a hunting morning, particularly on a Saturday. At an early hour, groups of grinning cits may be seen pouring in from the London side, some on the top of Cloud's coaches,[1] some in taxed carts, but the greater number mounted on good serviceable-looking nags, of the invaluable species, calculated for sport or business, "warranted free from vice, and quiet both to ride and in harness"; some few there are, who, with that kindness and considerate attention which peculiarly mark this class of sportsmen, have tacked a buggy to their hunter, and given a seat to a friend, who leaning over the back of the gig, his jocund phiz turned towards his fidus Achates, leads his own horse behind, listening to the discourse of "his ancient," or regaling him "with sweet converse"; and thus they onward jog, until the sign of the "Greyhound," stretching quite across the main street, greets their expectant optics, and seems to forbid their passing the open portal below. In they wend then, and having seen their horses "sorted," and the collar marks (as much as may be) carefully effaced by the shrewd application of a due quantity of grease and lamp-black, speed in to "mine host" and order a sound repast of the good things of this world; the which to discuss, they presently apply themselves with a vigour that indicates as much a determination to recruit fatigue endured, as to lay in stock against the effects of future exertion. Meanwhile the bustle increases; sportsmen arrive by the score, fresh tables are laid out, covered with "no end" of vivers; and towards the hour of nine, may be heard to perfection, that pleasing assemblage of sounds issuing from the masticatory organs of a number of men steadfastly and studiously employed in the delightful occupation of preparing their mouthfuls for deglutition. "O noctes coenæque Deûm," said friend Flaccus. Oh, hunting breakfasts! say we. Where are now the jocund laugh, the repartee, the oft-repeated tale, the last debate? As our sporting contemporary, the _Quarterly_, said, when describing the noiseless pursuit of old reynard by the Quorn: "Reader, there is no crash now, and not much music." It is the tinker that makes a great noise over a little work, but, at the pace these men are eating, there is no time for babbling. So, gentle lector, there is now no leisure for bandying compliments, 'tis your small eater alone who chatters o'er his meals; your true-born sportsman is ever a silent and, consequently, an assiduous grubber. True it is that occasionally space is found between mouthfuls to vociferate "WAITER!" in a tone that requires not repetition; and most sonorously do the throats of the assembled eaters re-echo the sound; but this is all--no useless exuberance of speech--no, the knife or fork is directed towards what is wanted, nor needs there any more expressive intimation of the applicant's wants. [Footnote 1: The date of this description, it must be remembered, is put many years back.] At length the hour of ten approaches; bills are paid, pocket-pistols filled, sandwiches stowed away, horses accoutred, and our bevy straddle forth into the town, to the infinite gratification of troops of dirty-nosed urchins, who, for the last hour, have been peeping in at the windows, impatiently watching for the _exeunt_ of our worthies.--They mount, and away--trot, trot--bump, bump--trot, trot--bump, bump--over Addington Heath, through the village, and up the hill to Hayes Common, which having gained, spurs are applied, and any slight degree of pursiness that the good steeds may have acquired by standing at livery in Cripplegate, or elsewhere, is speedily pumped out of them by a smart brush over the turf, to the "Fox," at Keston, where a numerous assemblage of true sportsmen patiently await the usual hour for throwing off. At length time being called, say twenty minutes to eleven, and Mr. Jorrocks, Nodding Homer, and the principal subscribers having cast up, the hounds approach the cover. "Yooi in there!" shouts Tom Hills, who has long hunted this crack pack; and crack! crack! crack! go the whips of some scores of sportsmen. "Yelp, yelp, yelp," howl the hounds; and in about a quarter of an hour Tom has not above four or five couple at his heels. This number being a trifle, Tom runs his prad at a gap in the fence by the wood-side; the old nag goes well at it, but stops short at the critical moment, and, instead of taking the ditch, bolts and wheels round. Tom, however, who is "large in the boiling pieces," as they say at Whitechapel, is prevented by his weight from being shaken out of his saddle; and, being resolved to take no denial, he lays the crop of his hunting-whip about the head of his beast, and runs him at the same spot a second time, with an _obligato_ accompaniment of his spur-rowels, backed by a "curm along then!" issued in such a tone as plainly informs his quadruped he is in no joking humour. These incentives succeed in landing Tom and his nag in the wished-for spot, when, immediately, the wood begins to resound with shouts of "Yoicks True-bo-y, yoicks True-bo-y, yoicks push him up, yoicks wind him!" and the whole pack begin to work like good 'uns. Occasionally may be heard the howl of some unfortunate hound that has been caught in a fox trap, or taken in a hare snare; and not unfrequently the discordant growls of some three or four more, vociferously quarrelling over the venerable remains of some defunct rabbit. "Oh, you rogues!" cries Mr. Jorrocks, a cit rapturously fond of the sport. After the lapse of half an hour the noise in the wood for a time increases audibly. 'Tis Tom chastising the gourmands. Another quarter of an hour, and a hound that has finished his coney bone slips out of the wood, and takes a roll upon the greensward, opining, no doubt, that such pastime is preferable to scratching his hide among brambles in the covers. "Hounds have no right to opine," opines the head whipper-in; so clapping spurs into his prad, he begins to pursue the delinquent round the common, with "Markis, Markis! what are you at, Markis? get into cover, Markis!" But "it's no go"; Marquis creeps through a hedge, and "grins horribly a ghastly smile" at his ruthless tormentor, who wends back, well pleased at having had an excuse for taking "a bit gallop"! Half an hour more slips away, and some of the least hasty of our cits begin to wax impatient, in spite of the oft-repeated admonition, "don't be in a hurry!" At length a yokel pops out of the cover, and as soon as he has recovered breath, informs the field that he has been "a-hollorin' to 'em for half an hour," and that the fox had "gone away for Tatsfield, 'most as soon as ever the 'oounds went into 'ood." All is now hurry-scurry--girths are tightened--reins gathered up--half-munched sandwiches thrust into the mouth--pocket-pistols applied to--coats comfortably buttoned up to the throat; and, these preparations made, away goes the whole field, "coolly and fairly," along the road to Leaves Green and Crown Ash Hill--from which latter spot, the operations of the pack in the bottom may be comfortably and securely viewed--leaving the whips to flog as many hounds out of cover as they can, and Tom to entice as many more as are willing to follow the "twang, twang, twang" of his horn. And now, a sufficient number of hounds having been seduced from the wood, forth sallies "Tummas," and making straight for the spot where our yokel's "mate" stands leaning on his plough-stilts, obtains from him the exact latitude and longitude of the spot where reynard broke through the hedge. To this identical place is the pack forthwith led; and, no sooner have they reached it, than the wagging of their sterns clearly shows how genuine is their breed. Old Strumpet, at length, first looking up in Tom's face for applause, ventures to send forth a long-drawn howl, which, coupled with Tom's screech, setting the rest agog, away they all go, like beans; and the wind, fortunately setting towards Westerham, bears the melodious sound to the delighted ears of our "roadsters," who, forthwith catching the infection, respond with deafening shouts and joyous yells, set to every key, and disdaining the laws of harmony. Thus, what with Tom's horn, the holloaing of the whips, and the shouts of the riders, a very pretty notion may be formed of what Virgil calls: "Clamorque virûm, clangorque tubarum." A terrible noise is the result! At the end of nine minutes or so, the hounds come to fault in the bottom, below the blacksmith's, at Crown Ash Hill, and the fox has a capital chance; in fact, they have changed for the blacksmith's tom cat, which rushed out before them, and finding their mistake, return at their leisure. This gives the most daring of the field, on the eminence, an opportunity of descending to view the sport more closely; and being assembled in the bottom, each congratulates his neighbour on the excellent condition and stanchness of the hounds, and the admirable view that has been afforded them of their peculiar style of hunting. At this interesting period, a "regular swell" from Melton Mowbray, unknown to everyone except his tailor, to whom he owes a long tick, makes his appearance and affords abundance of merriment for our sportsmen. He is just turned out of the hands of his valet, and presents the very beau-ideal of his caste--"quite the lady," in fact. His hat is stuck on one side, displaying a profusion of well-waxed ringlets; a corresponding infinity of whisker, terminating at the chin, there joins an enormous pair of moustaches, which give him the appearance of having caught the fox himself and stuck its brush below his nose. His neck is very stiff; and the exact Jackson-like fit of his coat, which almost nips him in two at the waist, and his superlatively well-cleaned leather Andersons,[2] together with the perfume and the general puppyism of his appearance, proclaim that he is a "swell" of the very first water, and one that a Surrey sportsman would like to buy at his own price and sell at the other's. In addition to this, his boots, which his "fellow" has just denuded from a pair of wash-leather covers, are of the finest, brightest, blackest patent leather imaginable; the left one being the identical boot by which Warren's monkey shaved himself, while the right is the one at which the game-cock pecked, mistaking its own shadow for an opponent, the mark of its bill being still visible above the instep; and the tops--whose pampered appetites have been fed on champagne--are of the most delicate cream-colour, the whole devoid of mud or speck. The animal he bestrides is no less calculated than himself to excite the risible faculties of the field, being a sort of mouse colour, with dun mane and tail, got by Nicolo, out of a flibbertigibbet mare, and he stands seventeen hands and an inch. His head is small and blood-like, his girth a mere trifle, and his legs, very long and spidery, of course without any hair at the pasterns to protect them from the flints; his whole appearance bespeaking him fitter to run for half-mile hunters' stakes at Croxton Park or Leicester, than contend for foxes' brushes in such a splendid country as the Surrey. There he stands, with his tail stuck tight between his legs, shivering and shaking for all the world as if troubled with a fit of ague. And well he may, poor beast, for--oh, men of Surrey, London, Kent, and Middlesex, hearken to my word--on closer inspection he proves to have been shaved!!![3] [Footnote 2: Anderson, of South Audley Street, is, or was, a famous breeches-maker.] [Footnote 3: Shaving was in great vogue at Melton some seasons back. It was succeeded by clipping, and clipping by singeing.] After a considerable time spent in casting to the right, the left, and the rear, "True-bouy" chances to take a fling in advance, and hitting upon the scent, proclaims it with his wonted energy, which drawing all his brethren to the spot, they pick it slowly over some brick-fields and flint-beds, to an old lady's flower-garden, through which they carry it with a surprising head into the fields beyond, when they begin to fall into line, and the sportsmen doing the same--"one at a time and it will last the longer"--"Tummas" tootles his horn, the hunt is up, and away they all rattle at "Parliament pace," as the hackney-coachmen say. Our swell, who flatters himself he can "ride a few," according to the fashion of his country, takes up a line of his own, abreast of the leading hounds, notwithstanding the oft vociferated cry of "Hold hard, sir!" "Pray, hold hard, sir!" "For God's sake, hold hard, sir!" "G--d d--n you, hold hard, sir!" "Where the h--ll are you going to, sir?" and other familiar inquiries and benedictions, with which a stranger is sometimes greeted, who ventures to take a look at a strange pack of hounds. In the meantime the fox, who has often had a game at romps with his pursuers, being resolved this time to give them a tickler, bears straight away for Westerham, to the infinite satisfaction of the "hill folks," who thus have an excellent opportunity of seeing the run without putting their horses to the trouble of "rejoicing in their strength, or pawing in the valley." But who is so fortunate as to be near the scene of action in this second scurry, almost as fast as the first? Our fancy supplies us, and there not being many, we will just initialise them all, and let he whom the cap fits put it on. If we look to the left, nearly abreast of the three couple of hounds that are leading by some half mile or so, we shall see "Swell"--like a monkey on a giraffe--striding away in the true Leicestershire style; the animal contracting its stride after every exertion in pulling its long legs out of the deep and clayey soil, until the Bromley barber, who has been quilting his mule along at a fearful rate, and in high dudgeon at anyone presuming to exercise his profession upon a dumb brute, overtakes him, and in the endeavour to pass, lays it into his mule in a style that would insure him rotatory occupation at Brixton for his spindles, should any member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals witness his proceedings; while his friend and neighbour old B----, the tinker, plies his little mare with the Brummagems, to be ready to ride over "Swell" the instant the barber gets him down. On the right of the leading hounds are three crack members of the Surrey, Messrs. B--e, S--bs, and B--l, all lads who can go; while a long way in the rear of the body of the pack are some dozen, who, while they sat on the hills, thought they could also, but who now find out their mistake. Down Windy Lane, a glimpse of a few red coats may be caught passing the gaps and weak parts of the fence, among whom we distinctly recognise the worthy master of the pack, followed by Jorrocks, with his long coat-laps floating in the breeze, who thinking that "catching-time" must be near at hand, and being dearly fond of blood, has descended from his high station to witness the close of the scene. "Vot a pace! and vot a country!" cries the grocer, standing high in his stirrups, and bending over the neck of his chestnut as though he were meditating a plunge over his head; "how they stick to him! vot a pack! by Jove they are at fault again. Yooi, Pilgrim! Yooi, Warbler, ma load! (lad). Tom, try down the hedge-row." "Hold your jaw, Mr. J----," cries Tom, "you are always throwing that red rag of yours. I wish you would keep your potato-trap shut. See! you've made every hound throw up, and it's ten to one that ne'er a one among 'em will stoop again." "Yonder he goes," cries a cock of the old school, who used to hunt with Colonel Jolliffe's hounds, and still sports the long blue surtout lined with orange, yellow-ochre unmentionables, and mahogany-coloured knee-caps, with mother-of-pearl buttons. "Yonder he goes among the ship (sheep), for a thousand! see how the skulking waggabone makes them scamper." At this particular moment a shrill scream is heard at the far end of a long shaw, and every man pushes on to the best of his endeavour. "Holloo o-o-u, h'loo o-o-u, h'loo--o-o-u, gone away! gone away! forward! forrard! hark back! hark forrard! hark forrard! hark back!" resounds from every mouth. "He's making for the 'oods beyond Addington, and we shall have a rare teaser up these hills," cries Jorrocks, throwing his arms round his horse's neck as he reaches the foot of them.--"D--n your hills," cries "Swell," as he suddenly finds himself sitting on the hindquarters of his horse, his saddle having slipped back for want of a breastplate,--"I wish the hills had been piled on your back, and the flints thrust down your confounded throat, before I came into such a cursed provincial." "Haw, haw, haw!" roars a Croydon butcher. "What don't 'e like it, sir, eh? too sharp to be pleasant, eh?--Your nag should have put on his boots before he showed among us." "He's making straight for Fuller's farm," exclaims a thirsty veteran on reaching the top, "and I'll pull up and have a nip of ale, please God." "Hang your ale," cries a certain sporting cheesemonger, "you had better come out with a barrel of it tacked to your horse's tail."--"Or 'unt on a steam-engine," adds his friend the omnibus proprietor, "and then you can brew as you go." "We shall have the Croydon Canal," cries Mr. H----n, of Tottenham, who knows every flint in the country, "and how will you like that, my hearties?" "Curse the Croydon Canal," bawls the little Bromley barber, "my mule can swim like a soap-bladder, and my toggery can't spoil, thank God!" The prophecy turns up. Having skirted Fuller's farm, the villain finds no place to hide; and in two minutes, or less, the canal appears in view. It is full of craft, and the locks are open, but there is a bridge about half a mile to the right. "If my horse can do nothing else he can jump this," cries "Swell," as he gathers him together, and prepares for the effort. He hardens his heart and goes at it full tilt, and the leggy animal lands him three yards on the other side. "Curse this fellow," cries Jorrocks, grinning with rage as he sees "Swell" skimming through the air like a swallow on a summer's eve, "he'll have a laugh at the Surrey, for ever and ever, Amen. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I wish I durst leap it. What shall I do? Here bargee," cries he to a bargeman, "lend us a help over and I'll give you ninepence." The bargeman takes him at his word, and getting the vessel close to the water's edge, Jorrocks has nothing to do but ride in, and, the opposite bank being accommodating, he lands without difficulty. Ramming his spurs into his nag, he now starts after "Swell," who is sailing away with a few couple of hounds that took the canal; the body of the pack and all the rest of the field--except the Bromley barber, who is now floundering in the water--having gone round to the bridge. The country is open, the line being across commons and along roads, so that Jorrocks, who is not afraid of "the pace" so long as there is no leaping, has a pretty good chance with "Swell." The scene now shifts. On turning out of a lane, along which they have just rattled, a fence of this description appears: The bottom part is made of flints, and the upper part of mud, with gorse stuck along the top, and there is a gutter on each side. Jorrocks, seeing that a leap is likely, hangs astern, and "Swell," thinking to shake off his only opponent, and to have a rare laugh at the Surrey when he gets back to Melton, puts his nag at it most manfully, who, though somewhat blown, manages to get his long carcass over, but, unfortunately alighting on a bed of flints on the far side, cuts a back sinew, and "Swell" measures his length on the headland. Jorrocks then pulls up. The tragedy of George Barnwell ends with a death, and we are happy in being able to gratify our readers with a similar entertainment. Already have the best-mounted men in the field attained the summit of one of the Mont Blancs of the country, when on looking down the other side of the "mountain's brow," they, to their infinite astonishment, espy at some distance our "Swell" dismounted and playing at "pull devil, pull baker" with the hounds, whose discordant bickerings rend the skies. "Whoo-hoop!" cries one; "whoo-hoop!" responds another; "whoo-hoop!" screams a third; and the contagion spreading, and each man dismounting, they descend the hill with due caution, whoo-hooping, hallooing, and congratulating each other on the splendour of the run, interspersed with divers surmises as to what mighty magic had aided the hounds in getting on such good terms with the warmint, and exclamations at the good fortune of the stranger, in being able (by nicking,[4] and the fox changing his line) to get in at the finish. [Footnote 4: A stranger never rides straight if he beats the members of the hunt.] And now some dozens of sportsmen quietly ambling up to the scene of action, view with delight (alone equalled by their wonder at so unusual and unexpected an event) the quarrels of the hounds, as they dispute with each other the possession of their victim's remains, when suddenly a gentleman, clad in a bright green silk-velvet shooting-coat, with white leathers, and Hessian boots with large tassels, carrying his Joe Manton on his shoulder, issues from an adjoining coppice, and commences a loud complaint of the "unhandsome conduct of the gentlemen's 'ounds in devouring the 'are (hare) which he had taken so much pains to shoot." Scarcely are these words out of his mouth than the whole hunt, from Jorrocks downwards, let drive such a rich torrent of abuse at our unfortunate _chasseur_, that he is fain to betake himself to his heels, leaving them undisputed masters of the field. The visages of our sportsmen become dismally lengthened on finding that their fox has been "gathered unto his fathers" by means of hot lead and that villainous saltpetre "digged out of the bowels of the harmless earth"; some few, indeed, there are who are bold enough to declare that the pack has actually made a meal of a hare, and that their fox is snugly earthed in the neighbouring cover. However, as there are no "reliquias Danaum," to prove or disprove this assertion, Tom Hills, having an eye to the cap-money, ventures to give it as his opinion, that pug has fairly yielded to his invincible pursuers, without having "dropped to shot." This appearing to give very general satisfaction, the first whip makes no scruple of swearing that he saw the hounds pull him down fairly; and Peckham, drawing his mouth up on one side, with his usual intellectual grin, takes a similar affidavit. The Bromley barber too, anxious to have it to say that he has for once been in at the death of a fox, vows by his beard that he saw the "varmint" lathered in style; and these protestations being received with clamorous applause, and everyone being pleased to have so unusual an event to record to his admiring spouse, agrees that a fox has not only been killed, but killed in a most sportsmanlike, workmanlike, businesslike manner; and long and loud are the congratulations, great is the increased importance of each man's physiognomy, and thereupon they all lug out their half-crowns for Tom Hills. In the meantime our "Swell" lays hold of his nag--who is sorely damaged with the flints, and whose wind has been pretty well pumped out of him by the hills--and proceeds to lead him back to Croydon, inwardly promising himself for the future most studiously to avoid the renowned county of Surrey, its woods, its barbers, its mountains, and its flints, and to leave more daring spirits to overcome the difficulties it presents; most religiously resolving, at the same time, to return as speedily as possible to his dear Leicestershire, there to amble o'er the turf, and fancy himself an "angel on horseback." The story of the country mouse, who must needs see the town, occurs forcibly to his recollection, and he exclaims aloud: "me sylva, cavusque Tutus ab insidiis tenui solabitur ervo." On overhearing which, Mr. Jorrocks hurries back to his brother subscribers, and informs them, very gravely, that the stranger is no less a personage than "Prince Matuchevitz, the Russian ambassador and minister plenipotentiary extraordinary," whereupon the whole field join in wishing him safe back in Russia--or anywhere else--and wonder at his incredible assurance in supposing that he could cope with THE SURREY HUNT. II. THE YORKSHIREMAN AND THE SURREY It is an axiom among fox-hunters that the hounds they individually hunt with are the best--compared with them all others are "slow." Of this species of pardonable egotism, Mr. Jorrocks--who in addition to the conspicuous place he holds in the Surrey Hunt, as shown in the preceding chapter, we should introduce to our readers as a substantial grocer in St. Botolph's Lane, with an elegant residence in Great Coram Street, Russell Square--has his full, if not rather more than his fair share. Vanity, however, is never satisfied without display, and Mr. Jorrocks longed for a customer before whom he could exhibit the prowess of his[5] pack. [Footnote 5: Subscribers, speaking to strangers, always talk of the hounds as their own.] Chance threw in his way a young Yorkshireman, who frequently appearing in subsequent pages, we may introduce as a loosish sort of hand, up to anything in the way of a lark, but rather deficient in cash--a character so common in London, as to render further description needless. Now it is well known that a Yorkshireman, like a dragoon, is nothing without his horse, and if he does understand anything better than racing--it is hunting. Our readers will therefore readily conceive that a Yorkshireman is more likely to be astonished at the possibility of fox-hunting from London, than captivated by the country, or style of turn-out; and in truth, looking at it calmly and dispassionately, in our easy-chair drawn to a window which overlooks the cream of the grazing grounds in the Vale of White Horse, it does strike us with astonishment, that such a thing as a fox should be found within a day's ride of the suburbs. The very idea seems preposterous, for one cannot but associate the charms of a "find" with the horrors of "going to ground" in an omnibus, or the fox being headed by a great Dr. Eady placard, or some such monstrosity. Mr. Mayne,[6] to be sure, has brought racing home to every man's door, but fox-hunting is not quite so tractable a sport. But to our story. [Footnote 6: The promoter of the Hippodrome, near Bayswater--a speculation that soon came to grief.] It was on a nasty, cold, foggy, dark, drizzling morning in the month of February, that the Yorkshireman, having been offered a "mount" by Mr. Jorrocks, found himself shivering under the Piazza in Covent Garden about seven o'clock, surrounded by cabs, cabbages, carrots, ducks, dollys, and drabs of all sorts, waiting for his horse and the appearance of the friend who had seduced him into the extraordinary predicament of attiring himself in top-boots and breeches in London. After pacing up and down some minutes, the sound of a horse's hoofs were heard turning down from Long Acre, and reaching the lamp-post at the corner of James Street, his astonished eyes were struck with the sight of a man in a capacious, long, full-tailed, red frock coat reaching nearly to his spurs, with mother-of-pearl buttons, with sporting devices--which afterwards proved to be foxes, done in black--brown shag breeches, that would have been spurned by the late worthy master of the Hurworth,[7] and boots, that looked for all the world as if they were made to tear up the very land and soil, tied round the knees with pieces of white tape, the flowing ends of which dangled over the mahogany-coloured tops. Mr. Jorrocks--whose dark collar, green to his coat, and _tout ensemble_, might have caused him to be mistaken for a mounted general postman--was on a most becoming steed--a great raking, raw-boned chestnut, with a twisted snaffle in his mouth, decorated with a faded yellow silk front, a nose-band, and an ivory ring under his jaws, for the double purpose of keeping the reins together and Jorrocks's teeth in his head--the nag having flattened the noses and otherwise damaged the countenances of his two previous owners, who had not the knack of preventing him tossing his head in their faces. The saddle--large and capacious--made on the principle of the impossibility of putting a round of beef upon a pudding plate--was "spick and span new," as was an enormous hunting-whip, whose iron-headed hammer he clenched in a way that would make the blood curdle in one's veins, to see such an instrument in the hands of a misguided man. [Footnote 7: The late Mr. Wilkinson, commonly called "Matty Wilkinson," master of the Hurworth foxhounds, was a rigid adherent of the "d----n-all-dandy" school of sportsmen.] "Punctuality is the politeness of princes," said Mr. Jorrocks, raising a broad-brimmed, lowish-crowned hat, as high as a green hunting-cord which tackled it to his yellow waistcoat by a fox's tooth would allow, as he came upon the Yorkshireman at the corner. "My soul's on fire and eager for the chase! By heavens, I declare I've dreamt of nothing else all night, and the worst of it is, that in a par-ox-ism of delight, when I thought I saw the darlings running into the warmint, I brought Mrs. J---- such a dig in the side as knocked her out of bed, and she swears she'll go to Jenner, and the court for the protection of injured ribs! But come--jump up--where's your nag? Binjimin, you blackguard, where are you? The fog is blinding me, I declare! Binjimin, I say! Binjimin! you willain, where are you?" "Here, sir! coming!" responded a voice from the bottom of one of the long mugs at a street breakfast stall, which the fog almost concealed from their view, and presently an urchin in a drab coat and blue collar came towing a wretched, ewe-necked, hungry-looking, roan rosinante along from where he had been regaling himself with a mug of undeniable bohea, sweetened with a composition of brown sugar and sand. "Now be after getting up," said Jorrocks, "for time and the Surrey 'ounds wait for no man. That's not a werry elegant tit, but still it'll carry you to Croydon well enough, where I'll put you on a most undeniable bit of 'orse-flesh--a reg'lar clipper. That's a hack--what they calls three-and-sixpence a side, but I only pays half a crown. Now, Binjimin, cut away home, and tell Batsay to have dinner ready at half-past five to a minute, and to be most particular in doing the lamb to a turn." The Yorkshireman having adjusted himself in the old flat-flapped hack saddle, and got his stirrups let out from "Binjimin's" length to his own, gathered up the stiff, weather-beaten reins, gave the animal a touch with his spurs, and fell into the rear of Mr. Jorrocks. The morning appeared to be getting worse. Instead of the grey day-dawn of the country, when the thin transparent mist gradually rises from the hills, revealing an unclouded landscape, a dense, thick, yellow fog came rolling in masses along the streets, obscuring the gas lights, and rendering every step one of peril. It could be both eat and felt, and the damp struck through their clothes in the most summary manner. "This is bad," said Mr. Jorrocks, coughing as he turned the corner by Drury Lane, making for Catherine Street, and upset an early breakfast and periwinkle stall, by catching one corner of the fragile fabric with his toe, having ridden too near to the pavement. "Where are you for now? and bad luck to ye, ye boiled lobster!" roared a stout Irish wench, emerging from a neighbouring gin-palace on seeing the dainty viands rolling in the street. "Cut away!" cried Jorrocks to his friend, running his horse between one of George Stapleton's dust-carts and a hackney-coach, "or the Philistines will be upon us." The fog and crowd concealed them, but "Holloa! mind where you're going, you great haw-buck!" from a buy-a-hearth-stone boy, whose stock-in-trade Jorrocks nearly demolished, as he crossed the corner of Catherine Street before him, again roused his vigilance. "The deuce be in the fog," said he, "I declare I can't see across the Strand. It's as dark as a wolf's mouth.--Now where are you going to with that meazly-looking cab of yours?--you've nearly run your shafts into my 'oss's ribs!" cried he to a cabman who nearly upset him. The Strand was kept alive by a few slip-shod housemaids, on their marrow-bones, washing the doorsteps, or ogling the neighbouring pot-boy on his morning errand for the pewters. Now and then a crazy jarvey passed slowly by, while a hurrying mail, with a drowsy driver and sleeping guard, rattled by to deliver their cargo at the post office. Here and there appeared one of those beings, who like the owl hide themselves by day, and are visible only in the dusk. Many of them appeared to belong to the other world. Poor, puny, ragged, sickly-looking creatures, that seemed as though they had been suckled and reared with gin. "How different," thought the Yorkshireman to himself, "to the fine, stout, active labourer one meets at an early hour on a hunting morning in the country!" His reverie was interrupted on arriving opposite the _Morning Chronicle_ office, by the most discordant yells that ever issued from human beings, and on examining the quarter from whence they proceeded, a group of fifty or a hundred boys, or rather little old men, were seen with newspapers in their hands and under their arms, in all the activity of speculation and exchange. "A clean _Post_ for Tuesday's _Times_!" bellowed one. "I want the _Hurl_! (Herald) for the _Satirist_!" shouted another. "Bell's _Life_ for the _Bull_! _The Spectator_ for the _Sunday Times_!" The approach of our sportsmen was the signal for a change of the chorus, and immediately Jorrocks was assailed with "A hunter! a hunter! crikey, a hunter! My eyes! there's a gamecock for you! Vot a beauty! Vere do you turn out to-day? Vere's the stag? Don't tumble off, old boy! 'Ave you got ever a rope in your pocket? Take Bell's _Life in London_, vot contains all the sporting news of the country! Vot a vip the gemman's got! Vot a precious basternadering he could give us--my eyes, vot a swell!--vot a shocking bad hat!_[8]--vot shocking bad breeches!" [Footnote 8: "Vot a shocking bad hat!"--a slang cockney phrase of 1831.] The fog, which became denser at every step, by the time they reached St. Clement's Danes rendered their further progress almost impossible.--"Oh, dear! oh, dear! how unlucky," exclaimed Jorrocks, "I would have given twenty pounds of best Twankay for a fine day--and see what a thing we've got! Hold my 'oss," said he to the Yorkshireman, "while I run into the 'Angel,' and borrow an argand burner, or we shall be endorsed[9] to a dead certainty." Off he got, and ran to the inn. Presently he emerged from the yard--followed by horse-keepers, coach-washers, porters, cads, waiters and others, amid loud cries of "Flare up, flare up, old cock! talliho fox-hunter!"--with a bright mail-coach footboard lamp, strapped to his middle, which, lighting up the whole of his broad back now cased in scarlet, gave him the appearance of a gigantic red-and-gold insurance office badge, or an elderly cherub without wings. [Footnote 9: City--for having a pole run into one's rear.] The hackney-coach-and cab-men, along whose lines they passed, could not make him out at all. Some thought he was a mail-coach guard riding post with the bags; but as the light was pretty strong he trotted on regardless of observation. The fog, however, abated none of its denseness even on the "Surrey side," and before they reached the "Elephant and Castle," Jorrocks had run against two trucks, three watercress women, one pies-all-ot!-all-ot! man, dispersed a whole covey of Welsh milkmaids, and rode slap over one end of a buy 'at (hat) box! bonnet-box! man's pole, damaging a dozen paste-boards, and finally upsetting Balham Hill Joe's Barcelona "come crack 'em and try 'em" stall at the door of the inn, for all whose benedictions, the Yorkshireman, as this great fox-hunting knight-errant's "Esquire," came in. Here the Yorkshireman would fain have persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to desist from his quixotic undertaking, but he turned a deaf ear to his entreaties. "We are getting fast into the country, and I hold it to be utterly impossible for this fog to extend beyond Kennington Common--'twill ewaporate, you'll see, as we approach the open. Indeed, if I mistake not, I begin to sniff the morning air already, and hark! there's a lark a-carrolling before us!" "Now, spooney! where are you for?" bellowed a carter, breaking off in the middle of his whistle, as Jorrocks rode slap against his leader, the concussion at once dispelling the pleasing pastoral delusion, and nearly knocking Jorrocks off his horse. As they approached Brixton Hill, a large red ball of lurid light appeared in the firmament, and just at the moment up rode another member of the Surrey Hunt in uniform, whom Jorrocks hailed as Mr. Crane. "By Jove, 'ow beautiful the moon is," said the latter, after the usual salutations. "Moon!" said Mr. Jorrocks, "that's not never no moon--I reckon it's Mrs. Graham's balloon." "Come, that's a good 'un," said Crane, "perhaps you'll lay me an 'at about it". "Done!" said Mr. Jorrocks, "a guinea one--and we'll ax my friend here.--Now, what's that?" "Why, judging from its position and the hour, I should say it is the sun!" was the reply. We have omitted to mention that this memorable day was a Saturday, one on which civic sportsmen exhibit. We may also premise, that the particular hunt we are about to describe, took place when there were very many packs of hounds within reach of the metropolis, all of which boasted their respective admiring subscribers. As our party proceeded they overtook a gentleman perusing a long bill of the meets for the next week, of at least half a dozen packs, the top of the list being decorated with a cut of a stag-hunt, and the bottom containing a notification that hunters were "carefully attended to by Charles Morton,[10] at the 'Derby Arms,' Croydon," a snug rural _auberge_ near the barrack. On the hunting bill-of-fare, were Mr. Jolliffe's foxhounds, Mr. Meager's harriers, the Derby staghounds, the Sanderstead harriers, the Union foxhounds, the Surrey foxhounds, rabbit beagles on Epsom Downs, and dwarf foxhounds on Woolwich Common. What a list to bewilder a stranger! The Yorkshireman left it all to Mr. Jorrocks. [Footnote 10: Where the carrion is, there will be the crow, and on the demise of the "Surrey staggers," Charley brushed off to the west, to valet the gentlemen's hunters that attend the Royal Stag Hunt.--_Vide_ Sir F. Grant's picture of the meet of the Royal Staghounds.] "You're for Jolliffe, I suppose," said the gentleman with the bill, to another with a blue coat and buff lining. "He's at Chipstead Church--only six miles from Croydon, a sure find and good country." "What are you for, Mr. Jorrocks?" inquired another in green, with black velvet breeches, Hessian boots, and a red waistcoat, who just rode up. "My own, to be sure," said Jorrocks, taking hold of the green collar of his coat, as much as to say, "How can you ask such a question?" "Oh, no," said the gentleman in green, "Come to the stag--much better sport--sure of a gallop--open country--get it over soon--back in town before the post goes out." Before Mr. Jorrocks had time to make a reply to this last interrogatory, they were overtaken by another horseman, who came hopping along at a sort of a butcher's shuffle, on a worn-out, three-legged, four-cornered hack, with one eye, a rat-tail, and a head as large as a fiddle-case.--"Who's for the blue mottles?" said he, casting a glance at their respective coats, and at length fixing it on the Yorkshireman. "Why, Dickens, you're not going thistle-whipping with that nice 'orse of yours," said the gentleman in the velvets; "come and see the stag turned out--sure of a gallop--no hedges--soft country--plenty of publics--far better sport, man, than pottering about looking for your foxes and hares, and wasting your time; take my advice, and come with me." "But," says Dickens, "my 'orse won't stand it; I had him in the shay till eleven last night, and he came forty-three mile with our traveller the day before, else he's a 'good 'un to go,' as you know. Do you remember the owdacious leap he took over the tinker's tent, at Epping 'Unt, last Easter? How he astonished the natives within!" "Yes; but then, you know, you fell head-foremost through the canvas, and no wonder your ugly mug frightened them," replied he of the velvets. "Ay; but that was in consequence of my riding by balance instead of gripping with my legs," replied Dickens; "you see, I had taken seven lessons in riding at the school in Bidborough Street, Burton Crescent, and they always told me to balance myself equally on the saddle, and harden my heart, and ride at whatever came in the way; and the tinker's tent coming first, why, naturally enough, I went at it. But I have had some practice since then, and, of course, can stick on better. I have 'unted regularly ever since, and can 'do the trick' now." "What, summer and winter?" said Jorrocks. "No," replied he, "but I have 'unted regularly every fifth Saturday since the 'unting began." After numerous discourses similar to the foregoing, they arrived at the end of the first stage on the road to the hunt, namely, the small town of Croydon, the rendezvous of London sportsmen. The whole place was alive with red coats, green coats, blue coats, black coats, brown coats, in short, coats of all the colours of the rainbow. Horsemen were mounting, horsemen were dismounting, one-horse "shays" and two-horse chaises were discharging their burdens, grooms were buckling on their masters' spurs, and others were pulling off their overalls. Eschewing the "Greyhound," they turn short to the right, and make for the "Derby Arms" hunting stables. Charley Morton, a fine old boy of his age, was buckling on his armour for the fight, for his soul, too, was "on fire, and eager for the chase." He was for the "venison"; and having mounted his "deer-stalker," was speedily joined by divers perfect "swells," in beautiful leathers, beautiful coats, beautiful tops, beautiful everything, except horses, and off they rode to cut in for the first course--a stag-hunt on a Saturday being usually divided into three. The ride down had somewhat sharpened Jorrocks's appetite; and feeling, as he said, quite ready for his dinner, he repaired to Mr. Morton's house--a kind of sporting snuggery, everything in apple-pie order, and very good--where he baited himself on sausages and salt herrings, a basin of new milk, with some "sticking powder" as he called it, _alias_ rum, infused into it; and having deposited a half-quartern loaf in one pocket, as a sort of balance against a huge bunch of keys which rattled in the other, he pulled out his watch, and finding they had a quarter of an hour to spare, proposed to chaperon the Yorkshireman on a tour of the hunting stables. Jorrocks summoned the ostler, and with great dignity led the way. "Humph," said he, evidently disappointed at seeing half the stalls empty, "no great show this morning--pity--gentleman come from a distance--should like to have shown him some good nags.--What sort of a devil's this?" "Oh, sir, he's a good 'un, and nothing but a good 'un!--Leap! Lord love ye, he'll leap anything. A railway cut, a windmill with the sails going, a navigable river with ships--anything in short. This is the 'orse wot took the line of houses down at Beddington the day they had the tremendious run from Reigate Hill." "And wot's the grey in the far stall?" "Oh, that's Mr. Pepper's old nag--Pepper-Caster as we call him, since he threw the old gemman, the morning they met at the 'Leg-of-Mutton' at Ashtead. But he's good for nothing. Bless ye! his tail shakes for all the world like a pepper-box afore he's gone half a mile. Those be yours in the far stalls, and since they were turned round I've won a bob of a gemman who I bet I'd show him two 'osses with their heads vere their tails should be.[11] I always says," added he with a leer, "that you rides the best 'osses of any gemman vot comes to our governor's." This flattered Jorrocks, and sidling up, he slipped a shilling into his hand, saying, "Well--bring them out, and let's see how they look this morning." The stall reins are slipped, and out they step with their hoods on their quarters. One was a large, fat, full-sized chestnut, with a white ratch down the full extent of his face, a long square tail, bushy mane, with untrimmed heels. The other was a brown, about fifteen two, coarse-headed, with a rat-tail, and collar-marked. The tackle was the same as they came down with. "You'll do the trick on that, I reckon," said Jorrocks, throwing his leg over the chestnut, and looking askew at the Yorkshireman as he mounted. "Tatt., and old Tatt., and Tatt. sen. before him, all agree that they never knew a bad 'oss with a rat-tail." [Footnote 11: A favourite joke among grooms when a horse is turned round in his stall.] "But, let me tell you, you must be werry lively, if you mean to live with our 'ounds. They go like the wind. But come! touch him with the spur, and let's do a trot." The Yorkshireman obeyed, and getting into the main street, onwards they jogged, right through Croydon, and struck into a line of villas of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, which extend for several miles along the road, exhibiting all sorts of architecture, Gothic, Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, Dutch, and Chinese. These gradually diminished in number, and at length they found themselves on an open heath, within a few miles of the meet of the "Surrey foxhounds". "Now", says Mr. Jorrocks, clawing up his smalls, "you will see the werry finest pack of hounds in all England; I don't care where the next best are; and you will see as good a turn-out as ever you saw in your life, and as nice a country to ride over as ever you were in". They reach the meet--a wayside public-house on a common, before which the hounds with their attendants and some fifty or sixty horsemen, many of them in scarlet, were assembled. Jorrocks was received with the greatest cordiality, amid whoops and holloas, and cries of "now Twankay!--now Sugar!--now Figs!" Waving his hand in token of recognition, he passed on and made straight for Tom Hill, with a face full of importance, and nearly rode over a hound in his hurry. "Now, Tom," said he, with the greatest energy, "do, my good fellow, strain every nerve to show sport to-day.--A gentleman has come all the way from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to see our excellent 'ounds, and I would fain have him galvanised.--Do show us a run, and let it end with blood, so that he may have something to tell the natives when he gets back to his own parts. That's him, see, sitting under the yew-tree, in a bottle-green coat with basket buttons, just striking a light on the pommel of his saddle to indulge in a fumigation.--Keep your eye on him all day, and if you can lead him over an awkward place, and get him a purl, so much the better.--If he'll risk his neck I'll risk my 'oss's." The Yorkshireman, having lighted his cigar and tightened his girths, rode leisurely among the horsemen, many of whom were in eager council, and a gentle breeze wafted divers scraps of conversation to his ear. What is that hound got by? No. How is that horse bred? No. What sport had you on Wednesday? No. Is it a likely find to-day? No, no, no; it was not where the hounds, but what the Consols, left off at; what the four per cents, and not the four horses, were up to; what the condition of the money, not the horse, market. "Anything doing in Danish bonds, sir?" said one. "You must do it by lease and release, and levy a fine," replied another. Scott _v._ Brown, crim. con. to be heard on or before Wednesday next.--Barley thirty-two to forty-two.--Fine upland meadow and rye grass hay, seventy to eighty.--The last pocket of hops I sold brought seven pounds fifteen shillings. Sussex bags six pounds ten shillings.--There were only twenty-eight and a quarter ships at market, "and coals are coals." "Glad to hear it, sir, for half the last you sent me were slates."--"Best qualities of beef four shillings and eightpence a stone--mutton three shillings and eightpence, to four shillings and sixpence.--He was exceedingly ill when I paid my last visit--I gave him nearly a stone of Epsom-salts, and bled him twice.--This horse would suit you to a T, sir, but my skip-jack is coming out on one at two o'clock that can carry a house.--See what a bosom this one's got.--Well, Gunter, old boy, have you iced your horse to-day?--Have you heard that Brown and Co. are in the _Gazette_? No, which Brown--not John Brown? No, William Brown. What, Brown of Goodman's Fields? No, Brown of---- Street--Brown_e_ with an _e_; you know the man I mean.--Oh, Lord, ay, the man wot used to be called Nosey Browne." A general move ensued, and they left "the meet." "Vere be you going to turn out pray, sir, may I inquire?" said a gentleman in green to the huntsman, as he turned into a field. "Turn out," said he, "why, ye don't suppose we be come calf-hunting, do ye? We throws off some two stones'-throw from here, if so be you mean what cover we are going to draw." "No," said green-coat, "I mean where do you turn out the stag?"--"D--n the stag, we know nothing about such matters," replied the huntsman. "Ware wheat! ware wheat! ware wheat!" was now the general cry, as a gentleman in nankeen pantaloons and Hessian boots with long brass spurs, commenced a navigation across a sprouting crop. "Ware wheat, ware wheat!" replied he, considering it part of the ceremony of hunting, and continued his forward course. "Come to my side," said Mr.----, to the whipper-in, "and meet that gentleman as he arrives at yonder gate; and keep by him while I scold you."--"Now, sir, most particularly d--n you, for riding slap-dash over the young wheat, you most confounded insensible ignorant tinker, isn't the headland wide enough both for you and your horse, even if your spurs were as long again as they are?" Shouts of "Yooi over, over, over hounds--try for him--yoicks--wind him! good dogs--yoicks! stir him up--have at him there!"--here interrupted the jawbation, and the whip rode off shaking his sides with laughter. "Your horse has got a stone in each forefoot, and a thorn in his near hock," observed a dentist to a wholesale haberdasher from Ludgate Hill, "allow me to extract them for you--no pain, I assure--over before you know it." "Come away, hounds! come away!" was heard, and presently the huntsman, with some of the pack at his horse's heels, issued from the wood playing _Rule, Britannia!_ on a key-bugle, while the cracks of heavy-thonged whips warned the stragglers and loiterers to follow. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast," observed Jorrocks, as he tucked the laps of his frock over his thighs, "and I hope we shall find before long, else that quarter of house-lamb will be utterly ruined. Oh, dear, they are going below hill I do believe! why we shall never get home to-day, and I told Mrs. Jorrocks half-past five to a minute, and I invited old Fleecy, who is a most punctual man." Jorrocks was right in his surmise. They arrived on the summit of a range of steep hills commanding an extensive view over the neighbouring country--almost, he said, as far as the sea-coast. The huntsman and hounds went down, but many of the field held a council of war on the top. "Well! who's going down?" said one. "I shall wait for the next turn," said Jorrocks, "for my horse does not like collar work." "I shall go this time," said another, "and the rest next." "And so will I," said a third, "for mayhap there will be no second turn." "Ay," added a fourth, "and he may go the other way, and then where-shall we all be?" "Poh!" said Jorrocks, "did you ever know a Surrey fox not take to the hills?--If he does not, I'll eat him without mint sauce," again harping on the quarter of lamb. Facilis descensus Averni--two-thirds of the field went down, leaving Jorrocks, two horse-dealers in scarlet, three chicken-butchers, half a dozen swells in leathers, a whip, and the Yorkshireman on the summit. "Why don't you go with the hounds?" inquired the latter of the whip. "Oh, I wait here, sir," said he, "to meet Tom Hills as he comes up, and to give him a fresh horse." "And who is Tom Hills?" inquired the Yorkshireman. "Oh, he's our huntsman," replied he; "you know Tom, don't you?" "Why, I can't say I do, exactly," said he; "but tell me, is he called Hills because he rides up and down these hills, or is that his real name?" "Hought! you know as well as I do," said he, quite indignantly, "that Tom Hills is his name." The hounds, with the majority of the field, having effected the descent of the hills, were now trotting on in the valley below, sufficiently near, however, to allow our hill party full view of their proceedings. After drawing a couple of osier-beds blank, they assumed a line parallel to the hills, and moved on to a wood of about ten acres, the west end of which terminated in a natural gorse. "They'll find there to a certainty," said Mr. Jorrocks, pulling a telescope out of his breeches' pocket, and adjusting the sight. "Never saw it blank but once, and that was the werry day the commercial panic of twenty-five commenced.--I remember making an entry in my ledger when I got home to that effect. Humph!" continued he, looking through the glass, "they are through the wood, though, without a challenge.--Now, my booys, push him out of the gorse! Let's see vot you're made of.--There goes the first 'ound in.--It's Galloper, I believe.--I can almost see the bag of shot round his neck.--Now they all follow.--One--two--three--four--five--all together, my beauties! Oh, vot a sight! Peckham's cap's in the air, and it's a find, by heavens!" Mr. Jorrocks is right.--The southerly wind wafts up the fading notes of the "Huntsman's Chorus" in _Der Frieschutz_ and confirms the fact.--Jorrocks is in ecstasies.--"Now," said he, clawing up his breeches (for he dispenses with the article of braces when out hunting), "that's what I calls fine. Oh, beautiful! beautiful!--Now, follow me if you please, and if yon gentleman in drab does not shoot the fox, he will be on the hills before long." Away they scampered along the top of the ridge, with a complete view of the operations below. At length Jorrocks stopped, and pulling the telescope out, began making an observation. "There he is, at last," cried he, "just crossed the corner of yon green field--now he creeps through the hedge by the fir-tree, and is in the fallow one. Yet, stay--that's no fox--it's a hare: and yet Tom Hills makes straight for the spot--and did you hear that loud tally-ho? Oh! gentlemen, gentlemen, we shall be laughed to scorn--what can they be doing--see, they take up the scent, and the whole pack have joined in chorus. Great heavens, it's no more a fox than I am!--No more brush than a badger! Oh, dear! oh, dear! that I should live to see my old friends, the Surrey fox'ounds, 'unt hare, and that too in the presence of a stranger." The animal made direct for the hills--whatever it was, the hounds were on good terms with it, and got away in good form. The sight was splendid--all the field got well off, nor between the cover and the hills was there sufficient space for tailing. A little elderly gentleman, in a pepper-and-salt coat, led the way gallantly--then came the scarlets--then the darks--and then the fustian-clad countrymen. Jorrocks was in a shocking state, and rolled along the hill-tops, almost frantic. The field reached the bottom, and the foremost commenced the steep ascent. "Oh, Tom Hills!--Tom Hills!--'what are you at? what are you after?'" demanded Jorrocks, as he landed on the top. "Here's a gentleman come all the way from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to see our excellent 'ounds, and here you are running a hare. Oh, Tom Hills! Tom Hills! ride forward, ride forward, and whip them off, ere we eternally disgrace ourselves." "Oh," says Tom, laughing, "he's a fox! but he's so tarnation frightened of our hounds, that his brush dropped off through very fear, as soon as ever he heard us go into the wood; if you go back, you'll find it somewhere, Mr. Jorrocks; haw, haw, haw! No fox indeed!" said he.--"Forrard, hounds, forrard!" And away he went--caught the old whipper-in, dismounted him in a twinkling, and was on a fresh horse with his hounds in full cry. The line of flight was still along the hill-tops, and all eagerly pressed on, making a goodly rattle over the beds of flints. A check ensued. "The guard on yonder nasty Brighton coach has frightened him with his horn," said Tom; "now we must make a cast up to yonder garden, and see if he's taken shelter among the geraniums in the green-house. As little damage as possible, gentlemen, if you please, in riding through the nursery grounds. Now, hold hard, sir--pray do--there's no occasion for you to break the kale pots; he can't be under them. Ah, yonder he goes, the tailless beggar; did you see him as he stole past the corner out of the early-cabbage bed? Now bring on the hounds, and let us press him towards London." "See the conquering hero comes", sounded through the avenue of elms as Tom dashed forward with the merry, merry pack. "I shall stay on the hills", said one, "and be ready for him as he comes back; I took a good deal of the shine out of my horse in coming up this time". "I think I will do the same", said two or three more. "Let's be doing", said Jorrocks, ramming his spurs into his nag to seduce him into a gallop, who after sending his heels in the air a few times in token of his disapprobation of such treatment, at last put himself into a round-rolling sort of canter, which Jorrocks kept up by dint of spurring and dropping his great bastinaderer of a whip every now and then across his shoulders. Away they go pounding together! The line lies over flint fallows occasionally diversified with a turnip-field or market-garden, and every now and then a "willa" appears, from which emerge footmen in jackets, and in yellow, red and green plush breeches, with no end of admiring housemaids, governesses, and nurses with children in their arms. Great was the emulation when any of these were approached, and the rasping sportsmen rushed eagerly to the "fore." At last they approach "Miss Birchwell's finishing and polishing seminary for young ladies," whose great flaring blue-and-gold sign, reflecting the noonday rays of the sun, had frightened the fox and caused him to alter his line and take away to the west. A momentary check ensued, but all the amateur huntsmen being blown, Tom, who is well up with his hounds, makes a quick cast round the house, and hits off the scent like a workman. A private road and a line of gates through fields now greet the eyes of our M'Adamisers. A young gentleman on a hired hunter very nattily attired, here singles himself out and takes place next to Tom, throwing the pebbles and dirt back in the eyes of the field. Tom crams away, throwing the gates open as he goes, and our young gentleman very coolly passes through, without a touch, letting them bang-to behind him. The Yorkshireman, who had been gradually creeping up, until he has got the third place, having opened two or three, and seeing another likely to close for want of a push, cries out to our friend as he approaches, "Put out your hand, sir!" The gentleman obediently extends his limb like the arm of a telegraph, and rides over half the next field with his hand in the air! The gate, of course, falls to. A stopper appears--a gate locked and spiked, with a downward hinge to prevent its being lifted. To the right is a rail, and a ha-ha beyond it--to the left a quick fence. Tom glances at both, but turns short, and backing his horse, rides at the rail. The Yorkshireman follows, but Jorrocks, who espies a weak place in the fence a few yards from the gate, turns short, and jumping off, prepares to lead over. It is an old gap, and the farmer has placed a sheep hurdle on the far side. Just as Jorrocks has pulled that out, his horse, who is a bit of a rusher, and has got his "monkey" completely up, pushes forward while his master is yet stooping--and hitting him in the rear, knocks him clean through the fence, head foremost into a squire-trap beyond!--"Non redolet sed olet!" exclaims the Yorkshireman, who dismounts in a twinkling, lending his friend a hand out of the unsavoury cesspool.--"That's what comes of hunting in a new[12] saddle, you see," added he, holding his nose. Jorrocks scrambles upon "terra firma" and exhibits such a spectacle as provokes the shouts of the field. He has lost his wig, his hat hangs to his back, and one side of his person and face is completely japanned with black odoriferous mixture. "My vig!" exclaims he, spitting and spluttering, "but that's the nastiest hole I ever was in--Fleet Ditch is lavender-water compared to it! Hooi yonder!" hailing a lad, "Catch my 'oss, boouy!" Tom Hills has him; and Jorrocks, pocketing his wig, remounts, rams his spurs into the nag, and again tackles with the pack, which had come to a momentary check on the Eden Bridge road. The fox has been headed by a party of gipsies, and, changing his point, bends southward and again reaches the hills, along which some score of horsemen have planted themselves in the likeliest places to head him. Reynard, however, is too deep for them, and has stolen down unperceived. Poor Jorrocks, what with the violent exertion of riding, his fall, and the souvenir of the cesspool that he still bears about him, pulls up fairly exhausted. "Oh, dear," says he, scraping the thick of the filth off his coat with his whip, "I'm reglarly blown, I earn't go down with the 'ounds this turn; but, my good fellow," turning to the Yorkshireman, who was helping to purify him, "don't let me stop you, go down by all means, but mind, bear in mind the quarter of house-lamb--at half-past five to a minute." [Footnote 12: There is a superstition among sportsmen that they are sure to get a fall the first day they appear in anything new.] Many of the cits now gladly avail themselves of the excuse of assisting Mr. Jorrocks to clean himself for pulling up, but as soon as ever those that are going below hill are out of sight and they have given him two or three wipes, they advise him to let it "dry on," and immediately commence a different sort of amusement--each man dives into his pocket and produces the eatables. Part of Jorrocks's half-quartern loaf was bartered with the captain of an East Indiaman for a slice of buffalo-beef. The dentist exchanged some veal sandwiches with a Jew for ham ones; a lawyer from the Borough offered two slices of toast for a hard-boiled egg; in fact there was a petty market "ouvert" held. "Now, Tomkins, where's the bottle?" demanded Jenkins. "Vy, I thought you would bring it out to-day," replied he; "I brought it last time, you know." "Take a little of mine, sir," said a gentleman, presenting a leather-covered flask--"real Thomson and Fearon, I assure you." "I wish someone would fetch an ocean of porter from the nearest public," said another. "Take a cigar, sir?" "No; I feel werry much obliged, but they always make me womit." "Is there any gentleman here going to Halifax, who would like to make a third in a new yellow barouche, with lavender-coloured wheels, and pink lining?" inquired Mr.----, the coach-maker. "Look at the hounds, gentlemen sportsmen, my noble sportsmen!" bellowed out an Epsom Dorling's correct--cardseller--and turning their eyes in the direction in which he was looking, our sportsmen saw them again making for the hills. Pepper-and-salt first, and oh, what a goodly tail was there!--three quarters of a mile in length, at the least. Now up they come--the "corps de reserve" again join, and again a party halt upon the hills. Again Tom Hills exchanges horses; and again the hounds go on in full cry. "I must be off," said a gentleman in balloon-like leathers to another tiger; "we have just time to get back to town, and ride round by the park before it is dark--much better than seeing the end of this brute. Let us go"; and away they went to canter through Hyde Park in their red coats. "I must go and all," said another gentleman; "my dinner will be ready at five, and it is now three." Jorrocks was game; and forgetting the quarter of house-lamb, again tackled with the pack. A smaller sweep sufficed this time, and the hills were once more descended, Jorrocks the first to lead the way. He well knew the fox was sinking, and was determined to be in at the death. Short running ensued--a check--the fox had lain down, and they had overrun the scent. Now they were on him, and Tom Hills's who-whoop confirmed the whole. "Ah! Tom Hills, Tom Hills!" exclaimed Jorrocks, as the former took up the fox, "'ow splendid, 'ow truly brilliant--by Jove, you deserve to be Lord Hill--oh, had he but a brush that we might present it to this gentleman from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to show the gallant doings of the men of Surrey!" "Ay," said Tom, "but Squire----'s keeper has been before us for it." "Now," said a gentleman in a cap, to another in a hat, "if you will ride up the hill and collect the money there, I will do so below--half-a-crown, if you please, sir--half-a-crown, if you please, sir.--Have I got your half-a-crown, sir?"--"Here's three shillings if you will give me sixpence." "Certainly, sir--certainly." "We have no time to spare," said Jorrocks, looking at his watch. "Good afternoon, gentlemen, good afternoon," muttering as he went, "a quarter of house-lamb at half-past five--Mrs. Jorrocks werry punctual--old Fleecy werry particular." They cut across country to Croydon, and as they approached the town, innumerable sportsmen came flocking in from all quarters. "What sport have you had?" inquired Jorrocks of a gentleman in scarlet; "have you been with Jolliffe?" "No, with the staghounds; three beautiful runs; took him once in a millpond, once in a barn, and once in a brickfield--altogether the finest day's sport I ever saw in my life." "What have you done, Mr. J----?" "Oh, we have had a most gallant thing; a brilliant run indeed--three hours and twenty minutes without a check--over the finest country imaginable." "And who got the brush?" inquired the stag-man. "Oh, it was a gallant run," said Jorrocks, "by far the finest I ever remember." "But did you kill?" demanded his friend. "Kill! to be sure we did. When don't the Surrey kill, I should like to know?" "And who got his brush, did you say?" "I can't tell," said he--"didn't hear the gentleman's name." "What sport has Mr. Meager had to-day?" inquired he of a gentleman in trousers, who issued from a side lane into the high road. "I have been with the Sanderstead, sir--a very capital day's sport--run five hares and killed three. We should have killed four--only--we didn't." "I don't think Mr. Meager has done anything to-day." "Yes, he has," said a gentleman, who just joined with a hare buckled on in front of his saddle, and his white cords all stained with blood; "we killed this chap after an hour and forty-five minutes' gallop; and accounted for another by losing her after running upwards of-three-quarters of an hour." "Well, then, we have all had sport," said Jorrocks, as he spurred his horse into a trot, and made for Morton's stables--"and if the quarter of house-lamb is but right, then indeed am I a happy man." III. SURREY SHOOTING: MR. JORROCKS IN TROUBLE Our readers are now becoming pretty familiar with our principal hero, Mr. Jorrocks, and we hope he improves on acquaintance. Our fox-hunting friends, we are sure, will allow him to be an enthusiastic member of the brotherhood, and though we do not profess to put him in competition with Musters, Osbaldeston, or any of those sort of men, we yet mean to say that had his lot been cast in the country instead of behind a counter, his keenness would have rendered him as conspicuous--if not as scientific--as the best of them. For a cockney sportsman, however, he is a very excellent fellow--frank, hearty, open, generous, and hospitable, and with the exception of riding up Fleet Street one Saturday afternoon, with a cock-pheasant's tail sticking out of his red coat pocket, no one ever saw him do a cock tail action in his life. The circumstances attending that exhibition are rather curious.--He had gone out as usual on a Saturday to have a day with the Surrey, but on mounting his hunter at Croydon, he felt the nag rather queer under him, and thinking he might have been pricked in the shoeing, he pulled up at the smith's at Addington to have his feet examined. This lost him five minutes, and unfortunately when he got to the meet, he found that a "travelling[13] fox" had been tallied at the precise moment of throwing off, with which the hounds had gone away in their usual brilliant style, to the tune of "Blue bonnets are over the border." As may be supposed, he was in a deuce of a rage; and his first impulse prompted him to withdraw his subscription and be done with the hunt altogether, and he trotted forward "on the line," in the hopes of catching them up to tell them so. In this he was foiled, for after riding some distance, he overtook a string of Smithfield horses journeying "foreign for Evans," whose imprints he had been taking for the hoof-marks of the hunters. About noon he found himself dull, melancholy, and disconsolate, before the sign of the "Pig and Whistle," on the Westerham road, where, after wetting his own whistle with a pint of half-and-half, he again journeyed onward, ruminating on the uncertainty and mutability of all earthly affairs, the comparative merits of stag-, fox-, and hare-hunting, and the necessity of getting rid of the day somehow or other in the country. [Footnote 13: He might well be called a "travelling fox," for it was said he had just travelled down from Herring's, in the New Road, by the Bromley stage.] Suddenly his reverie was interrupted by the discharge of a gun in the field adjoining the hedge along which he was passing, and the boisterous whirring of a great cock-pheasant over his head, which caused his horse to start and stop short, and to nearly pitch Jorrocks over his head. The bird was missed, but the sportsman's dog dashed after it, with all the eagerness of expectation, regardless of the cracks of the whip--the "comes to heel," and "downs to charge" of the master. Jorrocks pulled out his hunting telescope, and having marked the bird down with the precision of a billiard-table keeper, rode to the gate to acquaint the shooter with the fact, when to his infinite amazement he discovered his friend, Nosey Browne (late of "The Surrey"), who, since his affairs had taken the unfortunate turn mentioned in the last paper, had given up hunting and determined to confine himself to shooting only. Nosey, however, was no great performer, as may be inferred, when we state that he had been in pursuit of the above-mentioned cock-pheasant ever since daybreak, and after firing thirteen shots at him had not yet touched a feather. His dog was of the right sort--for Nosey at least--and hope deferred had not made his heart sick; on the contrary, he dashed after his bird for the thirteenth time with all the eagerness he displayed on the first. "Let me have a crack at him," said Jorrocks to Nosey, after their mutual salutations were over. "I know where he is, and I think I can floor him." Browne handed the gun to Jorrocks, who, giving up his hunter in exchange, strode off, and having marked his bird accurately, he kicked him up out of a bit of furze, and knocked him down as "dead as a door-nail." By that pheasant's tail hangs the present one. Now Nosey Browne and Jorrocks were old friends, and Nosey's affairs having gone crooked, why of course, like most men in a similar situation, he was all the better for it; and while his creditors were taking twopence-halfpenny in the pound, he was taking his diversion on his wife's property, which a sagacious old father-in-law had secured to the family in the event of such a contingency as a failure happening; so knowing Jorrock's propensity for sports, and being desirous of chatting over all his gallant doings with "The Surrey," shortly after the above-mentioned day he dispatched a "twopenny," offering him a day's shooting on his property in Surrey, adding, that he hoped he would dine with him after. Jorrocks being invited himself, with a freedom peculiar to fox-hunters, invited his friend the Yorkshireman, and visiting his armoury, selected him a regular shot-scatterer of a gun, capable of carrying ten yards on every side. At the appointed hour on the appointed morning, the Yorkshireman appeared in Great Coram Street, where he found Mr. Jorrocks in the parlour in the act of settling himself into a new spruce green cut-away gambroon butler's pantry-jacket, with pockets equal to holding a powder-flask each, his lower man being attired in tight drab stocking-net pantaloons, and Hessian boots with large tassels--a striking contrast to the fustian pocket-and-all-pocket jackets marked with game-bag strap, and shot-belt, and the weather-beaten many-coloured breeches and gaiters, and hob-nail shoes, that compose the equipment of a shooter in Yorkshire. Mr. Jorrocks not keeping any "sporting dogs," as the tax-papers call them, had borrowed a fat house-dog--a cross between a setter and a Dalmatian--of his friend Mr. Evergreen the greengrocer, which he had seen make a most undeniable point one morning in the Copenhagen Fields at a flock of pigeons in a beetroot garden. This valuable animal was now attached by a trash-cord through a ring in his brass collar to a leg of the sideboard, while a clean licked dish at his side, showed that Jorrocks had been trying to attach him to himself, by feeding him before starting. "We'll take a coach to the Castle", said Jorrocks, "and then get a go-cart or a cast somehow or other to Streatham, for we shall have walking enough when we get there. Browne is an excellent fellow, and will make us range every acre of his estate over half a dozen times before we give in". A coach was speedily summoned, into which Jorrocks, the dog Pompey, the Yorkshireman, and the guns were speedily placed, and away they drove to the "Elephant and Castle." There were short stages about for every possible place except Streatham. Greenwich, Deptford, Blackheath, Eltham, Bromley, Footscray, Beckenham, Lewisham--all places but the right. However, there were abundance of "go-carts," a species of vehicle that ply in the outskirts of the metropolis, and which, like the watering-place "fly," take their name from the contrary--in fact, a sort of _lucus a non lucendo_. They are carts on springs, drawn by one horse (with curtains to protect the company from the weather), the drivers of which, partly by cheating, and partly by picking pockets, eke out a comfortable existence, and are the most lawless set of rascals under the sun. Their arrival at the "Elephant and Castle" was a signal for a general muster of the fraternity, who, seeing the guns, were convinced that their journey was only what they call "a few miles down the road," and they were speedily surrounded by twenty or thirty of them, all with "excellent 'osses, vot vould take their honours fourteen miles an hour." All men of business are aware of the advantages of competition, and no one more so than Jorrocks, who stood listening to their offers with the utmost sang-froid, until he closed with one to take them to Streatham Church for two shillings, and deliver them within the half-hour, which was a signal for all the rest to set-to and abuse them, their coachman, and his horse, which they swore had been carrying "stiff-uns" [14] all night, and "could not go not none at all". Nor were they far wrong; for the horse, after scrambling a hundred yards or two, gradually relaxed into something between a walk and a trot, while the driver kept soliciting every passer-by to "ride," much to our sportsmen's chagrin, who conceived they were to have the "go" all to themselves. Remonstrance was vain, and he crammed in a master chimney-sweep, Major Ballenger the licensed dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff, of Streatham (a customer of Jorrocks), and a wet-nurse; and took up an Italian organ-grinder to ride beside himself on the front, before they had accomplished Brixton Hill. Jorrocks swore most lustily that he would fine him, and at every fresh assurance, the driver offered a passer-by a seat; but having enlisted Major Ballenger into their cause, they at length made a stand, which, unfortunately for them, was more than the horse could do, for just as he was showing off, as he thought, with a bit of a trot, down they all soused in the mud. Great was the scramble; guns, barrel-organ, Pompey, Jorrocks, driver, master chimney-sweep, Major Ballenger, were all down together, while the wet-nurse, who sat at the end nearest the door, was chucked clean over the hedge into a dry ditch. This was a signal to quit the vessel, and having extricated themselves the best way they could, they all set off on foot, and left the driver to right himself at his leisure. [Footnote 14: Doing a bit of resurrection work.] Ballenger looked rather queer when he heard they were going to Nosey Browne's, for it so happened that Nosey had managed to walk into his books for groceries and kitchen-stuff to the tune of fourteen pounds, a large sum to a man in a small way of business; and to be entertaining friends so soon after his composition, seemed curious to Ballenger's uninitiated suburban mind. Crossing Streatham Common, a short turn to the left by some yew-trees leads, by a near cut across the fields, to Browne's house; a fiery-red brick castellated cottage, standing on the slope of a gentle eminence, and combining almost every absurdity a cockney imagination can be capable of. Nosey, who was his own "Nash," set out with the intention of making it a castle and nothing but a castle, and accordingly the windows were made in the loophole fashion, and the door occupied a third of the whole frontage. The inconveniences of the arrangements were soon felt, for while the light was almost excluded from the rooms, "rude Boreas" had the complete run of the castle whenever the door was opened. To remedy this, Nosey increased the one and curtailed the other, and the Gothic oak-painted windows and door flew from their positions to make way for modern plate-glass in rich pea-green casements, and a door of similar hue. The battlements, however, remained, and two wooden guns guarded a brace of chimney-pots and commanded the wings of the castle, one whereof was formed into a green-, the other into a gig-house. The peals of a bright brass-handled bell at a garden-gate, surmounted by a holly-bush with the top cut into the shape of a fox, announced their arrival to the inhabitants of "Rosalinda Castle," and on entering they discovered young Nosey in the act of bobbing for goldfish, in a pond about the size of a soup-basin; while Nosey senior, a fat, stupid-looking fellow, with a large corporation and a bottle nose, attired in a single-breasted green cloth coat, buff waistcoat, with drab shorts and continuations, was reposing, _sub tegmine fagi_, in a sort of tea-garden arbour, overlooking a dung-heap, waiting their arrival to commence an attack upon the sparrows which were regaling thereon. At one end of the garden was a sort of temple, composed of oyster-shells, containing a couple of carrier-pigeons, with which Nosey had intended making his fortune, by the early information to be acquired by them: but "there is many a slip," as Jorrocks would say. Greetings being over, and Jorrocks having paid a visit to the larder, and made up a stock of provisions equal to a journey through the Wilderness, they adjourned to the yard to get the other dog, and the man to carry the game--or rather, the prog, for the former was but problematical. He was a character, a sort of chap of all work, one, in short, "who has no objection to make himself generally useful"; but if his genius had any decided bent, it was, perhaps, an inclination towards sporting. Having to act the part of groom and gamekeeper during the morning, and butler and footman in the afternoon, he was attired in a sort of composition dress, savouring of the different characters performed. He had on an old white hat, a groom's fustian stable-coat cut down into a shooting-jacket, with a whistle at the button-hole, red plush smalls, and top-boots. There is nothing a cockney delights in more than aping a country gentleman, and Browne fancied himself no bad hand at it; indeed, since his London occupation was gone, he looked upon himself as a country gentleman in fact. "Vell, Joe," said he, striddling and sticking his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, to this invaluable man of all work, "we must show the gemmem some sport to-day; vich do you think the best line to start upon--shall we go to the ten hacre field, or the plantation, or Thompson's stubble, or Timms's turnips, or my meadow, or vere?" "Vy, I doesn't know," said Joe; "there's that old hen-pheasant as we calls Drab Bess, vot has haunted the plantin' these two seasons, and none of us ever could 'it (hit), and I hears that Jack, and Tom, and Bob, are still left out of Thompson's covey; but, my eyes! they're 'special vild!" "Vot, only three left? where is old Tom, and the old ramping hen?" inquired Browne. "Oh, Mr. Smith, and a party of them 'ere Bankside chaps, com'd down last Saturday's gone a week, and rattled nine-and-twenty shots at the covey, and got the two old 'uns; at least it's supposed they were both killed, though the seven on 'em only bagged one bird; but I heard they got a goose or two as they vent home. They had a shot at old Tom, the hare, too, but he is still alive; at least I pricked him yesterday morn across the path into the turnip-field. Suppose we goes at him first?" The estate, like the game, was rather deficient in quantity, but Browne was a wise man and made the most of what he had, and when he used to talk about his "manor" on 'Change, people thought he had at least a thousand acres--the extent a cockney generally advertises for, when he wants to take a shooting-place. The following is a sketch of what he had: The east, as far as the eye could reach, was bounded by Norwood, a name dear to cockneys, and the scene of many a furtive kiss; the hereditaments and premises belonging to Isaac Cheatum, Esq. ran parallel with it on the west, containing sixty-three acres, "be the same more or less," separated from which, by a small brook or runner of water, came the estate of Mr. Timms, consisting of sixty acres, three roods, and twenty-four perches, commonly called or known by the name of Fordham; next to it were two allotments in right of common, for all manner of cattle, except cows, upon Streatham Common, from whence up to Rosalinda Castle, on the west, lay the estate of Mr. Browne, consisting of fifty acres and two perches. Now it so happened that Browne had formerly the permission to sport all the way up to Norwood, a distance of a mile and a half, and consequently he might have been said to have the right of shooting in Norwood itself, for the keepers only direct their attention to the preservation of the timber and the morals of the visitors; but since his composition with his creditors, Mr. Cheatum, who had "gone to the wall" himself in former years, was so scandalised at Browne doing the same, that no sooner did his name appear in the _Gazette_, than Cheatum withdrew his permission, thereby cutting him off from Norwood and stopping him in pursuit of his game. Joe's proposition being duly seconded, Mr. Jorrocks, in the most orthodox manner, flushed off his old flint and steel fire-engine, and proceeded to give it an uncommon good loading. The Yorkshireman, with a look of disgust, mingled with despair, and a glance at Joe's plush breeches and top-boots, did the same, while Nosey, in the most considerate sportsmanlike manner, merely shouldered a stick, in order that there might be no delicacy with his visitors, as to who should shoot first--a piece of etiquette that aids the escape of many a bird in the neighbourhood of London. Old Tom--a most unfortunate old hare, that what with the harriers, the shooters, the snarers, and one thing and another, never knew a moment's peace, and who must have started in the world with as many lives as a cat--being doomed to receive the first crack on this occasion, our sportsmen stole gently down the fallow, at the bottom of which were the turnips, wherein he was said to repose; but scarcely had they reached the hurdles which divided the field, before he was seen legging it away clean out of shot. Jorrocks, who had brought his gun to bear upon him, could scarcely refrain from letting drive, but thinking to come upon him again by stealth, as he made his circuit for Norwood, he strode away across the allotments and Fordham estate, and took up a position behind a shed which stood on the confines of Mr. Timms's and Mr. Cheatum's properties. Here, having procured a rest for his gun, he waited until old Tom, who had tarried to nip a few blades of green grass that came in his way, made his appearance. Presently he came cantering along the outside of the wood, at a careless, easy sort of pace, betokening either perfect indifference for the world's mischief, or utter contempt of cockney sportsmen altogether. He was a melancholy, woe-begone-looking animal, long and lean, with a slight inclination to grey on his dingy old coat, one that looked as though he had survived his kindred and had already lived beyond his day. Jorrocks, however, saw him differently, and his eyes glistened as he came within range of his gun. A well-timed shot ends poor Tom's miseries! He springs into the air, and with a melancholy scream rolls neck over heels. Knowing that Pompey would infallibly spoil him if he got up first, Jorrocks, without waiting to load, was in the act of starting off to pick him up, when, at the first step, he found himself in the grasp of a Herculean monster, something between a coal-heaver and a gamekeeper, who had been secreted behind the shed. Nosey Browne, who had been watching his movements, holloaed out to Jorrocks to "hold hard," who stood motionless, on the spot from whence he fired, and Browne was speedily alongside of him. "You are on Squire Cheatum's estate," said the man; "and I have authority to take up all poachers and persons found unlawfully trespassing; what's your name?" "He's not on Cheatum's estate," said Browne. "He is," said the man. "You're a liar," said Browne. "You're another," said the man. And so they went on; for when such gentlemen meet, compliments pass current. At length the keeper pulled out a foot-rule, and keeping Jorrocks in the same position he caught him, he set-to to measure the distance of his foot from the boundary, taking off in a line from the shed; when it certainly did appear that the length of a big toe was across the mark, and putting up his measure again, he insisted upon taking Jorrocks before a magistrate for the trespass. Of course, no objection could be made, and they all adjourned to Mr. Boreem's, when the whole case was laid before him. To cut a long matter short--after hearing the pros and cons, and referring to the Act of Parliament, his worship decided that a trespass had been committed; and though, he said, it went against the grain to do so, he fined Jorrocks in the mitigated penalty of one pound one. This was a sad damper to our heroes, who returned to the castle with their prog untouched and no great appetite for dinner. Being only a family party, when Mrs. B---- retired, the subject naturally turned upon the morning's mishap, and at every glass of port Jorrocks waxed more valiant, until he swore he would appeal against the "conwiction"; and remaining in the same mind when he awoke the next morning, he took the Temple in his way to St. Botolph Lane and had six-and-eightpence worth with Mr. Capias the attorney, who very judiciously argued each side of the question without venturing an opinion, and proposed stating a case for counsel to advise upon. As usual, he gave one that would cut either way, though if it had any tendency whatever it was to induce Jorrocks to go on; and he not wanting much persuasion, it will not surprise our readers to hear that Jorrocks, Capias, and the Yorkshireman were seen a few days after crossing Waterloo Bridge in a yellow post-chaise, on their way to Croydon sessions. After a "guinea" consultation at the "Greyhound," they adjourned to the court, which was excessively crowded, Jorrocks being as popular with the farmers and people as Cheatum was the reverse. Party feeling, too, running rather high at the time, there had been a strong "whip" among the magistrates to get a full attendance to reverse Boreem's conviction, who had made himself rather obnoxious on the blue interest at the election. Of course they all came in new hats,[15] and sat on the bench looking as wise as gentlemen judges generally do. [Footnote 15: Magistrates always buy their hats about session times, as they have the privilege of keeping their hats on their blocks in court.] One hundred and twenty-two affiliation cases (for this was in the old Poor Law time) having been disposed of, about one o'clock in the afternoon, the chairman, Mr. Tomkins of Tomkins, moved the order of the day. He was a perfect prototype of a county magistrate--with a bald powdered head covered by a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, hair terminating behind in a _queue_, resting on the ample collar of a snuff-brown coat, with a large bay-window of a corporation, with difficulty retained by the joint efforts of a buff waistcoat, and the waistband of a pair of yellow leather breeches. His countenance, which was solemn and grave in the extreme, might either be indicative of sense or what often serves in the place of wisdom--when parties can only hold their tongues--great natural stupidity. From the judge's seat, which he occupied in the centre of the bench, he observed, with immense dignity, "There is an appeal of Jorrocks against Cheatum, which we, the bench of magistrates of our lord the king, will take if the parties are ready," and immediately the court rang with "Jorrocks and Cheatum! Jorrocks and Cheatum! Mr. Capias, attorney-at-law! Mr. Capias answer to his name! Mr. Sharp attorney-at-law! Mr. Sharp's in the jury-room.--Then go fetch him directly," from the ushers and bailiffs of the court; for though Tomkins of Tomkins was slow himself, he insisted upon others being quick, and was a great hand at prating about saving the time of the suitors. At length the bustle of counsel crossing the table, parties coming in and others leaving court, bailiffs shouting, and ushers responding, gradually subsided into a whisper of, "That's Jorrocks! That's Cheatum!" as the belligerent parties took their places by their respective counsel. Silence having been called and procured, Mr. Smirk, a goodish-looking man for a lawyer, having deliberately unfolded his brief, which his clerk had scored plentifully in the margin, to make the attorney believe he had read it very attentively, rose to address the court--a signal for half the magistrates to pull their newspapers out of their pockets, and the other half to settle themselves down for a nap, all the sport being considered over when the affiliation cases closed. "I have the honour to appear on behalf of Mr. Jorrocks," said Mr. Smirk, "a gentleman of the very highest consideration--a fox-hunter--a shooter--and a grocer. In ordinary cases it might be necessary to prove the party's claim to respectability, but, in this instance, I feel myself relieved from any such obligation, knowing, as I do, that there is no one in this court, no one in these realms--I might almost add, no one in this world--to whom the fame of my most respectable, my most distinguished, and much injured client is unknown. Not to know JORROCKS is indeed to argue oneself unknown." "This is a case of no ordinary interest, and I approach it with a deep sense of its importance, conscious of my inability to do justice to the subject, and lamenting that it has not been entrusted to abler hands. It is a case involving the commercial and the sporting character of a gentleman against whom the breath of calumny has never yet been drawn--of a gentleman who in all the relations of life, whether as a husband, a fox-hunter, a shooter, or a grocer, has invariably preserved that character and reputation, so valuable in commercial life, so necessary in the sporting world, and so indispensable to a man moving in general society. Were I to look round London town in search of a bright specimen of a man combining the upright, sterling integrity of the honourable British merchant of former days with the ardour of the English fox-hunter of modern times, I would select my most respectable client, Mr. Jorrocks. He is a man for youth to imitate and revere! Conceive, then, the horror of a man of his delicate sensibility--of his nervous dread of depreciation--being compelled to appear here this day to vindicate his character, nay more, his honour, from one of the foulest attempts at conspiracy that was ever directed against any individual. I say that a grosser attack was never made upon the character of any grocer, and I look confidently to the reversion of this unjust, unprecedented conviction, and to the triumphant victory of my most respectable and public-spirited client. It is not for the sake of the few paltry shillings that he appeals to this court--it is not for the sake of calling in question the power of the constituted authorities of this county--but it is for the vindication and preservation of a character dear to all men, but doubly dear to a grocer, and which once lost can never be regained. Look, I say, upon my client as he sits below the witness-box, and say, if in that countenance there appears any indication of a lawless or rebellious spirit; look, I say, if the milk of human kindness is not strikingly portrayed in every feature, and truly may I exclaim in the words of the poet:" If to his share some trifling errors fall, Look in his face, and you'll forget them all.' "I regret to be compelled to trespass upon the valuable time of the court; but, sir, this appeal is based on a trespass, and one good trespass deserves another." The learned gentleman then proceeded to detail the proceedings of the day's shooting, and afterwards to analyse the enactments of the new Game Bill, which he denounced as arbitrary, oppressive, and ridiculous, and concluded a long and energetic speech, by calling upon the court to reverse the decision of the magistrate, and not support the preposterous position of fining a man for a trespass committed by his toe. After a few minutes had elapsed, Mr. Sergeant Bumptious, a stiff, bull-headed little man, desperately pitted with the smallpox, rose to reply, and looking round the court, thus commenced: "Five-and-thirty years have I passed in courts of justice, but never, during a long and extensive practice, have I witnessed so gross a perversion of that sublimest gift, called eloquence, as within the last hour"--here he banged his brief against the table, and looked at Mr. Smirk, who smiled.--"I lament, sir, that it has not been employed in a better cause--(bang again--and another look). My learned friend has, indeed, laboured to make the worse appear the better cause--to convert into a trifle one of the most outrageous acts that ever disgraced a human being or a civilised country. Well did he describe the importance of this case!--important as regards his client's character--important as regards this great and populous county--important as regards those social ties by which society is held together--important as regards a legislative enactment, and important as regards the well-being and prosperity of the whole nation--(bang, bang, bang). I admire the bombastic eloquence with which my learned friend introduced his most distinguished client--his most delicate minded--sensitive client!--Truly, to hear him speaking I should have thought he had been describing a lovely, blushing young lady, but when he comes to exhibit his paragon of perfection, and points out that great, red-faced, coarse, vulgar-looking, lubberly lump of humanity--(here Bumptious looked at Jorrocks as he would eat him)--sitting below the witness-box, and seeks to enlist the sympathies of your worships on the Bench--of you, gentlemen, the high-minded, shrewd, penetrating judges of this important cause--(and Bumptious smiled and bowed along the Bench upon all whose eyes he could catch)--on behalf of such a monster of iniquity, it does make one blush for the degradation of the British Bar--(bang--bang--bang--Jorrocks here looked unutterable things). Does my learned friend think by displaying his hero as a fox-hunter, and extolling his prowess in the field, to gain over the sporting magistrates on the Bench? He knows little of the upright integrity--the uncompromising honesty--the undeviating, inflexible impartiality that pervades the breast of every member of this tribunal, if he thinks for the sake of gain, fear, favour, hope, or reward, to influence the opinion, much less turn the judgment, of any one of them." (Here Bumptious bowed very low to them all and laid his hand upon his heart. Tomkins nodded approbation.) "Far, far be it from me to dwell with unbecoming asperity on the conduct of anyone--we are all mortals--and alike liable to err; but when I see a man who has been guilty of an act which has brought him all but within the verge of the prisoners' dock; I say, when I see a man who has been guilty of such an outrage on society as this ruffian Jorrocks, come forward with the daring effrontery that he has this day done, and claim redress where he himself is the offender, it does create a feeling in my mind divided between disgust and amazement"--(bang). Here Jorrock's cauldron boiled over, and rising from his seat with an outstretched shoulder-of-mutton fist, he bawled out, "D--n you, sir, what do you mean?" The court was thrown into amazement, and even Bumptious quailed before the fist of the mighty Jorrocks. "I claim the protection of the court," he exclaimed. Mr. Tomkins interposed, and said he should certainly order Mr. Jorrocks into custody if he repeated his conduct, adding that it was "most disrespectful to the justices of our lord the king." Bumptious paused a little to gather breath and a fresh volume of venom wherewith to annihilate Jorrocks, and catching his eye, he transfixed him like a rattlesnake, and again resumed. "How stands the case?" said he. "This cockney grocer--for after all he is nothing else--who I dare say scarcely knows a hawk from a hand-saw--leaves his figs and raisins, and sets out on a marauding excursion into the county of Surrey, and regardless of property--of boundaries--of laws--of liberties--of life itself--strides over every man's land, letting drive at whatever comes in his way! The hare he shot on this occasion was a pet hare!--For three successive summers had Miss Cheatum watched and fed it with all the interest and anxiety of a parent. I leave it to you, gentlemen, who have daughters of your own, with pets also, to picture to yourselves the agony of her mind in finding that her favourite had found its way down the throat of that great guzzling, gormandising, cockney cormorant; and then, forsooth, because he is fined for the outrageous trespass, he comes here as the injured party, and instructs his counsel to indulge in Billingsgate abuse that would disgrace the mouth of an Old Bailey practitioner! I regret that instead of the insignificant fine imposed upon him, the law did not empower the worthy magistrate to send him to the treadmill, there to recreate himself for six or eight months, as a warning to the whole fraternity of lawless vagabonds." Here he nodded his head at Jorrocks as much as to say, "I'll trounce you, my boy!" He then produced maps and plans of the different estates, and a model of the shed, to show how it had all happened, and after going through the case in such a strain as would induce one to believe it was a trial for murder or high treason, concluded as follows: "The eyes of England are upon us--reverse this conviction, and you let loose a rebel band upon the country, ripe for treason, stratagem, or spoil--you overturn the finest order of society in the world; henceforth no man's property will be safe, the laws will be disregarded, and even the upright, talented, and independent magistracy of England brought into contempt. But I feel convinced that your decision will be far otherwise--that by it you will teach these hot-headed--rebellious--radical grocers that they cannot offend with impunity, and show them that there is a law which reaches even the lowest and meanest inhabitant of these realms, that amid these days of anarchy and innovation you will support the laws and aristocracy of this country, that you will preserve to our children, and our children's children, those rights and blessings which a great and enlightened administration have conferred upon ourselves, and raise for Tomkins of Tomkins and the magistracy of the proud county of Surrey, a name resplendent in modern times and venerated to all eternity." Here Bumptious cast a parting frown at Jorrocks, and banging down his brief, tucked his gown under his arm, turned on his heel and left the court, to indulge in a glass of pale sherry and a sandwich, regardless which way the verdict went, so long as he had given him a good quilting. The silence that followed had the effect of rousing some of the dozing justices, who nudging those who had fallen asleep, they all began to stir themselves, and having laid their heads together, during which time they settled the dinner-hour for that day, and the meets of the staghounds for the next fortnight, they began to talk of the matter before the court. "I vote for reversing," said Squire Jolthead; "Jorrocks is such a capital fellow." "I must support Boreem," said Squire Hicks: "he gave me a turn when I made the mistaken commitment of Gipsy Jack." "What do you say, Mr. Giles?" inquired Mr. Tomkins. "Oh, anything you like, Mr. Tomkins." "And you, Mr. Hopper?" who had been asleep all the time. "Oh! guilty, I should say--three months at the treadmill--privately whipped, if you like," was the reply. Mr. Petty always voted on whichever side Bumptious was counsel--the learned serjeant having married his sister--and four others always followed the chair. Tomkins then turned round, the magistrates resumed their seats along the bench, and coming forward he stood before the judge's chair, and taking off his hat with solemn dignity and precision, laid it down exactly in the centre of the desk, amid cries from the bailiffs and ushers for "Silence, while the justices of the peace of our sovereign lord the king, deliver the judgment of the court." "The appellant in this case," said Mr. Tomkins, very slowly, "seeks to set aside a conviction for trespass, on the ground, as I understand, of his not having committed one. The principal points of the case are admitted, as also the fact of Mr. Jorrocks's toe, or a part of his toe, having intruded upon the respondent's estate. Now, so far as that point is concerned, it seems clear to myself and to my brother magistrates, that it mattereth not how much or how little of the toe was upon the land, so long as any part thereof was there. 'De minimis non curat lex'--the English of which is 'the law taketh no cognisance of fractions'--is a maxim among the salaried judges of the inferior courts in Westminster Hall, which we the unpaid, the in-cor-rup-ti-ble magistrates of the proud county of Surrey, have adopted in the very deep and mature deliberation that preceded the formation of our most solemn judgment. In the present great and important case, we, the unpaid magistrates of our sovereign lord the king, do not consider it necessary that there should be 'a toe, a whole toe, and nothing but a toe,' to constitute a trespass, any more than it would be necessary in the case of an assault to prove that the kick was given by the foot, the whole foot, and nothing but the foot. If any part of the toe was there, the law considers that it was there _in toto_. Upon this doctrine, it is clear that Mr. Jorrocks was guilty of a trespass, and the conviction must be affirmed. Before I dismiss the case I must say a few words on the statute under which this decision takes place. "This is the first conviction that has taken place since the passing of the Act, and will serve as a precedent throughout all England. I congratulate the country upon the efficacy of the tribunal to which it has been submitted. The court has listened with great and becoming attention to the arguments of the counsel on both sides: and though one gentleman with a flippant ignorance has denounced this new law as inferior to the pre-existing system, and a curse to the country, we, the magistrates of the proud county of Surrey, must enter our protest against such a doctrine being promulgated. Peradventure, you are all acquainted with my prowess as a shooter; I won two silver tankards at the Red House, Anno Domini 1815. I mention this to show that I am a practical sportsman, and as to the theory of the Game Laws, I derive my information from the same source that you may all derive yours--from the bright refulgent pages of the _New Sporting Magazine_!" IV. MR. JORROCKS AND THE SURREY STAGHOUNDS The Surrey foxhounds had closed their season--a most brilliant one--but ere Mr. Jorrocks consigned his boots and breeches to their summer slumber, he bethought of having a look at the Surrey staghounds, a pack now numbered among the things that were. Of course he required a companion, were it only to have some one to criticise the hounds with, so the evening before the appointed day, as the Yorkshireman was sitting in his old corner at the far end of the Piazza Coffee-room in Covent Garden, having just finished his second marrowbone and glass of white brandy, George--the only waiter in the room with a name--came smirking up with a card in his hand, saying, that the gentleman was waiting outside to speak with him. It was a printed one, but the large round hand in which the address had been filled up, encroaching upon the letters, had made the name somewhat difficult to decipher. At length he puzzled out "Mr. John Jorrocks--Coram Street"; the name of the city house or shop in the corner (No.--, St. Botolph's Lane) being struck through with a pen. "Oh, ask him to walk in directly," said the Yorkshireman to George, who trotted off, and presently the flapping of the doors in the passage announced his approach, and honest Jorrocks came rolling up the room--not like a fox-hunter, or any other sort of hunter, but like an honest wholesale grocer, fresh from the city. "My dear fellow, I'm so glad to see you, you can't think," said he, advancing with both hands out, and hugging the Yorkshireman after the manner of a Polar bear. "I have not time to stay one moment; I have to meet Mr. Wiggins at the corner of Bloomsbury Square at a quarter to six, and it wants now only seven minutes to," casting his eye up at the clock over the sideboard.--"I have just called to say that as you are fond of hunting, and all that sort of thing, if you have a mind for a day with the staghounds to-morrow, I will mount you same as before, and all that sort of thing--you understand, eh?" "Thank you, my good friend," said the Yorkshireman; "I have nothing to do to-morrow, and am your man for a stag-hunt." "That's right, my good fellow," said Jorrocks, "then I'll tell you what do--come and breakfast with me in Great Coram Street, at half-past seven to a minute. I've got one of the first 'ams (hams) you ever clapt eyes on in the whole course of your memorable existence.--Saw the hog alive myself--sixteen score within a pound; must come--know you like a fork breakfast--dejeune à la fauchette, as we say in France, eh? Like my Lord Mayor's fool I guess, love what's good; well, all right too--so come without any ceremony--us fox-hunters hates ceremony--where there's ceremony there's no friendship.--Stay--I had almost forgotten," added he, checking himself as he was on the point of departure. "When you come, ring the area bell, and then Mrs. J---- won't hear; know you don't like Mrs. J---- no more than myself." At the appointed hour the Yorkshireman reached Great Coram Street, just as Old Jorrocks had opened the door to look down the street for him. He was dressed in a fine flowing, olive-green frock (made like a dressing-gown), with a black velvet collar, having a gold embroidered stag on each side, gilt stag-buttons, with rich embossed edges; an acre of buff waistcoat, and a most antediluvian pair of bright yellow-ochre buckskins, made by White, of Tarporley, in the twenty-first year of the reign of George the Third; they were double-lashed, back-stiched, front-stiched, middle-stiched, and patched at both knees, with a slit up behind. The coat he had won in a bet, and the breeches in a raffle, the latter being then second or third hand. His boots were airing before the fire, consequently he displayed an amplitude of calf in grey worsted stockings, while his feet were thrust into green slippers. "So glad to see you"! said he; "here's a charming morning, indeed--regular southerly wind and a cloudy sky--rare scenting it will be--think I could almost run a stag myself. Come in--never mind your hat, hang it anywhere, but don't make a noise. I stole away and left Mrs. J---- snoring, so won't do to wake her, you know. By the way, you should see my hat;--Batsey, fatch my hat out of the back parlour. I've set up a new green silk cord, with a gold frog to fasten it to my button-hole--werry illigant, I think, and werry suitable to the dress--quite my own idea--have a notion all the Surrey chaps will get them; for, between you and me, I set the fashions, and what is more, I sometimes set them at a leap too. But now tell me, have you any objection to breakfasting in the kitchen?--more retired, you know, besides which you get everything hot and hot, which is what I call doing a bit of plisure." "Not at all," said the Yorkshireman, "so lead the way"; and down they walked to the lower regions. It was a nice comfortable-looking place, with a blazing fire, half the floor covered with an old oil-cloth, and the rest exhibiting the cheerless aspect of the naked flags. About a yard and a half from the fire was placed the breakfast table; in the centre stood a magnificent uncut ham, with a great quartern loaf on one side and a huge Bologna sausage on the other; besides these there were nine eggs, two pyramids of muffins, a great deal of toast, a dozen ship-biscuits, and half a pork-pie, while a dozen kidneys were spluttering on a spit before the fire, and Betsy held a gridiron covered with mutton-chops on the top; altogether there was as much as would have served ten people. "Now, sit down," said Jorrocks, "and let us be doing, for I am as hungry as a hunter. Hope you are peckish too; what shall I give you? tea or coffee?--but take both--coffee first and tea after a bit. If I can't give you them good, don't know who can. You must pay your devours, as we say in France, to the 'am, for it is an especial fine one, and do take a few eggs with it; there, I've not given you above a pound of 'am, but you can come again, you know--waste not want not. Now take some muffins, do, pray. Batsey, bring some more cream, and set the kidneys on the table, the Yorkshireman is getting nothing to eat. Have a chop with your kidney, werry luxterous--I could eat an elephant stuffed with grenadiers, and wash them down with a ocean of tea; but pray lay in to the breakfast, or I shall think you don't like it. There, now take some tea and toast or one of those biscuits, or whatever you like; would a little more 'am be agreeable? Batsey, run into the larder and see if your Missis left any of that cold chine of pork last night--and hear, bring the cold goose, and any cold flesh you can lay hands on, there are really no wittles on the table. I am quite ashamed to set you down to such a scanty fork breakfast; but this is what comes of not being master of your own house. Hope your hat may long cover your family: rely upon it, it is cheaper to buy your bacon than to keep a pig". Just as Jorrocks uttered these last words the side door opened, and without either "with your leave or by your leave", in bounced Mrs. Jorrocks in an elegant dishabille (or "dish-of-veal", as Jorrocks pronounced it), with her hair tucked up in papers, and a pair of worsted slippers on her feet, worked with roses and blue lilies. "Pray, Mister J----," said she, taking no more notice of the Yorkshireman than if he had been enveloped in Jack the Giant-killer's coat of darkness, "what is the meaning of this card? I found it in your best coat pocket, which you had on last night, and I do desire, sir, that you will tell me how it came there. Good morning, sir (spying the Yorkshireman at last), perhaps you know where Mr. Jorrocks was last night, and perhaps you can tell me who this person is whose card I have found in the corner of Mr. Jorrocks's best coat pocket?" "Indeed, madam", replied the Yorkshireman, "Mr. Jorrocks's movements of yesterday evening are quite a secret to me. It is the night that he usually spends at the Magpie and Stump, but whether he was there or not I cannot pretend to say, not being a member of the free and easy club. As for the card, madam..." "There, then, take it and read it," interrupted Mrs. J----; and he took the card accordingly--a delicate pale pink, with blue borders and gilt edge--and read--we would fain put it all in dashes and asterisks--"Miss Juliana Granville, John Street, Waterloo Road." This digression giving Mr. Jorrocks a moment or two to recollect himself, he pretended to get into a thundering passion, and seizing the card out of the Yorkshireman's hand, he thrust it into the fire, swearing it was an application for admission into the Deaf and Dumb Institution, where he wished he had Mrs. J----. The Yorkshireman, seeing the probability of a breeze, pretended to have forgotten something at the Piazza, and stole away, begging Jorrocks to pick him up as he passed. Peace had soon been restored; for the Yorkshireman had not taken above three or four turns up and down the coffee-room, ere George the waiter came to say that a gentleman waited outside. Putting on his hat and taking a coat over his arm, he turned out; when just before the door he saw a man muffled up in a great military cloak, and a glazed hat, endeavouring to back a nondescript double-bodied carriage (with lofty mail box-seats and red wheels), close to the pavement. "Who-ay, who-ay," said he, "who-ay, who-ay, horse!" at the same time jerking at his mouth. As the Yorkshireman made his exit, a pair eyes of gleamed through the small aperture between the high cloak collar and the flipe of the glazed hat, which he instantly recognised to belong to Jorrocks. "Why, what the deuce is this you are in?" said he, looking at the vehicle. "Jump up," said Jorrocks, "and I'll tell you all about it," which having done, and the machine being set in motion he proceeded to relate the manner in which he had exchanged his cruelty-van for it--by the way, as arrant a bone-setter as ever unfortunate got into, but which he, with the predilection all men have for their own, pronounced to be a "monstrous nice carriage." On their turning off the rough pavement on to the quiet smooth Macadamised road leading to Waterloo Bridge, his dissertation was interrupted by a loud horse-laugh raised by two or three toll-takers and boys lounging about the gate. "I say, Tom, twig this 'ere machine," said one. "Dash my buttons, I never seed such a thing in all my life." "What's to pay?" inquired Jorrocks, pulling up with great dignity, their observations not having penetrated the cloak collar which encircled his ears. "To pay!" said the toll-taker--"vy, vot do ye call your consarn?" "Why, a phaeton," said Jorrocks. "My eyes! that's a good 'un," said another. "I say, Jim--he calls this 'ere thing a phe-a-ton!" "A phe-a-ton!--vy, it's more like a fire-engine," said Jim. "Don't be impertinent," said Jorrocks, who had pulled down his collar to hear what he had to pay--"but tell me what's to pay?" "Vy, it's a phe-a-ton drawn by von or more 'orses," said the toll-taker; "and containing von or more asses," said Tom. "Sixpence-halfpenny, sir," "You are a saucy fellow," said Jorrocks. "Thank ye, master, you're another," said the toll-taker; "and now that you have had your say, vot do ye ax for your mouth?" "I say, sir, do you belong to the Phenix? Vy don't you show your badge?" "I say, Tom, that 'ere fire-engine has been painted by some house-painter, it's never been in the hands of no coach-maker. Do you shave by that 'ere glazed castor of yours?" "I'm blowed it I wouldn't get you a shilling a week to shove your face in sand, to make moulds for brass knockers." "Ay, get away!--make haste, or the fire will be out," bawled out another, as Jorrocks whipped on, and rattled out of hearing. "Now, you see," said he, resuming the thread of his discourse, as if nothing had happened, "this back seat turns down and makes a box, so that when Mrs. J---- goes to her mother's at Tooting, she can take all her things with her, instead of sending half of them by the coach as she used to do; and if we are heavy, there is a pole belonging to it, so that we can have two horses; and then there is a seat draws out here (pulling a stool from between his legs) which anybody can sit on." "Yes, anybody that is small enough," said the Yorkshireman, "but you would cut a queer figure on it, I reckon." The truth was, that the "fire-engine" was one of those useless affairs built by some fool upon a plan of his own, with the idea of combining every possible comfort and advantage, and in reality not possessing one. Friend Jorrocks had seen it at a second-hand shop in Fore Street, and became the happy owner of it, in exchange for the cruelty-van and seventeen pounds.--Their appearance on the road created no small sensation, and many were the jokes passed upon the "fire-engine." One said they were mountebanks; another that it was a horse-break; a third asked if it was one of Gurney's steam-carriages, while a fourth swore it was a new convict-cart going to Brixton. Jorrocks either did not or would not hear their remarks, and kept expatiating upon the different purposes to which the machine might be converted, and the stoutness of the horse that was drawing it. As they approached the town of Croydon, he turned his cloak over his legs in a very workman-like manner, and was instantly hailed by some brother sportsmen;--one complimented him on his looks, another on his breeches, a third praised his horse, a fourth abused the fire-engine, and a fifth inquired where he got his glazed hat. He had an answer for them all, and a nod or a wink for every pretty maid that showed at the windows; for though past the grand climacteric, he still has a spice of the devil in him--and, as he says, "there is no harm in looking." The "Red Lion" at Smitham Bottom was the rendezvous of the day. It is a small inn on the Brighton road, some three or four miles below Croydon. On the left of the road stands the inn, on the right is a small training-ground, and the country about is open common and down. There was an immense muster about the inn, and also on the training-ground, consisting of horsemen, gig-men, post-chaise-men, footmen,--Jorrocks and the Yorkshireman made the firemen. "Here's old Jorrocks, I do declare", exclaimed one, as Jorrocks drove the fire-engine up at as quick a pace as his horse would go. "Why, what a concern he's in", said another, "why, the old man's mad, surely".--"He's good for a subscription," added another, addressing him. "I say, Jorrocks, old boy, you'll give us ten pound for our hounds won't you?--that's a good fellow." "Oh yes, Jorrocks promised us a subscription last year," observed another, "and he is a man of his word--arn't you old leather breeches?" "No, gentlemen," said Jorrocks, standing up in the fire-engine, and sticking the whip into its nest, "I really cannot--I wish I could, but I really cannot afford it. Times really are so bad, and I have my own pack to subscribe to, and I must be 'just before I am generous.'" "Oh, but ten pounds is nothing in your way, you know, Jorrocks--adulterate a chest of tea. Old----here will give you all the leaves off his ash-trees." "No," said Jorrocks, "I really cannot--ten pounds is ten pounds, and I must cut my coat according to my cloth." "By Jove, but you must have had plenty of cloth when you cut that coat you've got on, old boy. Why there's as much cloth in the laps as would make a pair of horse-sheets." "Never mind," said Jorrocks, "I wear it, and not you." "Now," said Jorrocks in an undertone to the Yorkshireman, "you see what an unconscionable set of dogs these stag-'unters are. They're at every man for a subscription, and talk about guineas as if they grew upon gooseberry-bushes. Besides, they are such a rubbishing set--all drafts from the fox'ounds.--Now there's a chap on a piebald just by the trees--he goes into the _Gazette_ reglarly once in three years, and yet to see him out, you'd fancy all the country round belonged to him. And there's a buck with his bearing-rein so tight that he can hardly move his neck," pointing to a gentleman in scarlet, with a tremendous stiff blue cravat--"he lives by keeping a mad-house and being werry high, consequential sort of a cock, they calls him the 'Lord High Keeper!'--I'll tell ye a joke about that fellow," said he, pointing to a man alighting from a red-wheeled buggy--"he's a werry shabby screw, and is always trying to save a penny.--Well, he hires a young half-witted hawbuck for a servant, who didn't clean his boots to his liking, so he began reading the Riot Act one day, and concluded by saying, 'I'm blowed if I couldn't clean them better myself with a little pump-water.'--The next day, up came the boots duller than ever.--'Bless my soul,' exclaimed he, 'why, they are worse than before, how's this, sir?'--'Please, sir, you said you could clean them better with a little pump-water, so I tried it, and I do think they are worse!' Haw! haw! haw!--Yon chap in the black plush breeches and Hessians, standing by the ginger-pop tray, is the only man what ever got the better of me in the 'oss-dealing line, and he certainlie did bite me uncommon 'andsomely. I gave him three and twenty pounds, a strong violin case with patent hinges, lined with superfine green baize, and an uncut copy of Middleton's _Cicero_, for an 'oss that the blacksmith really declared wasn't worth shoeing.--Howsomever, I paid him off, for I christened the 'oss Barabbas--who, you knows, was a robber--and the seller has gone by the name of Barabbas ever since." "Well, but tell me, gentlemen, where do we dine?" inquired Jorrocks, turning to a group who had just approached the fire-engine. "We don't know yet," said a gentleman in scarlet, "the deer has not come yet; but yonder he is," pointing up the road to a covered cart, "and there are the hounds just coming over the hill at the back." The covered cart approached, and several went to meet it. The cry of "Oh, it's old Tunbridge," was soon heard. "Well, we shall have a good dinner," said Jorrocks, "if that is the case. Is it Tunbridge?" inquired he eagerly of one of the party who returned from the deer-cart. "Yes, it's old Tunbridge, and Snooks has ordered dinner at the Wells for sixteen at five o'clock, so the first sixteen that get there had better look out." "Here, bouy," said Jorrocks in an undertone to his servant, who was leading his screws about on the green, "take this 'oss out of the carriage, and give him a feed of corn, and then go on to Tunbridge Wells, and tell Mr. Pegg, at the Sussex Arms, that I shall be there with a friend to the dinner, and bid him write 'Jorrocks' upon two plates and place them together.--Nothing like making sure," said he, chuckling at his own acuteness. "Now to 'orse--to 'orse!" exclaimed he, suiting the action to the word, and climbing on to his great chestnut, leaving the Yorkshireman to mount the rat-tail brown. "Let's have a look at the 'ounds", turning his horse in the direction in which they were coming. Jonathan Griffin[16] took off his cap to Jorrocks, as he approached, who waved his hand in the most patronising manner possible, adding "How are you, Jonathan?" "Pretty well, thank you, Mister Jorrocks, hope you're the same." "No, not the same, for I'm werry well, which makes all the difference--haw! haw! haw! You seem to have but a shortish pack, I think--ten, twelve, fourteen couple--'ow's that? We always take nine and twenty with the Surrey". "Why, you see, Mister Jorrocks, stag-hunting and fox-hunting are very different. The scent of the deer is very ravishing, and then we have no drawing for our game. Besides, at this season, there are always bitches to put back--but we have plenty of hounds for sport.--I suppose we may be after turning out," added Jonathan, looking at his watch--"it's past eleven." [Footnote 16: Poor Jonathan, one of the hardest riders and drinkers of his day, exists, like his pack, but in the recollection of mankind. He was long huntsman to the late Lord Derby, who, when he gave up his staghounds, made Jonathan a present of them, and for two or three seasons he scratched on in an indifferent sort of way, until the hounds were sold to go abroad--to Hungary, we believe.] On hearing this, a gentleman off with his glove and began collecting, or capping, prior to turning out--it being the rule of the hunt to make sure of the money before starting, for fear of accidents. "Half a crown, if you please, sir." "Now I'll take your half a crown." "Mr. Jorrocks, shall I trouble you for half a crown?" "Oh, surely," said Jorrocks, pulling out a handful of great five-shilling pieces; "here's for this gentleman and myself," handing one of them over, "and I shan't even ask you for discount for ready money." The capping went round, and a goodly sum was collected. Meanwhile the deer-cart was drawn to the far side of a thick fence, and the door being opened, a lubberly-looking animal, as big as a donkey, blobbed out, and began feeding very composedly. "That won't do," said Jonathan Griffin, eyeing him--"ride on, Tom, and whip him away." Off went the whip, followed by a score of sportsmen whose shouts, aided by the cracking of their whips, would have frightened the devil himself; and these worthies, knowing the hounds would catch them up in due time, resolved themselves into a hunt for the present, and pursued the animal themselves. Ten minutes having expired and the hounds seeming likely to break away, Jonathan thought it advisable to let them have their wicked will, and accordingly they rushed off in full cry to the spot where the deer had been uncarted. Of course, there was no trouble in casting for the scent; indeed they were very honest, and did not pretend to any mystery; the hounds knew within an inch where it would be, and the start was pretty much like that for a hunter's plate in four-mile heats. A few dashing blades rode before the hounds at starting, but otherwise the field was tolerably quiet, and was considerably diminished after the three first leaps. The scent improved, as did the pace, and presently they got into a lane along which they rattled for five miles as hard as ever they could lay legs to the ground, throwing the mud into each other's faces, until each man looked as if he was roughcast. A Kentish wagon, drawn by six oxen, taking up the whole of the lane, had obliged the dear animal to take to the fields again, where, at the first fence, most of our high-mettled racers stood still. In truth, it was rather a nasty place, a yawning ditch, with a mud bank and a rotten landing. "Now, who's for it? Go it, Jorrocks, you're a fox-hunter," said one, who, erecting himself in his stirrups, was ogling the opposite side. "I don't like it," said Jorrocks; "is never a gate near?" "Oh yes, at the bottom of the field," and away they all tore for it. The hounds now had got out of sight, but were heard running in cover at the bottom of the turnip-field into which they had just passed, and also the clattering of horses' hoofs on the highway. The hounds came out several times on to the road, evidently carrying the scent, but as often threw up and returned into the cover. The huntsman was puzzled at last; and quite convinced that the deer was not in the wood, he called them out, and proceeded to make a cast, followed by the majority of the field. They trotted about at a brisk pace, first to the right, then to the left, afterwards to the north, and then to the south, over grass, fallow, turnips, potatoes, and flints, through three farmyards, round two horse-ponds, and at the back of a small village or hamlet, without a note, save those of a few babblers. Everyone seemed to consider it a desperate job. They were all puzzled; at last they heard a terrible holloaing about a quarter of a mile to the south, and immediately after was espied a group of horsemen, galloping along the road at full speed, in the centre of which was Jorrocks; his green coat wide open, with the tails flying a long way behind that of his horse, his right leg was thrust out, down the side of which he kept applying his ponderous hunting whip, making a most terrible clatter. As they approached, he singled himself out from the group, and was the first to reach the field. He immediately burst out into one of his usual hunting energetic strains. "Oh Jonathan Griffin! Jonathan Griffin!" said he, "here's a lamentable occurrence--a terrible disaster! Oh dear, oh dear--we shall never get to Tunbridge--that unfortunate deer has escaped us, and we shall never see nothing more of him--rely upon it, he's killed before this." "Why, how's that?" inquired Griffin, evidently in a terrible perturbation. "Why," said Jorrocks, slapping the whip down his leg again, "there's a little girl tells me, that as she was getting water at the well just at the end of the wood, where we lost him, she saw what she took to be a donkey jump into a return post-chaise from the 'Bell', at Seven Oaks, that was passing along the road with the door swinging wide open! and you may rely upon it, it was the deer. The landlord of the 'Bell' will have cut his throat before this, for, you know, he vowed wengeance against us last year, because his wife's pony-chaise was upset, and he swore that we did it." "Oh, but that's a bad job", said the huntsman; "what shall we do?" "Here, Tom," calling to the whipper-in, "jump on to the Hastings coach" (which just came up), "and try if you can't overtake him, and bring him back, chaise and all, and I'll follow slowly with the hounds." Tom was soon up, the coach bowled on, and Jonathan and the hounds trotted gently forward till they came to a public-house. Here, as they stopped lamenting over their unhappy fate, and consoling themselves with some cold sherry negus, the post-chaise appeared in sight, with the deer's head sticking out of the side window with all the dignity of a Lord Mayor. "Huzza! huzza! huzza!" exclaimed Jorrocks, taking off his hat, "here's old Tunbridge come back again, huzza! huzza!" "But who's to pay me for the po-chay," said the driver, pulling up; "I must be paid before I let him out." "How much?" says Jonathan. "Why, eighteen-pence a mile, to be sure, and three-pence a mile to the driver." "No," says Jorrocks, "that won't do, yours is a return chay; however, here's five shillings for you, and now, Jonathan, turn him out again--he's quite fresh after his ride--and see, he's got some straw in the bottom." Old Tunbridge was again turned out, with his head towards the town from whence he took his name, and after a quarter of an hour's law, the pack was again laid on. He was not, however, in very good wind, and it was necessary to divide the second chase into two heats, for which purpose the hounds were whipped off about the middle, while the deer took a cold bath, after which he was again set a-going. By half-past three they had accomplished the run; and Mr. Pegg, of the "Sussex Arms," having mounted his Pegasus, found them at the appointed place by the Medway, where old Tunbridge's carriage was waiting, into which having handed him, they repaired to the inn, and at five o'clock eighteen of them sat down to a dinner consisting of every delicacy of the season, the Lord High Keeper in the chair. Being all "hungry as hunters," little conversation passed until after the removal of the cloth, when after the King and his Majesty's Ministers had been drunk, the President gave "The noble, manly sport of stag-hunting," which he eulogised as the most legitimate and exhilarating of all sports, and sketched its progress from its wild state of infancy when the unhappy sportsmen had to range the fields and forests for their uncertain game, to the present state of luxurious ease and elaborate refinement, when they not only brought their deer to the meet, but by selecting the proper animal, could insure a finish at the place they most wished to dine at--all of which was most enthusiastically applauded; and on the speaker's ending, "Stag-hunting," and the "Surrey staghounds," and "Long life to all stag-hunters," were drank in brimming and overflowing bumpers. Fox-hunting, hare-hunting, rabbit-hunting, cat-hunting, rat-catching, badger-baiting--all wild, seasonable, and legitimate sports followed; and the chairman having run through his list, and thinking Jorrocks was getting rather mellow, resolved to try the soothing system on him for a subscription, the badgering of the morning not having answered. Accordingly, he called on the company to charge their glasses, as he would give them a bumper toast, which he knew they would have great pleasure in drinking.--"He wished to propose the health of his excellent friend on his right--MR. JORROCKS (applause), a gentleman whose name only required mentioning in any society of hunters to insure it a hearty and enthusiastic reception. He did not flatter his excellent friend when he said he was a man for the imitation of all, and he was sure that when the present company recollected the liberal support he gave to the Surrey foxhounds, together with the keenness with which he followed that branch of amusement, they would duly appreciate, not only the honour he had conferred upon them by his presence in the field that morning, and at the table that day, but the disinterested generosity which had prompted him voluntarily to declare his intention of contributing to the future support of the Surrey staghounds (immense cheers). He therefore thought the least they could do was to drink the health of Mr. Jorrocks, and success to the Surrey foxhounds, with three times three," which was immediately responded to with deafening cheers. Old Jorrocks, after the noise had subsided, got on his legs, and with one hand rattling the five-shilling pieces in his breeches-pocket, and the thumb of the other thrust into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, thus began to address them.--"Gentlemen," said he, "I'm no orator, but I'm an honest man--(hiccup)--I feels werry (hiccup) much obliged to my excellent friend the Lord High Keeper (shouts of laughter), I begs his pardon--my friend Mr. Juggins--for the werry flattering compliment he has paid me in coupling my name (hiccup) with the Surrey fox'ounds--a pack, I may say, without wanity (hiccup), second to none. I'm a werry old member of the 'unt, and when I was a werry poor man (hiccup) I always did my best to support them (hiccup), and now that I'm a werry rich man (cheers) I shan't do no otherwise. About subscribing to the staggers, I doesn't recollect saying nothing whatsomever about it (hiccup), but as I'm werry friendly to sporting in all its ramifications (hiccup), I'll be werry happy to give ten pounds to your 'ounds."--Immense cheers followed this declaration, which lasted for some seconds. When they had subsided, Jorrocks put his finger on his nose and, with a knowing wink of his eye, added: "Prowided my friend the Lord High Keep--I begs his pardon--Juggins--will give ten pounds to ours!" V. THE TURF: MR. JORROCKS AT NEWMARKET "A muffin--and the _Post_, sir," said George to the Yorkshireman,--on one of the fine fresh mornings that gently usher in the returning spring, and draw from the town-pent cits sighs for the verdure of the fields,--as he placed the above mentioned articles on his usual breakfast table in the coffee-room of the "Piazza." With the calm deliberation of a man whose whole day is unoccupied, the Yorkshireman sweetened his tea, drew the muffin and a select dish of prawns to his elbow, and turning sideways to the table, crossed his legs and prepared to con the contents of the paper. The first page as usual was full of advertisements.--Sales by auction--Favour of your vote and interest--If the next of kin--Reform your tailor's bills--Law--- Articled clerk--An absolute reversion--Pony phaeton--Artificial teeth--Messrs. Tattersall--Brace of pointers--Dog lost--Boy found--Great sacrifice--No advance in coffee--Matrimony--A single gentleman--Board and lodging in an airy situation--To omnibus proprietors--Steam to Leith and Hull--Stationery--Desirable investment for a small capital--The fire reviver or lighter. Then turning it over, his eye ranged over a whole meadow of type, consisting of the previous night's debate, followed on by City news, Police reports, Fashionable arrivals and departures, Dinners given, Sporting intelligence, Newmarket Craven meeting. "That's more in my way," said the Yorkshireman to himself as he laid down the paper and took a sip of his tea. "I've a great mind to go, for I may just as well be at Newmarket as here, having nothing particular to do in either place. I came to stay a hundred pounds in London it's true, but if I stay ten of it at Newmarket, it'll be all the same, and I can go home from there just as well as from here"; so saying, he took another turn at the tea. The race list was a tempting one, Riddlesworth, Craven Stakes, Column Stakes, Oatlands, Port, Claret, Sherry, Madeira, and all other sorts. A good week's racing in fact, for the saintly sinners who frequent the Heath had not then discovered any greater impropriety in travelling on a Sunday, then in cheating each other on the Monday. The tea was good, as were the prawns and eggs, and George brought a second muffin, at the very moment that the Yorkshireman had finished the last piece of the first, so that by the time he had done his breakfast and drawn on his boots, which were dryer and pleasanter than the recent damp weather had allowed of their being, he felt completely at peace with himself and all the world, and putting on his hat, sallied forth with the self-satisfied air of a man who had eat a good breakfast, and yet not too much. Newmarket was still uppermost in his mind, and as he sauntered along in the direction of the Strand, it occurred to him that perhaps Mr. Jorrocks might have no objection to accompany him. On entering that great thoroughfare of humanity, he turned to the east, and having examined the contents of all the caricature shops in the line, and paid threepence for a look at the _York Herald_, in the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's Churchyard, about noon he reached the corner of St. Botolph Lane. Before Jorrocks & Co.'s warehouse, great bustle and symptoms of brisk trade were visible. With true city pride, the name on the door-post was in small dirty-white letters, sufficiently obscure to render it apparent that Mr. Jorrocks considered his house required no sign; while, as a sort of contradiction, the covered errand-cart before it, bore "JORROCKS & Co.'s WHOLESALE TEA WAREHOUSE," in great gilt letters on each side of the cover, so large that "he who runs might read," even though the errand-cart were running too. Into this cart, which was drawn by the celebrated rat-tail hunter, they were pitching divers packages for town delivery, and a couple of light porters nearly upset the Yorkshireman, as they bustled out with their loads. The warehouse itself gave evident proof of great antiquity. It was not one of your fine, light, lofty, mahogany-countered, banker-like establishments of modern times, where the stock-in-trade often consists of books and empty canisters, but a large, roomy, gloomy, dirty, dingy sort of cellar above ground, full of hogsheads, casks, flasks, sugar-loaves, jars, bags, bottles, and boxes. The floor was half an inch thick, at least, with dirt, and was sprinkled with rice, currants, and raisins, as though they had been scattered for the purpose of growing. A small corner seemed to have been cut off, like the fold of a Leicestershire grazing-ground, and made into an office in the centre of which was a square or two of glass that commanded a view of the whole warehouse. "Is Mr. Jorrocks in?" inquired the Yorkshireman of a porter, who was busy digging currants with a wooden spade. "Yes, sir, you'll find him in the counting-house," was the answer; but on looking in, though his hat and gloves were there, no Jorrocks was visible. At the farther end of the warehouse a man in his shirt-sleeves, with a white apron round his waist and a brown paper cap on his head, was seen under a very melancholy-looking skylight, holding his head over something, as if his nose were bleeding. The Yorkshireman groped his way up to him, and asking if Mr. Jorrocks was in, found he was addressing the grocer himself. He had been leaning over a large trayful of little white cups--with teapots to match--trying the strength, flavour, and virtue of a large purchase of tea, and the beverage was all smoking before him. "My vig," exclaimed he, holding out his hand, "who'd have thought of seeing you in the city, this is something unkimmon! However, you're werry welcome in St. Botolph Lane, and as this is your first wisit, why, I'll make you a present of some tea--wot do you drink?--black or green, or perhaps both--four pounds of one and two of t'other. Here, Joe!" summoning his foreman, "put up four pounds of that last lot of black that came in, and two pounds of superior green, and this gentleman will tell you where to leave it.--And when do you think of starting?" again addressing the Yorkshireman--"egad this is fine weather for the country--have half a mind to have a jaunt myself--makes one quite young--feel as if I'd laid full fifty years aside, and were again a boy--when did you say you start?" "Why, I don't know exactly," replied the Yorkshireman, "the weather's so fine that I'm half tempted to go round by Newmarket." "Newmarket!" exclaimed Jorrocks, throwing his arm in the air, while his paper cap fell from his head with the jerk--"by Newmarket! why, what in the name of all that's impure, have you to do at Newmarket?" "Why, nothing in particular; only, when there's neither hunting nor shooting going on, what is a man to do with himself?--I'm sure you'd despise me if I were to go fishing." "True," observed Mr. Jorrocks somewhat subdued, and jingling the silver in his breeches-pocket. "Fox-'unting is indeed the prince of sports. The image of war, without its guilt, and only half its danger. I confess that I'm a martyr to it--a perfect wictim--no one knows wot I suffer from my ardour.--If ever I'm wisited with the last infirmity of noble minds, it will be caused by my ingovernable passion for the chase. The sight of a saddle makes me sweat. An 'ound makes me perfectly wild. A red coat throws me into a scarlet fever. Never throughout life have I had a good night's rest before an 'unting morning. But werry little racing does for me; Sadler's Wells is well enough of a fine summer evening--especially when they plump the clown over head in the New River cut, and the ponies don't misbehave in the Circus,--but oh! Newmarket's a dreadful place, the werry name's a sickener. I used to hear a vast about it from poor Will Softly of Friday Street. It was the ruin of him--and wot a fine business his father left him, both wholesale and retail, in the tripe and cow-heel line--all went in two years, and he had nothing to show at the end of that time for upwards of twenty thousand golden sovereigns, but a hundredweight of children's lamb's-wool socks, and warrants for thirteen hogsheads of damaged sherry in the docks. No, take my adwice, and have nothing to say to them--stay where you are, or, if you're short of swag, come to Great Coram Street, where you shall have a bed, wear-and-tear for your teeth, and all that sort of thing found you, and, if Saturday's a fine day, I'll treat you with a jaunt to Margate." "You are a regular old trump," said the Yorkshireman, after listening attentively until Mr. Jorrocks had exhausted himself, "but, you see, you've never been at Newmarket, and the people have been hoaxing you about it. I can assure you from personal experience that the people there are quite as honest as those you meet every day on 'Change, besides which, there is nothing more invigorating to the human frame--nothing more cheering to the spirits, than the sight and air of Newmarket Heath on a fine fresh spring morning like the present. The wind seems to go by you at a racing pace, and the blood canters up and down the veins with the finest and freest action imaginable. A stranger to the race-course would feel, and almost instinctively know, what turf he was treading, and the purpose for which that turf was intended". "There's a magic in the web of it." "Oh, I knows you are a most persuasive cock," observed Mr. Jorrocks interrupting the Yorkshireman, "and would conwince the devil himself that black is white, but you'll never make me believe the Newmarket folks are honest, and as to the fine hair (air) you talk of, there's quite as good to get on Hampstead Heath, and if it doesn't make the blood canter up and down your weins, you can always amuse yourself by watching the donkeys cantering up and down with the sweet little children--haw! haw! haw!--But tell me what is there at Newmarket that should take a man there?" "What is there?" rejoined the Yorkshireman, "why, there's everything that makes life desirable and constitutes happiness, in this world, except hunting. First there is the beautiful, neat, clean town, with groups of booted professors, ready for the rapidest march of intellect; then there are the strings of clothed horses--the finest in the world--passing indolently at intervals to their exercise,--the flower of the English aristocracy residing in the place. You leave the town and stroll to the wide open heath, where all is brightness and space; the white rails stand forth against the dear blue sky--the brushing gallop ever and anon startles the ear and eye; crowds of stable urchins, full of silent importance, stud the heath; you feel elated and long to bound over the well groomed turf and to try the speed of the careering wind. All things at Newmarket train the mind to racing. Life seems on the start, and dull indeed were he who could rein in his feelings when such inspiring objects meet together to madden them!" "Bravo!" exclaimed Jorrocks, throwing his paper cap in the air as the Yorkshireman concluded.--"Bravo!--werry good indeed! You speak like ten Lord Mayors--never heard nothing better. Dash my vig, if I won't go. By Jove, you've done it. Tell me one thing--is there a good place to feed at?" "Capital!" replied the Yorkshireman, "beef, mutton, cheese, ham, all the delicacies of the season, as the sailor said"; and thereupon the Yorkshireman and Jorrocks shook hands upon the bargain. Sunday night arrived, and with it arrived, at the "Belle Sauvage," in Ludgate Hill, Mr. Jorrocks's boy "Binjimin," with Mr. Jorrocks's carpet-bag; and shortly after Mr. Jorrocks, on his chestnut hunter, and the Yorkshireman, in a hack cab, entered the yard. Having consigned his horse to Binjimin; after giving him a very instructive lesson relative to the manner in which he would chastise him if he heard of his trotting or playing any tricks with the horse on his way home, Mr. Jorrocks proceeded to pay the remainder of his fare in the coach office. The mail was full inside and out, indeed the book-keeper assured him he could have filled a dozen more, so anxious ware all London to see the Riddlesworth run. "Inside," said he, "are you and your friend, and if it wern't that the night air might give you cold, Mr. Jorrocks" (for all the book-keepers in London know him), "I should have liked to have got you outsides, and I tried to make an exchange with two black-legs, but they would hear of nothing less than two guineas a head, which wouldn't do, you know. Here comes another of your passengers--a great foreign nobleman, they say--Baron something--though he looks as much like a foreign pickpocket as anything else." "Vich be de voiture?" inquired a tall, gaunt-looking foreigner, with immense moustache, a high conical hat with a bright buckle, long, loose, blueish-blackish frock-coat, very short white waistcoat, baggy brownish striped trousers, and long-footed Wellington boots, with a sort of Chinese turn up at the toe. "Vich be de Newmarket Voiture?" said he, repeating the query, as he entered the office and deposited a silk umbrella, a camlet cloak, and a Swiss knapsack on the counter. The porter, without any attempt at an answer, took his goods and walked off to the mail, followed closely by the Baron, and after depositing the cloak inside, so that the Baron might ride with his "face to the horses," as the saying is, he turned the knapsack into the hind boot, and swung himself into the office till it was time to ask for something for his exertions. Meanwhile the Baron made a tour of the yard, taking a lesson in English from the lettering on the various coaches, when, on the hind boot of one, he deciphered the word Cheapside.--"Ah, Cheapside!" said he, pulling out his dictionary and turning to the letter C. "Chaste, chat, chaw,--cheap, dat be it. Cheap,--to be had at a low price--small value. Ah! I hev (have) it," said he, stamping and knitting his brows, "sacré-e-e-e-e nom de Dieu," and the first word being drawn out to its usual longitude, three strides brought him and the conclusion of the oath into the office together. He then opened out upon the book-keeper, in a tremendous volley of French, English and Hanoverian oaths, for he was a cross between the first and last named countries, the purport of which was "dat he had paid de best price, and he be dem if he vod ride on de Cheapside of de coach." In vain the clerks and book-keepers tried to convince him he was wrong in his interpretation. With the full conviction of a foreigner that he was about to be cheated, he had his cloak shifted to the opposite side of the coach, and the knapsack placed on the roof. The fourth inside having cast up, the outside passengers mounted, the insides took their places, three-pences and sixpences were pulled out for the porters, the guard twanged his horn, the coachman turned out his elbow, flourished his whip, caught the point, cried "All right! sit tight!" and trotted out of the yard. Jorrocks and the Yorkshireman sat opposite each other, the Baron and old Sam Spring, the betting man, did likewise. Who doesn't know old Sam, with his curious tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, his old drab hat turned up with green, careless neckcloth, flowing robe, and comical cut? He knew Jorrocks--though--tell it not in Coram Street, he didn't know his name; but concluded from the disparity of age between him and his companion, that Jorrocks was either a shark or a shark's jackal, and the Yorkshireman a victim. With due professional delicacy, he contented himself with scrutinising the latter through his specs. The Baron's choler having subsided, he was the first to break the ice of silence. "Foine noight," was the observation, which was thrown out promiscuously to see who would take it up. Now Sam Spring, though he came late, had learned from the porter that there was a Baron in the coach, and being a great admirer of the nobility, for whose use he has a code of signals of his own, consisting of one finger to his hat for a Baron Lord as he calls them, two for a Viscount, three for an Earl, four for a Marquis, and the whole hand for a Duke, he immediately responded with "Yes, my lord," with a fore-finger to his hat. There is something sweet in the word "Lord" which finds its way home to the heart of an Englishman. No sooner did Sam pronounce it, than the Baron became transformed in Jorrocks's eyes into a very superior sort of person, and forthwith he commences ingratiating himself by offering him a share of a large paper of sandwiches, which the Baron accepted with the greatest condescension, eating what he could and stuffing the remainder into his hat. His lordship was a better hand at eating than speaking, and the united efforts of the party could not extract from him the precise purport of his journey. Sam threw out two or three feasible offers in the way of bets, but they fell still-born to the bottom of the coach, and Jorrocks talked to him about hunting and had the conversation all to himself, the Baron merely replying with a bow and a stare, sometimes diversified with, or "I tank you--vare good." The conversation by degrees resolved itself into a snore, in which they were all indulging, when the raw morning air rushed in among them, as a porter with a lanthorn opened the door and announced their arrival at Newmarket. Forthwith they turned into the street, and the outside passengers having descended, they all commenced straddling, yawning, and stretching their limbs while the guard and porters sorted their luggage. The Yorkshireman having an eye to a bed, speedily had Mr. Jorrocks's luggage and his own on the back of a porter on its way to the "Rutland Arms," while that worthy citizen followed in a sort of sleepy astonishment at the smallness of the place, inquiring if they were sure they had not stopped at some village by mistake. Two beds had been ordered for two gentlemen who could not get two seats by the mail, which fell to the lot of those who did, and into these our heroes trundled, having arranged to be called by the early exercising hour. Whether it was from want of his usual night-cap of brandy and water, or the fatigues of travelling, or what else, remains unknown, but no sooner was Mr. Jorrocks left alone with his candle, than all at once he was seized with a sudden fit of trepidation, on thinking that he should have been inveigled to such a place as Newmarket, and the tremor increasing as he pulled four five-pound bank-notes out of his watch-pocket, besides a vast of silver and his great gold watch, he was resolved, should an attempt be made upon his property, to defend it with his life, and having squeezed the notes into the toe of his boots, and hid the silver in the wash-hand stand, he very deliberately put his watch and the poker under the pillow, and set the heavy chest of drawers with two stout chairs and a table against the door, after all which exertions he got into bed and very soon fell sound asleep. Most of the inmates of the house were up with the lark to the early exercises, and the Yorkshireman was as early as any of them. Having found Mr. Jorrocks's door, he commenced a loud battery against it without awaking the grocer; he then tried to open it, but only succeeded in getting it an inch or two from the post, and after several holloas of "Jorrocks, my man! Mr. Jorrocks! Jorrocks, old boy! holloa, Jorrocks!" he succeeded in extracting the word "Wot?" from the worthy gentleman as he rolled over in his bed. "Jorrocks!" repeated the Yorkshireman, "it's time to be up." "Wot?" again was the answer. "Time to get up. The morning's breaking." "Let it break," replied he, adding in a mutter, as he turned over again, "it owes me nothing." Entreaties being useless, and a large party being on the point of setting off, the Yorkshireman joined them, and spent a couple of hours on the dew-bespangled heath, during which time they not only criticised the figure and action of every horse that was out, but got up tremendous appetites for breakfast. In the meantime Mr. Jorrocks had risen, and having attired himself with his usual care, in a smart blue coat with metal buttons, buff waistcoat, blue stocking-netted tights, and Hessian boots, he turned into the main street of Newmarket, where he was lost in astonishment at the insignificance of the place. But wiser men than Mr. Jorrocks have been similarly disappointed, for it enters into the philosophy of few to conceive the fame and grandeur of Newmarket compressed into the limits of the petty, outlandish, Icelandish place that bears the name. "Dash my vig," said Mr. Jorrocks, as he brought himself to bear upon Rogers's shop-window, "this is the werry meanest town I ever did see. Pray, sir," addressing himself to a groomish-looking man in a brown cut-away coat, drab shorts and continuations, who had just emerged from the shop with a race list in his hand, "Pray, sir, be this your principal street?" The man eyed him with a mixed look of incredulity and contempt. At length, putting his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, he replied, "I bet a crown you know as well as I do." "Done," said Mr. Jorrocks holding out his hand. "No--I won't do that," replied the man, "but I'll tell you what I'll do with you,--I'll lay you two to one, in fives or fifties if you like, that you knew before you axed, and that Thunderbolt don't win the Riddlesworth." "Really," said Mr. Jorrocks, "I'm not a betting man." "Then, wot the 'ell business have you at Newmarket?" was all the answer he got. Disgusted with such inhospitable impertinence, Mr. Jorrocks turned on his heel and walked away. Before the "White Hart" Inn was a smartish pony phaeton, in charge of a stunted stable lad. "I say, young chap," inquired Jorrocks, "whose is that?" "How did you know that I was a young chap?" inquired the abortion turning round. "Guessed it," replied Jorrocks, chuckling at his own wit. "Then guess whose it is." "Pray, are your clocks here by London time?" he asked of a respectable elderly-looking man whom he saw turn out of the entry leading to the Kingston rooms, and take the usual survey first up the town and then down it, and afterwards compose his hands in his breeches-pockets, there to stand to see the "world." [17] "Come now, old 'un--none o' your tricks here--you've got a match on against time, I suppose," was all the answer he could get after the man (old R--n the ex-flagellator) had surveyed him from head to foot. [Footnote 17: Newmarket or London--it's all the same--"The world" is but composed of one's own acquaintance.] We need hardly say after all these rebuffs that when Mr. Jorrocks met the Yorkshireman, he was not in the best possible humour; indeed, to say nothing of the extreme sharpness and suspicion of the people, we know of no place where a man, not fond of racing, is so completely out of his element as at Newmarket, for with the exception of a little "elbow shaking" in the evening, there is literally and truly nothing else to do. It is "Heath," "Ditch in," "Abingdon mile," "T.Y.C. Stakes," "Sweepstakes," "Handicaps," "Bet," "Lay," "Take," "Odds," "Evens," morning, noon and night. Mr. Jorrocks made bitter complaints during the breakfast, and some invidious comparisons between racing men and fox-hunters, which, however, became softer towards the close, as he got deeper in the delicacy of a fine Cambridge brawn. Nature being at length appeased, he again thought of turning out, to have a look, as he said, at the shows on the course, but the appearance of his friend the Baron opposite the window, put it out of his head, and he sallied forth to join him. The Baron was evidently incog.: for he had on the same short dirty-white waistcoat, Chinese boots, and conical hat, that he travelled down in, and being a stranger in the land, of course he was uncommonly glad to pick up Jorrocks, so after he had hugged him a little, called him a "bon garçon," and a few other endearing terms, he run his great long arm through his, and walked him down street, the whole peregrinations of Newmarket being comprised in the words "up street" and "down." He then communicated in most unrepresentable language, that he was on his way to buy "an 'oss," and Jorrocks informing him that he was a perfect connoisseur in the article, the Baron again assured him of his distinguished consideration. They were met by Joe Rogers the trainer with a ring-key in his hand, who led the way to the stable, and having unlocked a box in which was a fine slapping four-year old, according to etiquette he put his hat in a corner, took a switch in one hand, laid hold of the horse's head with the other, while the lad in attendance stripped off its clothes. The Baron then turned up his wrists, and making a curious noise in his throat, proceeded to pass his hand down each leg, and along its back, after which he gave it a thump in the belly and squeezed its throat, when, being as wise as he was at starting, he stuck his thumb in his side, and took a mental survey of the whole.--"Ah," said he at length--"foin 'oss,--foin 'oss; vot ears he has?" "Oh," said Rogers, "they show breeding." "Non, non, I say vot ears he has?" "Well, but he carries them well," was the answer. "Non, non," stamping, "I say vot ears (years) he has?" "Oh, hang it, I twig--four years old." Then the Baron took another long look at him. At length he resumed, "I vill my wet." "What's that?" inquired Rogers of Jorrocks. "His wet--why, a drink to be sure," and thereupon Rogers went to the pump and brought a glass of pure water, which the Baron refused with becoming indignation. "Non, non," said he stamping, "I vill my wet." Rogers looked at Jorrocks, and Jorrocks looked at Rogers, but neither Rogers nor Jorrocks understood him. "I vill my wet," repeated the Baron with vehemence. "He must want some brandy in it," observed Mr. Jorrocks, judging of the Baron by himself, and thereupon the lad was sent for three-penn'orth. When it arrived, the Baron dashed it out of his hand with a prolonged sacré-e-e-e--! adding "I vill von wet-tin-nin-na-ary surgeon." The boy was dispatched for one, and on his arrival the veterinary surgeon went through the process that the Baron had attempted, and not being a man of many words, he just gave the Baron a nod at the end. "How moch?" inquked the Baron of Rogers. "Five hundred," was the answer. "Vot, five hundred livre?" "Oh d----n it, you may take or leave him, just as you like, but you won't get him for less." The "vet" explained that the Baron wished to know whether it was five hundred francs (French ten-pences), or five hundred guineas English money, and being informed that it was the latter, he gave his conical hat a thrust on his brow, and bolted out of the box. But race hour approaches, and people begin to assemble in groups before the "rooms," while tax-carts, pony-gigs, post-chaises, the usual aristocratical accompaniments of Newmarket, come dribbling at intervals into the town. Here is old Sam Spring in a spring-cart, driven by a ploughboy in fustian, there the Earl of---- on a ten-pound pony, with the girths elegantly parted to prevent the saddle slipping over its head, while Miss----, his jockey's daughter, dashes by him in a phaeton with a powdered footman, and the postilion in scarlet and leathers, with a badge on his arm. Old Crockey puts on his greatcoat, Jem Bland draws the yellow phaeton and greys to the gateway of the "White Hart," to take up his friend Crutch Robinson; Zac, Jack and another, have just driven on in a fly. In short, it's a brilliant meeting! Besides four coronetted carriages with post-horses, there are three phaetons-and-pair; a thing that would have been a phaeton if they'd have let it; General Grosvenor's dog-carriage, that is to say, his carriage with a dog upon it; Lady Chesterfield and the Hon. Mrs. Anson in a pony phaeton with an out-rider (Miss---- will have one next meeting instead of the powdered footman); Tattersall in his double carriage driving without bearing-reins; Old Theobald in leather breeches and a buggy; five Bury butchers in a tax-cart; Young Dutch Sam on a pony; "Short-odds Richards" on a long-backed crocodile-looking rosinante; and no end of pedestrians. But where is Mr. Jorrocks all this time? Why eating brawn in the "Rutland Arms" with his friend the Baron, perfectly unconscious that all these passers-by were not the daily visables of the place. "Dash my vig," said he, as he bolted another half of the round, "I see no symptoms of a stir. Come, my lord, do me the honour to take another glass of sherry." His lordship was nothing loath, so by mutual entreaties they finished the bottle, besides a considerable quantity of porter. A fine, fat, chestnut, long-tailed Suffolk punch cart mare--fresh from the plough--having been considerately provided by the Yorkshireman for Mr. Jorrocks, with a cob for himself, they proceeded to mount in the yard, when Mr. Jorrocks was concerned to find that the Baron had nothing to carry him. His lordship, too, seemed disconcerted, but it was only momentary; for walking up to the punch mare, and resting his elbow on her hind quarter to try if she kicked, he very coolly vaulted up behind Mr. Jorrocks. Now Jorrocks, though proud of the patronage of a lord, did not exactly comprehend whether he was in earnest or not, but the Baron soon let him know; for thrusting his conical hat on his brow, he put his arm round Jorrocks's waist, and gave the old mare a touch in the flank with the Chinese boot, crying out--"Along me, brave _garçon_, along _ma cher_," and the owner of the mare living at Kentford, she went off at a brisk trot in that direction, while the Yorkshireman slipped down the town unperceived. The sherry had done its business on them both; the Baron, and who, perhaps was the most "cut" of the two, chaunted the _Marsellaise_ hymn of liberty with as much freedom as though he were sitting in the saddle. Thus they proceeded laughing and singing until the Bury pay-gate arrested their progress, when it occurred to the steersman to ask if they were going right. "Be this the vay to Newmarket races?" inquired Jorrocks of the pike-keeper. The man dived into the small pocket of his white apron for a ticket and very coolly replied, "Shell out, old 'un." "How much?" said Jorrocks. "Tuppence," which having got, he said, "Now, then, you may turn, for the heath be over yonder," pointing back, "at least it was there this morning, I know." After a volley of abuse for his impudence, Mr. Jorrocks, with some difficulty got the old mare pulled round, for she had a deuced hard mouth of her own, and only a plain snaffle in it; at last, however, with the aid of a boy to beat her with a furze-bush, they got her set a-going again, and, retracing their steps, they trotted "down street," rose the hill, and entered the spacious wide-extending flat of Newmarket Heath. The races were going forward on one of the distant courses, and a slight, insignificant, black streak, swelling into a sort of oblong (for all the world like an overgrown tadpole), was all that denoted the spot, or interrupted the verdant aspect of the quiet extensive plain. Jorrocks was horrified, having through life pictured Epsom as a mere drop in the ocean compared with the countless multitude of Newmarket, while the Baron, who was wholly indifferent to the matter, nearly had old Jorrocks pitched over the mare's head by applying the furze-bush (which he had got from the boy) to her tail while Mr. Jorrocks was sitting loosely, contemplating the barrenness of the prospect. The sherry was still alive, and being all for fun, he shuffled back into the saddle as soon as the old mare gave over kicking; and giving a loud tally-ho, with some minor "hunting noises," which were responded to by the Baron in notes not capable of being set to music, and aided by an equally indescribable accompaniment from the old mare at every application of the bush, she went off at score over the springy turf, and bore them triumphantly to the betting-post just as the ring was in course of formation, a fact which she announced by a loud neigh on viewing her companion of the plough, as well as by unpsetting some half-dozen black-legs as she rushed through the crowd to greet her. Great was the hubbub, shouting, swearing, and laughing,--for though the Newmarketites are familiar with most conveyances, from a pair of horses down to a pair of shoes, it had not then fallen to their lot to see two men ride into the ring on the same horse,--certainly not with such a hat between them as the Baron's. The gravest and weightiest matters will not long distract the attention of a black-leg, and the laughter having subsided without Jorrocks or the Baron being in the slightest degree disconcerted, the ring was again formed; horses' heads again turn towards the post, while carriages, gigs, and carts form an outer circle. A solemn silence ensues. The legs are scanning the list. At length one gives tongue. "What starts? Does Lord Eldon start?" "No, he don't," replies the owner. "Does Trick, by Catton?" "Yes, and Conolly rides--but mind, three pounds over." "Does John Bull?" "No John's struck out." "Polly Hopkins does, so does Talleyrand, also O, Fy! out of Penitence; Beagle and Paradox also--and perhaps Pickpocket." Another pause, and the pencils are pulled from the betting-books. The legs and lords look at each other, but no one likes to lead off. At length a voice is heard offering to take nine to one he names the winner. "It's short odds, doing it cautiously. I'll take eight then," he adds--"sivin!" but no one bites. "What will anyone lay about Trick, by Catton?" inquires Jem Bland. "I'll lay three to two again him. I'll take two to one--two ponies to one, and give you a suv. for laying it." "Carn't" is the answer. "I'll do it, Jem," cries a voice. "No, you won't," from Bland, not liking his customer. Now they are all at it, and what a hubbub there is! "I'll back the field--I'll lay--I'll take--I'll bet--ponies--fifties--hundreds--five hundred to two." "What do you want, my lord?" "Three to one against Trick, by Catton." "Carn't afford it--the odds really arn't that in the ring." "Take two--two hundred to one." "No." "Crockford, you'll do it for me?" "Yes, my lord. Twice over if you like. Done, done." "Do it again?" "No, thank you." "Trick, by Catton, don't start!" cries a voice. "Impossible!" exclaim his backers. "Quite true, I'm just from the weighing-house, and----told me so himself." "Shame! shame!" roar those who have backed him, and "honour--rascals--rogues--thieves--robbery--swindle--turf-ruined"--fly from tongue to tongue, but they are all speakers with never a speaker to cry order. Meanwhile the lads have galloped by on their hacks with the horses' cloths to the rubbing-house, and the horses have actually started, and are now visible in the distance sweeping over the open heath, apparently without guide or beacon. The majority of the ring rush to the white judge's box, and have just time to range themselves along the rude stakes and ropes that guard the run in, and the course-keeper in a shooting-jacket on a rough pony to crack his whip, and cry to half a dozen stable-lads to "clear the course," before the horses come flying towards home. Now all is tremor; hope and fear vacillating in each breast. Silence stands breathless with expectation--all eyes are riveted--the horses come within descrying distance--"beautiful!" three close together, two behind. "Clear the course! clear the course! pray clear the course!" "Polly Hopkins! Polly Hopkins!" roar a hundred voices as they near. "O, Fy! O, Fy!" respond an equal number. "The horse! the horse!" bellow a hundred more, as though their yells would aid his speed, as Polly Hopkins, O, Fy! and Talleyrand rush neck-and-neck along the cords and pass the judge's box. A cry of "dead heat!" is heard. The bystanders see as suits their books, and immediately rush to the judge's box, betting, bellowing, roaring, and yelling the whole way. "What's won? what's won? what's won?" is vociferated from a hundred voices. "Polly Hopkins! Polly Hopkins! Polly Hopkins!" replies Mr. Clark with judicial dignity. "By how much? by how much?" "Half a head--half a head," [18] replies the same functionary. "What's second?" "O, Fy!" and so, amid the song of "Pretty, pretty Polly Hopkins," from the winners, and curses and execrations long, loud, and deep, from the losers, the scene closes. The admiring winners follow Polly to the rubbing-house, while the losing horses are left in the care of their trainers and stable-boys, who console themselves with hopes of "better luck next time." After a storm comes a calm, and the next proceeding is the wheeling of the judge's box, and removal of the old stakes and ropes to another course on a different part of the heath, which is accomplished by a few ragged rascals, as rude and uncouth as the furniture they bear. In less than half an hour the same group of anxious careworn countenances are again turned upon each other at the betting-post, as though they had never separated. But see! the noble owner of Trick, by Catton, is in the crowd, and Jem Bland eyeing him like a hawk. "I say, Waggey," cries he (singling out a friend stationed by his lordship), "had you ought on Trick, by Catton?" "No, Jem," roars Wagstaff, shaking his head, "I knew my man too well." "Why now, Waggey, do you know I wouldn't have done such a thing for the world! no, not even to have been made a Markiss!" a horse-laugh follows this denunciation, at which the newly created marquis bites his livid lips. [Footnote 18: No judge ever gave a race as won by half a head; but we let the whole passage stand as originally written.--EDITOR.] The Baron, who appears to have no taste for walking, still sticks to the punch mare, which Mr. Jorrocks steers to the newly formed ring aided by the Baron and the furze-bush. Here they come upon Sam Spring, whose boy has just brought his spring-cart to bear upon the ring formed by the horsemen, and thinking it a pity a nobleman of any county should be reduced to the necessity of riding double, very politely offers to take one into his carriage. Jorrocks accepts the offer, and forthwith proceeds to make himself quite at home in it. The chorus again commences, and Jorrocks interrogates Sam as to the names of the brawlers. "Who be that?" said he, "offering to bet a thousand to a hundred." Spring, after eyeing him through his spectacles, with a grin and a look of suspicion replies, "Come now--come--let's have no nonsense--you know as well as I." "Really," replies Mr. Jorrocks most earnestly, "I don't." "Why, where have you lived all your life?" "First part of it with my grandmother at Lisson Grove, afterwards at Camberwell, but now I resides in Great Coram Street, Russell Square--a werry fashionable neighbourhood." "Oh, I see," replies Sam, "you are one of the reg'lar city coves, then--now, what brings you here?" "Just to say that I have been at Newmarket, for I'm blowed if ever you catch me here again." "That's a pity," replied Sam, "for you look like a promising man--a handsome-bodied chap in the face--don't you sport any?" "O a vast!--'unt regularly--I'm a member of the Surrey 'unt--capital one it is too--best in England by far." "What do you hunt?" inquired Sam. "Foxes, to be sure." "And are they good eating?" "Come," replied Jorrocks, "you know, as well as I do, we don't eat 'em." The dialogue was interrupted by someone calling to Sam to know what he was backing. "The Bedlamite colt, my lord," with a forefinger to his hat. "Who's that?" inquired Jorrocks. "That's my Lord L----, a baron-lord--and a very nice one--best baron-lord I know--always bets with me--that's another baron-lord next him, and the man next him is a baron-knight, a stage below a baron-lord--something between a nobleman and a gentleman." "And who be that stout, good-looking man in a blue coat and velvet collar next him, just rubbing his chin with the race card--he'll be a lord too, I suppose?" "No,--that's Mr. Gully, as honest a man as ever came here,--that's Crockford before him. The man on the right is Mr. C----, who they call the 'cracksman,' because formerly he was a professional housebreaker, but he has given up that trade, and turned gentleman, bets, and keeps a gaming-table. This little ugly black-faced chap, that looks for all the world like a bilious Scotch terrier, has lately come among us. He was a tramping pedlar--sold worsted stockings--attended country courses, and occasionally bet a pair. Now he bets thousands of pounds, and keeps racehorses. The chaps about him all covered with chains and rings and brooches, were in the duffing line--sold brimstoned sparrows for canary-birds, Norwich shawls for real Cashmere, and dried cabbage-leaves for cigars. Now each has a first-rate house, horses and carriages, and a play-actress among them. Yon chap, with the extravagantly big mouth, is a cabinet-maker at Cambridge. He'll bet you a thousand pounds as soon as look at you." "The chap on the right of the post with the red tie, is the son of an ostler. He commenced betting thousands with a farthing capital. The man next him, all teeth and hair, like a rat-catcher's dog, is an Honourable by birth, but not very honourable in his nature." "But see," cried Mr. Jorrocks, "Lord---- is talking to the Cracksman." "To be sure," replies Sam, "that's the beauty of the turf. The lord and the leg are reduced to an equality. Take my word for it, if you have a turn for good society, you should come upon the turf.--I say, my Lord Duke!" with all five fingers up to his hat, "I'll lay you three to two on the Bedlamite colt." "Done, Mr. Spring," replies his Grace, "three ponies to two." "There!" cried Mr. Spring, turning to Jorrocks, "didn't I tell you so?" The riot around the post increases. It is near the moment of starting, and the legs again become clamorous for what they want. Their vehemence increases. Each man is _in extremis_. "They are off!" cries one. "No, they are not," replies another. "False start," roars a third. "Now they come!" "No, they don't!" "Back again." They are off at last, however, and away they speed over the flat. The horses come within descrying distance. It's a beautiful race--run at score the whole way, and only two tailed off within the cords. Now they set to--whips and spurs go, legs leap, lords shout, and amid the same scene of confusion, betting, galloping, cursing, swearing, and bellowing, the horses rush past the judge's box. But we have run our race, and will not fatigue our readers with repetition. Let us, however, spend the evening, and then the "Day at Newmarket" will be done. Mr. Spring, with his usual attention to strangers, persuades Mr. Jorrocks to make one of a most agreeable dinner-party at the "White Hart" on the assurance of spending a delightful evening. Covers are laid for sixteen in the front room downstairs, and about six o'clock that number are ready to sit down. Mr. Badchild, the accomplished keeper of an oyster-room and minor hell in Pickering Place, is prevailed upon to take the chair, supported on his right by Mr. Jorrocks, and on his left by Mr. Tom Rhodes, of Thames Street, while the stout, jolly, portly Jerry Hawthorn fills--in the fullest sense of the word--the vice-chair. Just as the waiters are removing the covers, in stalks the Baron, in his conical hat, and reconnoitres the viands. Sam, all politeness, invites him to join the party. "I tank you," replies the Baron, "but I have my wet in de next room." "But bring your wet with you," rejoins Sam, "we'll all have our wet together after dinner," thinking the Baron meant his wine. The usual inn grace--"For what we are going to receive, the host expects to be paid",--having been said with great feeling and earnestness, they all set to at the victuals, and little conversation passed until the removal of the cloth, when Mr. Badchild, calling upon his vice, observed that as in all probability there were gentlemen of different political and other opinions present, perhaps the best way would be to give a comprehensive toast, and so get over any debatable ground,--he therefore proposed to drink in a bumper "The king, the queen, and all the royal family, the ministry, particularly the Master of the Horse, the Army, the Navy, the Church, the State, and after the excellent dinner they had eaten, he would include the name of the landlord of the White Hart" (great applause). Song from Jerry Hawthorn--"The King of the Cannibal Islands".--The chairman then called upon the company to fill their glasses to a toast upon which there could be no difference of opinion. "It was a sport which they all enjoyed, one that was delightful to the old and to the young, to the peer and to the peasant, and open to all. Whatever might be the merits of other amusements, he had never yet met any man with the hardihood to deny that racing was at once the noblest and the most legitimate" (loud cheers, and thumps on the table, that set all the glasses dancing), "not only was it the noblest and most legitimate, but it was the most profitable; and where was the man of high and honourable principle who did not feel when breathing the pure atmosphere of that Heath, a lofty self-satisfaction at the thought, that though he might have left those who were near and dear to him in a less genial atmosphere, still he was not selfishly enjoying himself, without a thought for their welfare; for racing, while it brought health and vigour to the father, also brought what was dearer to the mind of a parent--the means of promoting the happiness and prosperity of his family--(immense cheers). With these few observations he should simply propose 'The Turf,' and may we long be above it"--(applause and, on the motion of Mr. Spring, three cheers for Mrs. Badchild and all the little Badchildren were called for and given). When the noise had subsided. Mr. Jorrocks very deliberately got up, amid whispers and inquiries as to who he was. "Gentlemen," said he, with an indignant stare, and a thump on the table, "Gentlemen, I say, in much of what has fallen from our worthy chairman, I go-in-sides, save in what he says about racing--I insists that 'unting is the sport of sports" (immense laughter, and cries of "wot an old fool!") "Gentlemen may laugh, but I say it's a fact, and though I doesn't wish to create no displeasancy whatsomever, yet I should despise myself most confoundedly--should consider myself unworthy of the great and distinguished 'unt to which I have the honour to belong, if I sat quietly down without sticking up for the chase (laughter).--I say, it's one of the balances of the constitution (laughter).--I say, it's the sport of kings! the image of war without its guilt (hisses and immense laughter). He would fearlessly propose a bumper toast--he would give them 'fox-hunting.'" There was some demur about drinking it, but on the interposition of Sam Spring, who assured the company that Jorrocks was one of the right sort, and with an addition proposed by Jerry Hawthorn, which made the toast more comprehensible, they swallowed it, and the chairman followed it up with "The Sod",--which was drunk with great applause. Mr. Cox of Blue Hammerton returned thanks. "He considered cock-fighting the finest of all fine amusements. Nothing could equal the rush between two prime grey-hackles--that was his colour. The chairman had said a vast for racing, and to cut the matter short, he might observe that cock-fighting combined all the advantages of making money, with the additional benefit of not being interfered with by the weather. He begged to return his best thanks for himself and brother sods, and only regretted he had not been taught speaking in his youth, or he would certainly have convinced them all, that 'cocking' was the sport." "Coursing" was the next toast--for which Arthur Pavis, the jockey, returned thanks. "He was very fond of the 'long dogs,' and thought, after racing, coursing was the true thing. He was no orator, and so he drank off his wine to the health of the company." "Steeplechasing" followed, for which Mr. Coalman of St. Albans returned thanks, assuring the company that it answered his purpose remarkably well. Then the Vice gave the "Chair," and the Chair gave the "Vice"; and by way of a finale, Mr. Badchild proposed the game of "Chicken-hazard," observing in a whisper to Mr. Jorrocks, that perhaps he would like to subscribe to a joint-stock purse for the purpose of going to hell. To which Mr. Jorrocks, with great gravity, replied; "Sir, I'm d----d if I do." VI. A WEEK AT CHELTENHAM: THE CHELTENHAM DANDY Mr. Jorrocks had been very poorly indeed of indigestion, as he calls it, produced by tucking in too much roast beef and plum pudding at Christmas, and prolonging the period of his festivities a little beyond the season allowed by Moore's _Almanack_, and having in vain applied the usual remedies prescribed on such occasions, he at length consented to try the Cheltenham waters, though altogether opposed to the element, he not having "astonished his stomach," as he says, for the last fifteen years with a glass of water. Having established himself and the Yorkshireman in a small private lodging in High Street, consisting of two bedrooms and a sitting-room, he commenced his visits to the royal spa, and after a few good drenches, picked up so rapidly, that to whatever inn they went to dine, the landlords and waiters were astounded at the consumption of prog, and in a very short time he was known from the "Royal Hotel" down to Hurlston's Commercial Inn, as the great London Cormorant. At first, however, he was extremely depressed in spirits, and did nothing the whole day after his arrival, but talk about the arrangement of his temporal affairs; and the first symptom he gave of returning health was one day at dinner at the "Plough," by astonishing two or three scarlet-coated swells, who as usual were disporting themselves in the coffee-room, by bellowing to the waiter for some Talli-ho "sarce" to his fish. Before this he had never once spoken of his favourite diversion, and the sportsmen cantered by the window to cover in the morning, and back in the afternoon, without eliciting a single observation from him. The morning after this change for the better, he addressed his companion at breakfast as follows: "Blow me tight, Mr. York, if I arn't regularly renowated. I'm as fresh as an old hat after a shower of rain. I really thinks I shall get over this terrible illness, for I dreamt of 'unting last night, and, if you've a mind, we'll go and see my Lord Segrave's reynard dog, and then start from this 'ere corrupt place, for, you see, it's nothing but a town, and what's the use of sticking oneself in a little pokey lodging like this 'ere, where there really is not room to swing a cat, and paying the deuce knows how much tin, too, when one has a splendid house in Great Coram Street going on all the time, with a rigler establishment of servants and all that sort of thing. Now, you knows, I doesn't grudge a wisit to Margate, though that's a town too, but then, you see, one has the sea to look at, whereas here, it's nothing but a long street with shops, not so good as those in Red Lion Street, with a few small streets branching off from it, and as to the prommenard, as they calls it, aside the spa, with its trees and garden stuff, why, I'm sure, to my mind, the Clarence Gardens up by the Regent's Park, are quite as fine. It's true the doctor says I must remain another fortnight to perfect the cure, but then them 'ere M.D.'s, or whatever you calls them, are such rum jockeys, and I always thinks they say one word for the patient and two for themselves. Now, my chap said, I must only take half a bottle o' black strap a day at the werry most, whereas I have never had less than a whole one--his half first, as I say, and my own after--and because I tells him I take a pint, he flatters himself his treatment is capital, and that he is a wonderful M.D.; but as a man can't be better than well, I think we'll just see what there's to be seen in the neighbourhood, and then cut our sticks, and, as I said before, I should like werry much to see my Lord Segrave's hounds, in order that I may judge whether there is anything in the wide world to be compared to the Surrey, for if I remember right, Mr. Nimrod described them as werry, werry fine, indeed." Having formed this resolution, Jorrocks stamped on the floor (for the bell was broken) for the little boy who did the odd jobs of the house, to bring up his Hessian boots, into which having thrust his great calves, and replaced the old brown great-coat which he uses for a dressing-gown by a superfine Saxony blue, with metal buttons and pockets outside, he pulled his wig straight, stuck his white hat with the green flaps knowingly on his head, and sallied forth for execution as stout a man as ever. Knowing that the kennel is near the Winchcourt road, they proceeded in that direction, but after walking about a mile, came upon a groom on a chestnut horse, who, returning from the chase, was wetting his whistle at the appropriate sign of the "Fox and Hounds," and who informed them that they had passed the turning for the kennel, but that the hounds were out, and then in a wood which he pointed out on the hillside about two miles off, into which they had just brought their fox. Looking in that direction, they presently saw the summit of one of the highest of the range of hills that encircle the town of Cheltenham, covered with horsemen and pedestrians, who kept moving backwards and forwards on the "mountain's brow," looking in the distance more like a flock of sheep than anything else. Jorrocks, being all right again and up to anything, proposed a start to the wood, and though he thought they should hardly reach it before the hounds either killed their fox or he broke away again, they agreed to take the chance, and away they went, "best leg first" as the saying is. The cover (Queen Wood by name, and, as Jorrocks found out from somebody, the property of Lord Ellenborough) being much larger than it at first appeared and the fox but a bad one, they were in lots of time, and having toiled to the top of the wood, Jorrocks swaggered in among the horsemen with all the importance of an alderman. For full an hour after they got there the hounds kept running in cover, the fox being repeatedly viewed and the pack continually pressing him. Once or twice he came out, but after skirting the cover's edge a few yards turned in again. Indeed, there were two foxes on foot, one being a three-legged one, and it was extraordinary how he went and stood before hounds, going apparently very cautiously and stopping every now and then to listen. At last a thundering old grey-backed fellow went away before the whole field, making for the steep declivities that lead into the downs, and though the brow of the hill was covered with foot-people who holloa'd and shouted enough to turn a lion, he would make his point, and only altering his course so as to avoid running right among the mob, he gained the summit of the hill and disappeared. This hill, being uncommonly steep, was a breather for hounds that had been running so long as they had, in a thick cover too, and neither they nor the horses went at it with any great dash. The fox was not a fellow to be caught very easily, and nothing but a good start could have given them any chance, but the hounds never got well settled to the scent, and after a fruitless cast his lordship gave it up, and Jorrocks and Co. trudged back to Cheltenham, J---- highly delighted at so favourable an opportunity of seeing the hounds. Indeed, so pleased was he with the turn-out and the whole thing, that finding from Skinner, one of the whippers-in, that they met on the following morning at Purge Down-turnpike, in their best country, forgetting all about his indigestion and the royal spa, he went to Newman and Longridge, the horse dealers and livery stable keepers and engaged a couple of nags "to look at the hounds upon," as he impressed upon their minds, which he ordered to be ready at nine o'clock. This day he proposed to give the landlord of the "George Inn," in the High Street, the benefit of his rapacious appetite, and about five o'clock (his latest London hour) they sat down to dinner. The "George" is neither exactly a swell house like the "Royal Hotel" or the "Plough," nor yet a commercial one, but something betwixt and between. The coffee-room is very small, consequently all the frequenters are drawn together, and if a conversation is started a man must be deuced unsociable that does not join in the cry. As three or four were sitting round the fire chatting over their tipple, and Jorrocks was telling some of his best bouncers, the door opened and a waiter bowed a fresh animal into the cage, who, after eyeing the party, took off his hat and forthwith proceeded to pull off divers neckcloths, cloaks, great-coats, muffitees, until he reduced himself to about half the size he was on entering. He was a little square-built old man, with white hair and plenty of it, a long stupid red face with little pig eyes, a very long awkward body, and very short legs. He was dressed in a blue coat, buff waistcoat, a sort of baggy grey or thunder-and-lightning trousers, over which he had buttoned a pair of long black gaiters. Having "peeled," he rubbed his hands and blew upon them, as much as to say, "Now, gentlemen, won't you let me have a smell of the fire?" and, accordingly, by a sort of military revolution, they made a place for him right in the centre. "Coldish night I reckon, sir," said Jorrocks, looking him over. "Very cold indeed, very cold indeed," answered he, rubbing his elbows against his ribs, and stamping with his feet. "I've just got off the top of the Liverpool coach, and, I can assure you, it's very cold riding outside a coach all day long--however, I always say that it's better than being inside, though, indeed, it's very little that I trouble coaches at all in the course of the year--generally travel in my own carriage, only my family have it with them in Bristol now, where I'm going to join them; but I'm well used to the elements, hunting, shooting, and fishing, as I do constantly." This later announcement made Jorrocks rouse up, and finding himself in the company of a sportsman and one, too, who travelled in his own carriage, he assumed a different tone and commenced on a fresh tack--"and pray, may I make bold to inquire what country you hunts in, sir?" said he. "Oh! I live in Cheshire--Mainwaring's country, but Melton's the place I chiefly hunt at,--know all the fellows there; rare set of dogs, to be sure,--only country worth hunting in, to my mind." _Jorrocks_. Rigler swells, though, the chaps, arn't they? Recollect one swell of a fellow coming with his upper lip all over fur into our country, thinking to astonish our weak minds, but I reckon we told him out. _Stranger_. What! you hunt, do you? _Jorrocks_. A few--you've perhaps heard tell of the Surrey 'unt? _Stranger_. Cocktail affair, isn't it? _Jorrocks_. No such thing, I assure you. Cocktail indeed! I likes that. _Stranger_. Well, but it's not what we calls a fast-coach. _Jorrocks_. I doesn't know wot you calls a fast-coach, but if you've a mind to make a match, I'll bet you a hat, ay, or half a dozen hats, that I'll find a fellow to take the conceit out o' any your Meltonians. _Stranger_. Oh! I don't doubt but you have some good men among you; I'm sure I didn't mean anything offensive, by asking if it was a cocktail affair, but we Meltonians certainly have a trick, I must confess, of running every other country down; come, sir, I'll drink the Surrey hunt with all my heart, said he, swigging off the remains of a glass of brandy-and-water which the waiter had brought him shortly after entering. _Jorrocks_. Thank you, sir, kindly. Waiter, bring me a bottom o' brandy, cold, without--and don't stint for quantity, if you please. Doesn't you think these inns werry expensive places, sir? I doesn't mean this in particular, but inns in general. _Stranger_. Oh! I don't know, sir. We must expect to pay. "Live and let live," is my motto. I always pay my inn bills without looking them over. Just cast my eyes at the bottom to see the amount, then call for pen and ink, add so much for waiter, so much for chambermaid, so much for boots, and if I'm travelling in my own carriage so much for the ostler for greasing. That's the way I do business, sir. _Jorrocks_. Well, sir, a werry pleasant plan too, especially for the innkeeper--and all werry right for a gentleman of fortune like you. My motto, however, is "Waste not, want not," and my wife's father's motto was "Wilful waste brings woeful want," and I likes to have my money's worth.--Now, said he, pulling out a handful of bills, at some places that I go to they charges me six shillings a day for my dinner, and when I was ill and couldn't digest nothing but the lightest and plainest of breakfasts, when a fork breakfast in fact would have made a stiff 'un of me, and my muffin mill was almost stopped, they charged me two shillings for one cake, and sixpence for two eggs.--Now I'm in the tea trade myself, you must know, and I contend that as things go, or at least as things went before the Barbarian eye, as they call Napier, kicked up a row with the Hong merchants, it's altogether a shameful imposition, and I wonder people put up with it. _Stranger_. Oh, sir, I don't know. I think that it is the charge all over the country. Besides, it doesn't do to look too closely at these things, and you must allow something for keeping up the coffee-room, you know--fire, candles, and so on. _Jorrocks_. But blow me tight, you surely don't want a candle to breakfast by? However, I contends that innkeepers are great fools for making these sort of charges, for it makes people get out of their houses as quick as ever they can, whereas they might be inclined to stay if they could get things moderate.--For my part I likes a coffee-room, but having been used to commercial houses when I travelled, I knows what the charges ought to be. Now, this room is snug enough though small, and won't require no great keeping up. _Stranger_. No--but this room is smaller than the generality of them, you know. They frequently have two fires in them, besides no end of oil burning.--I know the expense of these things, for I have a very large house in the country, and rely upon it, innkeepers have not such immense profits as many people imagines--but, as I said before, "live and let live." _Jorrocks_. So says I, "live and let live"--but wot I complains of is, that some innkeepers charge so much that they won't let people live. No man is fonder of eating than myself, but I don't like to pay by the mouthful, or yet to drink tea at so much a thimbleful. By the way, Sar, if you are not previously engaged, I should be werry happy to supply you with red Mocho or best Twankay at a very reasonable figure indeed for cash? _Stranger._ Thank you, sir, thank you. Those are things I never interfere with--leave all these things to my people. My housekeeper sends me in her book every quarter day, with an account of what she pays. I just look at the amount--add so much for wages, and write a cheque--"live and let live!" say I. However, added he, pulling out his watch, and ringing the bell for the chambermaid, "I hate to get up very early, so I think it is time to go to bed, and I wish you a very good night, gentlemen all." Jorrocks gets up, advances half-way to the door, makes him one of his most obsequious bows, and wishes him a werry good night. Having heard him tramp upstairs and safely deposited in his bedroom, they pulled their chairs together again, and making a smaller circle round the fire, proceeded to canvass their departed friend. Jorrocks began--"I say, wot a regular swell the chap is--a Meltonian, too.--I wonders who the deuce he is. Wish Mr. Nimrod was among us, he could tell us all about him, I dare say. I'm blowed if I didn't take him for a commercial gentleman at first, until he spoke about his carriages. I likes to see gentlemen of fortune making themselves sociable by coming into the coffee-room, instead of sticking themselves up in private sitting-rooms, as if nobody was good enough for them. You know Melton, Mr. York; did you ever see the gentleman out?" "I can't say that I ever did," said his friend, "but people look so different in their red coats to what they do in mufti, that there's no such thing as recognising them unless you had a previous acquaintance with them. The fields in Leicestershire are sometimes so large that it requires a residence to get anything like a general knowledge of the hunt, and, you know, Northamptonshire's the country for my money, after Surrey, of course." "I don't think he is a gentleman," observed a thin sallow-complexioned young man, who, sitting on one side of the fire, had watched the stranger very narrowly without joining in the conversation. "He gives me more the idea of a gentleman's servant, acting the part of master, than anything else." _Jorrocks._ Oh! he is a gentleman, I'm sure--besides, a servant wouldn't travel in a carriage you know, and he talked about greasing the wheels and all that sort of thing, which showed he was familiar with the thing. "That's very true," replied the youth--"but a servant may travel in the rumble and pay for greasing the wheels all the same, or perhaps have to grease them himself." "Well, I should say he's a foolish purse-proud sort of fellow," observed another, "who has come into money unexpectedly, and who likes to be the cock of his party, and show off a little." _Jorrocks._ I'll be bound to say you're all wrong--you are not fox-hunters, you see, or you would know that that is a way the sportsmen have--we always make ourselves at home and agreeable--have a word for everybody in fact, and no reserve; besides, you see, there was nothing gammonacious, as I calls it, about his toggery, no round-cut coats with sporting buttons, or coaches and four, or foxes for pins in his shirt. "I don't care for that," replied the sallow youth, "dress him as you will, court suit, bag wig, and sword, you'll make nothing better of him--he's a SNOB." Jorrocks, getting up, runs to the table on which the hats were standing, saying, "I wonder if he's left his castor behind him? I've always found a man's hat will tell a good deal. This is yours, Mr. York, with the loop to it, and here's mine--I always writes Golgotha in mine, which being interpreted, you know, means the place of a skull. These are yours, I presume, gentlemen?" said he, taking up two others. "Confound him, he's taken his tile with him--however, I'm quite positive he's a gentleman--lay you a hat apiece all round he is, if you like!" "But how are we to prove it?" inquired the youth. _Jorrocks._ Call in the waiter. _Youth._ He may know nothing about him, and a waiter's gentleman is always the man who pays him most. _Jorrocks._ Trust the waiter for knowing something about him, and if he doesn't, why, it's only to send a purlite message upstairs, saying that two gentlemen in the coffee-room have bet a trifle that he is some nobleman--Lord Maryborough, for instance,--he's a little chap--but we must make haste, or the gentleman will be asleep. "Well, then, I'll take your bet of a hat," replied the youth, "that he is not what I call a gentleman." _Jorrocks._ I don't know what you calls a gentleman. I'll lay you a hat, a guinea one, either white or black, whichever you like, but none o' your dog hairs or gossamers, mind--that he's a man of dibs, and doesn't follow no trade or calling, and if that isn't a gentleman, I don't know wot is. What say you, Mr. York? "Suppose we put it thus--You bet this gentleman a hat that he's a Meltonian, which will comprise all the rest." _Jorrocks._ Werry well put. Do you take me, sir? A guinea hat against a guinea hat. "I do," said the youth. _Jorrocks._ Then DONE--now ring the bell for the waiter--I'll pump him. _Enter waiter._ _Jorrocks._ Snuff them candles, if you please, and bring me another bottom o' brandy-cold, without--and, waiter! here, pray who is that gentleman that came in by the Liverpool coach to-night? The little gentleman in long black gaiters who sat in this chair, you know, and had some brandy-and-water. _Waiter._ I know who you mean, sir, quite well, the gentleman who's gone to bed. Let me see, what's his name? He keeps that large Hotel in---- Street, Liverpool--what's the--Here an immense burst of laughter drowned the remainder of the sentence. Jorrocks rose in a rage. "No! you double-distilled blockhead," said he, "no such thing--you're thinking of someone else. The gentleman hunts at Melton Mowbray, and travels in his own carriage." _Waiter_. I don't know nothing about Melton Mowbray, sir, but the last time he came through here on his road to Bristol, he was in one of his own rattle-trap yellows, and had such a load--his wife, a nurse, and eight children inside; himself, his son, and an apple-tree on the dickey--that the horses knocked up half-way and... _Jorrocks_. Say no more--say no more--d----n his teeth and toe-nails--and that's swearing--a thing I never do but on the most outrageous occasions. Confounded humbug, I'll be upsides with him, however. Waiter, bring the bill and no more brandy. Never was so done in all my life--a gammonacious fellow! "There, sir, there's your one pound one," said he, handing a sovereign and a shilling to the winner of the hat. "Give me my tile, and let's mizzle.--Waiter, I can't wait; must bring the bill up to my lodgings in the morning if it isn't ready.--Come away, come away--I shall never get over this as long as ever I live. 'Live and let live,' indeed! no wonder he stuck up for the innkeepers--a publican and a sinner as he is. Good night, gentlemen, good night." _Exit Jorrocks_. VII. AQUATICS: MR. JORROCKS AT MARGATE The shady side of Cheapside had become a luxury, and footmen in red plush breeches objects of real commiseration, when Mr. Jorrocks, tired of the heat and "ungrateful hurry of the town," resolved upon undertaking an aquatic excursion. He was sitting, as is "his custom always in the afternoon," in the arbour at the farther end of his gravel walk, which he dignifies by the name of "garden," and had just finished a rough mental calculation, as to whether he could eat more bread spread with jam or honey, when the idea of the jaunt entered his imagination. Being a man of great decision, he speedily winnowed the project over in his mind, and producing a five-pound note from the fob of his small clothes, passed it in review between his fingers, rubbed out the creases, held it up to the light, refolded and restored it to his fob. "Batsay," cried he, "bring my castor--the white one as hangs next the blue cloak;" and forthwith a rough-napped, unshorn-looking, white hat was transferred from the peg to Mr. Jorrocks's head. This done, he proceeded to the "Piazza," where he found the Yorkshireman exercising himself up and down the spacious coffee-room, and, grasping his hand with the firmness of a vice, he forthwith began unburthening himself of the object of his mission. "'Ow are you?" said he, shaking his arm like the handle of a pump. "'Ow are you, I say?--I'm so delighted to see you, ye carn't think--isn't this charming weather! It makes me feel like a butterfly--really think the 'air is sprouting under my vig." Here he took off his wig and rubbed his hand over his bald head, as though he were feeling for the shoots. "Now to business--Mrs. J---- is away at Tooting, as you perhaps knows, and I'm all alone in Great Coram Street, with the key of the cellar, larder, and all that sort of thing, and I've a werry great mind to be off on a jaunt--what say you?" "Not the slightest objection," replied the Yorkshireman, "on the old principle of you finding cash, and me finding company." "Why, now I'll tell you, werry honestly, that I should greatly prefer your paying your own shot; but, however, if you've a mind to do as I do, I'll let you stand in the half of a five-pound note and whatever silver I have in my pocket," pulling out a great handful as he spoke, and counting up thirty-two and sixpence. "Very good," replied the Yorkshireman when he had finished, "I'm your man;--and not to be behindhand in point of liberality, I've got threepence that I received in change at the cigar divan just now, which I will add to the common stock, so that we shall have six pounds twelve and ninepence between us." "Between us!" exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, "now that's so like a Yorkshireman. I declare you Northerns seem to think all the world are asleep except yourselves;--howsomever, I von't quarrel with you--you're a goodish sort of chap in your way, and so long as I keep the swag, we carn't get far wrong. Well, then, to-morrow at two we'll start for Margate--the most delightful place in all the world, where we will have a rare jollification, and can stay just as long as the money holds out. So now good-bye--I'm off home again to see about wittles for the woyage." It were almost superfluous to mention that the following day was a Saturday--for no discreet citizen would think of leaving town on any other. It dawned with uncommon splendour, and the cocks of Coram Street and adjacent parts seemed to hail the morn with more than their wonted energy. Never, save on a hunting morning, did Mr. Jorrocks tumble about in bed with such restless anxiety as cock after cock took up the crow in every gradation of noise from the shrill note of the free street-scouring chanticleer before the door, to the faint response of the cooped and prisoned victims of the neighbouring poulterer's, their efforts being aided by the flutterings and impertinent chirruping of swarms of town-bred sparrows. At length the boy, Binjimin, tapped at his master's door, and, depositing his can of shaving-water on his dressing-table, took away his coat and waistcoat, under pretence of brushing them, but in reality to feel if he had left any pence in the pockets. With pleasure Mr. Jorrocks threw aside the bed-clothes, and bounded upon the floor with a bump that shook his own and adjoining houses. On this day a few extra minutes were devoted to his toilet, one or two of which were expended in adjusting a gold foxhead pin in a conspicuous part of his white tie, and in drawing on a pair of new dark blue stocking-net pantaloons, made so excessively tight, that at starting, any of his Newmarket friends would have laid three to two against his ever getting into them at all. When on, however, they fully developed the substantial proportions of his well-rounded limbs, while his large tasselled Hessians showed that the bootmaker had been instructed to make a pair for a "great calf." A blue coat, with metal buttons, ample laps, and pockets outside, with a handsome buff kerseymere waistcoat, formed his costume on this occasion. Breakfast being over, he repaired to St. Botolph Lane, there to see his letters and look after his commercial affairs; in which the reader not being interested, we will allow the Yorkshireman to figure a little. About half-past one this enterprising young man placed himself in Tommy Sly's wherry at the foot of the Savoy stairs, and not agreeing in opinion with Mr. Jorrocks that it is of "no use keeping a dog and barking oneself," he took an oar and helped to row himself down to London Bridge. At the wharf below the bridge there lay a magnificent steamer, painted pea-green and white, with flags flying from her masts, and the deck swarming with smart bonnets and bodices. Her name was the _Royal Adelaide_, from which the sagacious reader will infer that this excursion was made during the late reign. The Yorkshireman and Tommy Sly having wormed their way among the boats, were at length brought up within one of the vessels, and after lying on their oars a few seconds, they were attracted by, "Now, sir, are you going to sleep there?" addressed to a rival nautical whose boat obstructed the way, and on looking up on deck what a sight burst upon the Yorkshireman's astonished vision!--Mr. Jorrocks, with his coat off, and a fine green velvet cap or turban, with a broad gold band and tassel, on his head, hoisting a great hamper out of the wherry, rejecting all offers of assistance, and treating the laughter and jeers of the porters and bystanders with ineffable contempt. At length he placed the load to his liking, and putting on his coat, adjusted his hunting telescope, and advanced to the side, as the Yorkshireman mounted the step-ladder and came upon deck. "Werry near being over late," said he, pulling out his watch, just at which moment the last bell rang, and a few strokes of the paddles sent the vessel away from the quay. "A miss is as good as a mile," replied the Yorkshireman; "but pray what have you got in the hamper?" "In the 'amper! Why, wittles to be sure. You seem to forget we are going a woyage, and 'ow keen the sea hair is. I've brought a knuckle of weal, half a ham, beef, sarsingers, chickens, sherry white, and all that sort of thing, and werry acceptable they'll be by the time we get to the Nore, or may be before." "Ease her! Stop her!" cried the captain through his trumpet, just as the vessel was getting into her stride in mid-stream, and, with true curiosity, the passengers flocked to the side, to see who was coming, though they could not possibly have examined half they had on board. Mr. Jorrocks, of course, was not behindhand in inquisitiveness, and proceeded to adjust his telescope. A wherry was seen rowing among the craft, containing the boatman, and a gentleman in a woolly white hat, with a bright pea-green coat, and a basket on his knee. "By jingo, here's Jemmy Green!" exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, taking his telescope from his eye, and giving his thigh a hearty slap. "How unkimmon lucky! The werry man of all others I should most like to see. You know James Green, don't you?" addressing the Yorkshireman--"young James Green, junior, of Tooley Street--everybody knows him--most agreeable young man in Christendom--fine warbler--beautiful dancer--everything that a young man should be." "How are you James?" cried Jorrocks, seizing him by the hand as his friend stepped upon deck; but whether it was the nervousness occasioned by the rocking of the wherry, or the shaking of the step-ladder up the side of the steamer, or Mr. Jorrocks's new turban cap, but Mr. Green, with an old-maidish reserve, drew back from the proffered embrace of his friend. "You have the adwantage of me, sir," said he, fidgeting back as he spoke, and eyeing Mr. Jorrocks with unmeasured surprise--"Yet stay--if I'm not deceived it's Mr. Jorrocks--so it is!" and thereupon they joined hands most cordially, amid exclamations of, "'Ow are you, J----?" '"Ow are you, G----?" "'Ow are you, J----?" "So glad to see you, J----" "So glad to see you, G----" "So glad to see you, J----" "And pray what may you have in your basket?" inquired Mr. Jorrocks, putting his hand to the bottom of a neat little green-and-white willow woman's basket, apparently for the purpose of ascertaining its weight. "Only my clothes, and a little prowision for the woyage. A baked pigeon, some cold maccaroni, and a few pectoral lozenges. At the bottom are my Margate shoes, with a comb in one, and a razor in t'other; then comes the prog, and at the top, I've a dickey and a clean front for to-morrow. I abominates travelling with much luggage. Where, I ax, is the use of carrying nightcaps, when the innkeepers always prowide them, without extra charge? The same with regard to soap. Shave, I say, with what you find in your tray. A wet towel makes an excellent tooth-brush, and a pen-knife both cuts and cleans your nails. Perhaps you'll present your friend to me," added he in the same breath, with a glance at the Yorkshireman, upon whose arm Mr. Jorrocks was resting his telescope hand. "Much pleasure," replied Mr. Jorrocks, with his usual urbanity. "Allow me to introduce Mr. Stubbs, Mr. Green, Mr. Green, Mr. Stubbs: now pray shake hands," added he, "for I'm sure you'll be werry fond of each other"; and thereupon Jemmy, in the most patronising manner, extended his two forefingers to the Yorkshireman, who presented him with one in return. For the information of such of our readers as may never have seen Mr. James Green, senior junior, either in Tooley Street, Southwark, where the patronymic name abounds, or at Messrs. Tattersall's, where he generally exhibits on a Monday afternoon, we may premise, that though a little man in stature, he is a great man in mind and a great swell in costume. On the present occasion, as already stated, he had on a woolly white hat, his usual pea-green coat, with a fine, false, four-frilled front to his shirt, embroidered, plaited, and puckered, like a lady's habit-shirt. Down the front were three or four different sorts of studs, and a butterfly brooch, made of various coloured glasses, sat in the centre. His cravat was of a yellow silk with a flowered border, confining gills sharp and pointed that looked up his nostrils; his double-breasted waistcoat was of red and yellow tartan with blue glass post-boy buttons; and his trousers, which were very wide and cut out over the foot of rusty-black chamois-leather opera-boots, were of a broad blue stripe upon a white ground. A curly, bushy, sandy-coloured wig protruded from the sides of his woolly white hat, and shaded a vacant countenance, which formed the frontispiece of a great chuckle head. Sky-blue gloves and a stout cane, with large tassels, completed the rigging of this borough dandy. Altogether he was as fine as any peacock, and as vain as the proudest. "And 'ow is Mrs. J----?" inquired Green with the utmost affability--"I hopes she's uncommon well--pray, is she of your party?" looking round. "Why, no," replied Mr. Jorrocks, "she's off at Tooting at her mother's, and I'm just away, on the sly, to stay a five-pound at Margate this delightful weather. 'Ow long do you remain?" "Oh, only till Monday morning--I goes every Saturday; in fact," added he in an undertone, "I've a season ticket, so I may just as well use it, as stay poking in Tooley Street with the old folks, who really are so uncommon glumpy, that it's quite refreshing to get away from them." "That's a pity," replied Mr. Jorrocks, with one of his benevolent looks. "But 'ow comes it, James, you are not married? You are not a bouy now, and should be looking out for a home of your own." "True, my dear J----, true," replied Mr. Green; "and I'll tell you wot, our principal book-keeper and I have made many calculations on the subject, and being a man of literature like yourself, he gave it as his opinion the last time we talked the matter over, that it would only be avoiding Silly and running into Crab-beds; which I presume means Quod or the Bench. Unless he can have a wife 'made to order,' he says he'll never wed. Besides, the women are such a bothersome encroaching set. I declare I'm so pestered with them that I don't know vich vay to turn. They are always tormenting of me. Only last week one sent me a specification of what she'd marry me for, and I declare her dress, alone, came to more than I have to find myself in clothes, ball-and concert-tickets, keep an 'oss, go to theatres, buy lozenges, letter-paper, and everything else with. There were bumbazeens, and challies, and merinos, and crape, and gauze, and dimity, and caps, bonnets, stockings, shoes, boots, rigids, stays, ringlets; and, would you believe it, she had the unspeakable audacity to include a bustle! It was the most monstrous specification and proposal I ever read, and I returned it by the twopenny post, axing her if she hadn't forgotten to include a set of false teeth. Still, I confess, I'm tired of Tooley Street. I feel that I have a soul above hemp, and was intended for a brighter sphere; but vot can one do, cooped up at home without men of henergy for companions? No prospect of improvement either; for I left our old gentleman alarmingly well just now, pulling about the flax and tow, as though his dinner depended upon his exertions. I think if the women would let me alone, I might have some chance, but it worries a man of sensibility and refinement to have them always tormenting of one.--I've no objection to be led, but, dash my buttons, I von't be driven." "Certainly not," replied Mr. Jorrocks, with great gravity, jingling the silver in his breeches-pocket. "It's an old saying, James, and times proves it true, that you may take an 'oss to the water but you carn't make him drink--and talking of 'osses, pray, how are you off in that line?" "Oh, werry well--uncommon, I may say--a thoroughbred, bang tail down to the hocks, by Phantom, out of Baron Munchausen's dam--gave a hatful of money for him at Tatts'.--five fives--a deal of tin as times go. But he's a perfect 'oss, I assure you--bright bay with four black legs, and never a white hair upon him. He's touched in the vind, but that's nothing--I'm not a fox-hunter, you know, Mr. Jorrocks; besides, I find the music he makes werry useful in the streets, as a warning to the old happle women to get out of the way. Pray, sir," turning to the Yorkshireman with a jerk, "do you dance?"--as the boat band, consisting of a harp, a flute, a lute, a long horn, and a short horn, struck up a quadrille,--and, without waiting for a reply, our hero sidled past, and glided among the crowd that covered the deck. "A fine young man, James," observed Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing Jemmy as he elbowed his way down the boat--"fine young man--wants a little of his father's ballast, but there's no putting old heads on young shoulders. He's a beautiful dancer," added Mr. Jorrocks, putting his arm through the Yorkshireman's, "let's go and see him foot it." Having worked their way down, they at length got near the dancers, and mounting a ballast box had a fine view of the quadrille. There were eight or ten couple at work, and Jemmy had chosen a fat, dumpy, red-faced girl, in a bright orange-coloured muslin gown, with black velvet Vandyked flounces, and green boots--a sort of walking sunflower, with whom he was pointing his toe, kicking out behind, and pirouetting with great energy and agility. His male _vis-à-vis_ was a waistcoatless young Daniel Lambert, in white ducks, and a blue dress-coat, with a carnation in his mouth, who with a damsel in ten colours, reel'd to and fro in humble imitation. "Green for ever!" cried Mr. Jorrocks, taking off his velvet cap and waving it encouragingly over his head: "Green for ever! Go it Green!" and, accordingly, Green went it with redoubled vigour. "Wiggins for ever!" responded a female voice opposite, "I say, Wiggins!" which was followed by a loud clapping of hands, as the fat gentleman made an astonishing step. Each had his admiring applauders, though Wiggins "had the call" among the ladies--the opposition voice that put him in nomination proceeding from the mother of his partner, who, like her daughter, was a sort of walking pattern book. The spirit of emulation lasted throughout the quadrille, after which, sunflower in hand, Green traversed the deck to receive the compliments of the company. "You must be 'ungry," observed Mr. Jorrocks, with great politeness to the lady, "after all your exertions," as the latter stood mopping herself with a coarse linen handkerchief--"pray, James, bring your partner to our 'amper, and let me offer her some refreshment," which was one word for the Sunflower and two for himself, the sea breeze having made Mr. Jorrocks what he called "unkimmon peckish." The hamper was speedily opened, the knuckle of veal, the half ham, the aitch bone of beef, the Dorking sausages (made in Drury Lane), the chickens, and some dozen or two of plovers' eggs were exhibited, while Green, with disinterested generosity, added his baked pigeon and cold maccaroni to the common stock. A vigorous attack was speedily commenced, and was kept up, with occasional interruptions by Green running away to dance, until they hove in sight of Herne Bay, which caused an interruption to a very interesting lecture on wines, that Mr. Jorrocks was in the act of delivering, which went to prove that port and sherry were the parents of all wines, port the father, and sherry the mother; and that Bluecellas, hock, Burgundy, claret, Teneriffe, Madeira, were made by the addition of water, vinegar, and a few chemical ingredients, and that of all "humbugs," pale sherry was the greatest, being neither more nor less than brown sherry watered. Mr. Jorrocks then set to work to pack up the leavings in the hamper, observing as he proceeded, that wilful waste brought woeful want, and that "waste not, want not," had ever been the motto of the Jorrocks family. It was nearly eight o'clock ere the _Royal Adelaide_ touched the point of the far-famed Margate Jetty, a fact that was announced as well by the usual bump, and scuttle to the side to get out first, as by the band striking up _God save the King_, and the mate demanding the tickets of the passengers. The sun had just dropped beneath the horizon, and the gas-lights of the town had been considerately lighted to show him to bed, for the day was yet in the full vigour of life and light. Two or three other cargoes of cockneys having arrived before, the whole place was in commotion, and the beach swarmed with spectators as anxious to watch this last disembarkation as they had been to see the first. By a salutary regulation of the sages who watch over the interests of the town, "all manner of persons," are prohibited from walking upon the jetty during this ceremony, but the platform of which it is composed being very low, those who stand on the beach outside the rails, are just about on a right level to shoot their impudence cleverly into the ears of the new-comers who are paraded along two lines of gaping, quizzing, laughing, joking, jeering citizens, who fire volleys of wit and satire upon them as they pass. "There's leetle Jemmy Green again!" exclaimed a nursery-maid with two fat, ruddy children in her arms, "he's a beauty without paint!" "Hallo, Jorrocks, my hearty! lend us your hand," cried a brother member of the Surrey Hunt. Then there was a pointing of fingers and cries of "That's Jorrocks! that's Green!" "That's Green! that's Jorrocks!" and a murmuring titter, and exclamations of "There's Simpkins! how pretty he is!" "But there's Wiggins, who's much nicer." "My eye, what a cauliflower hat Mrs. Thompson's got!" "What a buck young Snooks is!" "What gummy legs that girl in green has!" "Miss Trotter's bustle's on crooked!" from the young ladies at Miss Trimmer's seminary who were drawn up to show the numerical strength of the academy, and act the part of walking advertisements. These observations were speedily drowned by the lusty lungs of a flyman bellowing out, as Green passed, "Hallo! my young brockley-sprout, are you here again?--now then for the tizzy you owe me,--I have been waiting here for it ever since last Monday morning." This salute produced an irate look and a shake of his cane from Green, with a mutter of something about "imperance," and a wish that he had his big fighting foreman there to thrash him. When they got to the gate at the end, the tide of fashion became obstructed by the kissings of husbands and wives, the greetings of fathers and sons, the officiousness of porters, the cries of flymen, the importunities of innkeepers, the cards of bathing-women, the salutations of donkey drivers, the programmes of librarians, and the rush and push of the inquisitive; and the waters of "comers" and "stayers" mingled in one common flood of indescribable confusion. Mr. Jorrocks, who, hamper in hand, had elbowed his way with persevering resignation, here found himself so beset with friends all anxious to wring his digits, that, fearful of losing either his bed or his friends, he besought Green to step on to the "White Hart" and see about accommodation. Accordingly Green ran his fingers through the bushy sides of his yellow wig, jerked up his gills, and with a _négligé_ air strutted up to that inn, which, as all frequenters of Margate know, stands near the landing-place, and commands a fine view of the harbour. Mr. Creed, the landlord, was airing himself at the door, or, as Shakespeare has it, "taking his ease at his inn," and knowing Green of old to be a most unprofitable customer, he did not trouble to move his position farther than just to draw up one leg so as not wholly to obstruct the passage, and looked at him as much as to say "I prefer your room to your company." "Quite full here, sir," said he, anticipating Green's question. "Full, indeed?" replied Jemmy, pulling up his gills--"that's werry awkward, Mr. Jorrocks has come down with myself and a friend, and we want accommodation." "Mr. Jorrocks, indeed!" replied Mr. Creed, altering his tone and manner; "I'm sure I shall be delighted to receive Mr. Jorrocks--he's one of the oldest customers I have--and one of the best--none of your 'glass of water and toothpick' gentleman--real downright, black-strap man, likes it hot and strong from the wood--always pays like a gentleman--never fights about three-pences, like some people I know," looking at Jemmy. "Pray, what rooms may you require?" "Vy, there's myself, Mr. Jorrocks, and Mr. Jorrocks's other friend--three in all, and we shall want three good, hairy bedrooms." "Well, I don't know," replied Mr. Creed, laughing, "about their hairiness, but I can rub them with bear's grease for you." Jemmy pulled up his gills and was about to reply, when Mr. Jorrocks's appearance interrupted the dialogue. Mr. Creed advanced to receive him, blowing up his porters for not having been down to carry up the hamper, which he took himself and bore to the coffee-room, amid protestations of his delight at seeing his worthy visitor. Having talked over the changes of Margate, of those that were there, those that were not, and those that were coming, and adverted to the important topic of supper, Mr. Jorrocks took out his yellow and white spotted handkerchief and proceeded to flop his Hessian boots, while Mr. Creed, with his own hands, rubbed him over with a long billiard-table brush. Green, too, put himself in form by the aid of the looking-glass, and these preliminaries being adjusted, the trio sallied forth arm-in-arm, Mr. Jorrocks occupying the centre. It was a fine, balmy summer evening, the beetles and moths still buzzed and flickered in the air, and the sea rippled against the shingly shore, with a low indistinct murmur that scarcely sounded among the busy hum of men. The shades of night were drawing on--a slight mist hung about the hills, and a silvery moon shed a broad brilliant ray upon the quivering waters "of the dark blue sea," and an equal light over the wide expanse of the troubled town. How strange that man should leave the quiet scenes of nature, to mix in myriads of those they profess to quit cities to avoid! One turn to the shore, and the gas-lights of the town drew back the party like moths to the streets, which were literally swarming with the population. "Cheapside, at three o'clock in the afternoon," as Mr. Jorrocks observed, was never fuller than Margate streets that evening. All was lighted up--all brilliant and all gay--care seemed banished from every countenance, and pretty faces and smart gowns reigned in its stead. Mr. Jorrocks met with friends and acquaintances at every turn, most of whom asked "when he came?" and "when he was going away?" Having perambulated the streets, the sound of music attracted Jemmy Green's attention, and our party turned into a long, crowded and brilliantly lighted bazaar, just as the last notes of a barrel-organ at the far end faded away, and a young woman in a hat and feathers, with a swan's-down muff and tippet, was handed by a very smart young man in dirty white Berlin gloves, and an equally soiled white waistcoat, into a sort of orchestra above where, after the plaudits of the company had subsided, she struck-up: "If I had a donkey vot vouldn't go." At the conclusion of the song, and before the company had time to disperse, the same smart young gentleman,--having rehanded the young lady from the orchestra and pocketed his gloves,--ran his fingers through his hair, and announced from that eminence, that the spirited proprietors of the Bazaar were then going to offer for public competition in the enterprising shape of a raffle, in tickets, at one shilling each, a most magnificently genteel, rosewood, general perfume box fitted up with cedar and lined with red silk velvet, adorned with cut-steel clasps at the sides, and a solid, massive, silver name-plate at the top, with a best patent Bramah lock and six chaste and beautifully rich cut-glass bottles, and a plate-glass mirror at the top--a box so splendidly perfect, so beautifully unique, as alike to defy the powers of praise and the critiques of the envious; and thereupon he produced a flashy sort of thing that might be worth three and sixpence, for which he modestly required ten subscribers, at a shilling each, adding, "that even with that number the proprietors would incur a werry heavy loss, for which nothing but a boundless sense of gratitude for favours past could possibly recompense them." The youth's eloquence and the glitter of the box reflecting, as it did at every turn, the gas-lights both in its steel and glass, had the desired effect--shillings went down, and tickets went off rapidly, until only three remained. "Four, five, and ten, are the only numbers now remaining," observed the youth, running his eye up the list and wetting his pencil in his mouth. "Four, five and ten! ten, four, five! five, four, ten! are the only numbers now vacant for this werry genteel and magnificent rosewood perfume-box, lined with red velvet, cut-steel clasps, a silver plate for the name, best patent Bramah lock, and six beautiful rich cut-glass bottles, with a plate glass mirror in the lid--and only four, five, and ten now vacant!" "I'll take ten," said Green, laying down a shilling. "Thank you, sir--only four and five now wanting, ladies and gentlemen--pray, be in time--pray, be in time! This is without exception the most brilliant prize ever offered for public competition. There were only two of these werry elegant boxes made,--the unfortunate mechanic who executed them being carried off by that terrible malady, the cholera morbus,--and the other is now in the possession of his most Christian Majesty the King of the French. Only four and five wanting to commence throwing for this really perfect specimen of human ingenuity--only four and five!" "I'll take them," cried Green, throwing down two shillings more--and then the table was cleared--the dice box produced, and the crowd drew round. "Number one!--who holds number one?" inquired the keeper, arranging the paper, and sucking the end of his pencil. A young gentleman in a blue jacket and white trousers owned the lot, and, accordingly, led off the game. The lottery-keeper handed the box, and put in the dice--rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, plop, and lift up--"seven and four are eleven"--"now again, if you please, sir," putting the dice into the box--rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, plop, and lift up--a loud laugh--"one and two make three"--the youth bit his lips;--rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, plop--a pause--and lift up--"threes!"--"six, three, and eleven, are twenty." "Now who holds number two?--what lady or gentleman holds number two? Pray, step forward!" The Sunflower drew near--Green looked confused--she fixed her eye upon him, half in fear, half in entreaty--would he offer to throw for her? No, by Jove, Green was not so green as all that came to, and he let her shake herself. She threw twenty-two, thereby putting an extinguisher on the boy, and raising Jemmy's chance considerably. "Three" was held by a youngster in nankeen petticoats, who would throw for himself, and shook the box violently enough to be heard at Broadstairs. He scored nineteen, and, beginning to cry immediately, was taken home. Green was next, and all eyes turned upon him, for he was a noted hand. He advanced to the table with great sangfroid, and, turning back the wrists of his coat, exhibited his beautiful sparkling paste shirt buttons, and the elegant turn of his taper hand, the middle finger of which was covered with massive rings. He took the box in a _négligé_ manner, and without condescending to shake it, slid the dice out upon the table by a gentle sideway motion--"sixes!" cried all, and down the marker put twelve. At the second throw, he adopted another mode. As soon as the dice were in, he just chucked them up in the air like as many halfpence, and down they came five and six--"eleven," said the marker. With a look of triumph Green held the box for the third time, which he just turned upside down, and lo, on uncovering, there stood two--"ones!" A loud laugh burst forth, and Green looked confused. "I'm so glad!" whispered a young lady, who had made an unsuccessful "set" at Jemmy the previous season, in a tone loud enough for him to hear. "I hope he'll lose," rejoined a female friend, rather louder. "That Jemmy Green is my absolute abhorrence," observed a third. "'Orrible man, with his nasty vig," observed the mamma of the first speaker--"shouldn't have my darter not at no price." Green, however, headed the poll, having beat the Sunflower, and had still two lots in reserve. For number five, he threw twenty-five, and was immediately outstripped, amid much laughter and clapping of hands from the ladies, by number six, who in his turn fell a prey to number seven. Between eight and nine there was a very interesting contest who should be lowest, and hopes and fears were at their altitude, when Jemmy Green again turned back his coat-wrist to throw for number ten. His confidence had forsaken him a little, as indicated by a slight quivering of the under-lip, but he managed to conceal it from all except the ladies, who kept too scrutinising an eye upon him. His first throw brought sixes, which raised his spirits amazingly; but on their appearance a second time, he could scarcely contain himself, backed as he was by the plaudits of his friend Mr. Jorrocks. Then came the deciding throw--every eye was fixed on Jemmy, he shook the box, turned it down, and lo! there came seven. "Mr. James Green is the fortunate winner of this magnificent prize!" exclaimed the youth, holding up the box in mid-air, and thereupon all the ladies crowded round Green, some to congratulate him, others to compliment him on his looks, while one or two of the least knowing tried to coax him out of his box. Jemmy, however, was too old a stager, and pocketed the box and other compliments at the same time. Another grind of the organ, and another song followed from the same young lady, during which operation Green sent for the manager, and, after a little beating about the bush, proposed singing a song or two, if he would give him lottery-tickets gratis. He asked three shilling-tickets for each song, and finally closed for five tickets for two songs, on the understanding that he was to be announced as a distinguished amateur, who had come forward by most particular desire. Accordingly the manager--a roundabout, red-faced, consequential little cockney--mounted the rostrum, and begged to announce to the company that that "celebrated wocalist, Mr. James Green, so well known as a distinguished amateur and conwivialist, both at Bagnigge Wells, and Vite Conduit House, LONDON, had werry kindly consented, in order to promote the hilarity of the evening, to favour the company with a song immediately after the drawing of the next lottery," and after a few high-flown compliments, which elicited a laugh from those who were up to Jemmy's mode of doing business, he concluded by offering a _papier-maché_ tea-caddy for public competition, in shilling lots as before. As soon as the drawing was over, they gave the organ a grind, and Jemmy popped up with a hop, step, and a jump, with his woolly white hat under his arm, and presented himself with a scrape and a bow to the company. After a few preparatory "hems and haws," he pulled up his gills and spoke as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen! hem"--another pull at his gills--"ladies and gentlemen--my walued friend, Mr. Kitey Graves, has announced that I will entertain the company with a song; though nothing, I assure you--hem--could be farther from my idea--hem--when my excellent friend asked me,"--"Hookey Walker!" exclaimed someone who had heard Jemmy declare the same thing half a dozen times--"and, indeed, ladies and gentlemen--hem--nothing but the werry great regard I have for Mr. Kitey Graves, who I have known and loved ever since he was the height of sixpennorth of coppers" a loud laugh followed this allusion, seeing that eighteenpenny-worth would almost measure out the speaker. On giving another "hem," and again pulling up his gills, an old Kentish farmer, in a brown coat and mahogany-coloured tops, holloaed out, "I say, sir! I'm afear'd you'll be catching cold!" "I 'opes not," replied Jemmy in a fluster, "is it raining? I've no umbrella, and my werry best coat on!" "No! raining, no!" replied the farmer, "only you've pulled at your shirt so long that I think you must be bare behind! Haw! haw! haw!" at which all the males roared with laughter, and the females hid their faces in their handkerchiefs, and tittered and giggled, and tried to be shocked. "ORDER! ORDER!" cried Mr. Jorrocks, in a loud and sonorous voice, which had the effect of quelling the riot and drawing all eyes upon himself. "Ladies and gentlemen," said he, taking off his cap with great gravity, and extending his right arm, Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense; a couplet so apropos, and so well delivered, as to have the immediate effect of restoring order and making the farmer look foolish. Encouraged by the voice of his great patron, Green once more essayed to finish his speech, which he did by a fresh assurance of the surprise by which he had been taken by the request of his friend, Kitey Graves, and an exhortation for the company to make allowance for any deficiency of "woice," inasmuch as how as labouring under "a wiolent 'orseness," for which he had long been taking pectoral lozenges. He then gave his gills another pull, felt if they were even, and struck up: "Bid me discourse," in notes, compared to which the screaming of a peacock would be perfect melody. Mr. Jorrocks having taken a conspicuous position, applauded long, loudly, and warmly, at every pause--approbation the more deserved and disinterested, inasmuch as the worthy gentleman suffers considerably from music, and only knows two tunes, one of which, he says, "is _God save the King_, and the other isn't." Having seen his protégé fairly under way, Mr. Jorrocks gave him a hint that he would return to the "White Hart," and have supper ready by the time he was done; accordingly the Yorkshireman and he withdrew along an avenue politely formed by the separation of the company, who applauded as they passed. An imperial quart and a half of Mr. Creed's stoutest draft port, with the orthodox proportion of lemon, cloves, sugar, and cinnamon, had almost boiled itself to perfection under the skilful superintendence of Mr. Jorrocks, on the coffee-room fire, and a table had been handsomely decorated with shrimps, lobsters, broiled bones, fried ham, poached eggs, when just as the clock had finished striking eleven, the coffee-room door opened with a rush, and in tripped Jemmy Green with his hands crammed full of packages, and his trousers' pockets sticking out like a Dutch burgomaster's. "Vell, I've done 'em brown to-night, I think," said he, depositing his hat and half a dozen packages on the sideboard, and running his fingers through his curls to make them stand up. "I've won nine lotteries, and left one undrawn when I came away, because it did not seem likely to fill. Let me see," said he, emptying his pockets,--"there is the beautiful rosewood box that I won, ven you was there; the next was a set of crimping-irons, vich I von also; the third was a jockey-vip, which I did not want and only stood one ticket for and lost; the fourth was this elegant box, with a view of Margate on the lid; then came these six sherry labels with silver rims; a snuff-box with an inwisible mouse; a coral rattle with silver bells; a silk yard measure in a walnut-shell; a couple of West India beetles; a humming-bird in a glass case, which I lost; and then these dozen bodkins with silver eyes--so that altogether I have made a pretty good night's work of it. Kitey Graves wasn't in great force, so after I had sung _Bid me Discourse_, and _I'd be a Butterfly_, I cut my stick and went to the hopposition shop, where they used me much more genteelly; giving me three tickets for a song, and introducing me in more flattering terms to the company--don't like being considered one of the nasty 'reglars,' and they should make a point of explaining that one isn't. Besides, what business had Kitey to say anything about Bagnigge Vells? a hass!--Now, perhaps, you'll favour me with some supper." "Certainly," replied Mr. Jorrocks, patting Jemmy approvingly on the head--"you deserve some. It's only no song, no supper, and you've been singing like a nightingale;" thereupon they set to with vigorous determination. A bright Sunday dawned, and the beach at an early hour was crowded with men in dressing-gowns of every shape, hue, and material, with buff slippers--the "regulation Margate shoeing," both for men and women. As the hour of eleven approached, and the church bells began to ring, the town seemed to awaken suddenly from a trance, and bonnets the most superb, and dresses the most extravagant, poured forth from lodgings the most miserable. Having shaved and dressed himself with more than ordinary care and attention, Mr. Jorrocks walked his friends off to church, assuring them that no one need hope to prosper throughout the week who did not attend it on the Sunday, and he marked his own devotion throughout the service by drowning the clerk's voice with his responses. After this spiritual ablution Mr. Jorrocks bethought himself of having a bodily one in the sea; and the day being excessively hot, and the tide about the proper mark, he pocketed a couple of towels out of his bedroom and went away to bathe, leaving Green and the Yorkshireman to amuse themselves at the "White Hart." This house, as we have already stated, faces the harbour, and is a corner one, running a considerable way up the next street, with a side door communicating, as well as the front one, with the coffee-room. This room differs from the generality of coffee-rooms, inasmuch as the windows range the whole length of the room, and being very low they afford every facility for the children and passers-by to inspect the interior. Whether this is done to show the Turkey carpet, the pea-green cornices, the bright mahogany slips of tables, the gay trellised geranium-papered room, or the aristocratic visitors who frequent it, is immaterial--the description is as accurate as if George Robins had drawn it himself. In this room then, as the Yorkshireman and Green were lying dozing on three chairs apiece, each having fallen asleep to avoid the trouble of talking to the other, they were suddenly roused by loud yells and hootings at the side door, and the bursting into the coffee-room of what at first brush they thought must be a bull. The Yorkshireman jumped up, rubbed his eyes, and lo! before him stood Mr. Jorrocks, puffing like a stranded grampus, with a bunch of sea-weed under his arm and the dress in which he had started, with the exception of the dark blue stocking-net pantaloons, the place of which were supplied by a flowing white linen kilt, commonly called a shirt, in the four corners of which were knotted a few small pebbles--producing, with the Hessian boots and one thing and another, the most laughable figure imaginable. The blood of the Jorrockses was up, however, and throwing his hands in the air, he thus delivered himself. "Oh gentlemen! gentlemen!--here's a lamentable occurrence--a terrible disaster--oh dear! oh dear!--I never thought I should come to this. You know, James Green," appealing to Jemmy, "that I never was the man to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty; I have always said that 'want of decency is want of sense,' and see how I am rewarded! Oh dear! oh dear! that I should ever have trusted my pantaloons out of my sight." While all this, which was the work of a moment, was going forward, the mob, which had been shut out at the side door on Jorrocks's entry, had got round to the coffee-room window, and were all wedging their faces in to have a sight of him. It was principally composed of children, who kept up the most discordant yells, mingled with shouts of "there's old cutty shirt!"--"who's got your breeches, old cock?"--"make a scramble!"--"turn him out for another hunt!"--"turn him again!"--until, fearing for the respectability of his house, the landlord persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to retire into the bar to state his grievances. It then appeared that having travelled along the coast, as far as the first preventive stationhouse on the Ramsgate side of Margate, the grocer had thought it a convenient place for performing his intended ablutions, and, accordingly, proceeded to do what all people of either sex agree upon in such cases--namely to divest himself of his garments; but before he completed the ceremony, observing some females on the cliffs above, and not being (as he said) a man "to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty," he advanced to the water's edge in his aforesaid unmentionables, and forgetting that it was not yet high tide, he left them there, when they were speedily covered, and the pockets being full of silver and copper, of course they were "swamped." After dabbling about in the water and amusing himself with picking up sea-weed for about ten minutes, Mr. Jorrocks was horrified, on returning to the spot where he thought he had left his stocking-net pantaloons, to find that they had disappeared; and after a long fruitless search, the unfortunate gentleman was compelled to abandon the pursuit, and render himself an object of chase to all the little boys and girls who chose to follow him into Margate on his return without them. Jorrocks, as might be expected, was very bad about his loss, and could not get over it--it stuck in his gizzard, he said--and there it seemed likely to remain. In vain Mr. Creed offered him a pair of trousers--he never had worn a pair. In vain he asked for the loan of a pair of white cords and top-boots, or even drab shorts and continuations. Mr. Creed was no sportsman, and did not keep any. The bellman could not cry the lost unmentionables because it was Sunday, and even if they should be found on the ebbing of the tide, they would take no end of time to dry. Mr. Jorrocks declared his pleasure at an end, and forthwith began making inquiries as to the best mode of getting home. The coaches were all gone, steamboats there were none, save for every place but London, and posting, he said, was "cruelly expensive." In the midst of his dilemma, "Boots," who is always the most intelligent man about an inn, popped in his curly head, and informed Mr. Jorrocks that the Unity hoy, a most commodious vessel, neat, trim, and water-tight, manned by his own maternal uncle, was going to cut away to London at three o'clock, and would land him before he could say "Jack Robinson." Mr. Jorrocks jumped at the offer, and forthwith attiring himself in a pair of Mr. Creed's loose inexpressibles, over which he drew his Hessian boots, he tucked the hamper containing the knuckle of veal and other etceteras under one arm, and the bunch of sea-weed he had been busy collecting, instead of watching his clothes, under the other, and, followed by his friends, made direct for the vessel. Everybody knows, or ought to know, what a hoy is--it is a large sailing-boat, sometimes with one deck, sometimes with none; and the Unity, trading in bulky goods, was of the latter description, though there was a sort of dog-hole at the stern, which the master dignified by the name of a "state cabin," into which he purposed putting Mr. Jorrocks, if the weather should turn cold before they arrived. The wind, however, he said, was so favourable, and his cargo--"timber and fruit," as he described it, that is to say, broomsticks and potatoes--so light, that he warranted landing him at Blackwall at least by ten o'clock, where he could either sleep, or get a short stage or an omnibus on to Leadenhall Street. The vessel looked anything but tempting, neither was the captain's appearance prepossessing, still Mr. Jorrocks, all things considered, thought he would chance it; and depositing his hamper and sea-weed, and giving special instructions about having his pantaloons cried in the morning--recounting that besides the silver, and eighteen-pence in copper, there was a steel pencil-case with "J.J." on the seal at the top, an anonymous letter, and two keys--he took an affectionate leave of his friends, and stepped on board, the vessel was shoved off and stood out to sea. Monday morning drew the cockneys from their roosts betimes, to take their farewell splash and dive in the sea. As the day advanced, the bustle and confusion on the shore and in the town increased, and everyone seemed on the move. The ladies paid their last visits to the bazaars and shell shops, and children extracted the last ounce of exertion from the exhausted leg-weary donkeys. Meanwhile the lords of the creation strutted about, some in dressing-gowns, others, "full puff," with bags and boxes under their arms--while sturdy porters were wheeling barrows full of luggage to the jetty. The bell-man went round dressed in a blue and red cloak, with a gold hatband. Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong, went the bell, and the gaping cockneys congregated around. He commenced--"To be sould in the market-place a quantity of fresh ling." Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong: "The _Royal Adelaide_, fast and splendid steam-packet, Capt. Whittingham, will leave the pier this morning at nine o'clock precisely, and land the passengers at London Bridge Steam-packet Wharf--fore cabin fares and children four shillings--saloon five shillings." Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong: "The superb and splendid steam-packet, the _Magnet_, will leave the pier this morning at nine o'clock precisely, and land the passengers at the St. Catherine Docks--fore-cabin fares and children four shillings--saloon five shillings." Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong: "Lost at the back of James Street--a lady's black silk--black lace wale--whoever has found the same, and will bring it to the cryer, shall receive one shilling reward." Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong: "Lost, last night, between the jetty and the York Hotel, a little boy, as answers to the name of Spot, whoever has found the same, and will bring him to the cryer, shall receive a reward of half-a-crown." Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong: "Lost, stolen, or strayed, or otherwise conveyed, a brown-and-white King Charles's setter as answers to the name of Jacob Jones. Whoever has found the same, or will give such information as shall lead to the detection and conversion of the offender or offenders shall be handsomely rewarded." Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding, dong: "Lost below the prewentive sarvice station by a gentleman of great respectability--a pair of blue knit pantaloons, containing eighteen penny-worth of copper--a steel pencil-case--a werry anonymous letter, and two keys. Whoever will bring the same to the cryer shall receive a reward.--_God save the King!"_ Then, as the hour of nine approached, what a concourse appeared! There were fat and lean, and short and tall, and middling, going away, and fat and lean, and short and tall, and middling, waiting to see them off; Green, as usual, making himself conspicuous, and canvassing everyone he could lay hold of for the _Magnet_ steamer. At the end of the jetty, on each side, lay the _Royal Adelaide_ and the _Magnet_, with as fierce a contest for patronage as ever was witnessed. Both decks were crowded with anxious faces--for the Monday's steamboat race is as great an event as a Derby, and a cockney would as lieve lay on an outside horse as patronise a boat that was likely to let another pass her. Nay, so high is the enthusiasm carried, that books are regularly made on the occasion, and there is as much clamour for bets as in the ring at Epsom or Newmarket. "Tomkins, I'll lay you a dinner--for three--_Royal Adelaide_ against the _Magnet_," bawled Jenkins from the former boat. "Done," cries Tomkins. "The _Magnet_ for a bottle of port," bawled out another. "A whitebait dinner for two, the _Magnet_ reaches Greenwich first." "What should you know about the _Magnet_?" inquires the mate of the _Royal Adelaide_. "Vy, I think I should know something about nauticals too, for Lord St. Wincent was my godfather." "I'll bet five shillings on the _Royal Adelaide."_ "I'll take you," says another. "I'll bet a bottom of brandy on the _Magnet_," roars out the mate. "Two goes of Hollands', the _Magnet's_ off Herne Bay before the _Royal Adelaide."_ "I'll lay a pair of crimping-irons against five shillings, the _Magnet_ beats the _Royal Adelaide_," bellowed out Green, who having come on board, had mounted the paddle-box. "I say, Green, I'll lay you an even five if you like." "Well, five pounds," cries Green. "No, shillings," says his friend. "Never bet in shillings," replies Green, pulling up his shirt collar. "I'll bet fifty pounds," he adds,-getting valiant. "I'll bet a hundred ponds--a thousand pounds--a million pounds--half the National Debt, if you like." Precisely as the jetty clock finishes striking nine, the ropes are slipped, and the rival steamers stand out to sea with beautiful precision, amid the crying, the kissing of hands, the raising of hats, the waving of handkerchiefs, from those who are left for the week, while the passengers are cheered by adverse tunes from the respective bands on board. The _Magnet_, having the outside, gets the breeze first hand, but the _Royal Adelaide_ keeps well alongside, and both firemen being deeply interested in the event, they boil up a tremendous gallop, without either being able to claim the slightest advantage for upwards of an hour and a half, when the _Royal Adelaide_ manages to shoot ahead for a few minutes, amid the cheers and exclamations of her crew. The _Magnet's_ fireman, however, is on the alert, and a few extra pokes of the fire presently bring the boats together again, in which state they continue, nose and nose, until the stiller water of the side of the Thames favours the _Magnet_, and she shoots ahead amid the cheers and vociferations of her party, and is not neared again during the voyage. This excitement over, the respective crews sink into a sort of melancholy sedateness, and Green in vain endeavours to kick up a quadrille. The men were exhausted and the women dispirited, and altogether they were a very different set of beings to what they were on the Saturday. Dull faces and dirty-white ducks were the order of the day. The only incident of the voyage was, that on approaching the mouth of the Medway, the _Royal Adelaide_ was hailed by a vessel, and the Yorkshireman, on looking overboard, was shocked to behold Mr. Jorrocks sitting in the stern of his hoy in the identical position he had taken up the previous day, with his bunch of sea-weed under his elbow, and the remains of the knuckle of veal, ham, and chicken, spread on the hamper before him. "Stop her?" cried the Yorkshireman, and then hailing Mr. Jorrocks he holloaed out, "In the name of the prophet, Figs, what are you doing there?" "Oh, gentlemen! gentlemen!" exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, brightening up as he recognised the boat, "take compassion on a most misfortunate indiwidual--here have I been in this 'orrid 'oy, ever since three o'clock yesterday afternoon and here I seem likely to end my days--for blow me tight if I couldn't swim as fast as it goes." "Look sharp, then," cried the mate of the steamer, "and chuck us up your luggage." Up went the sea-weed, the hamper, and Mr. Jorrocks; and before the hoyman awoke out of a nap, into which he had composed himself on resigning the rudder to his lad, our worthy citizen was steaming away a mile before his vessel, bilking him of his fare. Who does not recognise in this last disaster, the truth of the old adage? "Most haste, least speed." VIII. THE ROAD: ENGLISH AND FRENCH. "Jorrocks's France, in three wolumes, would sound werry well," observed our worthy citizen, one afternoon, to his confidential companion the Yorkshireman, as they sat in the veranda in Coram Street, eating red currants and sipping cold whiskey punch; "and I thinks I could make something of it. They tells me that at the 'west end' the booksellers will give forty pounds for anything that will run into three wolumes, and one might soon pick up as much matter as would stretch into that quantity." The above observation was introduced in a long conversation between Mr. Jorrocks and his friend, relative to an indignity that had been offered him by the rejection by the editor of a sporting periodical of a long treatise on eels, which, independently of the singularity of diction, had become so attenuated in the handling, as to have every appearance of filling three whole numbers of the work; and Mr. Jorrocks had determined to avenge the insult by turning author on his own account. The Yorkshireman, ever ready for amusement, cordially supported Mr. Jorrocks in his views, and a bargain was soon struck between them, the main stipulations of which were, that Mr. Jorrocks should find cash, and the Yorkshireman should procure information. Accordingly, on the Saturday after, the nine o'clock Dover heavy drew up at the "Bricklayers' Arms," with Mr. Jorrocks on the box seat, and the Yorkshireman imbedded among the usual heterogeneous assembly--soldiers, sailors, Frenchmen, fishermen, ladies' maids, and footmen--that compose the cargo of these coaches. Here they were assailed with the usual persecution from the tribe of Israel, in the shape of a hundred merchants, proclaiming the virtues of their wares; one with black-lead pencils, twelve a shilling, with an invitation to "cut 'em and try 'em"; another with a good pocket-knife, "twelve blades and saw, sir"; a third, with a tame squirrel and a piping bullfinch, that could whistle _God save the King_ and the _White Cockade_--to be given for an old coat. "Buy a silver guard-chain for your vatch, sir!" cried a dark eyed urchin, mounting the fore-wheel, and holding a bunch of them in Mr. Jorrocks's face; "buy pocket-book, memorandum-book!" whined another. "Keepsake--Forget-me-not--all the last year's annuals at half-price!" "Sponge cheap, sponge! take a piece, sir--take a piece." "Patent leather straps." "Barcelona nuts. Slippers. _Morning Hurl (Herald)._ Rhubarb. 'Andsome dog-collar, sir, cheap!--do to fasten your wife up with!" "Stand clear, ye warmints!" cries the coachman, elbowing his way among them--and, remounting the box, he takes the whip and reins out of Mr. Jorrocks's hands, cries "All right behind? sit tight!" and off they go. The day was fine, and the hearts of all seemed light and gay. The coach, though slow, was clean and smart, the harness bright and well-polished, while the sleek brown horses poked their heads about at ease, without the torture of the bearing-rein. The coachman, like his vehicle, was heavy, and had he been set on all fours, a party of six might have eat off his back. Thus they proceeded at a good steady substantial sort of pace; trotting on level ground, walking up hills, and dragging down inclines. Nor among the whole party was there a murmur of discontent at the pace. Most of the passengers seemed careless which way they went, so long as they did but move, and they rolled through the Garden of England with the most stoical indifference. We know not whether it has ever struck the reader, but the travellers by Dover coaches are less captious about pace than those on most others. And now let us fancy our friends up, and down, Shooter's Hill, through Dartford, Northfleet, and Gravesend--at which latter place, the first foreign symptom appears, in words, "Poste aux Chevaux," on the door-post of the inn; and let us imagine them bowling down Rochester Hill at a somewhat amended pace, with the old castle, by the river Medway, the towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester full before them, and the finely wooded country extending round in pleasing variety of hill and dale. As they reach the foot of the hill, the guard commences a solo on his bugle, to give notice to the innkeeper to have the coach dinner on the table. All huddled together, inside and out, long passengers and short ones, they cut across the bridge, rattle along the narrow street, sparking the mud from the newly-watered streets on the shop windows and passengers on each side, and pull up at the "Pig and Crossbow," with a jerk and a dash as though they had been travelling at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Two other coaches are "dining," while some few passengers, whose "hour is not yet come," sit patiently on the roof, or pace up and down the street with short and hurried turns, anxious to see the horses brought out that are to forward them on their journey. And what a commotion this new arrival creates! From the arched doorway of the inn issue two chamber-maids, one in curls the other in a cap; Boots, with both curls and a cap, and a ladder in his hand; a knock-kneed waiter, with a dirty duster, to count noses, while the neat landlady, in a spruce black silk gown and clean white apron, stands smirking, smiling, and rubbing her hands down her sides, inveigling the passengers into the house, where she will turn them over to the waiters to take their chance the instant she gets them in. About the door the usual idlers are assembled.--A coachman out of place, a beggar out at the elbows, a sergeant in uniform, and three recruits with ribbons in their hats; a captain with his boots cut for corns, the coachman that is to drive to Dover, a youth in a straw hat and a rowing shirt, the little inquisitive old man of the place--who sees all the midday coaches change horses, speculates on the passengers and sees who the parcels are for--and, though last but not least, Mr. Bangup, the "varmint" man, the height of whose ambition is to be taken for a coachman. As the coach pulled up, he was in the bar taking a glass of cold sherry "without" and a cigar, which latter he brings out lighted in his mouth, with his shaved white hat stuck knowingly on one side, and the thumbs of his brown hands thrust into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, throwing back his single breasted fancy buttoned green coat, and showing a cream coloured cravat, fastened with a gold coach-and-four pin, which, with a buff waistcoat and tight drab trousers buttoning over the boot, complete his "toggery," as he would call it. His whiskers are large and riotous in the extreme, while his hair is clipped as close as a charity schoolboy's. The coachman and he are on the best of terms, as the outward twist of their elbows and jerks of the head on meeting testify. His conversation is short and slangy, accompanied with the correct nasal twang. After standing and blowing a few puffs, during which time the passengers have all alighted, and the coachman has got through the thick of his business, he takes the cigar out of his mouth, and, spitting on the flags, addresses his friend with, "Y've got the old near-side leader back from Joe, I see." "Yes, Mr. Bangup, yes," replies his friend, "but I had some work first--our gov'rnor was all for the change--at last, says I to our 'osskeeper, says I, it arn't no use your harnessing that 'ere roan for me any more, for as how I von't drive him, so it's not to no use harnessing of him, for I von't be gammon'd out of my team not by none on them, therefore it arn't to never no use harnessing of him again for me." "So you did 'em," observes Mr. Bangup. "Lord bless ye, yes! it warn't to no use aggravising about it, for says I, I von't stand it, so it warn't to no manner of use harnessing of him again for me." "Come, Smith, what are you chaffing there about?" inquires the landlord, coming out with the wide-spread way-bill in his hands, "have you two insides?" "No, gov'rnor, I has but von, and that's precious empty, haw! haw! haw!" "Well, but now get Brown to blow his horn early, and you help to hurry the passengers away from my grub, and may be I'll give you your dinner for your trouble," replies the landlord, reckoning he would save both his meat and his horses by the experiment. "Ay, there goes the dinner!" added he, just as Mr. Jorrocks's voice was heard inside the "Pig and Crossbow," giving a most tremendous roar for his food.--"Pork at the top, and pork at the bottom," the host observes to the waiter in passing, "and mind, put the joints before the women--they are slow carvers." While the foregoing scene was enacting outside, our travellers had been driven through the passage into a little, dark, dingy room at the back of the house, with a dirty, rain-bespattered window, looking against a whitewashed blank wall. The table, which was covered with a thrice-used cloth, was set out with lumps of bread, knives, and two and three pronged forks laid alternately. Altogether it was anything but inviting, but coach passengers are very complacent; and on the Dover road it matters little if they are not. The bustle of preparation was soon over. Coats No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3, are taken off in succession, for some people wear top-coats to keep out the "heat"; chins are released from their silken jeopardy, hats are hid in corners, and fur caps thrust into pockets of the owners. Inside passengers eye outside ones with suspicion, while a deaf gentleman, who has left his trumpet in the coach, meets an acquaintance whom he has not seen for seven years, and can only shake hands and grin to the movements of the lips of the speaker. "You find it very warm inside, I should think, sir?" "Thank ye, thank ye, my good friend; I'm rayther deaf, but I presume you're inquiring after my wife and daughters--they are very well, I thank ye." "Where will you sit at dinner?" rejoins the first speaker, in hopes of a more successful hit. "It is two years since I saw him." "No; where will you sit, sir? I said." "Oh, John? I beg your pardon--I'm rayther deaf--he's in Jamaica with his regiment." "Come, waiter, BRING DINNER!" roared Mr. Jorrocks, at the top of his voice, being the identical shout that was heard outside, and presently the two dishes of pork, a couple of ducks, and a lump of half-raw, sadly mangled, cold roast beef, with waxy potatoes and overgrown cabbages, were scattered along the table. "What a beastly dinner!" exclaims an inside dandy, in a sable-collared frock-coat--"the whole place reeks with onions and vulgarity. Waiter, bring me a silver fork!" "Allow me to duck you, ma'am?" inquires an outside passenger, in a facetious tone, of a female in a green silk cloak, as he turns the duck over in the dish. "Thank you, sir, but I've some pork coming." "Will you take some of this thingumbob?" turning a questionable-looking pig's countenance over in its pewter bed. "You are in considerable danger, my friend--you are in considerable danger," drawls forth the superfine insider to an outsider opposite. "How's that?" inquires the former in alarm. "Why, you are eating with your knife, and you are in considerable danger of cutting your mouth".--What is the matter at the far end of the table?--a lady in russet brown, with a black velvet bonnet and a feather, in convulsions. "She's choking by Jove! hit her on the back--gently, gently--she's swallowed a fish-bone." "I'll lay five to two she dies," cries Mr. Bolus, the sporting doctor of Sittingbourne. She coughs--up comes a couple of tooth-picks, she having drunk off a green glass of them in mistake. "Now hark'e, waiter! there's the guard blowing his horn, and we have scarcely had a bite apiece," cries Mr. Jorrocks, as that functionary sounded his instrument most energetically in the passage; "blow me tight, if I stir before the full half-hour's up, so he may blow till he's black in the face." "Take some cheese, sir?" inquires the waiter. "No, surely not, some more pork, and then some tarts". "Sorry, sir, we have no tarts we can recommend. Cheese is partiklar good." [Enter coachman, peeled down to a more moderate-sized man.] "Leaves ye here, if you please, sur." "With all my heart, my good friend." "Please to remember the coachman--driv ye thirty miles." "Yes, but you'll recollect how saucy you were about my wife's bonnet-box there's sixpence between us for you." "Oh, sur! I'm sure I didn't mean no unpurliteness. I 'opes you'll forget it; it was werry aggravising, certainly, but driv ye thirty miles. 'Opes you'll give a trifle more, thirty miles." "No, no, no more; so be off." "Please to remember the coachman, ma'am, thirty miles!" "Leaves ye here, sir, if you please; goes no further, sir; thirty miles, ma'am; all the vay from Lunnun, sir." A loud flourish on the bugle caused the remainder of the gathering to be made in dumb show, and having exhausted his wind, the guard squeezed through the door, and, with an extremely red face, assured the company that "time was hup" and the "coach quite ready." Then out came the purses, brown, green, and blue, with the usual inquiry, "What's dinner, waiter?" "Two and six, dinner, beer, three,--two and nine yours," replied the knock-kneed caitiff to the first inquirer, pushing a blue-and-white plate under his nose; "yours is three and six, ma'am;--two glasses of brandy-and-water, four shillings, if you please sir--a bottle of real Devonshire cider."--"You must change me a sovereign," handing one out. "Certainly, sir," upon which the waiter, giving it a loud ring upon the table, ran out of the room. "Now, gentlemen and ladies! pray, come, time's hup--carn't wait--must go"--roars the guard, as the passengers shuffle themselves into their coats, cloaks, and cravats, and Joe "Boots" runs up the passage with the ladder for the lady. "Now, my dear Mrs. Sprat, good-bye.--God bless you, and remember me most kindly to your husband and dear little ones --and pray, write soon," says an elderly lady, as she hugs and kisses a youngish one at the door, who has been staying with her for a week, during which time they have quarrelled regularly every night. "Have you all your things, dearest? three boxes, five parcels, an umbrella, a parasol, the cage for Tommy's canary, and the bundle in the red silk handkerchief--then good-bye, my beloved, step up--and now, Mr. Guard, you know where to set her down." "Good-bye, dearest Mrs. Jackson, all right, thank you," replies Mrs. Sprat, stepping up the ladder, and adjusting herself in the gammon board opposite the guard, the seat the last comer generally gets.--"But stay! I've forgot my reticule--it's on the drawers in the bedroom--stop, coachman! I say, guard!" "Carn't wait, ma'am--time's hup"--and just at this moment a two-horse coach is heard stealing up the street, upon which the coachman calls to the horse-keepers to "stand clear with their cloths, and take care no one pays them twice over," gives a whistling hiss to his leaders, the double thong to his wheelers, and starts off at a trot, muttering something about, "cuss'd pair-'oss coach,--convict-looking passengers," observing confidentially to Mr. Jorrocks, as he turned the angle of the street, "that he would rather be hung off a long stage, than die a natural death on a short one," while the guard drowns the voices of the lady who has left her reticule, and of the gentleman who has got no change for his sovereign, in a hearty puff of: Rule Britannia,--Britannia rule the waves. Britons, never, never, never, shall be slaves! Blithely and merrily, like all coach passengers after feeding, our party rolled steadily along, with occasional gibes at those they met or passed, such as telling waggoners their linch-pins were out; carters' mates, there were nice pocket-knives lying on the road; making urchins follow the coach for miles by holding up shillings and mock parcels; or simple equestrians dismount in a jiffy on telling them their horses' shoes were not all on "before." [19] Towards the decline of the day, Dover heights appeared in view, with the stately castle guarding the Channel, which seen through the clear atmosphere of an autumnal evening, with the French coast conspicuous in the distance, had more the appearance of a wide river than a branch of the sea. [Footnote 19: This is more of a hunting-field joke than a road one. "Have I all my shoes on?" "They are not all on before."] The coachman mended his pace a little, as he bowled along the gentle descents or rounded the base of some lofty hill, and pulling up at Lydden took a glass of soda-water and brandy, while four strapping greys, with highly-polished, richly-plated harness, and hollyhocks at their heads, were put to, to trot the last few miles into Dover. Paying-time being near, the guard began to do the amiable--hoped Mrs. Sprat had ridden comfortable; and the coachman turned to the gentleman whose sovereign was left behind to assure him he would bring his change the next day, and was much comforted by the assurance that he was on his way to Italy for the winter. As the coach approached Charlton Gate, the guard flourished his bugle and again struck up _Rule Britannia_, which lasted the whole breadth of the market-place, and length of Snargate Street, drawing from Mr. Muddle's shop the few loiterers who yet remained, and causing Mr. Le Plastrier, the patriotic moth-impaler, to suspend the examination of the bowels of a watch, as they rattled past his window. At the door of the "Ship Hotel" the canary-coloured coach of Mr. Wright, the landlord, with four piebald horses, was in waiting for him to take his evening drive, and Mrs. Wright's pony phaeton, with a neat tiger in a blue frock-coat and leathers, was also stationed behind to convey her a few miles on the London road. Of course the equipages of such important personages could not be expected to move for a common stage-coach, consequently it pulled up a few yards from the door. It is melancholy to think that so much spirit should have gone unrewarded, or in other words, that Mr. Wright should have gone wrong in his affairs.--Mrs. Ramsbottom said she never understood the meaning of the term, "The Crown, and Bill of Rights (Wright's)," until she went to Rochester. Many people, we doubt not, retain a lively recollection of the "bill of Wright's of Dover." But to our travellers. "Now, sir! this be Dover, that be the Ship, I be the coachman, and we goes no further," observed the amphibious-looking coachman, in a pea-jacket and top-boots, to Mr. Jorrocks, who still kept his seat on the box, as if he expected, that because they booked people "through to Paris," at the coach office in London, that the vehicle crossed the Channel and conveyed them on the other side. At this intimation, Mr. Jorrocks clambered down, and was speedily surrounded by touts and captains of vessels soliciting his custom. "_Bonjour,_ me Lor'," said a gaunt French sailor in ear-rings, and a blue-and-white jersey shirt, taking off a red nightcap with mock politeness, "you shall be cross." "What's that about?" inquires Mr. Jorrocks--"cross! what does the chap mean?" "Ten shillin', just, me Lor'," replied the man. "Cross for ten shillings," muttered Mr. Jorrocks, "vot does the Mouncheer mean? Hope he hasn't picked my pocket." "I--you--vill," said the sailor slowly, using his fingers to enforce his meaning, "take to France," pointing south, "for ten shillin' in my _bateau_, me Lor," continued the sailor, with a grin of satisfaction as he saw Mr. Jorrocks began to comprehend him. "Ah! I twig--you'll take me across the water." said our citizen chuckling at the idea of understanding French and being called a Lord--"for ten shillings--half-sovereign in fact." "Don't go with him, sir," interrupted a Dutch-built English tar; "he's got nothing but a lousy lugger that will be all to-morrow in getting over, if it ever gets at all; and the _Royal George_, superb steamer, sails with a King's Messenger and dispatches for all the foreign courts at half-past ten, and must be across by twelve, whether it can or not." "Please take a card for the _Brocklebank_--quickest steamer out of Dover--wind's made expressly to suit her, and she can beat the _Royal George_ like winking. Passengers never sick in the most uproarious weather," cried another tout, running the corner of his card into Mr. Jorrocks's eye to engage his attention. Then came the captain of the French mail-packet, who was dressed much like a new policeman, with an embroidered collar to his coat, and a broad red band round a forage cap which he raised with great politeness, as he entreated Mr. Jorrocks's patronage of his high-pressure engine, "vich had beat a balloon, and vod take him for half less than noting." A crowd collected, in the centre of which stood Mr. Jorrocks perfectly unmoved, with his wig awry and his carpet-bag under his arm. "Gentlemen," said he, extending his right hand, "you seem to me to be desperately civil--your purliteness appears to know no bounds--but, to be candid with you, I beg to say that whoever will carry me across the herring pond cheapest shall have my custom, so now begin and bid downwards." "Nine shillings," said an Englishman directly--"eight" replied a Frenchman--"seven and sixpence"--"seven shillings"--"six and sixpence"--"six shillings"--"five and sixpence"; at last it came down to five shillings, at which there were two bidders, the French captain and the tout of the _Royal George_,--and Mr. Jorrocks, like a true born Briton, promised his patronage to the latter, at which the Frenchmen shrugged up their shoulders, and burst out a-laughing, one calling him, "my Lor' Ros-bif," and the other "Monsieur God-dem," as they walked off in search of other victims. None but the natives of Dover can tell what the weather is, unless the wind comes directly off the sea, and it was not until Mr. Jorrocks proceeded to embark after breakfast the next morning, that he ascertained there was a heavy swell on, so quiet had the heights kept the gambols of Boreas. Three steamers were simmering into action on the London-hotel side of the harbour, in one of which--the _Royal George_--two britzkas and a barouche were lashed ready for sea, while the custom-house porters were trundling barrows full of luggage under the personal superintendence of a little shock-headed French commissionnaire of Mr. Wright's in a gold-laced cap, and the other gentry of the same profession from the different inns. As the _Royal George_ lay nearly level with the quay, Mr. Jorrocks stepped on board without troubling himself to risk his shins among the steps of a ladder that was considerately thrust into the place of embarkation; and as soon as he set foot upon deck, of course he was besieged by the usual myriad of land sharks. First came Monsieur the Commissionnaire with his book, out of which he enumerated two portmanteaus and two carpet-bags, for each of which he made a specific charge leaving his own gratuity optional with his employer; then came Mr. Boots to ask for something for showing them the way; after him the porter of the inn for carrying their cloaks and great-coats, all of which Mr. Jorrocks submitted to, most philosophically, but when the interpreter of the deaf and dumb ladder man demanded something for the use of the ladder, his indignation got the better of him and he exclaimed loud enough to be heard by all on deck, "Surely you wouldn't charge a man for what he has not enjoyed!" A voyage is to many people like taking an emetic--they look at the medicine and wish it well over, and look at the sea and wish themselves well over. Everything looked bright and gay at Dover--the cliffs seemed whiter than ever--the sailors had on clean trousers, and the few people that appeared in the streets were dressed in their Sunday best. The cart-horses were seen feeding leisurely on the hills, and there was a placid calmness about everything on shore, which the travellers would fain have had extended to the sea. They came slowly and solemnly upon deck, muffled up in cloaks and coats, some with their passage money in their hands, and took their places apparently with the full expectation of being sick. The French packet-boat first gave symptoms of animation, in the shape of a few vigorous puffs from the boiler, which were responded to by the _Royal George_, whose rope was slipped without the usual tinkle of the bell, and she shot out to sea, closely followed by the Frenchman, who was succeeded by the other English boat. Three or four tremendous long protracted dives, each followed by a majestic rise on the bosom of the waves, denoted the crossing of the bar; and just as the creaking of the cordage, the flapping of the sails, and the nervous quivering of the paddles, as they lost their hold of the water, were in full vigour, the mate crossed the deck with a large white basin in his hand, the sight of which turned the stomachs of half the passengers. Who shall describe the misery that ensued? The groans and moans of the sufferers, increasing every minute, as the vessel heaved and dived, and rolled and creaked, while hand-basins multiplied as half-sick passengers caught the green countenance and fixed eye of some prostrate sufferer and were overcome themselves. Mr. Jorrocks, what with his Margate trips, and a most substantial breakfast of beef-steaks and porter, tea, eggs, muffins, prawns, and fried ham, held out as long as anybody--indeed, at one time the odds were that he would not be sick at all; and he kept walking up and down deck like a true British tar. In one of his turns he was observed to make a full stop.--Immediately before the boiler his eye caught a cadaverous-looking countenance that rose between the top of a blue camlet cloak, and the bottom of a green travelling-cap, with a large patent-leather peak; he was certain that he knew it, and, somehow or other, he thought, not favourably. The passenger was in that happy mood just debating whether he should hold out against sickness any longer, or resign himself unreservedly to its horrors, when Mr. Jorrocks's eye encountered his, and the meeting did not appear to contribute to his happiness. Mr. Jorrocks paused and looked at him steadily for some seconds, during which time his thoughts made a rapid cast over his memory. "Sergeant Bumptious, by gum!" exclaimed he, giving his thigh a hearty slap, as the deeply indented pock-marks on the learned gentleman's face betrayed his identity. "Sergeant," said he, going up to him, "I'm werry 'appy to see ye--may be in the course of your practice at Croydon you've heard that there are more times than one to catch a thief." "Who are you?" inquired the sergeant with a growl, just at which moment the boat gave a roll, and he wound up the inquiry by a donation to the fishes. "Who am I?" replied Mr. Jorrocks, as soon as he was done, "I'll soon tell ye that--I'm Mr. JORROCKS! Jorrocks wersus Cheatum, in fact--now that you have got your bullying toggery off, I'll be 'appy to fight ye either by land or sea." "Oh-h-h-h!" groaned the sergeant at the mention of the latter word, and thereupon he put his head over the boat and paid his second subscription. Mr. Jorrocks stood eyeing him, and when the sergeant recovered, he observed with apparent mildness and compassion, "Now, my dear sergeant, to show ye that I can return good for evil, allow me to fatch you a nice 'ot mutton chop!" "Oh-h-h-h-h!" groaned the sergeant, as though he would die. "Or perhaps you'd prefer a cut of boiled beef with yellow fat, and a dab of cabbage?" an alternative which was too powerful for the worthy citizen himself--for, like Sterne with his captive, he had drawn a picture that his own imagination could not sustain--and, in attempting to reach the side of the boat, he cascaded over the sergeant, and they rolled over each other, senseless and helpless upon deck. "Mew, mew," screamed the seagulls;--"creak, creak," went the cordage;--"flop, flop," went the sails; round went the white basins, and the steward with the mop; and few passengers would have cared to have gone overboard, when, at the end of three hours' misery, the captain proclaimed that they were running into still water off Boulogne. This intimation was followed by the collection of the passage money by the mate, and the jingling of a tin box by the steward, under the noses of the party, for perquisites for the crew. Jorrocks and the sergeant lay together like babes in the wood until they were roused by this operation, when, with a parting growl at his companion, Mr. Jorrocks got up; and though he had an idea in his own mind that a man had better live abroad all his life than encounter such misery as he had undergone, for the purpose of returning to England, he recollected his intended work upon France, and began to make his observations upon the town of Boulogne, towards which the vessel was rapidly steaming. "Not half so fine as Margate," said he; "the houses seem all afraid of the sea, and turn their ends to it instead of fronting it, except yon great white place, which I suppose is the baths"; and, taking his hunting telescope out of his pocket, he stuck out his legs and prepared to make an observation. "How the people are swarming down to see us!" he exclaimed. "I see such a load of petticoats--glad Mrs. J---- ain't with us; may have some fun here, I guess. Dear me, wot lovely women! wot ankles! beat the English, hollow--would give something to be a single man!" While he made these remarks, the boat ran up the harbour in good style, to the evident gratification of the multitude who lined the pier from end to end, and followed her in her passage. "Ease her! stop her!" at last cried the captain, as she got opposite a low wooden guard-house, midway down the port. A few strokes of the paddles sent her up to the quay, some ropes were run from each end of the guard-house down to the boat, within which space no one was admitted except about a dozen soldiers or custom-house officers--in green coats, white trousers, black sugar-loaf "caps," and having swords by their sides--and some thick-legged fisherwomen, with long gold ear-rings, to lower the ladder for disembarkation. The idlers, that is to say, all the inhabitants of Boulogne, range themselves outside the ropes on foot, horseback, in carriages, or anyhow, to take the chance of seeing someone they know, to laugh at the melancholy looks of those who have been sick, and to criticise the company, who are turned into the guarded space like a flock of sheep before them. Mr. Jorrocks, having scaled the ladder, gave himself a hearty and congratulatory shake on again finding himself on terra firma, and sticking his hat jauntily on one side, as though he didn't know what sea-sickness was, proceeded to run his eye along the spectators on one side of the ropes; when presently he was heard to exclaim, "My vig, there's Thompson! He owes us a hundred pounds, and has been doing these three years." And thereupon he bolted up to a fine looking young fellow--with mustachios, in a hussar foraging cap stuck on one side of his head, dressed in a black velvet shooting-jacket, and with half a jeweller's shop about him in the way of chains, brooches, rings and buttons--who had brought a good-looking bay horse to bear with his chest against the cords. "Thompson," said Mr. Jorrocks, in a firm tone of voice, "how are you?" "How do ye do, Mister Jorrocks," drawled out the latter, taking a cigar from his mouth, and puffing a cloud of smoke over the grocer's head. "Well, I'm werry well, but I should like to have a few moments' conversation with you." "Would ye?" said Thompson, blowing another cloud. "Yes, I would; you remember that 'ere little bill you got Simpkins to discount for you one day when I was absent; we have had it by us a long time now, and it is about time you were taking it up." "You think so, do you, Mister Jorrocks; can't you renew it? I'll give you a draft on Aldgate pump for the amount." "Come, none of your funning with me, I've had enough of your nonsense: give me my pewter, or I'll have that horse from under you; for though it has got the hair rubbed off its near knee, it will do werry well to carry me with the Surrey occasionally." "You old fool," said Thompson, "you forget where you are; if I could pay you your little bill, do you suppose I would be here? You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip, can ye? But I'll tell you what, my covey, if I can't give you satisfaction in money, you shall give me the satisfaction of a gentleman, if you don't take care what you are about, you old tinker. By Jove, I'll order pistols and coffee for two to-morrow morning at Napoleon's column, and let the daylight through your carcass if you utter another syllable about the bill. Why, now, you stare as Balaam did at his ass, when he found it capable of holding an argument with him!" And true enough, Jorrocks was dumbfounded at this sort of reply from a creditor, it not being at all in accordance with the _Lex mercatoria_, or law of merchants, and quite unknown on 'Change. Before, however, he had time to recover his surprise, all the passengers having entered the roped area, one of the green-coated gentry gave him a polite twist by the coat-tail, and with a wave of the hand and bend of his body, beckoned him to proceed with the crowd into the guard-house. After passing an outer room, they entered the bureau by a door in the middle of a wooden partition, where two men were sitting with pens ready to enter the names of the arrivers in ledgers. "Votre nom et designation?" said one of them to Mr. Jorrocks--who, with a bad start, had managed to squeeze in first--to which Mr. Jorrocks shook his head. "Sare, what's your name, sare?" inquired the same personage. "JORROCKS," was the answer, delivered with great emphasis, and thereupon the secretary wrote "Shorrock." "--Monsieur Shorrock," said he, looking up, "votre profession, Monsieur? Vot you are, sare?" "A grocer," replied Mr. Jorrocks, which caused a titter from those behind who meant to sink the shop. "Marchand-Epicier," wrote the bureau-keeper. "Quel age avez-vous, Monsieur? How old you are, sare?" "Two pound twelve," replied Mr. Jorrocks, surprised at his inquisitiveness. "No, sare, not vot monnay you have, sare, hot old you are, sare." "Well, two pound twelve, fifty-two in fact." Mr. Jorrocks was then passed out, to take his chance among the touts and commissionaires of the various hotels, who are enough to pull passengers to pieces in their solicitations for custom. In Boulogne, however, no man with money is ever short of friends; and Thompson having given the hint to two or three acquaintances as he rode up street, there were no end of broken-down sportsmen, levanters, and gentlemen who live on the interest of what they owe other people, waiting to receive Mr. Jorrocks. The greetings on their parts were most cordial and enthusiastic, and even some who were in his books did not hesitate to hail him; the majority of the party, however, was composed of those with whom he had at various tunes and places enjoyed the sports of the field, but whom he had never missed until they met at Boulogne. Their inquiries were business-like and familiar:--"are ye, Jorrocks?" cried one, holding out both hands. "How are ye, my lad of wax? Do you still play billiards?--Give you nine, and play you for a Nap." "Come to my house this evening, old boy, and take a hand at whist for old acquaintance sake," urged the friend on his left; "got some rare cogniac, and a box of beautiful Havannahs." "No, Jorrocks,--dine with me," said a third, "and play chicken-hazard." "Don't," said a fourth, confidentially, "he'll fleece ye like fun". "Let me put your name down to our Pigeon Club; only a guinea entrance and a guinea subscription--nothing to a rich man like you." "Have you any coin to lend on unexceptionable personal security, with a power of killing and selling your man if he don't pay?" inquired another. "Are they going to abolish the law of arrest? 'twould be very convenient if they did." "Will you discount me a bill at three months?" "Is B---- out of the Bench yet?" "Who do they call Nodding Homer in your hunt?" "Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen!" cried Mr. Jorrocks, "go it gently, go it gently! Consider the day is 'ot, I'm almost out of breath, and faint for want of food. I've come all the way from Angle-tear, as we say in France, and lost my breakfast on the wogaye. Where is there an inn where I can recruit my famished frame? What's this?" looking up at a sign, "'Done a boar in a manger,' what does this mean?--where's my French dictionary? I've heard that boar is very good to eat." "Yes, but this boar is to drink," said a friend on the right; "but you must not put up at a house of that sort; come to the Hôtel d'Orleans, where all the best fellows and men of consequence go, a celebrated house in the days of the Boulogne Hunt. Ah, that was the time, Mr. Jorrocks! we lived like fighting-cocks then; you should have been among us, such a rollicking set of dogs! could hunt all day, race maggots and drink claret all night, and take an occasional by-day with the hounds on a Sunday. Can't do that with the Surrey, I guess. There's the Hôtel d'Orleans," pointing to it as they turned the corner of the street; "splendid house it is. I've no interest in taking you there, don't suppose so; but the sun of its greatness is fast setting--there's no such shaking of elbows as there used to be--the IOU system knocked that up. Still, you'll be very comfortable; a bit of carpet by your bedside, curtains to your windows, a pie-dish to wash in, a clean towel every third day, and as many friends to dine with you as ever you like--no want of company in Boulogne, I assure you. Here, Mr. W----," addressing the innkeeper who appeared at the door, "this is the very celebrated Mr. Jorrocks, of whom we have all heard so much,--take him and use him as you would your own son; and, hark ye (aside), don't forget I brought him." "Garsoon," said Jorrocks, after having composed himself a little during which time he was also composing a French speech from his dictionary and Madame de Genlis's[20] _Manuel du Voyageur_, "A che hora [ora] si pranza?" looking at the waiter, who seemed astonished. "Oh, stop!" said he, looking again, "that's Italian--I've got hold of the wrong column. A quelle heure dine--hang me if I know how to call this chap--dine [spelling it], t'on?" "What were you wishing to say, sir?" inquired the waiter, interrupting his display of the language. "Wot, do you speak English?" asked Jorrocks in amazement. "I hope so, sir," replied the man, "for I'm an Englishman." "Then, why the devil did you not say so, you great lout, instead of putting me into a sweat this 'ot day by speaking French to you?" "Beg pardon, sir, thought you were a Frenchman." "Did you, indeed?" said Jorrocks, delighted; "then, by Jove, I do speak French! Somehow or other I thought I could, as I came over. Bring me a thundering beef-steak, and a pint of stout, directly!" The Hôtel d'Orleans being a regular roast-beef and plum-pudding sort of house, Mr. Jorrocks speedily had an immense stripe of tough beef and boiled potatoes placed before him, in the well-windowed _salle à manger_, and the day being fine he regaled himself at a table at an open window, whereby he saw the smart passers-by, and let them view him in return. [Footnote 20: For the benefit of our "tarry-at-home" readers, we should premise that Madame de Genlis's work is arranged for the convenience of travellers who do not speak any language but their own; and it consists of dialogues on different necessary subjects, with French and Italian translations opposite the English.] Sunday is a gay day in France, and Boulogne equals the best town in smartness. The shops are better set out, the women are better dressed, and there is a holiday brightness and air of pleasure on every countenance. Then instead of seeing a sulky husband trudging behind a pouting wife with a child in her arms, an infallible sign of a Sunday evening in England, they trip away to the rural _fête champêtre_, where with dancing, lemonade, and love, they pass away the night in temperate if not innocent hilarity. "Happy people! that once a week, at least, lay down their cares, and dance and sing, and sport away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth." The voyage, though short, commenced a new era in Mr. Jorrocks's life, and he entirely forget all about Sunday and Dover dullness the moment he set foot on sprightly France, and he no more recollected it was Sunday, than if such a day had ceased to exist in the calendar. Having bolted his steak, he gave his Hessians their usual flop with his handkerchief, combed his whiskers, pulled his wig straight, and sallied forth, dictionary in hand, to translate the signs, admire the clever little children talking French, quiz the horses, and laugh at everything he didn't understand; to spend his first afternoon, in short, as nine-tenths of the English who go "abroad" are in the habit of doing. Early the next morning. Mr. Jorrocks and the Yorkshireman, accompanied by the commissionnaire of the Hôtel d'Orleans, repaired to the upper town, for the purpose of obtaining passports, and as they ascended the steep street called La grand Rue, which connects the two towns, they held a consultation as to what the former should be described. A "Marchand-Epicier" would obtain Mr. Jorrocks no respect, but, then, he objected to the word "Rentier." "What is the French for fox-'unter?" said he, after a thoughtful pause, turning to his dictionary. There was no such word. "Sportsman, then? Ay, Chasseur! how would that read? John Jorrocks, Esq., Chasseur,--not bad, I think," said he. "That will do," replied the Yorkshireman, "but you must sink the Esquire now, and tack 'Monsieur' before your name, and a very pretty euphonious sound 'Monsieur Jorrocks' will have; and when you hear some of the little Parisian grisettes lisp it out as you turn the garters over on their counters, while they turn their dark flashing eyes over upon you, it will be enough to rejuvenate your old frame. But suppose we add to 'Chasseur'--'Member of the Surrey Hunt?'" "By all means," replied Mr. Jorrocks, delighted at the idea, and ascending the stairs of the Consulate three steps at a time. The Consul, Mons. De Horter, was in attendance sitting in state, with a gendarme at the door and his secretary at his elbow. "_Bonjour,_ Monsieur," said he, bowing, as Mr. Jorrocks passed through the lofty folding door; to which our traveller replied, "The top of the morning to you, sir," thinking something of that sort would be right. The Consul, having scanned him through his green spectacles, drew a large sheet of thin printed paper from his portfolio, with the arms of France placed under a great petticoat at the top, and proceeded to fill up a request from his most Christian Majesty to all the authorities, both civil and military, of France, and also of all the allied "pays," "de laisser librement passer" Monsieur John Jorrocks, Chasseur and member of the Hont de Surrey, and plusieurs other Honts; and also, Monsieur Stubbs, native of Angleterre, going from Boulogne to Paris, and to give them aid and protection, "en cas de besoin," all of which Mr. Jorrocks --like many travellers before him--construed into a most flattering compliment and mark of respect, from his most Christian Majesty to himself. Under the word "signalement" in the margin, the Consul also drew the following sketch of our hero, in order, as Mr. Jorrocks supposed, that the King of the Mouncheers might know him when he saw him: "Age de 52 ans Taille d'un mètre 62 centimetres Perruque brun Front large Yeux gris-sanguin Nez moyen Barbe grisâtre Vizage ronde Teint rouge." He then handed it over to Mr. Jorrocks for his signature, who, observing the words "Signature du Porteur" at the bottom, passed it on to the porter of the inn, until put right by the Consul, who, on receiving his fee, bowed him out with great politeness. Great as had been the grocer's astonishment at the horses and carts that he had seen stirring about the streets, his amazement knew no bounds when the first Paris diligence came rolling into town with six horses, spreading over the streets as they swung about in all directions--covered with bells, sheep-skins, worsted balls, and foxes' brushes, driven by one solitary postilion on the off wheeler. "My vig," cried he, "here's Wombwell's wild-beast show! What the deuce are they doing in France? I've not heard of them since last Bartlemy-fair, when I took my brother Joe's children to see them feed. But stop--this is full of men! My eyes, so it is! It's what young Dutch Sam would call a male coach, because there are no females about it. Well, I declare, I am almost sorry I did not bring Mrs. J----. Wot would they think to see such a concern in Cheapside? Why, it holds half a township--a perfect willage on wheels. My eyes, wot a curiosity! Well, I never thought to live to see such a sight as this!--wish it was going our way that I might have a ride in it. Hope ours will be as big." Shortly after theirs did arrive, and Mr. Jorrocks was like a perfect child with delight. It was not a male coach, however, for in the different compartments were five or six ladies. "Oh, wot elegant creatures," cried he, eyeing them; "I could ride to Jerusalem with them without being tired; wot a thing it is to be a bachelor!" The Conducteur--with the usual frogged, tagged, embroidered jacket, and fur-bound cap--having hoisted their luggage on high, the passengers who had turned out of their respective compartments to stretch their legs after their cramping from Calais, proceeded to resume their places. There were only two seats vacant in the interior, or, as Mr. Jorrocks called it, the "middle house," consequently the Yorkshireman and he crossed legs. The other four passengers had corner-seats, things much coveted by French travellers. On Mr. Stubbs's right sat an immense Englishman, enveloped in a dark blue camlet cloak, fastened with bronze lionhead clasps, a red neckcloth, and a shabby, napless, broad-brimmed, brown hat. His face was large, round, and red, without an atom of expression, and his little pig eyes twinkled over a sort of a mark that denoted where his nose should have been; in short, his head was more like a barber's wig block than anything else, and his outline would have formed a model of the dome of St. Paul's. On the Yorkshireman's left was a chattering young red-trousered dragoon, in a frock-coat and flat foraging cap with a flying tassel. Mr. Jorrocks was more fortunate than his friend, and rubbed sides with two women; one was English, either an upper nursery-maid or an under governess, but who might be safely trusted to travel by herself. She was dressed in a black beaver bonnet lined with scarlet silk, a nankeen pelisse with a blue ribbon, and pea-green boots, and she carried a sort of small fish-basket on her knee, with a "plain Christian's prayer book" on the top. The other was French, approaching to middle age, with a nice smart plump figure, good hazel-coloured eyes, a beautiful foot and ankle, and very well dressed. Indeed, her dress very materially reduced the appearance of her age, and she was what the milliners would call remarkably well "got up." Her bonnet was a pink satin, with a white blonde ruche surmounted by a rich blonde veil, with a white rose placed elegantly on one side, and her glossy auburn hair pressed down the sides of a milk-white forehead, in the Madonna style.--Her pelisse was of "violet-des-bois" figured silk, worn with a black velvet pelerine and a handsomely embroidered collar. Her boots were of a colour to match the pelisse; and a massive gold chain round her neck, and a solitary pearl ring on a middle finger, were all the jewellery she displayed. Mr. Jorrocks caught a glimpse of her foot and ankle as she mounted the steps to resume her place in the diligence, and pushing the Yorkshireman aside, he bundled in directly after her, and took up the place we have described. The vehicle was soon in motion, and its ponderous roll enchanted the heart of the grocer. Independently of the novelty, he was in a humour to be pleased, and everything with him was _couleur de rose_. Not so the Yorkshireman's right-hand neighbour, who lounged in the corner, muffled up in his cloak, muttering and cursing at every jolt of the diligence, as it bumped across the gutters and jolted along the streets of Boulogne. At length having got off the pavement, after crushing along at a trot through the soft road that immediately succeeds, they reached the little hill near Mr. Gooseman's farm, and the horses gradually relaxed into a walk, when he burst forth with a tremendous oath, swearing that he had "travelled three hundred thousand miles, and never saw horses walk up such a bit of a bank before." He looked round the diligence in the expectation of someone joining him, but no one deigned a reply, so, with a growl and a jerk of his shoulders, he again threw himself into his corner. The dragoon and the French lady then began narrating the histories of their lives, as the French people always do, and Mr. Jorrocks and the Yorkshireman sat looking at each other. At length Mr. Jorrocks, pulling his dictionary and _Madame de Genlis_ out of his pocket, observed, "I quite forgot to ask the guard at what time we dine--most important consideration, for I hold it unfair to takes one's stomach by surprise, and a man should have due notice, that he may tune his appetite accordingly. I have always thought, that there's as much dexterity required to bring an appetite to table in the full bloom of perfection, as there is in training an 'oss to run on a particular day.--Let me see," added he, turning over the pages of _de Genlis_--"it will be under the head of eating and drinking, I suppose.--Here it is--(opens and reads)--'I have a good appetite--I am hungry--I am werry hungry--I am almost starved'--that won't do--'I have eaten enough'--that won't do either--'To breakfast'--no.--But here it is, by Jingo--'Dialogue before dinner'--capital book for us travellers, this Mrs. de Genlis--(reads) 'Pray, take dinner with us to-day, I shall give you plain fare.'--That means rough and enough, I suppose," observed Mr. Jorrocks to the Yorkshireman.--"'What time do we dine to-day? French: A quelle heure dinons-nous aujourd'hui?--Italian: A che hora (ora) si prancey (pranza) oggi?'" "Ah, Monsieur, vous parlez Français à merveille," said the French lady, smiling with the greatest good nature upon him. "A marble!" said Mr. Jorrocks, "wot does that mean?" preparing to look it out in the dictionary. "Ah, Monsieur, I shall you explain--you speak French like a natif." "Indeed!" said Mr. Jorrocks, with a bow, "I feel werry proud of your praise; and your English is quite delightful.--By Jove," said he to the Yorkshireman, with a most self-satisfied grin, "you were right in what you told me about the gals calling me Monsieur.--I declare she's driven right home to my 'art--transfixed me at once, in fact." Everyone who has done a little "voyaging," as they call it in France, knows that a few miles to the south of Samer rises a very steep hill, across which the route lies, and that diligence travellers are generally invited to walk up it. A path which strikes off near the foot of the hill, across the open, cuts off the angle, and--diligences being anything but what the name would imply,--the passengers, by availing themselves of the short cut, have ample time for striking up confabs, and inquiring into the comforts of the occupiers of the various compartments. Our friends of the "interior" were all busy jabbering and talking--some with their tongues, others with their hands and tongues--with the exception of the monster in the cloak, who sat like a sack in the corner, until the horses, having reached the well-known breathing place, made a dead halt, and the conducteur proceeded to invite the party to descend and "promenade" up the hill. "What's happened now?" cried the monster, jumping up as the door opened; "surely, they don't expect us to walk up this mountain! I've travelled three hundred thousand miles, and was never asked to do such a thing in all my life before. I won't do it; I paid for riding, and ride I will. You are all a set of infamous cheats," said he to the conducteur in good plain English; but the conducteur, not understanding the language, shut the door as soon as all the rest were out, and let him roll on by himself. Jorrocks stuck to his woman, who had a negro boy in the rotonde, dressed in baggy slate-coloured trousers, with a green waistcoat and a blue coat, with a coronet on the button, who came to hand her out, and was addressed by the heroic name of "Agamemnon." Jorrocks got a glimpse of the button, but, not understanding foreign coronets, thought it was a crest; nevertheless, he thought he might as well inquire who his friend was, so, slinking back as they reached the foot of the hill he got hold of the nigger, and asked what they called his missis. Massa did not understand, and Mr. Jorrocks, sorely puzzled how to explain, again had recourse to the _Manuel du Voyageur_; but Madame de Genlis had not anticipated such an occurrence, and there was no dialogue adapted to his situation. There was a conversation with a lacquey, however, commencing with--"Are you disposed to enter into my service?" and, in the hopes of hitting upon something that would convey his wishes, he "hark'd forward," and passing by--"Are you married?" arrived at--"What is your wife's occupation?" "Que fait votre femme?" said he, suiting the action to the word, and pointing to Madame. Agamemnon showed his ivories, as he laughed at the idea of Jorrocks calling his mistress his wife, and by signs and words conveyed to him some idea of the importance of the personage to whom he alluded. This he did most completely, for before the diligence came up, Jorrocks pulled the Yorkshireman aside, and asked if he was aware that they were travelling with a real live Countess; "Madame la Countess Benwolio, the nigger informs me," said he; "a werry grande femme, though what that means I don't know." "Oh, Countesses are common enough here," replied the Yorkshireman. "I dare say she's a stay-maker. I remember a paint-maker who had a German Baron for a colour-grinder once." "Oh," said Jorrocks, "you are jealous--you always try to run down my friends; but that won't do, I'm wide awake to your tricks"; so saying, he shuffled off, and getting hold of the Countess, helped Agamemnon to hoist her into the diligence. He was most insinuating for the next two hours, and jabbered about love and fox-hunting, admiring the fine, flat, open country, and the absence of hedges and flints; but as neither youth nor age can subsist on love alone, his confounded appetite began to trouble him, and got quite the better of him before they reached Abbeville. Every mile seemed a league, and he had his head out of the window at least twenty times before they came in sight of the town. At length the diligence got its slow length dragged not only to Abbeville, but to the sign of the "Fidèle Berger"--or "Fiddle Burgur," as Mr. Jorrocks pronounced it--where they were to dine. The door being opened, out he jumped, and with his _Manuel du Voyageur_ in one hand, and the Countess Benvolio in the other, he pushed his way through the crowd of "pauvres misérables" congregated under the gateway, who exhibited every species of disease and infirmity that poor human nature is liable or heir to, and entered the hotel. The "Sally manger," as he called it, was a long brick-floored room on the basement, with a white stove at one end, and the walls plentifully decorated with a panoramic view of the Grand Nation wallopping the Spaniards at the siege of Saragossa. The diligence being a leetle behind time as usual, the soup was on the table when they entered. The passengers quickly ranged themselves round, and, with his mouth watering as the female garçon lifted the cover from the tureen, Mr. Jorrocks sat in the expectation of seeing the rich contents ladled into the plates. His countenance fell fifty per cent as the first spoonful passed before his eyes.--"My vig, why it's water!" exclaimed he--"water, I do declare, with worms[21] in it--I can't eat such stuff as that--it's not man's meat--oh dear, oh dear, I fear I've made a terrible mistake in coming to France! Never saw such stuff as this at Bleaden's or Birch's, or anywhere in the city." "I've travelled three hundred thousand miles," said the fat man, sending his plate from him in disgust, "and never tasted such a mess as this before." "I'll show them up in _The Times_," cried Mr. Jorrocks; "and, look, what stuff is here--beef boiled to rags!--well, I never, no never, saw anything like this before. Oh, I wish I was in Great Coram Street again!--I'm sure I can't live here--I wonder if I could get a return chaise--waiter--garsoon--cuss! Oh dear! I see _Madame de Genlis_ is of no use in a pinch--and yet what a dialogue here is! Oh heavens! grant your poor Jorrocks but one request, and that is the contents of a single sentence. 'I want a roasted or boiled leg of mutton, beef, hung beef, a quarter of mutton, mutton chops, veal cutlets, stuffed tongue, dried tongue, hog's pudding, white sausage, meat sausage, chicken with rice, a nice fat roast fowl, roast chicken with cressy, roast or boiled pigeon, a fricassee of chicken, sweet-bread, goose, lamb, calf's cheek, calf's head, fresh pork, salt pork, cold meat, hash.'--But where's the use of titivating one's appetite with reading of such luxteries? Oh, what a wife Madame de Genlis would have made for me! Oh dear, oh dear, I shall die of hunger, I see --I shall die of absolute famine--my stomach thinks my throat's cut already!" In the height of his distress in came two turkeys and a couple of fowls, and his countenance shone forth like an April sun after a shower. "Come, this is better," said he; "I'll trouble you, sir, for a leg and a wing, and a bit of the breast, for I'm really famished--oh hang! the fellow's a Frenchman, and I shall lose half the day in looking it out in my dictionary. Oh dear, oh dear, where's the dinner dialogue!--well, here's something to that purpose. 'I will send you a bit of this fowl.' 'A little bit of the fowl cannot hurt you.'--No, nor a great bit either.--'Which do you like best, leg or wing?' 'Qu'aimez-vous le mieux, la cuisse ou l'aile?'" Here the Countess Benvolio, who had been playing a good knife and fork herself, pricked up her ears, and guessing at Jorrocks's wants, interceded with her countryman and got him a plateful of fowl. It was soon disposed of, however, and half a dish of hashed hare or cat, that was placed within reach of him shortly after, was quickly transferred into his plate. A French dinner is admirably calculated for leading the appetite on by easy stages to the grand consummation of satiety. It begins meagrely, as we have shown, and proceeds gradually through the various gradations of lights, savories, solids, and substantiate. Presently there was a large dish of stewed eels put on. "What's that?" asked Jorrocks of the man.--"Poisson," was the reply. "Poison! why, you infidel, have you no conscience?" "Fishe," said the Countess. "Oh, ay, I smell--eels--just like what we have at the Eel-pie-house at Twickenham--your ladyship, I am thirsty--'ge soif,' in fact." "Ah, bon!" said the Countess, laughing, and giving him a tumbler of claret. "I've travelled three hundred thousand miles," said the fat man, "and never saw claret drunk in that way before." "It's not werry good, I think," said Mr. Jorrocks, smacking his lips; "if it was not claret I would sooner drink port." Some wild ducks and fricandeau de veau which followed, were cut up and handed round, Jorrocks helping himself plentifully to both, as also to pommes de terre à la maitre d'hôtel, and bread at discretion. "Faith, but this is not a bad dinner, after all's said and done, when one gets fairly into it." "Fear it will be very expensive," observed the fat man. Just when Jorrocks began to think he had satisfied nature, in came a roast leg of mutton, a beef-steak, "à la G--d-dam", [22] and a dish of larks and snipes. [Footnote 21: Macaroni soup.] [Footnote 22: When the giraffe mania prevailed in Paris, and gloves, handkerchiefs, gowns, reticules, etc. were "à la Giraffe," an Englishman asked a waiter if they had any beef-steaks "à la Giraffe." "No, monsieur, but we have them à la G--d-dem," was the answer.] "Must have another tumbler of wine before I can grapple with these chaps," said he, eyeing them, and looking into Madame de Genlis's book: "'Garsoon, donnez-moi un verre de vin,'" holding up the book and pointing to the sentence. He again set to and "went a good one" at both mutton and snipes, but on pulling up he appeared somewhat exhausted. He had not got through it all yet, however. Just as he was taking breath, a _garçon_ entered with some custards and an enormous omelette soufflée, whose puffy brown sides bagged over the tin dish that contained it. "There's a tart!" cried Mr. Jorrocks; "Oh, my eyes, what a swell!--Well, I suppose I must have a shy at it.--'In for a penny in for a pound!' as we say at the Lord Mayor's feed. Know I shall be sick, but, however, here goes," sending his plate across the table to the _garçon_, who was going to help it. The first dive of the spoon undeceived him as he heard it sound at the bottom of the dish. "Oh lauk, what a go! All puff, by Jove!--a regular humbug--a balloon pudding, in short! I won't eat such stuff--give it to Mouncheer there," rejecting the offer of a piece. "I like the solids;--will trouble you for some of that cheese, sir, and don't let it taste of the knive. But what do they mean by setting the dessert on before the cloth is removed? And here comes tea and coffee--may as well have some, I suppose it will be all the same price. And what's this?" eyeing a lot of liqueur glasses full of eau de vie. "Chasse-café, Monsieur," said the _garçon_. "Chasse calf--chasse calf--what's that? Oh, I twig--what we call 'shove in the mouth' at the Free-and-Easy. Yes, certainly, give me a glass." "You shall take some dessert," said the Countess, handing him over some peaches and biscuits. "Well, I'll try my hand at it, if it will oblege your ladyship, but I really have had almost enough." "And some abricot," said she, helping him to a couple of fine juicy ones. "Oh, thank you, my lady, thank you, my lady, I'm nearly satisfied." "Vous ne mangez pas," said she, giving him half a plate of grapes. "Oh, my lady, you don't understand me--I can't eat any more--I am regularly high and dry--chock full--bursting, in fact." Here she handed him a plate of sponge-cakes mixed with bon-bons and macaroons, saying, "Vous êtes un pauvre mangeur--vous ne mangez rien, Monsieur." "Oh dear, she does not understand me, I see.--Indeed, my lady, I cannot eat any more.--Ge woudera, se ge could-era, mais ge can-ne-ra pas!" "Well, now, I've travelled three hundred thousand miles, and never heard such a bit of French as that before," said the fat man, chuckling. IX. MR. JORROCKS IN PARIS As the grey morning mist gradually dispersed, and daylight began to penetrate the cloud that dimmed the four squares of glass composing the windows of the diligence, the Yorkshireman, half-asleep and half-awake, took a mental survey of his fellow-travellers.--Before him sat his worthy friend, snoring away with his mouth open, and his head, which kept bobbing over on to the shoulder of the Countess, enveloped in the ample folds of a white cotton nightcap.--She, too, was asleep and, disarmed of all her daylight arts, dozed away in tranquil security. Her mouth also was open, exhibiting rather a moderate set of teeth, and her Madonna front having got a-twist, exposed a mixture of brown and iron-grey hairs at the parting place. Her bonnet swung from the roof of the diligence, and its place was supplied by a handsome lace cap, fastened under her chin by a broad-hemmed cambric handkerchief. Presently the sun rose, and a bright ray shooting into the Countess's corner, awoke her with a start, and after a hurried glance at the passengers, who appeared to be all asleep, she drew a small ivory-cased looking-glass from her bag, and proceeded to examine her features. Mr. Jorrocks awoke shortly after, and with an awful groan exclaimed that his backbone was fairly worn out with sitting. "Oh dear!" said he, "my behind aches as if I had been kicked all the way from Hockleyhole to Marylebone. Are we near Paris? for I'm sure I can't find seat any longer, indeed I can't. I'd rather ride two hundred miles in nine hours, like H'osbaldeston, than be shut up in this woiture another hour. It really is past bearing, and that's the long and short of the matter." This exclamation roused all the party, who began yawning and rubbing their eyes and looking at their watches. The windows also were lowered to take in fresh air, and on looking out they found themselves rolling along a sandy road, lined on each side with apple-trees, whose branches were "groaning" with fruit. They breakfasted at Beaumont, and had a regular spread of fish, beef-steak, mutton-chops, a large joint of hot roast veal, roast chickens, several yards of sour bread, grapes, peaches, pears, and plums, with vin ordinaire, and coffee au lait; but Mr. Jorrocks was off his feed, and stood all the time to ease his haunches. Towards three in the afternoon they caught the first glimpse of the gilded dome of the Hospital of Invalids, which was a signal for all the party to brush up and make themselves agreeable. Even the three-hundred-thousand miler opened out, and began telling some wonderful anecdotes, while the Countess and Mr. Jorrocks carried on a fierce flirtation, or whatever else they pleased to call it. At last, after a deal of jargon, he broke off by appealing to the Yorkshireman to know what "inn" they should "put up at" in Paris. "I don't know, I'm sure," said he; "it depends a good deal upon how you mean to live. As you pay my shot it does not do for beggars to be choosers; but suppose we try Meurice's" "Oh no," replied Mr. Jorrocks, "her ladyship tells me it is werry expensive, for the English always pay through the nose if they go to English houses in Paris; and, as we talk French, we can put up at a French one, you know." "Well, then, we can try one of the French ones in the Rue de la Paix." "Rue de la Pay! no, by Jove, that won't do for me--the werry name is enough--no Rue de la Pay for me, at least if I have to pay the shot." "Well, then, you must get your friend there to tell you of some place, for I don't care twopence, as long as I have a bed, where it is." The Countess and he then laid their heads together again, and when the diligence stopped to change horses at St. Denis, Mr. Jorrocks asked the Yorkshireman to alight, and taking him aside, announced with great glee that her ladyship, finding they were strangers in the land, had most kindly invited them to stay with her, and that she had a most splendid house in the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons, ornamented with mirrors, musical clocks, and he didn't know what, and kept the best company in all France, marquesses, barons, viscounts, authors, etc. Before the Yorkshireman had time to reply, the conducteur came and hurried them back into the diligence, and closed the door with a bang, to be sure of having his passengers there while he and the postilion shuffled the cards and cut for a glass of _eau-de-vie_ apiece. The Countess, suspecting what they had been after, resumed the conversation as soon as Mr. Jorrocks was seated.--"You shall manger cinque fois every day," said she; "cinque fois," she repeated.--"Humph!" said Mr. Jorrocks to himself, "what can that mean?--cank four--four times five's twenty--eat twenty times a day--not possible!" "Oui, Monsieur, cinque fois," repeated the Countess, telling the number off on her fingers--"Café at nine of the matin, déjeuner à la fourchette at onze o'clock, diner at cinque heure, café at six hour, and souper at neuf hour." "Upon my word," replied Mr. Jorrocks, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, "your offer is werry inwiting. My lady," said he, bowing before her, "Je suis--I am much flattered." "And, Monsieur?" said she, looking at the Yorkshireman. He, too, assured her that he was very much flattered, and was beginning to excuse himself, when the Countess interrupted him somewhat abruptly by turning to Mr. Jorrocks and saying, "He sall be your son--n'est ce pas?" "No, my lady, I've no children," replied he, and the Countess's eyes in their turn underwent a momentary illumination. The Parisian barrier was soon reached, and the man taken up to kick about the jaded travellers' luggage at the journey's end. While this operation was going on in the diligence yard, the Countess stuck close to Mr. Jorrocks, and having dispatched Agamemnon for a fiacre, bundled him in, luggage and all, and desiring her worthy domestic to mount the box, and direct the driver, she kissed her hand to the Yorkshireman, assuring him she would be most happy to see him, in proof of which, she drove away without telling him her number, or where the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons was. Paris is a charming place after the heat of the summer has passed away, and the fine, clear, autumnal days arrive. Then is the time to see the Tuileries gardens to perfection, when the Parisians have returned from their châteaus, and emigrating English and those homeward bound halt to renovate on the road; then is the time that the gayest plants put forth their brightest hues, and drooping orange flowers scent the air which silvery fountains lend their aid to cool. On a Sunday afternoon, such as we have described, our friend Mr. Stubbs (who since his arrival had been living very comfortably at the Hôtel d'Hollande, in expectation of Mr. Jorrocks paying his bill) indulged in six sous' worth of chairs--one to sit upon and one for each leg--and, John Bull-like, stretched himself out in the shade beneath the lofty trees, to view the gay groups who promenaded the alleys before him. First, there came a helmeted cuirassier, with his wife in blue satin, and a little boy in his hand in uniform, with a wooden sword, a perfect miniature of the father; then a group of short-petticoated, shuffling French women, each with an Italian greyhound in slips, followed by an awkward Englishman with a sister on each arm, all stepping out like grenadiers; then came a ribbon'd chevalier of the Legion of Honour, whose hat was oftener in his hand than on his head, followed by a nondescript looking militaire with fierce mustachios, in shining jack-boots, white leathers, and a sort of Italian military cloak, with one side thrown over the shoulder, to exhibit the wearer's leg, and the bright scabbard of a large sword, while on the hero's left arm hung a splendidly dressed woman. "What a figure!" said the Yorkshireman to himself, as they came before him, and he took another good stare.--"Yet stay--no, impossible!--Gracious Heaven! it can't be--and yet it is--by Jove, it's Jorrocks!" "Why now, you old imbecile," cried he, jumping off his chairs and running up to him, "What are you after?" bursting into a loud laugh as he looked at Mr. Jorrocks's mustachios (a pair of great false ones). "Is there no piece of tomfoolery too great for you? What's come across you now? Where the deuce did you get these things?" taking hold of the curls at one side of his mustachios. "How now?" roared Mr. Jorrocks with rage and astonishment. "How now! ye young scaramouch, vot do you mean by insulting a gentleman sportsman in broad daylight, in the presence of a lady of quality? By Jingo," added he, his eyes sparkling with rage, "if you are not off before I can say 'dumpling' I'll run you through the gizzard and give your miserable carcass to the dogs," suiting the action to the word, and groping under his cloak for the hilt of his sword.--A crowd collected, and the Yorkshireman perceiving symptoms of a scene, slunk out of the mêlée, and Mr. Jorrocks, after an indignant shake or two of his feathers and curl of his mustachios, pursued his course up the gardens. This was the first time they had met since their arrival, which was above a week before; indeed, it was nine days, for the landlord of the house where the Yorkshireman lived had sent his "little bill" two days before this, it being an established rule of his house, and one which was conspicuously posted in all the rooms, that the bills were to be settled weekly; and Mr. Stubbs had that very morning observed that the hat of Monsieur l'Hote was not raised half so high from his head, nor his body inclined so much towards the ground as it was wont to be--a pretty significant hint that he wanted his cash.--Now the Yorkshireman, among his other accomplishments, had a turn for play, and unfortunately had been at the Salon the night before, when, after continuous run of ill-luck, he came away twelve francs below the amount of the hotel-keeper's bill, consequently a rumpus with Mr. Jorrocks could not have taken place at a more unfortunate moment. Thinking, however, a good night's rest or two might settle him down, and put all matters right, he let things alone until the Tuesday following, when again finding Monsieur's little "memoire" on one side of his coffeecup, and a framed copy of the "rules and regulations" of the house on the other, he felt constrained to take some decisive step towards its liquidation. Accordingly, having breakfasted, he combed his hair straight over his face, and putting on a very penitential look, called a cab, and desired the man to drive him to the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons.--After zigzagging, twisting, and turning about in various directions, they at last jingled to the end of a very narrow dirty-looking street, whose unswept pavement had not been cheered by a ray of sunshine since the houses were built. It was excessively narrow, and there were no flags on either side; but through the centre ran a dribbling stream, here and there obstructed by oyster-shells, or vegetable refuse, as the water had served as a plaything for children, or been stopped by servants for domestic purposes. The street being extremely old, of course the houses were very large, forming, as all houses do in Paris, little squares entered by folding doors, at one side of which, in a sort of lodge, lives the Porter--"Parlez au Portier"--who receives letters, parcels, and communications for the several occupiers, consisting sometimes of twenty or thirty different establishments in one house. From this functionary may be learned the names of the different tenants. Having dismissed his cab, the Yorkshireman entered the first gateway on his left, to take the chance of gaining some intelligence of the Countess. The Porter--a cobbler by trade--was hammering away, last on knee, at the sole of a shoe, and with a grin on his countenance, informed the Yorkshireman that the Countess lived next door but one. A thrill of fear came over him on finding himself so near the residence of his indignant friend, but it was of momentary duration, and he soon entered the courtyard of No. 3--where he was directed by an unshaved grisly-looking porter, to proceed "un troisième," and ring the bell at the door on the right-hand side. Obedient to his directions, the Yorkshireman proceeded to climb a wide but dirty stone staircase, with carved and gilded balusters, whose wall and steps had known no water for many years, and at length found himself on the landing opposite the very apartment which contained the redoubtable Jorrocks. Here he stood for a few seconds, breathing and cooling himself after his exertions, during which time he pictured to himself the worthy citizen immersed in papers deeply engaged in the preparation of his France in three volumes, and wished that the first five minutes of their interview were over. At length he mustered courage to grasp a greasy-looking red tassel, and give a gentle tinkle to the bell. The door was quickly opened by Agamemnon in dirty loose trousers and slippers, and without a coat. He recognised his fellow-traveller, and in answer to his inquiry if Monsieur Jorrocks was at home, grinned, and answered, "Oh oui, certainement, Monsieur le Colonel Jorrockes est ici," and motioned him to come in. The Yorkshireman entered the little ante-room--a sort of scullery, full of mops, pans, dirty shoes, dusters, candlesticks--and the first thing that caught his eye was Jorrocks's sword, which Agamemnon had been burnishing up with sandpaper and leather, lying on a table before the window. This was not very encouraging, but Agamemnon gave no time for reflection, and opening half a light salmon-coloured folding door directly opposite the one by which he entered, the Yorkshireman passed through, unannounced and unperceived by Mr. Jorrocks or the Countess, who were completely absorbed in a game of dominoes, sitting on opposite sides of a common deal table, whose rose-coloured silk cover was laid over the back of a chair. Jorrocks was sitting on a stool with his back to the door, and the Countess being very intent on the game, Mr. Stubbs had time for a hasty survey of the company and apartment before she looked up. It was about one o'clock, and of course she was still _en déshabillé_, with her nightcap on, a loose _robe de chambre_ of flannel, and a flaming broad-striped red-and-black Scotch shawl thrown over her shoulders, and swan's-down-lined slippers on her feet. Mr. Jorrocks had his leather pantaloons on, with a rich blue and yellow brocade dressing-gown, and blue morocco slippers to match. His jack-boots, to which he had added a pair of regimental heel-spurs, were airing before a stove, which contained the dying embers of a small log. The room was low, and contained the usual allowance of red figured velvet-cushioned chairs, with brass nails; the window curtains were red-and-white on rings and gilded rods; a secretaire stood against one of the walls, and there was a large mirror above the marble mantelpiece, which supported a clock surmounted by a flying Cupid, and two vases of artificial flowers covered with glass, on one of which was placed an elegant bonnet of the newest and most approved fashion. The floor, of highly polished oak, was strewed about with playbills, slippers, curl-papers, boxes, cards, dice, ribbons, dirty handkerchiefs, etc.; and on one side of the deal table was a plate containing five well-picked mutton-chop bones, and hard by lay Mr. Jorrocks's mustachios and a dirty small tooth-comb. Just as the Yorkshireman had got thus far in his survey, the Countess gave the finishing stroke to the game, and Mr. Jorrocks, jumping up in a rage, gave his leathers such a slap as sent a cloud of pipe-clay flying into his face. "Vous avez the devil's own luck"; exclaimed he, repeating the blow, when, to avoid the cloud, he turned short round, and encountered the Yorkshireman. "How now?" roared he at the top of his voice, "who sent for you? Have you come here to insult me in my own house? I'll lay my soul to an 'oss-shoe, I'll be too many for ye! Where's my sword?" "Now, my good Mr. Jorrocks," replied the Yorkshireman very mildly, "pray, don't put yourself into a passion--consider the lady, and don't let us have any unpleasantness in Madame la Duchesse Benvolio's house," making her a very low bow as he spoke, and laying his hand on his heart. "D--n your displeasancies!" roared Jorrocks, "and that's swearing--a thing I've never done since my brother Joe fobbed me of my bottom piece of muffin. Out with you, I say! Out with ye! you're a nasty dirty blackguard; I'm done with you for ever. I detest the sight of you and hate ye afresh every time I see you!" "Doucement, mon cher Colonel," interposed the Countess, "ve sall play anoder game, and you sall had von better chance," clapping him on the back as she spoke. "I von't!" bellowed Jorrocks. "Turn this chap out first. I'll do it myself. H'Agamemnon! H'Agamemnon! happortez my sword! bring my sword! tout suite, directly!" "Police! Police! Police!" screamed the Countess out of the window; "Police! Police! Police!" bellowed Agamemnon from the next one; "Police! Police! Police!" re-echoed the grisly porter down below; and before they had time to reflect on what had passed, a sergeant's file of the National Guard had entered the hotel, mounted the stairs, and taken possession of the apartment. The sight of the soldiers with their bright bayonets, all fixed and gleaming as they were, cooled Mr. Jorrocks's courage in an instant, and, after standing a few seconds in petrified astonishment, he made a dart at his jack-boots and bolted out of the room. The Countess Benvolio then unlocked her secretaire, in which was a plated liqueur-stand with bottles and glasses, out of which she poured the sergeant three, and the privates two glasses each of pure _eau-de-vie,_ after which Agamemnon showed them the top of the stairs. In less than ten minutes all was quiet again, and the Yorkshireman was occupying Mr. Jorrocks's stool. The Countess then began putting things a little in order, adorned the deal table with the rose-coloured cover--before doing which she swept off Mr. Jorrocks's mustachios, and thrust a dirty white handkerchief and the small tooth-comb under the cushion of a chair--while Agamemnon carried away the plate with the bones. "Ah, le pauvre Colonel," said the Countess, eyeing the bones as they passed, "he sall be von grand homme to eat--him eat toujours--all day long--Oh, him mange beaucoup--beaucoup--beaucoup. He is von varé amiable man, bot he sall not be moch patience. I guess he sall be varé rich--n'est ce pas? have many guinea?--He say he keep beaucoup des chiens--many dogs for the hont--he sail be vot dey call rom customer (rum customer) in Angleterre, I think." Thus she went rattling on, telling the Yorkshireman all sorts of stories about the _pauvre_ Colonel, whom she seemed ready to change for a younger piece of goods with a more moderate appetite; and finding Mr. Stubbs more complaisant than he had been in the diligence, she concluded by proposing that he should accompany the Colonel and herself to a _soirée-dansante_ that evening at a friend of hers, another Countess, in the "Rue des Bons-Enfants." Being disengaged as usual, he at once assented, on condition that the Countess would effect a reconciliation between Mr. Jorrocks and himself, for which purpose she at once repaired to his room, and presently reappeared arm-in-arm with our late outrageously indignant hero. The Colonel had been occupying his time at the toilette, and was _en grand costume_--finely cleaned leathers, jack-boots and brass spurs, with a spick and span new blue military frock-coat, hooking and eyeing up to the chin, and all covered with braid, frogs, tags, and buttons. "Dere be von beau garçon!" exclaimed the Countess, turning him round after having led him into the middle of the room--"dat habit does fit you like vax." "Yes," replied Mr. Jorrocks, raising his arms as though he were going to take flight, "but it is rather tight--partiklarly round the waist--shouldn't like to dine in it. What do you think of it?" turning round and addressing the Yorkshireman as if nothing had happened--"suppose you get one like it?" "Do," rejoined the Countess, "and some of the other things--vot you call them, Colonel?" "What--breeches?" "Yes, breeches--but the oder name--vot you call dem?" "Oh, leathers?" replied Mr. Jorrocks. "No, no, another name still." "I know no other. Pantaloons, perhaps, you mean?" "No, no, not pantaloons." "Not pantaloons?--then I know of nothing else. You don't mean these sacks of things, called trousers?" taking hold of the Yorkshireman's. "No, no, not trousers." "Then really, my lady, I don't know any other name." "Oh, yes, Colonel, you know the things I intend. Vot is it you call Davil in Angleterre?" "Oh, we have lots of names for him--Old Nick, for instance."--"Old Nick breeches," said the Countess thoughtfully; "no, dat sall not be it--vot else?" "Old Harry?" replied Mr. Jorrocks.--"Old Harry breeches," repeated the Countess in the hopes of catching the name by the ear--"no, nor dat either, encore anoder name, Colonel." "Old Scratch, then?" "Old Scratch breeches," re-echoed the Countess--"no, dat shall not do."--"Beelzebub?" rejoined Mr. Jorrocks. "Beelzebub breeches," repeated the Countess--"nor dat." "Satan, then?" said Mr. Jorrocks. "Oh oui!" responded the Countess with delight, "satan! black satan breeches--you shall von pair of black satan breeches, like the Colonel." "And the Colonel will pay for them, I presume?" said the Yorkshireman, looking at Mr. Jorrocks. "I carn't," said Mr. Jorrocks in an undertone; "I'm nearly cleaned out, and shall be in Short's Gardens before I know where I am, unless I hold better cards this evening than I've done yet. Somehow or other, these French are rather too sharp for me, and I've been down upon my luck ever since I came.--Lose every night, in fact, and then they are so werry anxious for me to have my rewenge, as they call it, that they make parties expressly for me every evening; but, instead of getting my rewenge, I only lose more and more money.--They seem to me always to turn up the king whenever they want him.--To-night we are going to a Countess's of werry great consequence, and, as you know écarté well, I'll back your play, and, perhaps, we may do something between us." This being all arranged, Mr. Stubbs took his departure, and Mr. Jorrocks having girded on his sword, and the Countess having made her morning toilette, they proceed to their daily promenade in the Tuileries Gardens. A little before nine that evening, the Yorkshireman again found himself toiling up the dirty staircase, and on reaching the third landing was received by Agamemnon in a roomy uniform of a chasseur--dark green and tarnished gold, with a cocked-hat and black feather, and a couteau de chasse, slung by a shining patent-leather belt over his shoulder. The opening of the inner door displayed the worthy Colonel sitting at his ease, with his toes on each side of the stove (for the evenings had begun to get cool), munching the last bit of crust of the fifth Périgord pie that the Countess had got him to buy.--He was extremely smart; thin black gauze-silk stockings, black satin breeches; well-washed, well-starched white waistcoat with a rolling collar, showing an amplitude of frill, a blue coat with yellow buttons and a velvet collar, while his pumps shone as bright as polished steel. The Countess presently sidled into the room, all smirks and smiles as dressy ladies generally are when well "got up." Rouge and the milliner had effectually reduced her age from five and forty down to five and twenty. She wore a dress of the palest pink satin, with lilies of the valley in her hair, and an exquisitely wrought gold armlet, with a most Lilliputian watch in the centre. Mr. Jorrocks having finished his pie-crust, and stuck on his mustachios, the Countess blew out her bougies, and the trio, preceeded by Agamemnon with a lanthorn in his hand, descended the stairs, whose greasy, muddy steps contrasted strangely with the rich delicacy of the Countess's beautifully slippered feet. Having handed them into the voiture, Agamemnon mounted up behind, and in less than ten minutes they rumbled into the spacious courtyard of the Countess de Jackson, in the Rue des Bons-Enfants, and drew up beneath a lofty arch at the foot of a long flight of dirty black-and-white marble stairs, about the centre of which was stationed a _lacquey de place_ to show the company up to the hall. The Countess de Jackson (the wife of an English horse-dealer) lived in an _entresol au troisième_, but the hotel being of considerable dimensions, her apartment was much more spacious than the Countess Benvolio's. Indeed, the Countess de Jackson, being a _marchande des modes_, had occasion for greater accommodation, and she had five low rooms, whereof the centre one was circular, from which four others, consisting of an ante-room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and _salle à manger_, radiated. Agamemnon having opened the door of the _fiacre_, the Countess Benvolio took the Yorkshireman's arm, and at once preceded to make the ascent, leaving the Colonel to settle the fare, observing as they mounted the stairs, that he was "von exceeding excellent man, but varé slow." "Madame la Contesse Benvolio and Monsieur Stoops!" cried the _lacquey de place_ as they reached the door of the low ante-room, where the Countess Benvolio deposited her shawl, and took a final look at herself in the glass. She again took the Yorkshireman's arm and entered the round ballroom, which, though low and out of all proportion, had an exceedingly gay appearance, from the judicious arrangement of the numerous lights, reflected in costly mirrors, and the simple elegance of the crimson drapery, festooned with flowers and evergreens against the gilded walls. Indeed, the hotel had been the residence of an ambassador before the first revolution, and this _entresol_ had formed the private apartment of his Excellency. The door immediately opposite the one by which they entered, led into the Countess de Jackson's bedroom, which was also lighted up, with the best furniture exposed and her toilette-table set out with numberless scent bottles, vases, trinkets, and nick-nacks, while the _salle à manger_ was converted into a card-room. Having been presented in due form to the hostess, the Yorkshireman and his new friend stood surveying the gay crowd of beautiful and well-dressed women, large frilled and well-whiskered men, all chatting, and bowing, and dancing, when a half-suppressed titter that ran through the room attracted their attention, and turning round, Mr. Jorrocks was seen poking his way through the crowd with a number of straws sticking to his feet, giving him the appearance of a feathered Mercury. The fact was, that Agamemnon had cleaned his shoes with the liquid varnish (french polish), and forgetting to dry it properly, the carrying away half the straw from the bottom of the _fiacre_ was the consequence, and Mr. Jorrocks having paid the Jehu rather short, the latter had not cared to tell him about it. The straws were, however, soon removed without interruption to the gaiety of the evening. Mr. Stubbs, of course, took an early opportunity of waltzing with the Countess Benvolio, who, as all French women are, was an admirable dancer, and Jorrocks stood by fingering and curling his mustachios, admiring her movements but apparently rather jealous of the Yorkshireman. "I wish," said he after the dance was over, "that you would sit down at _écarté_ and let us try to win some of these mouncheers' tin, for I'm nearly cleaned out. Let us go into the cardroom, but first let us see if we can find anything in the way of nourishment, for I begin to be hungry. Garsoon," said he catching a servant with a trayful of _eau sucrée_ glasses, "avez-vous kick-shaws to eat?" putting his finger in his mouth--"ge wouderay some refreshment." "Oh, oui," replied the garçon taking him to an open window overlooking the courtyard, and extending his hand in the air, "voilà, monsieur, de très bon rafraîchissement." The ball proceeded with the utmost decorum, for though composed of shopkeepers and such like, there was nothing in their dress or manner to indicate anything but the best possible breeding. Jorrocks, indeed, fancied himself in the very élite of French society, and, but for a little incident, would have remained of that opinion. In an unlucky moment he took it into his head he could waltz, and surprised the Countess Benvolio by claiming her hand for the next dance. "It seems werry easy," said he to himself as he eyed the couples gliding round the room;--"at all ewents there's nothing like trying, 'for he who never makes an effort never risks a failure.'" The couples were soon formed and ranged for a fresh dance. Jorrocks took a conspicuous position in the centre of the room, buttoned his coat, and, as the music struck up, put his arm round the waist of his partner. The Countess, it seems, had some misgivings as to his prowess in the dancing line, and used all her strength to get him well off, but the majority of the dancers started before him. At length, however, he began to move, and went rolling away in something between a gallop and a waltz, effecting two turns, like a great cart-wheel, which brought him bang across the room, right into the track of another couple, who were swinging down at full speed, making a cannon with his head against both theirs, and ending by all four coming down upon the hard boards with a tremendous crash--the Countess Benvolio undermost, then the partner of the other Countess, then Jorrocks, and then the other Countess herself. Great was the commotion, and the music stopped; Jorrocks lost his wig, and split his Beelzebub breeches across the knees, while the other gentleman cracked his behind--and the Countess Benvolio and the other Countess were considerably damaged; particularly the other Countess, who lost four false teeth and broke an ear-ring. This, however, was not the worst, for as soon as they were all scraped together and set right again, the other Countess's partner attacked Jorrocks most furiously, calling him a _sacré-nom de-Dieu'd bête_ of an Englishman, a mauvais sujet, a cochon, etc., then spitting on the floor--the greatest insult a Frenchman can offer--he vapoured about being one of the "grand nation," "that he was brave--the world knew it," and concluded by thrusting his card--"Monsieur Charles Adolphe Eugene, Confiturier, No. 15 bis, Rue Poupée"--into Jorrocks's face. It was now Jorrocks's turn to speak, so doubling his fists, and getting close to him, he held one to his nose, exclaiming, "D--n ye, sir, je suis--JORROCKS!--Je suis an Englishman! je vous lick within an inch of your life! --Je vous kick!--je vous mill!--je vous flabbergaster!" and concluded by giving him his card, "Monsieur le Colonel Jorrocks, No 3, Rue des Mauvais-Garçons." A friend of the confectioner's interposed and got him away, and Mr. Stubbs persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to return into the cardroom, where they were speedily waited upon by the friend of the former, who announced that the Colonel must make an apology or fight, for he said, although Jorrocks was a "Colonel Anglais," still Monsieur Eugene was of the Legion of Honour, and, consequently, very brave and not to be insulted with impunity. All this the Yorkshireman interpreted to Mr. Jorrocks, who was most anxious to fight, and wished it was light that they might go to work immediately. Mr. Stubbs therefore told the confectioner's friend (who was also his foreman), that the Colonel would fight him with pistols at six o'clock in the Bois de Boulogne, but no sooner was the word "pistols" mentioned than the friend exclaimed, with a grimace and shrug of his shoulders, "Oh horror, no! Monsieur Adolphe is brave, but he will not touch pistols--they're not weapons of his country." Jorrocks then proposed to fight him with broad swords, but this the confectioner's foreman declined on behalf of his principal, and at last the Colonel suggested that they could not do better than fight it out with fists. Now, the confectioner was ten years younger than Jorrocks, tall, long-armed, and not over-burthened with flesh, and had, moreover, taken lessons of Harry Harmer, when that worthy had his school in Paris, so he thought the offer was a good one, and immediately closed with it. Jorrocks, too, had been a patron of the prize-ring, having studied under Bill Richmond, the man of colour, and was reported to have exhibited in early life (incog.) with a pugilist of some pretensions at the Fives-court, so, all things considered, fists seemed a very proper mode of settling the matter, and that being agreed upon, each party quitted the Countess de Jackson's--the confectioner putting forth all manner of high-flown ejaculations and prayers for success, as he groped about the ante-room for his hat, and descended the stairs. "Oh! God of war!" said he, throwing up his hands, "who guided the victorious army of this grand nation in Egypt, when, from the pyramids, forty centuries beheld our actions--oh, brilliant sun, who shone upon our armies at Jaffa, at Naples, Montebello, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Algiers, who blessed our endeavours, who knowest that we are brave--brave as a hundred lions--look down on Charles Adolphe Eugene, and enable him to massacre and immolate on the altar of his wrath, this sacré-nom de-Dieu'd beastly hog of an Englishman"--and thereupon he spit upon the flags with all the venom of a viper. Jorrocks, too, indulged in a few figures of speech, as he poked his way home, though of a different description. "Now blister my kidneys," said he, slapping his thigh, "but I'll sarve him out! I'll baste him as Randall did ugly Borrock. I'll knock him about as Belcher did the Big Ilkey Pigg. I'll damage his mug as Turner did Scroggins's. I'll fib him till he's as black as Agamemnon--for I do feel as though I could fight a few." * * * * * The massive folding doors of the Porte-Cocher at the Hôtel d'Hollande had not received their morning opening, when a tremendous loud, long, protracted rat-tat-tat-tat-tan, sounded like thunder throughout the extensive square, and brought numerous nightcapped heads to the windows, to see whether the hotel was on fire, or another revolution had broken out. The _maître d'hotel_ screamed, the porter ran, the _chef de cuisine_ looked out of his pigeon-hole window, and the _garçons_ and male _femmes des chambres_ rushed into the yard, with fear and astonishment depicted on their countenances, when on peeping through the grating of the little door, Mr. Jorrocks was descried, knocker in hand, about to sound a second edition. Now, nothing is more offensive to the nerves of a Frenchman than a riotous knock, and the impertinence was not at all migitated by its proceeding from a stranger who appeared to have arrived through the undignified medium of a co-cou.[23] Having scanned his dimensions and satisfied himself that, notwithstanding all the noise, Jorrocks was mere mortal man, the porter unbolted the door, and commenced a loud and energetic tirade of abuse against "Monsieur Anglais," for his audacious thumping, which he swore was enough to make every man of the National Guard rush "to arms." In the midst of the torrent, very little of which Mr. Jorrocks understood, the Yorkshireman appeared, whom he hurried into the _co-cou_, bundled in after him, cried "ally!" to the driver, and off they jolted at a miserably slow trot. A little before seven they reached the village of Passy, where it was arranged they should meet and proceed from thence to the Bois de Boulogne, to select a convenient place for the fight; but neither the confectioner nor his second, nor any one on his behalf, was visible and they walked the length and breadth of the village, making every possible inquiry without seeing or hearing anything of them. At length, having waited a couple of hours, Mr. Jorrocks's appetite overpowered his desire of revenge, and caused him to retire to the "Chapeau-Rouge" to indulge in a "fork breakfast." Nature being satisfied, he called for pen and ink, and with the aid of Mr. Stubbs drew up the following proclamation which to this day remains posted in the _salle à manger_ a copy whereof was transmitted by post to the confectioner at Paris. [Footnote 23: _Co-cous_ are nondescript vehicles that ply in the environs of Paris. They are a sort of cross between a cab and a young Diligence.] PROCLAMATION! I, John Jorrocks, of Great Coram Street, in the County of Middlesex, Member of the Surrey Hunt, in England, and Colonel of the Army when I'm in France, having been grossly insulted by Charles Adolphe Eugene of No. 15 bis, Rue Poupée, confectioner, this day repaired to Passy, with the intention of sarving him out with my fists; but, neither he nor any one for him having come to the scratch, I, John Jorrocks, do hereby proclaim the said Charles Adolphe Eugene to be a shabby fellow and no soldier, and totally unworthy the notice of a fox-hunter and a gentleman sportsman. (Signed) JOHN JORROCKS. (Countersigned) STUBBS. This being completed, and the bill paid, they returned leisurely on foot to Paris, looking first at one object, then at another, so that the Countess Benvolio's dinner-hour was passed ere they reached the Tuileries Gardens, where after resting themselves until it began to get dusk, and their appetites returned, they repaired to the Café de Paris to destroy them again.--The lofty well-gilded salon was just lighted up, and the numberless lamps reflected in costly mirrors in almost every partition of the wall, aided by the graceful figures and elegant dresses of the ladies, interspersed among the sombre-coated gentry, with here and there the gay uniforms of the military, imparted a fairy air to the scene, which was not a little heightened by the contrast produced by Mr. Jorrocks's substantial figure, stumping through the centre with his hat on his head, his hands behind his back, and the dust of the day hanging about his Hessians. "Garsoon," said he, hanging up his hat, and taking his place at a vacant table laid for two, "ge wouderai some wittles," and, accordingly, the spruce-jacketed, white-aproned _garçon_ brought him the usual red-backed book with gilt edges, cut and lettered at the side, like the index to a ledger, and, as Mr. Jorrocks said, "containing reading enough for a month." "Quelle potage voulez vous, monsieur?" inquired the _garçon_ at last, tired of waiting while he studied the _carte_ and looked the words out in the dictionary. "_Avez-vous_ any potted lobster?" "Non," said the _garçon_, "potage au vermicelle, au riz, a la Julienne, consommé, et potage aux choux." "Old shoe! who the devil do you think eats old shoes here? Have you any mock turtle or gravy soup?" "Non, monsieur," said the _garçon_ with a shrug of the shoulders. "Then avez-vous any roast beef?" "Non, monsieur; nous avons boeuf au naturel--boeuf à la sauce piquante--boeuf aux cornichons--boeuf à la mode--boeuf aux choux--boeuf à la sauce tomate--bifteck aux pommes de terre." "Hold hard," said Jorrocks; "I've often heard that you can dress an egg a thousand ways, and I want to hear no more about it; bring me a beef-steak and pommes de terre for three." "Stop!" cried Mr. Stubbs, with dismay--"I see you don't understand ordering a dinner in France --let me teach you. Where's the _carte?_" "Here," said Mr. Jorrocks, "is 'the bill of lading,'" handing over the book.--"Garçon, apportez une douzaine des huîtres, un citron, et du beurre frais," said the Yorkshireman, and while they were discussing the propriety of eating them before or after the soup, a beautiful dish of little green oysters made their appearance, which were encored before the first supply was finished. "Now, Colonel," said the Yorkshireman, "take a bumper of Chablis," lifting a pint bottle out of the cooler. "It has had one plunge in the ice-pail and no more--see what a delicate rind it leaves on the glass!" eyeing it as he spoke. "Ay, but I'd rayther it should leave something in the mouth than on the side of the glass," replied Mr. Jorrocks; "I loves a good strong generous wine--military port, in fact--but here comes fish and soup--wot are they?" "Filet de sole au gratin, et potage au macaroni avec fromage de Parmesan. I'll take fish first, because the soup will keep hot longest." "So will I," said Mr. Jorrocks, "for I think you understand the thing--but they seem to give werry small penn'orths--it really looks like trifling with one's appetite--I likes the old joint--the cut-and-come-again system, such as we used to have at Sugden's in Cornhill--joint, wegitables, and cheese all for two shillings." "Don't talk of your joints here," rejoined the Yorkshireman--"I told you before, you don't understand the art of eating--the dexterity of the thing consists in titivating the appetite with delicate morsels so as to prolong the pleasure. A well-regulated French dinner lasts two hours, whereas you go off at score, and take the shine out of yourself before you turn the Tattenham Corner of your appetite. But come, take another glass of Chablis, for your voice is husky as though your throat was full of dust.--Will you eat some of this boulli-vert?" "No, not no bouleward for me thank ye." "Well, then, we will have the 'entrée de boeuf--beef with sauce tomate--and there is a côtelette de veau en papillotte;--which will you take?" "I'll trouble the beef, I think; I don't like that 'ere pantaloon cutlet much, the skin is so tough." "Oh, but you don't eat the paper, man; that is only put on to keep this nice layer of fat ham from melting; take some, if it is only that you may enjoy a glass of champagne after it. There is no meat like veal for paving the way for a glass of champagne." "Well, I don't care if I do, now you have explained how to eat it, for I've really been troubled with indigestion all day from eating one wholesale yesterday; but don't you stand potatoes--pommes de terre, as we say in France?" "Oh yes, fried, and à la maître d'hotel; here they come, smoking hot. Now, J---- for a glass of champagne--take it out of the pail--nay, man! not with both hands round the middle, unless you like it warm--by the neck, so," showing him how to do it and pouring him a glass of still champagne. "This won't do," said Jorrocks, holding it up to the candle; "garsoon! garsoon!--no good--no bon--no fizzay, no fizzay," giving the bottom of the bottle a slap with his hand to rouse it. "Oh, but this is still champagne," explained the Yorkshireman, "and far the best." "I don't think so," retorted Mr. Jorrocks, emptying the glass into his water-stand. "Well, then, have a bottle of the other," rejoined the Yorkshireman, ordering one. "And who's to pay for it?" inquired Mr. Jorrocks. "Oh, never mind that--care killed the cat--give a loose to pleasure for once, for it's a poor heart that never rejoices. Here it comes, and 'may you never know what it is to want,' as the beggar boys say.--Now, let's see you treat it like a philosopher--the wire is off, so you've nothing to do but cut the string, and press the cork on one side with your thumb.--Nay! you've cut both sides!" Fizz, pop, bang, and away went the cork close past the ear of an old deaf general, and bounded against the wall.--"Come, there's no mischief done, so pour out the wine.--Your good health, old boy, may you live for a thousand years, and I be there to count them! --Now, that's what I call good," observed the Yorkshireman, holding up his glass, "see how it dulls the glass, even to the rim--champagne isn't worth a copper unless it's iced--is it, Colonel?" "Vy, I don't know--carn't say I like it so werry cold; it makes my teeth chatter, and cools my courage as it gets below--champagne certainly gives one werry gentlemanly ideas, but for a continuance, I don't know but I should prefer mild hale." "You're right, old boy, it does give one very gentlemanly ideas, so take another glass, and you'll fancy yourself an emperor.--Your good health again." "The same to you, sir. And now wot do you call this chap?" "That is a quail, the other a snipe--which will you take?" "Vy, a bit of both, I think; and do you eat these chaps with them?" "Yes, nothing nicer--artichokes á la sauce blanche; you get the real eating part, you see, by having them sent up this way, instead of like haystacks, as they come in England, diving and burning your fingers amid an infinity of leaves." "They are werry pretty eating, I must confess; and this upper Binjamin of ham the birds are cooked in is delicious. I'll trouble you for another plateful." "That's right, Colonel, you are yourself again. I always thought you would come back into the right course; and now you are good for a glass of claret of light Hermitage. Come, buck up, and give a loose to pleasure for once." "For once, ay, that's what you always say; but your once comes so werry often." "Say no more.--Garçon! un demi-bouteille de St. Julien; and here, J----, is a dish upon which I will stake my credit as an experienced caterer--a Charlotte de pommes--upon my reputation it is a fine one, the crust is browned to a turn, and the rich apricot sweet-meat lies ensconced in the middle, like a sleeping babe in its cradle. If ever man deserved a peerage and a pension it is this cook." "It's werry delicious--order another." "Oh, your eyes are bigger than your stomach, Mr. J----. According to all mathematical calculations, this will more than suffice. Ay, I thought so--you are regularly at a stand-still. Take a glass of whatever you like. Good--I'll drink Chablis to your champagne. And now, that there may be no mistake as to our country, we will have some cheese--fromage de Roquefort, Gruyère, Neufchatel, or whatever you like--and a beaker of Burgundy after, and then remove the cloth, for I hate dabbling in dowlas after dinner is done." "Rum beggars these French," said Mr. Jorrocks to himself, laying down the newspaper, and taking a sip of Churchman's chocolate, as on the Sunday morning he sat with the Countess Benvolio, discussing rolls and butter, with _Galignani's Messenger_, for breakfast. "Rum beggars, indeed," said he, resuming the paper, and reading the programme of the amusements for the day, commencing with the hour of Protestant service at the Ambassador's Chapel, followed on by Palace and Gallery of Pictures of the Palais Royal--Review with Military Music in the Place du Carousel--Horse-races in the Champs de Mars--Fête in the Park of St. Cloud--Combat d'Animaux, that is to say, dog-fighting and bull-baiting, at the Barrière du Combat, Tivoli, etc., etc., "It's not werry right, but I suppose at Rome we must do as Romans do," with which comfortable reflection Mr. Jorrocks proposed that the Countess and he should go to the races. Madame was not partial to animals of any description, but having got a new hat and feathers she consented to show them, on condition that they adjoined to the fête at St. Cloud in the evening. Accordingly, about noon, the ostler's man of a neighbouring English livery-stable drew up a dark-coloured job cab, with a red-and-white striped calico lining, drawn by a venerable long-backed white horse, at the Countess's gateway in the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons, into which Mr. Jorrocks having handed her ladyship, and Agamemnon, who was attired in his chasseur uniform, having climbed up behind, the old horse, after two or three flourishes of his dirty white tail, as a sort of acknowledgment of the whip on his sides, got himself into motion, and proceeded on his way to the races. The Countess being resolved to cut a dash, had persuaded our hero to add a smart second-hand cocked-hat, with a flowing red-and-white feather, to the rest of his military attire; and the end of a scarlet handkerchief, peeping out at the breast of his embroidered frock-coat, gave him the appearance of wearing a decoration, and procured him the usual salute from the soldiers and veterans of the Hospital of Invalids, who were lounging about the ramparts and walks of the edifice. The Countess's costume was simple and elegant; a sky-blue satin pelisse with boots to match, and a white satin bonnet with white feathers, tipped with blue, and delicate primrose-coloured gloves. Of course the head of the cab was well thrown back to exhibit the elegant inmates to the world. Great respect is paid to the military in France, as Mr. Jorrocks found by all the hack, cab, and _fiacre _ drivers pulling up and making way for him to pass, as the old crocodile-backed white horse slowly dragged its long length to the gateway of the Champ de Mars. Here the guard, both horse and foot, saluted him, which he politely acknowledged, under direction of the Countess, by raising his _chapeau bras_, and a subaltern was dispatched by the officer in command to conduct him to the place appointed for the carriages to stand. But for this piece of attention Mr. Jorrocks would certainly have drawn up at the splendid building of the École Militaire, standing as it does like a grand stand in the centre of the gravelly dusty plain of the Champ de Mars. The officer, having speared his way through the crowd with the usual courtesy of a Frenchman, at length drew up the cab in a long line of anonymous vehicles under the rows of stunted elms by the stone-lined ditch, on the southern side of the plain when, turning his charger round, he saluted Mr. Jorrocks, and bumped off at a trot. Mr. Jorrocks then stuck the pig-driving whip into the socket, and throwing forward the apron, handed out the Countess, and installed Agamemnon in the cab. A fine day and a crowd make the French people thoroughly happy, and on this afternoon the sun shone brightly and warmly on the land;--still there was no apparently settled purpose for the assembling of the multitude, who formed themselves in groups upon the plain, or lined the grass-burnt mounds at the sides, in most independent parties. The Champ de Mars forms a regular parallelogram of 2700 feet by 1320, and the course, which is of an oblong form, comprises a circuit of the whole, and is marked out with strong posts and ropes. Within the course, equestrians--or more properly speaking, "men on horseback"--are admitted under the surveillance of a regiment of cavalry, while infantry and cavalry are placed in all directions with drawn swords and fixed bayonets to preserve order. Being a gravelly sandy soil, in almost daily requisition for the exercise and training of troops, no symptoms of vegetation can be expected, and the course is as hard as the ride in Rotten Row or up to Kensington Gardens. About the centre of the south side, near where the carriages were drawn up, a few temporary stands were erected for the royal family and visitors, the stand for the former being in the centre, and hung with scarlet and gold cloth, while the others were tastefully arranged with tri-coloured drapery. These are entered by tickets only, but there are always plenty of platforms formed by tables and "chaises à louer" (chairs to let) for those who don't mind risking their necks for a sight. Some few itinerants tramped about the plain, offering alternately tooth-picks, play-bills, and race-lists for sale. Mr. Jorrocks, of course, purchased one of the latter, which was decorated at the top with a woodcut, representing three jockeys riding two horses, one with a whip as big as a broad sword. We append the list as a specimen of "Sporting in France," which, we are sorry to see, does not run into our pages quite so cleverly as our printer could wish.[24] [Footnote 24: Racing in France is, of course, now a very different business to the primitive sport it was when this sketch was written.--EDITOR.] Foreigners accuse the English of claiming every good-looking horse, and every well-built carriage, met on the Continent, as their own, but we think that few would be ambitious of laying claim to the honour of supplying France with jockeys or racehorses. Mr. Jorrocks, indeed, indifferent as he is to the affairs of the turf, could not suppress his "conwiction" of the difference between the flibberty-gibberty appearance of the Frenchmen, and the quiet, easy, close-sitting jockeys of Newmarket. The former all legs and elbows, spurting and pushing to the front at starting, in tawdry, faded jackets, and nankeen shorts, just like the frowsy door-keepers of an Epsom gambling-booth; the latter in clean, neat-fitting leathers, well-cleaned boots, spick and span new jackets, feeling their horses' mouths, quietly in the rear, with their whip hands resting on their thighs. Then such riding! A hulking Norman with his knees up to his chin, and a long lean half-starved looking Frenchman sat astride like a pair of tongs, with a wet sponge applied to his knees before starting, followed by a runaway English stable lad, in white cords and drab gaiters, and half a dozen others equally singular, spurring and tearing round and round, throwing the gravel and sand into each other's faces, until the field was so separated as to render it difficult to say which was leading and which was tailing, for it is one of the rules of their races, that each heat must be run in a certain time, consequently, though all the horses may be distanced, the winner keeps working away. Then what an absence of interest and enthusiasm on the part of the spectators! Three-fourths of them did not know where the horses started, scarcely a man knew their names, and the few tenpenny bets that were made, were sported upon the colour of the jackets. A Frenchman has no notion of racing, and it is on record that after a heat in which the winning horse, after making a waiting race, ran in at the finish, a Parisian observed, that "although 'Annette' had won at the finish, he thought the greater honour was due to 'Hercule,' he having kept the lead the greater part of the distance." On someone explaining to him that the jockey on Annette had purposely made a waiting race, he was totally incredulous, asserting that he was sure the jockeys had too much _amour-propre_ to remain in the rear at any part of the race, when they might be in front. X. SPORTING IN FRANCE PROGRAMME DES COURSES DE CHEVAUX QUI AURONT LIEU AU CHAMP-DE-MARS LE DIMANCHE A UNE HEURE, EN PRESENCE DE LL. MM. LE ROI ET LA REINE, ET DES PRINCES DE LA FAMILLE ROYALE DEUX PRIX ROYAUX +------------+--------------+----------------+------+--------+----------------+ | NOMS | SIGNALEMENS | NOMS |POIDS |NOMS | COSTUMES | |Des Chevaux | Et Ages | Des |à |Des |Des Jockeys | | | | Proprietaires |porter|Jockeys | | +------------+--------------+----------------+------+--------+----------------+ |Prix royal de 5000 fr. pour les chevaux et jumens de deuxième espèce.--En | | partie liée | | | | | | | | |Moina |Bai-clair-4 |Haras de Meudon |102 l.|Tom |Veste rouge | | | | | | Hall |toque tricolore | |Corisandre |Bai-brun-5 |M. Bonvié fils |115 |Tom |Veste orange, | | | | | |Wilson |manches et toque| | | | | | |noires. | |Flore |Bai-cerise-4 |M. de Laroque |102 |Tony |Veste noire, | | | | | |Montel |manches blanches| | | | | | |toque noire. | |Eleanor |Alezan-brulé-5|M. de Royère |112 |Bernou |Veste verte, | | | | | | | toque noire. | |Diomède |Bai-4 |M. le baron de |105 |Baptiste|Veste bleue, | | | | la Bastide | | |manches jaunes, | | | | | | |toque bl. et j. | |Cirus |Bai-brun-5 |Lord Seymour |115 |North |Veste orange, | | | | | | | toque noire. | |Aline |Bai-clair-4 |M. Noel |102 |Tom |Veste ponceau, | | | | | | |manches blanches| | | | | | | toque bleue. | |Léonie |Alezan-doré-5 |M. Belhomme |112 |Pichon |Veste jaune, | | | | | | | toque verte | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Prix royal de 6ooo fr. pour les chevaux de première espèce.--En partie liée | | | | | | | | |Young-Milton|Bai-4 |M. Fasquel |105 l.|Tom Webb|Veste et toque | | | | | | | noires. | |Mouna |Bai-clair-4 |M. de Laroque |102 |Tony |Veste noire, | | | | | | Montal |manches blanches| | | | | | |toque noire | |Paméla |Bai-4 |Heras de Meudon |102 |Tom Hall|Veste rouge, | | | | | | |toque tricolore.| |Eglé |Gris-sanguin-5|Lord Seymour |112 |Mous |Veste orange, | | | | | | | toque noire | |Cédéric |Bai-5 |M. le baron de |115 |Baptiste|Veste bleue, | | | | la Bastide | | |manches jaunes, | | | | | | |toque bl. et ja.| |Young-Tandem|Bai-cerise-4 |M. Schickler |105 |Webb |Veste rouge, | | | | | | | toque noire. | | | | | | | | |Oubiou |Alezan-6 |MM. Salvador et |121 |Tom |Veste bleue, | | | | Tassinari | | Johns |manches blanches| | | | | | | | | | | | | |toque rouge. | |Coradin |Bai-5 |M. Moreil |115 |René |Veste bleue, | | | | | | |manches jaunes, | | | | | | |toque bl.&jaune.| +------------+--------------+----------------+------+--------+----------------+ |Nota. Les chevaux de première espèce sont ceux nés en France de pères et | |mères étrangers: ceux de la deuxième espèce sont ceux nés de pères et | |mères Français ou seulement de l'un des deux.--Chaque épreuve comprendra | |les deux tours du Champs de Mars.--Les courses commenceront par la | |premiere épreuve des chevaux de deuxième espèce.--La seconde course se | |fera pour la première épreuve des chevaux de première espèce: suivie de | |la deuxième épreuve des chevaux de deuxième espèce: et elles seront | |terminées par la deuxième épreuve des chevaux de première espèce. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ======================================================================== Transcriber's note: The original document contains an additional column that could not be squeezed into the 80 characters allowed in this format. That column shows the pedigree of the horses, as follows: Moina: Issu de Candide et de Miltonia. Corisandre: Issu d'Holbein et de Lisbeth. Flore: Issue de Tigris et Biche. Eléanor: Issue de Moulay et de Cadette. Diomède: Issu de Prémium et de Gabrielle. Cirus: Issu de Toley et de Miss. Aline: Issue de Snail et d'une jument Normande. Léonie: Issue de Massoud et d'une fille de D-y-o. Young-Milton: Issu de Milton et de Betzi. Mouna: Issu de Rainbow et de Mouna. Paméla: Issue de Candid et Géane Eglé: Issue de Rainbow and Young-Urganda. Cédéric: Issue de Candid et Prestesse. Young-Tandem: Issu de Multum-in-Parvo et d'Oida. Oubiou: Issu d'Oubiou et d'une fille de Stradlamlad. Coradin: Issu de Candid et de Prestesse. ======================================================================= "Moderate sport," said Mr. Jorrocks to himself, curling his mustachios and jingling a handful of five-franc pieces in the pocket of his leathers--"moderate sport indeed," and therefore he turned his back to the course and walked the Countess off towards the cab. From beneath a low tenth-rate-looking booth, called "The Cottage of Content," supported by poles placed on the stunted trees of the avenue, and exhibiting on a blue board, "John Jones, dealer in British beer," in gilt letters, there issued the sound of voices clamouring about odds, and weights and scales, and on looking in, a score of ragamuffin-looking grooms, imitation jockeys, and the usual hangers-on of the racehorses and livery-stables, were seen drinking beer, smoking, playing at cards, dice, and chuck-farthing. Before the well-patched canvas curtain that flapped before the entrance, a crowd had collected round one of the horses which was in the care of five or six fellows, one to hold him, another to whistle to him, a third to whisk the flies away with a horse's tail, a fourth to scrape him, a fifth to rinse his mouth out,--while the stud-groom, a tall, gaunt, hairy-looking fellow, in his shirt sleeves, with ear-rings, a blue apron and trousers (more like a gardener than a groom), walked round and round with mystified dignity, sacréing and muttering, "Ne parlez pas, ne parlez pas," as anyone approached who seemed likely to ask questions. Mr. Jorrocks, having well ascertained the importance of his hat and feather, pushed his way with the greatest coolness into the ring, just to cast his eye over the horse and see whether he was fit to go with the Surrey, and the stud-groom immediately took off his lavender-coloured foraging cap, and made two profound salaams, one to the Colonel, the other to the Countess. Mr. Jorrocks, all politeness, took off his _chapeau_, and no sooner was it in the air, than with a wild exclamation of surprise and delight, the groom screamed, "Oh, Monsieur Shorrock, mon ami, comment vous portez vous?" threw his arms round the Colonel's neck, and kissed him on each cheek. "Hold!" roared the Colonel, half smothered in the embrace, and disengaging himself he drew back a few paces, putting his hand on the hilt of his sword, when in the training groom of Paris he recognised his friend the Baron of Newmarket. The abruptness of the incident disarmed Mr. Jorrocks of reflection, and being a man of impulse and warm affections, he at once forgave the novelty of the embrace, and most cordially joined hands with those of his friend. They then struck up a mixture of broken English and equally broken French, in mutual inquiries after each other's healths and movements, and presuming that Mr. Jorrocks was following up the sporting trade in Paris, the Baron most considerately gave him his best recommendations which horse to back, kindly betting with him himself, but, unfortunately, at each time assigning Mr. Jorrocks the losing horse. At length, being completely cleaned out, he declined any further transactions, and having got the Countess into the cab, was in the act of climbing in himself, when someone took him by the sword as he was hoisting himself up by the wooden apron, and drew him back to the ground. "Holloa, Stubbs, my boy!" cried he, "I'm werry 'appy to see ye," holding out his hand, and thereupon Mr. Stubbs took off his hat to the Countess. "Well now, the deuce be in these French," observed Mr. Jorrocks, confidentially, in an undertone as, resigning the reins to Agamemnon, he put his arm through the Yorkshireman's and drew out of hearing of the Countess behind the cab--"the deuce be in them. I say. There's that beggarly Baron as we met at Newmarket has just diddled me out of four Naps and a half, by getting me to back 'osses that he said were certain to win, and I really don't know how we are to make 'tongue and buckle' meet, as the coachmen say. Somehow or other they are far too sharp for me. Cards, dominoes, dice, backgammon, and racing, all one--they inwariably beat me, and I declare I haven't as much pewter as will coach me to Calais." The Yorkshireman, as may be supposed, was not in a condition of any great pecuniary assistance, but after a turn or two along the mound, he felt it would be a reproach on his country if he suffered his friend to be done by a Frenchman, and on consideration he thought of a trick that Monsieur would not be up to. Accordingly, desiring Mr. Jorrocks to take him to the Baron, and behave with great cordiality, and agree to the proposal he should make, they set off in search of that worthy, who, after some trouble, they discovered in the "Cottage of Content," entertaining John Jones and his comrades with an account of the manner in which he had fleeced Monsieur Shorrock. The Yorkshireman met him with the greatest delight, shook hands with him over and over again, and then began talking about racing, pigeon-shooting, and Newmarket, pretended to be full of money, and very anxious for the Baron's advice in laying it out. On hearing this, the Baron beckoned him to retire, and joining him in the avenue, walked him up and down, while he recommended his backing a horse that was notoriously amiss. The Yorkshireman consented, lost a Nap with great good humour, and banteringly told the Baron he thought he could beat the horse on foot. This led them to talk of foot-racing and at last the Yorkshireman offered to bet that Mr. Jorrocks would run fifty yards with him on his back, before the Baron would run a hundred. Upon this the Baron scratched his head and looked very knowing, pretended to make a calculation, when the Yorkshireman affected fear, and professed his readiness to withdraw the offer. The Baron then plucked up his courage, and after some haggling, the match was made for six Naps, the Yorkshireman reckoning the Baron might have ten francs in addition to what he had won of Mr. Jorrocks and himself. The money was then deposited in the hands of the Countess Benvolio, and away went the trio to the "Cottage of Content," to get men and ropes to measure and keep the ground. The English jockeys and lads, though ready enough to pigeon a countryman themselves, have no notion of assisting a foreigner to do so, unless they share in the spoil, and the Baron being a notorious screw, they all seemed heartily glad to find him in a trap. Out then they all sallied, amid cheers and shouts, while John Jones, with a yard-wand in his hand, proceeded to measure a hundred yards along the low side of the mound. This species of amusement being far more in accordance with the taste of the French than anything in which horses are concerned, an immense mob flocked to the scene, and the Baron having explained how it was, and being considered a safe man to follow, numerous offers were made to bet against the performance of the match. The Yorkshireman being a youth of discretion and accustomed to bet among strangers, got on five Naps more with different parties, who to "prevent accidents" submitted to deposit the money with the Countess, and all things being adjusted, and the course cleared by a picket of infantry, Mr. Jorrocks ungirded his sword, and depositing it with his frock-coat in the cab, walked up to the fifty yards he was to have for start. "Now, Colonel," said the Yorkshireman, backing him to the mound, so that he might leap on without shaking him, "put your best leg first, and it's a hollow thing; if you don't fall, you must win,"--and thereupon taking Mr. Jorrocks's cocked hat and feather from his head, he put it sideways on his own, so that he might not be recognised, and mounted his man. Mr. Jorrocks then took his place as directed by John Jones, and at a signal from him--the dropping of a blue cotton handkerchief--away they started amid the shouts, the clapping of hands, and applause of the spectators, who covered the mound and lined the course on either side. Mr. Jorrocks's action was not very capital, his jack-boots and leathers rather impeding his limbs, while the Baron had as little on him as decency would allow. The Yorkshireman feeling his man rather roll at the start, again cautioned him to take it easy, and after a dozen yards he got into a capital run, and though the lanky Baron came tearing along like an ill-fed greyhound, Mr. Jorrocks had full two yards to spare, and ran past the soldier, who stood with his cap on his bayonet as a winning-post, amid the applause of his backers, the yells of his opponents, and the general acclamation of the spectators. The Countess, anticipating the victory of her hero, had dispatched Agamemnon early in the day for a chaplet of red-and-yellow immortelles, and having switched the old cab horse up to the winning-post, she gracefully descended, without showing more of her foot and ankle than was strictly correct, and decorated his brow with the wreath, as the Yorkshireman dismounted. Enthusiasm being always the order of the day in France, this act was greeted with the loudest acclamations, and, without giving him time to recover his wind, the populace bundled Mr. Jorrocks neck and shoulders into the cab, and seizing the old horse by the head, paraded him down the entire length of the Champ de Mars, Mr. Jorrocks bowing and kissing his hands to the assembled multitude, in return for the vivas! the clapping of hands, and the waving of ribbons and handkerchiefs that greeted him as he went. Popularity is but a fickle goddess, and in no country more fickle than in France. Ere the procession reached the end of the dusty plain, the mob had tailed off very considerably, and as the leader of the old white horse pulled him round to return, a fresh commotion in the distance, caused by the apprehension of a couple of pickpockets, drew away the few followers that remained, and the recently applauded and belauded Mr. Jorrocks was left alone in his glory. He then pulled up, and taking the chaplet of immortelles from his brow, thrust it under the driving cushion of the cab, and proceeded to reinstate himself in his tight military frock, re-gird himself with his sword, and resume the cocked hat and feather. Nothing was too good for Mr. Stubbs at that moment, and, had a pen and ink been ready, Mr. Jorrocks would have endorsed him a bill for any amount. Having completed his toilette he gave the Yorkshireman the vacant seat in the cab, flopped the old horse well about the ears with the pig-driving whip, and trotted briskly up the line he had recently passed in triumphal procession, and wormed his way among the crowd in search of the Countess. There was nothing, however, to be seen of her, and after driving about, and poking his way on foot into all the crowds he could find, bolting up to every lady in blue, he looked at his great double-cased gold repeater, and finding it was near three o'clock and recollecting the fête of St. Cloud, concluded her ladyship must have gone on, and Agamemnon being anxious to see it, of course was of the same opinion; so, again flopping the old horse about the ears, he cut away down the Champ de Mars, and by the direction of Agamemnon crossed the Seine by the Pont des Invalides, and gained the route to Versailles. Here the genius of the people was apparent, for the road swarmed with voitures of every description, diligences, gondoles, co-cous, cabs, fiacres, omnibuses, dame-blanches, all rolling and rumbling along, occasionally interrupted by the lilting and tilting of a light English cab or tilbury, drawn by a thoroughbred, and driven by a dandy. The spirit of the old white horse even seemed roused as he got among the carriages and heard the tramping of hoofs and the jingling of bells round the necks of other horses, and he applied himself to the shafts with a vigour his enfeebled-looking frame appeared incapable of supplying. So they trotted on, and after a mile travelling at a foot's pace after they got into close line, they reached the porte Maillot, and resigning the cab to the discretion of Agamemnon, Mr. Jorrocks got himself brushed over by one of the gentry who ply in that profession at all public places, and tucking his sword under one arm, he thrust the other through Mr. Stubbs's, and, John-Bull-like, strutted up the long broad grass avenue, through the low part of the wood of St. Cloud, as if all he saw belonged to himself. The scene was splendid, and nature, art, and the weather appeared confederated for effect. On the lofty heights arose the stately place, looking down with placid grandeur on the full foliage of the venerable trees, over the beautiful gardens, the spouting fountains, the rushing cascades, and the gay and countless myriads that swarmed the avenues, while the circling river flowed calmly on, without a ripple on its surface, as if in ridicule of the sound of trumpets, the clang of cymbals, and the beat of drums, that rent the air around. Along the broad avenue were ranged shows of every description--wild beasts, giants, jugglers, tumblers, mountebanks, and monsters, while in spots sheltered from the sun by lofty trees were dancing-places, swings, roundabouts, archery-butts, pistol-ranges, ball-kicking and head-thumping places, montagnes-Suisses, all the concomitants of fairs and fêtes--beating "Bartlemy Fair," as Mr. Jorrocks candidly confessed, "all to nothing." The chance of meeting the Countess Benvolio in such a multitude was very remote indeed, but, to tell the truth, Mr. Jorrocks never once thought of her, until having eat a couple of cold fowls and drank a bottle of porter, at an English booth, he felt in his pocket for his purse, and remembered it was in her keeping. Mr. Stubbs, however, settled the account, and in high glee Mr. Jorrocks resumed his peregrinations, visiting first one show, then another, shooting with pea-guns, then dancing a quadrille, until he was brought up short before a splendid green-and-gold roundabout, whose magic circle contained two lions, two swans, two black horses, a tiger, and a giraffe. "Let's have a ride," said he, jumping on to one of the black horses and adjusting the stirrups to his length. The party was soon made up, and as the last comer crossed his tiger, the engine was propelled by the boys in the centre, and away they went at Derby pace. In six rounds Mr. Jorrocks lost his head, turned completely giddy, and bellowed out to them to stop. They took no heed--all the rest were used to it--and after divers yells and ineffectual efforts to dismount, he fell to the ground like a sack. The machine was in full work at the time, and swept round three or four times before they could stop it. At last Mr. Stubbs got to him, and a pitiable plight he was in. He had fallen on his head, broken his feather, crushed his chapeau bras, lost off his mustachios, was as pale as death, and very sick. Fortunately the accident happened near the gate leading to the town of St. Cloud, and thither, with the aid of two gendarmes, Mr. Stubbs conveyed the fallen hero, and having put him to bed at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, he sent for a "médecin," who of course shook his head, looked very wise, ordered him to drink warm water--a never-failing specific in France--and keep quiet. Finding he had an Englishman for a patient, the "médecin" dropped in every two hours, always concluding with the order "encore l'eau chaud." A good sleep did more for Mr. Jorrocks than the doctor, and when the "médecin" called in the morning, and repeated the injunction "encore l'eau chaud," he bellowed out, "Cuss your _l'eau chaud_, my stomach ain't a reserwoir! Give me some wittles!" The return of his appetite being a most favourable symptom, Mr. Stubbs discharged the doctor, and forthwith ordered a _déjeuner à la fourchette_, to which Mr. Jorrocks did pretty fair justice, though trifling in comparison with his usual performances. They then got into a Versailles diligence that stopped at the door, and rattling along at a merry pace, very soon reached Paris and the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons. "Come up and see the Countess," said Mr. Jorrocks as they arrived at the bottom of the flight of dirty stairs, and, with his hands behind his back and his sword dragging at his heels, he poked upstairs, and opening the outer door entered the apartment. He passed through the small ante-room without observing his portmanteau and carpet-bag on the table, and there being no symptoms of the Countess in the next one, he walked forward into the bedroom beyond. Before an English fire-place that Mr. Jorrocks himself had been at the expense of providing, snugly ensconced in the luxurious depths of a well-cushioned easy chair, sat a monstrous man with a green patch on his right eye, in slippers, loose hose, a dirty grey woollen dressing-gown, and black silk nightcap, puffing away at a long meerschaum pipe, with a figure of Bacchus on the bowl. At a sight so unexpected Mr. Jorrocks started back, but the smoker seemed quite unconcerned, and casting an unmeaning grey eye at the intruder, puffed a long-drawn respiration from his mouth. "How now!" roared Mr. Jorrocks, boiling into a rage, which caused the monster to start upon his legs as though he were galvanised. "Vot brings you here?" "Sprechen sie Deutsch?" responded the smoker, opening his eye a little wider, and taking the pipe from his mouth. "Speak English, you fool," bawled Mr. Jorrocks. "Sie sind sehr unverschämt" (you are very impudent), replied the Dutchman with a thump on the table. "I'll run you through the gizzard!" rejoined Mr. Jorrocks, half drawing his sword,--"skin you alive, in fact!" when in rushed the Countess and threw herself between them. Now, Mynheer Van Rosembom, a burgomaster of Flushing, was an old friend of the Countess's, and an exceedingly good paying one, and having cast up that morning quite unexpectedly by the early diligence from Dunkirk, and the Countess being enraged at Mr. Jorrocks for not sharing the honours of his procession in the cab on the previous day, and believing, moreover, that his treasury was pretty well exhausted, thought she could not do better than instal Rosembom in his place, and retain the stakes she held for the Colonel's board and lodging. This arrangement she kept to herself, simply giving Rosembom, who was not a much better Frenchman than Col. Jorrocks, to understand that the room would be ready for him shortly, and Agamemnon was ordered to bundle Mr. Jorrocks's clothes into his portmanteau and bag, and place them in readiness in the ante-room. Rosembom, fatigued with his journey, then retired to enjoy his pipe at his ease, while the Countess went to the Marche St. Honoré to buy some sour crout, roast beef, and prunes for his dinner. "Turn this great slush-bucket out of my room!" cried Mr. Jorrocks, as the Countess rushed into his apartment. "Vot's he doing here?" "Doucement, mon cher Colonel," said she, clapping him on the back, "he sall be my brodder." "Never such a thing!" roared Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing him as he spoke. "Never such a thing! no more than myself--out with him, I say, or I'll cut my stick--_toute suite--_directly!" "Avec tout mon coeur!" replied the Countess, her choler rising as she spoke. "You're another," rejoined Mr. Jorrocks, judging by her manner that she called him something offensive--"Vous ête one mauvaise woman!" "Monsieur," said the Countess, her eyes flashing as she spoke, "vous êtes un polisson!--von rascal!--von dem villain!--un charlatan!--von nasty--bastely--ross bif!--dem dog!" and thereupon she curled her fingers and set her teeth on edge as though she would tear his very eyes out. Rosembom, though he didn't exactly see the merits of the matter, exchanged his pipe for the poker, so what with this, the sword, and the nails, things wore a very belligerent aspect. Mr. Stubbs, as usual, interposed, and the Countess, still keeping up the semblance of her rage, ordered them to quit her apartment directly, or she would have recourse to her old friends the police. Mr. Stubbs was quite agreeable to go, but he hinted that she might as well hand over the stakes that had been entrusted to her keeping on the previous day, upon which she again indulged in a torrent of abuse, swore they were a couple of thieves, and that Mr. Jorrocks owed her far more than the amount for board and lodging. This made the Colonel stare, for on the supposition that he was a visitor, he had been firing away his money in all directions, playing at everything she proposed, buying her bonnets, Perigord pies, hiring remises, and committing every species of extravagance, and now to be charged for what he thought was pure friendship, disgusted him beyond expression. The Countess speedily summoned the porter, the man of letters of the establishment, and with his aid drew Mr. Jorrocks out a bill, which he described as "reaching down each side of his body and round his waist," commencing with 2 francs for savon, and then proceeding in the daily routine of café, 1 franc; déjeuner à la fourchette, 5 francs; diner avec vin, 10 francs; tea, 1 franc; souper, 3 francs; bougies, 2 francs; appartement, 3 francs; running him up a bill of 700 francs; and when Mr. Stubbs remonstrated on the exorbitance of the charges, she replied, "It sall be, sare, as small monnaie as sail be consistent avec my dignified respectability, you to charge." There seemed no help for the matter, so Mr. Stubbs paid the balance, while Mr. Jorrocks, shocked at the duplicity of the Countess, the impudence of Rosembom, and the emptiness of his own pockets, bolted away without saying a word. That very night the Malle-Poste bore them from the capital, with two cold fowls, three-quarters of a yard of bread, and a bottle of porter, for Mr. Jorrocks on the journey, and ere another sun went down, the sandy suburbs of Calais saw them toiling towards her ramparts, and rumbling over the drawbridges and under the portcullis, that guard the entrance to her gloomy town. Calais! cold, cheerless, lifeless Calais! Whose soul has ever warmed as it approached thy town? but how many hearts have turned with sickening sorrow from the mirthless tinkling of thy bells! "We'll not stay here long I guess," said Mr. Jorrocks as the diligence pulled up at the post-office, and the conducteur requested the passengers to descend. "That's optional," said a bystander, who was waiting for his letters, looking at Mr. Jorrocks with an air as much as to say, what a rum-looking fellow you are, and not without reason, for the Colonel was attired in a blue sailor's jacket, white leathers, and jack-boots, with the cocked hat and feather. The speaker was a middle-aged, middle-statured man, with a quick intelligent eye, dressed in a single-breasted green riding-coat, striped toilinette waistcoat, and drab trousers, with a whip in his hand. "Thank you for nothing!" replied Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing him in return, upon which the speaker turned to the clerk and asked if there were any letters for Monsieur Apperley or Nimrod. "NIMROD!" exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, dropping on his knees as though he were shot. "Oh my vig what have I done? Oh dear! oh dear! what a dumbfounderer--flummoxed I declare!" "Hold up! old 'un," said Nimrod in astonishment; "why, what's the matter now? You don't owe me anything I dare say!" "Owe you anything! yes, I does," said Mr. Jorrocks, rising from the ground, "I owes you a debt of gratitude that I can never wipe off--you'll be in the day-book and ledger of my memory for ever and a year." "Who are you?" inquired Nimrod, becoming more and more puzzled, as he contrasted his dialect with his dress. "Who am I? Why, I'm Mister Jorrocks." "Jorrocks, by Jove! Who'd have thought it! I declare I took you for a horse-marine. Give us your hand, old boy. I'm proud to make your acquaintance." "Ditto to you, sir, twice repeated. I considers you the werry first man of the age!"--and thereupon they shook hands with uncommon warmth. "You've been in Paris, I suppose," resumed Nimrod, after their respective digits were released; "were you much gratified with what you saw? What pleased you most--the Tuileries, Louvre, Garden of Plants, Père la Chaise, Notre Dame, or what?" "Why now, to tell you the truth, singular as it may seem, I saw nothing but the Tuileries and Naughty Dame.--I may say a werry naughty dame, for she fleeced me uncommonly, scarcely leaving me a dump to carry me home." "What, you've been among the ladies, have you? That's gay for a man at your time of life." "Yes, I certainlie have been among the ladies,--countesses I may say--but, dash my vig, they are a rum set, and made me pay for their acquaintance. The Countess Benwolio certainlie is a bad 'un." "Oh, the deuce!--did that old devil catch you?" inquired Nimrod. "Vot, do you know her?" "Know her! ay--everybody here knows her with her black boy. She's always on the road, and lives now by the flats she catches between Paris and the coast. She was an agent for Morison's Pills--but having a fractious Scotch lodger that she couldn't get out, she physicked him so dreadfully that he nearly died, and the police took her licence away. But you are hungry, Mr. Jorrocks, come to my house and spend the evening, and tell me all about your travels." Mr. Stubbs objected to this proposition, having just learned that the London packet sailed in an hour, so the trio adjourned to Mr. Roberts's, Royal Hotel, where over some strong eau-de-vie they cemented their acquaintance, and Mr. Jorrocks, finding that Nimrod was to be in England the following week, insisted upon his naming a day for dining in Great Coram Street. "Permits" to embark having been considerately granted "gratis" by the Government for a franc apiece, at the hour of ten our travellers stepped on board, and Mr. Jorrocks, having wrapped himself up in his martial cloak, laid down in the cabin and, like Ulysses in Ithaca, as Nimrod would say, "arrived in London Asleep." XI. A RIDE TO BRIGHTON ON "THE AGE" _(In a very "Familiar Letter" to Nimrod)_ DEAR NIMROD, You have favoured myself, and the sporting world at large, with a werry rich high-flavoured account of the great Captain Barclay, and his extonishing coach, the "Defiance"; and being werry grateful to you for that and all other favours, past, present, and to come, I take up my grey goose quill to make it "obedient to my will," as Mr. Pope, the poet, says, in relating a werry gratifying ride I had on the celebrated "Brighton Age," along with Sir Wincent Cotton, Bart., and a few other swells. Being, as you knows, of rather an emigrating disposition, and objecting to make a nick-stick of my life by marking down each Christmas Day over roast-beef and plum pudding, cheek-by-jowl with Mrs. J---- at home, I said unto my lad Binjimin--and there's not a bigger rogue unhung--"Binjimin, be after looking out my Sunday clothes, and run down to the Regent Circus, and book me the box-seat of the 'Age,' for I'm blow'd if I'm not going to see the King at Brighton (or 'London-sur-Mary,' as James Green calls it), and tell the pig-eyed book-keeper it's for Mr. Jorrocks, and you'll be sure to get it." Accordingly, next day, I put in my appearance at the Circus, dressed in my best blue Saxony coat, with metal buttons, yellow waistcoat, tights, and best Hessians, with a fine new castor on my head, and a carnation in my button-hole. Lots of chaps came dropping in to go, and every one wanted the box-seat. "Can I have the box-seat?" said one.--"No, sir; Mr. Jorrocks has it." "Is the box-seat engaged?" asked another.--"Yes, sir; Mr. Jorrocks has taken it." "Book me the box," said a third with great dignity.--"It's engaged already." "Who by?"--"Mr. Jorrocks"; and so they went on to the tune of near a dozen. Presently a rattling of pole chains was heard, and a cry was raised of "Here's Sir Wincent!" I looks out, and saw a werry neat, dark, chocolate-coloured coach, with narrow red-striped wheels, and a crest, either a heagle or a unicorn (I forgets which), on the door, and just the proprietors' names below the winder, and "The Age," in large gilt letters, below the gammon board, drawn by four blood-like, switch-tailed nags, in beautiful highly polished harness with brass furniture, without bearing reins--driven by a swellish-looking young chap, in a long-backed, rough, claret-coloured benjamin, with fancy-coloured tyes, and a bunch of flowers in his button-hole--no coachman or man of fashion, as you knows, being complete without the flower. There was nothing gammonacious about the turn-out; all werry neat and 'andsome, but as plain as plain could be; and there was not even a bit of Christmas at the 'orses' ears, which I observed all the other coaches had. Well, down came Sir Wincent, off went his hat, out came the way-bill, and off he ran into the office to see what they had for him. "Here, coachman," says a linen-draper's "elegant extract," waiting outside, "you've to deliver this (giving him a parcel) in the Marine Parade the instant you get to Brighton. It's Miss---- 's bustle, and she'll be waiting for it to put on to go out to dinner, so you musn't lose a moment, and you may charge what you like for your trouble." "Werry well," says Sir Wincent, laughing, "I'll take care of her bustle. Now, book-keeper, be awake. Three insides here, and six out. Pray, sir," touching his hat to me, "are you booked here? Oh! Mr. Jorrocks, I see. I begs your pardon. Jump up, then; be lively! what luggage have you?" "Two carpet-bags, with J. J., Great Coram Street, upon them." "There, then we'll put them in the front boot, and you'll have them under you. All right behind? Sit tight!" Hist! off we go by St. Mertain's Church into the Strand, to the booking-office there. The streets were werry full, but Sir Wincent wormed his way among the coal-wagons, wans, busses, coaches, bottom-over-tops,--in wulgar French, "cow sur tate," as they calls the new patent busses--trucks, cabs, &c., in a marvellous workmanlike manner, which seemed the more masterly, inasmuch as the leaders, having their heads at liberty, poked them about in all directions, all a mode Francey, just as they do in Paris. At the Marsh gate we were stopped. A black job was going through on one side, and a haw-buck had drawn a great yellow one 'oss Gravesend cruelty wan into the other, and was fumbling for his coin. "Now, Young Omnibus!" cried Sir Wincent, "don't be standing there all day." The man cut into his nag, but the brute was about beat. "There, don't 'it him so 'ard (hard)," said Sir Wincent, "or you may hurt him!" When we got near the Helephant and Castle, Timothy Odgkinson, of Brixton Hill, a low, underselling grocer, got his measly errand cart, with his name and address in great staring white letters, just in advance of the leaders, and kept dodging across the road to get the sound ground, for the whole line was werry "woolley" as you calls it. "Come, Mister independent grocer! go faster if you can," cries Sir Wincent, "though I think you have bought your horse where you buy your tea, for he's werry sloe." A little bit farther on a chap was shoving away at a truck full of market-baskets. "Now, Slavey," said he, "keep out of my way!" At the Helephant and Castle, and, indeed, wherever he stopped, there were lots of gapers assembled to see the Baronet coachman, but Sir Wincent never minded them, but bustled about with his way-bill, and shoved in his parcels, fish-baskets, and oyster-barrels like a good 'un. We pulled up to grub at the Feathers at Merstham, and 'artily glad I was, for I was far on to famish, having ridden whole twenty-five miles in a cold, frosty air without morsel of wittles of any sort. When the Bart. pulled up, he said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen--twenty minutes allowed here, and let me adwise you to make the most of it." I took the 'int, and heat away like a regular bagman, who can always dispatch his ducks and green peas in ten minutes. We started again, and about one hundred yards below the pike stood a lad with a pair of leaders to clap on, for the road, as I said before, was werry woolley. "Now, you see, Mr. Jorrocks," said Sir Wincent, "I do old Pikey by having my 'osses on this side. The old screw drew me for four shillings one day for my leaders, two each way, so, says I, 'My covey, if you don't draw it a little milder, I'll send my 'osses from the stable through my friend Sir William Jolliffe's fields to the other side of your shop,' and as he wouldn't, you see here they are, and he gets nothing." The best of company, they say, must part, and Baronets "form no exception to the rule," as I once heard Dr. Birkbeck say. About a mile below the halfway 'ouse another coach hove in sight, and each pulling up, they proved to be as like each other as two beans, and beneath a mackintosh, like a tent cover, I twigged my friend Brackenbury's jolly phiz. "How are you, Jorrocks?" and "How are you, Brack?" flew across like billiard-balls, while Sir Wincent, handing me the ribbons, said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all a good morning and a pleasant ride," and Brack having done the same by his coach and passengers, the two heroes met on terry firmey, as we say in France, to exchange way-bills and directions about parcels. "Now," said Sir Wincent, "you'll find Miss----'s bustle under the front seat--send it off to the Marine Parade the instant you get in, for she wants it to make herself up to-night for a party." "By Jove, that's lucky," said Brackenbury, "for I'll be hanged if I haven't got old Lady----'s false dinner-set of ivories in my waistcoat pocket, which I should have forgot if you hadn't mentioned t'other things, and then the old lady would have lost her blow-out this Christmas. Here they are," handing out a small box, "and mind you leave them yourself, for they tell me they are costly, being all fixed in coral, with gold springs, and I don't know what--warranted to eat of themselves, they say." "She has lost her modesty with her teeth, it seems," said Sir Wincent. "Old women ought to be ashamed to be seen out of their graves after their grinders are gone. I'll pound it the old tabby carn't be under one hundred. But quick! who does that d----d parrot and the cock-a-too belong to that you've got stuck up there? and look, there's a canary and all! I'll be d----d if you don't bring me a coach loaded like Wombwell's menagerie every day! Well, be lively! 'Twill be all the same one hundred years hence.--All right? Sit tight! Good night!" "Well, Mr. Jorrocks, it's long since we met," said Brackenbury, looking me over--"never, I think, since I showed you way over the Weald of Sussex from Torrington Wood, on the gallant wite with the Colonel's 'ounds! Ah, those were rare days, Mr. Jorrocks! we shall never see their like again! But you're looking fresh. Time lays a light hand on your bearing-reins! I hope it will be long ere you are booked by the Gravesend Buss. You don't lush much, I fancy?" added he, putting a lighted cigar in his mouth. "Yes, I does," said I--"a good deal; but I tells you what, Brackenbury, I doesn't fumigate none--it's the fumigation that does the mischief," and thereupon we commenced a hargument on the comparitive mischief of smoking and drinking, which ended without either being able to convince the other. "Well, at all events, you gets beefey, Brackenbury," said I; "you must be a couple of stone heavier than when we used to talliho the 'ounds together. I think I could lead you over the Weald now, at all ewents if the fences were out of the way," for I must confess that Brack was always a terrible chap at the jumps, and could go where few would follow. We did the journey within the six hours--werry good work, considering the load and the state of the roads. No coach like the "Age"--in my opinion. I was so werry much pleased with Brack's driving, that I presented him with a four-in-hand whip. I put up at Jonathan Boxall's, the Star and Garter, one of the pleasantest and best-conducted houses in all Brighton. It is close to the sea, and just by Mahomed, the sham-poor's shop. I likes Jonathan, for he is a sportsman, and we spin a yarn together about 'unting, and how he used to ride over the moon when he whipped in to St. John, in Berkshire. But it's all talk with Jonathan now, for he's more like a stranded grampus now than a fox-hunter. In course I brought down a pair of kickseys and pipe-cases, intending to have a round with the old muggers, but the snow put a stop to all that. I heard, however, that both the Telscombe Tye and the Devil's Dike dogs had been running their half-crown rounds after hares, some of which ended in "captures," others in "escapes," as the newspapers terms them. I dined at the Albion on Christmas Day, and most misfortunately, my appetite was ready before the joints, so I had to make my dinner off Mary Ann cutlets, I think they call them, that is to say, chops screwed up in large curl papers, and such-like trifles. I saw some chaps drinking small glasses of stuff, so I asked the waiter what it was, and, thinking he said "Elixir of Girls," I banged the table, and said, "Elixir of Girls! that's the stuff for my money--give me a glass." The chap laughed, and said, "Not Girls, sir, but Garus"; and thereupon he gave another great guffaw. It is a capital coffee-room, full of winders, and finely-polished tables, waiters in silk stockings, and they give spermaceti cheese, and burn Parmesan candles. The chaps in it, however, were werry unsociable, and there wasn't a man there that I would borrow half a crown to get drunk with. Stickey is the landlord, but he does not stick it in so deep as might be expected from the looks of the house, and the cheese and candles considered. It was a most tempestersome night, and, having eaten and drank to completion, I determined to go and see if my aunt, in Cavendish Street, was alive; and after having been nearly blown out to France several times, I succeeded in making my point and running to ground. The storm grew worser and worser, and when I came to open the door to go away, I found it blocked with snow, and the drifts whirling about in all directions. My aunt, who is a werry feeling woman, insisted on my staying all night, which only made the matter worse, for when I came to look out in the morning I found the drift as high as the first floor winder, and the street completely buried in snow. Having breakfasted, and seeing no hopes of emancipation, I hangs out a flag of distress--a red wipe--which, after flapping about for some time, drew three or four sailors and a fly-man or two. I explained from the winder how dreadfully I was situated, prayed of them to release me, but the wretches did nothing but laugh, and ax wot I would give to be out. At last one of them, who acted as spokesman, proposed that I should put an armchair out of the winder, and pay them five shillings each for carrying me home on their shoulders. It seemed a vast of money, but the storm continuing, the crowd increasing, and I not wishing to kick up a row at my aunt's, after offering four and sixpence, agreed to their terms, and throwing out a chair, plumped up to the middle in a drift. Three cheers followed the feat, which drew all the neighbours to the winders, when about half a dozen fellows, some drunk, some sober, and some half-and-half, pulled me into the chair, hoisted me on to their shoulders, and proceeded into St. James's Street, bellowing out, "Here's the new member for Brighton! Here's the boy wot sleeps in Cavendish Street! Huzzah, the old 'un for ever! There's an elegant man for a small tea-party! Who wants a fat chap to send to their friends this Christmas?" The noise they made was quite tremendious, and the snow in many places being up to their middles, we made werry slow progress, but still they would keep me in the chair, and before we got to the end of the street the crowd had increased to some hundreds. Here they began snow-balling, and my hat and wig soon went flying, and then there was a fresh holloa. "Here's Mr. Wigney, the member for Brighton," they cried out; "I say, old boy, are you for the ballot? You must call on the King this morning; he wants to give you a Christmas-box." Just then one of the front bearers tumbled, and down we all rolled into a drift, just opposite Daly's backey shop. There were about twenty of us in together, but being pretty near the top, I was soon on my legs, and seeing an opening, I bolted right forward--sent three or four fellows flying--dashed down the passage behind Saxby's wine vaults, across the Steyne, floundering into the drifts, followed by the mob, shouting and pelting me all the way. This double made some of the beggars over-shoot the mark, and run past the statute of George the Fourth, but, seeing their mistake, or hearing the other portion of the pack running in the contrary direction, they speedily joined heads and tails, and gave me a devil of a burst up the narrow lane by the Wite 'Orse 'Otel. Fortunately Jonathan Boxall's door was open, and Jonathan himself in the passage bar, washing some decanters. "Look sharp, Jonathan!" said I, dashing past him as wite as a miller, "look sharp! come out of that, and be after clapping your great carcase against the door to keep the Philistines out, or they'll be the death of us both." Quick as thought the door was closed and bolted before ever the leaders had got up, but, finding this the case, the mob halted and proceeded to make a deuce of a kick-up before the house, bellowing and shouting like mad fellows, and threatening to pull it down if I did not show. Jonathan got narvous, and begged and intreated me to address them. I recommended him to do it himself, but he said he was quite unaccustomed to public speaking, and he would stand two glasses of "cold without" if I would. "Hot with," said I, "and I'll do it." "Done," said he, and he knocked the snow off my coat, pulled my wig straight, and made me look decent, and took me to a bow-winder'd room on the first floor, threw up; the sash, and exhibited me to the company outside. I bowed and kissed my hand like a candidate. They cheered and shouted, and then called for silence whilst; I addressed them. "Gentlemen," said I, "Who are you?" "Why, we be the men wot carried your honour's glory from Cavendish Street, and wants to be paid for it."; "Gentlemen," said I, "I'm no orator, but I'm a honest man; I pays everybody twenty shillings in the pound. and no mistake (cheers). If you had done your part of the bargain, I would have done mine, but 'ow can you expect to be paid after spilling me? This is a most inclement day, and, whatever you may say to the contrary, I'm not Mr. Clement Wigney."--"No, nor Mr. Faithful neither," bellowed one of the bearers.--said I, "you'll get the complaints of the season, chilblains and influhensa, if you stand dribbling there in the snow. Let me advise you to mizzle, for, if you don't, I'm blowed if I don't divide a whole jug of cold water equally amongst you. Go home to your wives and children, and don't be after annoying an honest, independent, amiable publican, like Jonathan Boxall. That's all I've got to say, and if I was to talk till I'm black in the face, I couldn't say nothing more to the purpose; so, I wishes you all 'A Merry Christmas and an 'Appy New Year.'" But I'm fatiguing you, Mr. Nimrod, with all this, which is only hinteresting to the parties concerned, so will pass on to other topics. I saw the King riding in his coach with his Sunday coat on. He looked werry well, but his nose was rather blueish at the end, a sure sign that he is but a mortal, and feels the cold just like any other man. The Queen did not show, but I saw some of her maids of honour, who made me think of the Richmond cheesecakes. There were a host of pretty ladies, and the cold gave a little colour to their noses, too, which, I think, improved their appearance wastly, for I've always remarked that your ladies of quality are rather pasty, and do not generally show their high blood in their cheeks and noses. I'm werry fond of looking at pretty girls, whether maids of 'onour or maids of all work. The storm stopped all wisiting, and even the Countess of Winterton's ball was obliged to be put off. Howsomever, that did not interfere at all with Jonathan Boxall and me, except that it, perhaps, made us take a bottom of brandy more than usual, particularly after Jonathan had run over again one of his best runs. Now, dear Nimrod, adieu. Whenever you comes over to England, I shall be werry 'appy to see you in Great Coram Street, where dinner is on the table punctually at five on week days, and four on Sundays; and with best regards to Mrs. Nimrod, and all the little Nimrods, I remain, for Self and Co., yours to serve, JOHN JORROCKS. XII. MR. JORROCKS'S DINNER PARTY The general postman had given the final flourish to his bell, and the muffin-girl had just begun to tinkle hers, when a capacious yellow hackney-coach, with a faded scarlet hammer-cloth, was seen jolting down Great Coram Street, and pulling up at Mr. Jorrocks's door. Before Jarvey had time to apply his hand to the area bell, after giving the usual three knocks and a half to the brass lion's head on the door, it was opened by the boy Benjamin in a new drab coat, with a blue collar, and white sugar-loaf buttons, drab waistcoat, and black velveteen breeches, with well-darned white cotton stockings. The knock drew Mr. Jorrocks from his dining-room, where he had been acting the part of butler, for which purpose he had put off his coat and appeared in his shirtsleeves, dressed in nankeen shorts, white gauze silk stockings, white neckcloth, and white waistcoat, with a frill as large as a hand-saw. Handing the bottle and corkscrew to Betsey, he shuffled himself into a smart new blue saxony coat with velvet collar and metal buttons, and advanced into the passage to greet the arrivers. "Oh! gentlemen, gentlemen," exclaimed he, "I'm so 'appy to see you--so werry 'appy you carn't think," holding out both hands to the foremost, who happened to be Nimrod; "this is werry kind of you, for I declare it's six to a minute. 'Ow are you, Mr. Nimrod? Most proud to see you at my humble crib. Well, Stubbs, my boy, 'ow do you do? Never knew you late in my life," giving him a hearty slap on the back. "Mr. Spiers, I'm werry 'appy to see you. You are just what a sporting publisher ought to be--punctuality itself. Now, gentlemen, dispose of your tiles, and come upstairs to Mrs. J----, and let's get you introduced." "I fear we are late, Mr. Jorrocks," observed Nimrod, advancing past the staircase end to hang up his hat on a line of pegs against the wall. "Not a bit of it," replied Mr. Jorrocks--"not a bit of it--quite the contrary--you are the first, in fact!" "Indeed!" replied Nimrod, eyeing a table full of hats by where he stood--"why here are as many hats as would set up a shop. I really thought I'd got into Beaver (Belvoir) Castle by mistake!" "Haw! haw! haw! werry good, Mr. Happerley, werry good indeed--I owes you one." "I thought it was a castor-oil mill," rejoined Mr. Spiers. "Haw! haw! haw! werry good, Mr. Spiers, werry good indeed--owes you one also--but I see what you're driving at. You think these hats have a coconut apiece belonging to them upstairs. No such thing I assure you; no such thing. The fact is, they are what I've won at warious times of the members of our hunt, and as I've got you great sporting coves dining with me, I'm a-going to set them out on my sideboard, just as racing gents exhibit their gold and silver cups, you know. Binjimin! I say, Binjimin! you blackguard," holloaing down the kitchen stairs, "why don't you set out the castors as I told you? and see you brush them well!" "Coming, sir, coming, sir!" replied Benjamin, from below, who at that moment was busily engaged, taking advantage of Betsey's absence, in scooping marmalade out of a pot with his thumb. "There's a good lot of them," said Mr. Jorrocks, resuming the conversation, "four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen--all trophies of sporting prowess. Real good hats. None o' your nasty gossamers, or dog-hair ones. There's a tile!" said he, balancing a nice new white one with green rims on the tip of his finger. "I won that in a most miraculous manner. A most wonderful way, in fact. I was driving to Croydon one morning in my four-wheeled one-'oss chay, and just as I got to Lilleywhite, the blacksmith's, below Brixton Hill, they had thrown up a drain--a 'gulph' I may call it--across the road for the purpose of repairing the gas-pipe--I was rayther late as it was, for our 'ounds are werry punctual, and there was nothing for me but either to go a mile and a half about, or drive slap over the gulph. Well, I looked at it, and the more I looked at it the less I liked it; but just as I was thinking I had seen enough of it, and was going to turn away, up tools Timothy Truman in his buggy, and he, too, began to crane and look into the abyss--and a terrible place it was, I assure you--quite frightful, and he liked it no better than myself. Seeing this, I takes courage, and said, 'Why, Tim, your 'oss will do it!' 'Thank'e, Mr. J----,' said he, 'I'll follow you.' 'Then,' said I, 'if you'll change wehicles'--for, mind ye, I had no notion of damaging my own--'I'll bet you a hat I gets over.' 'Done,' said he, and out he got; so I takes his 'oss by the head, looses the bearing-rein, and leading him quietly up to the place and letting him have a look at it, gave him a whack over the back, and over he went, gig and all, as clever as could be!" _Stubbs_. Well done, Mr. J----, you are really a most wonderful man! You have the most extraordinary adventures of any man breathing--but what did you do with your own machine? _Jorrocks_. Oh! you see, I just turned round to Binjimin, who was with me, and said, You may go home, and, getting into Timothy's buggy, I had my ride for nothing, and the hat into the bargain. A nice hat it is too--regular beaver--a guinea's worth at least. All true what I've told you, isn't it, Binjimin? "Quite!" replied Benjamin, putting his thumb to his nose, and spreading his fingers like a fan as he slunk behind his master. "But come, gentlemen," resumed Mr. Jorrocks, "let's be after going upstairs.--Binjimin, announce the gentlemen as your missis taught you. Open the door with your left hand, and stretch the right towards her, to let the company see the point to make up to." The party ascend the stairs one at a time, for the flight is narrow and rather abrupt, and Benjamin, obeying his worthy master's injunctions, threw open the front drawing-room door, and discovered Mrs. Jorrocks sitting in state at a round table, with annuals and albums spread at orthodox distances around. The possession of this room had long been a bone of contention between Mr. Jorrocks and his spouse, but at length they had accommodated matters by Mr. Jorrocks gaining undivided possession of the back drawing-room (communicating by folding-doors), with the run of the front one equally with Mrs. Jorrocks on non-company days. A glance, however, showed which was the master's and which the mistress's room. The front one was papered with weeping willows, bending under the weight of ripe cherries on a white ground, and the chair cushions were covered with pea-green cotton velvet with yellow worsted bindings. The round table was made of rosewood, and there was a "whatnot" on the right of the fire-place of similar material, containing a handsomely-bound collection of Sir Walter Scott's Works, in wood. The carpet-pattern consisted of most dashing bouquets of many-coloured flowers, in winding French horns on a very light drab ground, so light, indeed, that Mr. Jorrocks was never allowed to tread upon it except in pumps or slippers. The bell-pulls were made of foxes' brushes, and in the frame of the looking-glass, above the white marble mantelpiece, were stuck visiting-cards, notes of invitation, thanks for "obliging inquiries," etc. The hearth-rug exhibited a bright yellow tiger, with pink eyes, on a blue ground, with a flossy green border; and the fender and fire-irons were of shining brass. On the wall, immediately opposite the fire-place, was a portrait of Mrs. Jorrocks before she was married, so unlike her present self that no one would have taken it for her. The back drawing-room, which looked out upon the gravel walk and house-backs beyond, was papered with broad scarlet and green stripes in honour of the Surrey Hunt uniform, and was set out with a green-covered library table in the centre, with a red morocco hunting-chair between it and the window, and several good strong hair-bottomed mahogany chairs around the walls. The table had a very literary air, being strewed with sporting magazines, odd numbers of _Bell's Life_, pamphlets, and papers of various descriptions, while on a sheet of foolscap on the portfolio were ten lines of an elegy on a giblet pie which had been broken in coming from the baker's, at which Mr. Jorrocks had been hammering for some time. On the side opposite the fire-place, on a hanging range of mahogany shelves, were ten volumes of _Bell's Life in London_, the _New Sporting Magazine_, bound gilt and lettered, the _Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Boxiana_, Taplin's _Farriery_, Nimrod's _Life of Mytton_, and a backgammon board that Mr. Jorrocks had bought by mistake for a history of England. Mrs. Jorrocks, as we said before, was sitting in state at the far side of the round table, on a worsted-worked ottoman exhibiting a cock pheasant on a white ground, and was fanning herself with a red-and-white paper fan, and turning over the leaves of an annual. How Mr. Jorrocks happened to marry her, no one could ever divine, for she never was pretty, had very little money, and not even a decent figure to recommend her. It was generally supposed at the time, that his brother Joe and he having had a deadly feud about a bottom piece of muffin, the lady's friends had talked him into the match, in the hopes of his having a family to leave his money to, instead of bequeathing it to Joe or his children. Certain it is, they never were meant for each other; Mr. Jorrocks, as our readers have seen, being all nature and impulse, while Mrs. Jorrocks was all vanity and affectation. To describe her accurately is more than we can pretend to, for she looked so different in different dresses, that Mr. Jorrocks himself sometimes did not recognise her. Her face was round, with a good strong brick-dust sort of complexion, a turn-up nose, eyes that were grey in one light and green in another, and a middling-sized mouth, with a double chin below. Mr. Jorrocks used to say that she was "warranted" to him as twelve years younger than himself, but many people supposed the difference of age between them was not so great. Her stature was of the middle height, and she was of one breadth from the shoulders to the heels. She was dressed in a flaming scarlet satin gown, with swan's-down round the top, as also at the arms, and two flounces of the same material round the bottom. Her turban was of green velvet, with a gold fringe, terminating in a bunch over the left side, while a bird-of-paradise inclined towards the right. Across her forehead she wore a gold band, with a many-coloured glass butterfly (a present from James Green), and her neck, arms, waist (at least what ought to have been her waist) were hung round and studded with mosaic-gold chains, brooches, rings, buttons, bracelets, etc., looking for all the world like a portable pawnbroker's shop, or the lump of beef that Sinbad the sailor threw into the Valley of Diamonds. In the right of a gold band round her middle, was an immense gold watch, with a bunch of mosaic seals appended to a massive chain of the same material; and a large miniature of Mr. Jorrocks when he was a young man, with his hair stiffly curled, occupied a place on her left side. On her right arm dangled a green velvet bag with a gold cord, out of which one of Mr. Jorrocks's silk handkerchiefs protruded, while a crumpled, yellowish-white cambric one, with a lace fringe, lay at her side. On an hour-glass stool, a little behind Mrs. Jorrocks, sat her niece Belinda (Joe Jorrocks's eldest daughter), a nice laughing pretty girl of sixteen, with languishing blue eyes, brown hair, a nose of the "turn-up" order, beautiful mouth and teeth, a very fair complexion, and a gracefully moulded figure. She had just left one of the finishing and polishing seminaries in the neighbourhood of Bromley, where, for two hundred a year and upwards, all the teasing accomplishments of life are taught, and Mrs. Jorrocks, in her own mind, had already appropriated her to James Green, while Mr. Jorrocks, on the other hand, had assigned her to Stubbs. Belinda's dress was simplicity itself; her silken hair hung in shining tresses down her smiling face, confined by a plain tortoiseshell comb behind, and a narrow pink velvet band before. Round her swan-like neck was a plain white cornelian necklace; and her well-washed white muslin frock, confined by a pink sash, flowing behind in a bow, met in simple folds across her swelling bosom. Black sandal shoes confined her fairy feet, and with French cotton stockings, completed her toilette. Belinda, though young, was a celebrated eastern beauty, and there was not a butcher's boy in Whitechapel, from Michael Scales downwards, but what eyed her with delight as she passed along from Shoreditch on her daily walk. The presentations having been effected, and the heat of the day, the excellence of the house, the cleanliness of Great Coram Street--the usual topics, in short, when people know nothing of each other--having been discussed, our party scattered themselves about the room to await the pleasing announcement of dinner. Mr. Jorrocks, of course, was in attendance upon Nimrod, while Mr. Stubbs made love to Belinda behind Mrs. Jorrocks. Presently a loud long-protracted "rat-tat-tat-tat-tan, rat-tat-tat-tat-tan," at the street door sounded through the house, and Jorrocks, with a slap on his thigh, exclaimed, "By Jingo! there's Green. No man knocks with such wigorous wiolence as he does. All Great Coram Street and parts adjacent know when he comes. Julius Caesar himself couldn't kick up a greater row." "What Green is it, Green of Rollestone?" inquired Nimrod, thinking of his Leicestershire friend. "No," said Mr. Jorrocks, "Green of Tooley Street. You'll have heard of the Greens in the borough, 'emp, 'op, and 'ide (hemp, hop, and hide) merchants--numerous family, numerous as the 'airs in my vig. This is James Green, jun., whose father, old James Green, jun., _verd antique_, as I calls him, is the son of James Green, sen., who is in the 'emp line, and James is own cousin to young old James Green, sen., whose father is in the 'ide line." The remainder of the pedigree was lost by Benjamin throwing open the door and announcing Mr. Green; and Jemmy, who had been exchanging his cloth boots for patent-leather pumps, came bounding upstairs like a racket-ball. "My dear Mrs. Jorrocks," cried he, swinging through the company to her, "I'm delighted to see you looking so well. I declare you are fifty per cent younger than you were. Belinda, my love, 'ow are you? Jorrocks, my friend, 'ow do ye do?" "Thank ye, James," said Jorrocks, shaking hands with him most cordially, "I'm werry well, indeed, and delighted to see you. Now let me present you to Nimrod." "Ay, Nimrod!" said Green, in his usual flippant style, with a nod of his head, "'ow are ye, Nimrod? I've heard of you, I think--Nimrod Brothers and Co., bottle merchants, Crutched Friars, ain't it?" "No," said Jorrocks, in an undertone with a frown--Happerley Nimrod, the great sporting hauthor." "True," replied Green, not at all disconcerted, "I've heard of him--Nimrod--the mighty 'unter before the lord. Glad to see ye, Nimrod. Stubbs, 'ow are ye?" nodding to the Yorkshireman, as he jerked himself on to a chair on the other side of Belinda. As usual, Green was as gay as a peacock. His curly flaxen wig projected over his forehead like the roof of a Swiss cottage, and his pointed gills were supported by a stiff black mohair stock, with a broad front and black frill confined with jet studs down the centre. His coat was light green, with archery buttons, made very wide at the hips, with which he sported a white waistcoat, bright yellow ochre leather trousers, pink silk stockings, and patent-leather pumps. In his hand he carried a white silk handkerchief, which smelt most powerfully of musk; and a pair of dirty wristbands drew the eye to sundry dashing rings upon his fingers. Jonathan Crane, a little long-nosed old city wine-merchant, a member of the Surrey Hunt, being announced and presented, Mrs. Jorrocks declared herself faint from the heat of the room, and begged to be excused for a few minutes. Nimrod, all politeness, was about to offer her his arm, but Mr. Jorrocks pulled him back, whispering, "Let her go, let her go." "The fact is," said he in an undertone after she was out of hearing, "it's a way Mrs. J---- has when she wants to see that dinner's all right. You see she's a terrible high-bred woman, being a cross between a gentleman-usher and a lady's-maid, and doesn't like to be supposed to look after these things, so when she goes, she always pretend to faint. You'll see her back presently," and, just as he spoke, in she came with a half-pint smelling-bottle at her nose. Benjamin followed immediately after, and throwing open the door proclaimed, in a half-fledged voice, that "dinner was sarved," upon which the party all started on their legs. "Now, Mr. Happerley Nimrod," cried Jorrocks, "you'll trot Mrs. J---- down--according to the book of etiquette, you know, giving her the wall side.[25] Sorry, gentlemen, I havn't ladies apiece for you, but my sally-manger, as we say in France, is rayther small, besides which I never like to dine more than eight. Stubbs, my boy, Green and you must toss up for Belinda--here's a halfpenny, and let be 'Newmarket'[26] if you please. Wot say you? a voman! Stubbs wins!" cried Mr. Jorrocks, as the halfpenny fell head downwards. "Now, Spiers, couple up with Crane, and James and I will whip in to you. But stop, gentlemen!" cried Mr. Jorrocks, as he reached the top of the stairs, "let me make one request--that you von't eat the windmill you'll see on the centre of the table. Mrs. Jorrocks has hired it for the evening, of Mr. Farrell, the confectioner, in Lamb's Conduit Street, and it's engaged to two or three evening parties after it leaves this." "Lauk, John! how wulgar you are. What matter can it make to your friends where the windmill comes from!" exclaimed Mrs. Jorrocks in an audible voice from below, Nimrod, with admirable skill, having piloted her down the straights and turns of the staircase. Having squeezed herself between the backs of the chairs and the wall, Mrs. Jorrocks at length reached the head of the table, and with a bump of her body and wave of her hand motioned Nimrod to take the seat on her right. Green then pushed past Belinda and Stubbs, and took the place on Mrs. Jorrocks's left, so Stubbs, with a dexterous manoeuvre, placed himself in the centre of the table, with Belinda between himself and her uncle. Crane and Spiers then filled the vacant places on Nimrod's side, Mr. Spiers facing Mr. Stubbs. [Footnote 25: "In your passage from one room to another, offer the lady the wall in going downstairs," etc,--_Spirit of Etiquette._] [Footnote 26: "We have repeatedly decided that Newmarket is _one_ toss."--_Bell's Life._] The dining-room was the breadth of the passage narrower than the front drawing-room, and, as Mr. Jorrocks truly said, was rayther small--but the table being excessively broad, made the room appear less than it was. It was lighted up with spermaceti candles in silver holders, one at each corner of the table, and there was a lamp in the wall between the red-curtained windows, immediately below a brass nail, on which Mr. Jorrocks's great hunting-whip and a bunch of boot garters were hung. Two more candles in the hands of bronze Dianas on the marble mantelpiece, lighted up a coloured copy of Barraud's picture of John Warde on Blue Ruin; while Mr. Ralph Lambton, on his horse Undertaker, with his hounds and men, occupied a frame on the opposite wall. The old-fashioned cellaret sideboard, against the wall at the end, supported a large bright-burning brass lamp, with raised foxes round the rim, whose effulgent rays shed a brilliant halo over eight black hats and two white ones, whereof the four middle ones were decorated with evergreens and foxes' brushes. The dinner table was crowded, not covered. There was scarcely a square inch of cloth to be seen on any part. In the centre stood a magnificent finely spun barley-sugar windmill, two feet and a half high, with a spacious sugar foundation, with a cart and horses and two or three millers at the door, and a she-miller working a ball-dress flounce at a lower window. The whole dinner, first, second, third, fourth course --everything, in fact, except dessert--was on the table, as we sometimes see it at ordinaries and public dinners. Before both Mr. and Mrs. Jorrocks were two great tureens of mock-turtle soup, each capable of holding a gallon, and both full up to the brim. Then there were two sorts of fish; turbot and lobster sauce, and a great salmon. A round of boiled beef and an immense piece of roast occupied the rear of these, ready to march on the disappearance of the fish and soup--and behind the walls, formed by the beef of old England, came two dishes of grouse, each dish holding three brace. The side dishes consisted of a calf's head hashed, a leg of mutton, chickens, ducks, and mountains of vegetables; and round the windmill were plum-puddings, tarts, jellies, pies, and puffs. Behind Mrs. Jorrocks's chair stood "Batsay" with a fine brass-headed comb in her hair, and stiff ringlets down her ruddy cheeks. She was dressed in a green silk gown, with a coral necklace, and one of Mr. Jorrocks's lavender and white coloured silk pocket-handkerchiefs made into an apron. "Binjimin" stood with the door in his hand, as the saying is, with a towel twisted round his thumb, as though he had cut it. "Now, gentlemen," said Mr. Jorrocks, casting his eye up the table, as soon as they had all got squeezed and wedged round it, and the dishes were uncovered, "you see your dinner, eat whatever you like except the windmill--hope you'll be able to satisfy nature with what's on--would have had more but Mrs. J---- is so werry fine, she won't stand two joints of the same sort on the table." _Mrs. J._ Lauk, John, how can you be so wulgar! Who ever saw two rounds of beef, as you wanted to have? Besides, I'm sure the gentlemen will excuse any little defishency, considering the short notice we have had, and that this is not an elaborate dinner. _Mr. Spiers._ I'm sure, ma'm, there's no de_fish_ency at all. Indeed, I think there's as much fish as would serve double the number--and I'm sure you look as if you had your soup "on sale or return," as we say in the magazine line. _Mr. J._ Haw! haw! haw! werry good, Mr. Spiers. I owe you one. Not bad soup though--had it from Birch's. Let me send you some; and pray lay into it, or I shall think you don't like it. Mr. Happerley, let me send you some--and, gentlemen, let me observe, once for all, that there's every species of malt liquor under the side table. Prime stout, from the Marquess Cornwallis, hard by. Also ale, table, and what my friend Crane there calls lamen_table_--he says, because it's so werry small--but, in truth, because I don't buy it of him. There's all sorts of drench, in fact, except water--thing I never touch--rots one's shoes, don't know what it would do with one's stomach if it was to get there. Mr. Crane, you're eating nothing. I'm quite shocked to see you; you don't surely live upon hair? Do help yourself, or you'll faint from werry famine. Belinda, my love, does the Yorkshireman take care of you? Who's for some salmon?--bought at Luckey's, and there's both Tallyho and Tantivy sarce to eat with it. Somehow or other I always fancies I rides harder after eating these sarces with fish. Mr. Happerley Nimrod, you are the greatest man at table, consequently I axes you to drink wine first, according to the book of etiquette--help yourself, sir. Some of Crane's particklar, hot and strong, real stuff, none of your wan de bones (vin de beaume) or rot-gut French stuff--hope you like it--if you don't, pray speak your mind freely, now that we have Crane among us. Binjimin, get me some of that duck before Mr. Spiers, a leg and a wing, if you please, sir, and a bit of the breast. _Mr. Spiers._ Certainly, sir, certainly. Do you prefer a right or left wing, sir? _Mr. Jorrocks._ Oh, either. I suppose it's all the same. _Mr. Spiers._ Why no, sir, it's not exactly all the same; for it happens there is only one remaining, therefore it must be the _left_ one. _Mr. J._ (chuckling). Haw! haw! haw! Mr. S----, werry good that--werry good indeed. I owes you two. "I'll trouble you for a little, Mr. Spiers, if you please," says Crane, handing his plate round the windmill. "I'm sorry, sir, it is all gone," replies Mr. Spiers, who had just filled Mr. Jorrocks's plate; "there's nothing left but the neck," holding it up on the fork. "Well, send it," rejoins Mr. Crane; "neck or nothing, you know, Mr. Jorrocks, as we say with the Surrey." "Haw! haw! haw!" grunts Mr. Jorrocks, who is busy sucking a bone; "haw! hawl haw! werry good, Crane, werry good--owes you one. Now, gentlemen," added he, casting his eye up the table as he spoke, "let me adwise ye, before you attack the grouse, to take the hedge (edge) off your appetites, or else there won't be enough, and, you know, it does not do to eat the farmer after the gentlemen. Let's see, now--three and three are six, six brace among eight--oh dear, that's nothing like enough. I wish, Mrs. J----, you had followed my adwice, and roasted them all. And now, Binjimin, you're going to break the windmill with your clumsiness, you little dirty rascal! Why von't you let Batsay arrange the table? Thank you, Mr. Crane, for your assistance--your politeness, sir, exceeds your beauty." [A barrel organ strikes up before the window, and Jorrocks throws down his knife and fork in an agony.] "Oh dear, oh dear, there's that cursed horgan again. It's a regular annihilator. Binjimin, run and kick the fellow's werry soul out of him. There's no man suffers so much from music as I do. I wish I had a pocketful of sudden deaths, that I might throw one at every thief of a musicianer that comes up the street. I declare the scoundrel has set all my teeth on edge. Mr. Nimrod, pray take another glass of wine after your roast beef.--Well, with Mrs. J---- if you choose, but I'll join you--always says that you are the werry cleverest man of the day--read all your writings--anny-tommy (anatomy) of gaming, and all. Am a hauthor myself, you know--once set to, to write a werry long and elaborate harticle on scent, but after cudgelling my brains, and turning the thing over and over again in my mind, all that I could brew on the subject was, that scent was a werry rum thing; nothing rummer than scent, except a woman." "Pray," cried Mrs. Jorrocks, her eyes starting as she spoke, "don't let us have any of your low-lifed stable conversation here--you think to show off before the ladies," added she, "and flatter yourself you talk about what we don't understand. Now, I'll be bound to say, with all your fine sporting hinformation, you carn't tell me whether a mule brays or neighs!" "Vether a mule brays or neighs?" repeated Mr. Jorrocks, considering. "I'll lay I can!" "Which, then?" inquired Mrs. Jorrocks. "Vy, I should say it brayed." "Mule bray!" cried Mrs. Jorrocks, clapping her hands with delight, "there's a cockney blockhead for you! It brays, does it?" _Mr. Jorrocks. _I meant to say, neighed. "Ho! ho! ho!" grinned Mrs. J----, "neighs, does it? You are a nice man for a fox-'unter--a mule neighs--thought I'd catch you some of these odd days with your wain conceit." "Vy, what does it do then?" inquired Mr. Jorrocks, his choler rising as he spoke. "I hopes, at all ewents, he don't make the 'orrible noise you do." "Why, it screams, you great hass!" rejoined his loving spouse. A single, but very resolute knock at the street door, sounding quite through the house, stopped all further ebullition, and Benjamin, slipping out, held a short conversation with someone in the street, and returned. "What's happened now, Binjimin?" inquired Mr. Jorrocks, with anxiety on his countenance, as the boy re-entered the room; "the 'osses arn't amiss, I 'ope?" "Please, sir, Mr. Farrell's young man has come for the windmill--he says you've had it two hours," replied Benjamin. "The deuce be with Mr. Farrell's young man! he does not suppose we can part with the mill before the cloth's drawn--tell him to mizzle, or I'll mill him. 'Now's the day and now's the hour'; who's for some grouse? Gentlemen, make your game, in fact. But first of all let's have a round robin. Pass the wine, gentlemen. What wine do you take, Stubbs." "Why, champagne is good enough for me." _Mr. Jorrocks,_ I dare say; but if you wait till you get any here, you will have a long time to stop. Shampain, indeed! had enough of that nonsense abroad--declare you young chaps drink shampain like hale. There's red and wite port, and sherry, in fact, and them as carn't drink, they must go without. X. was expensive and soon became poor, Y. was the wise man and kept want from the door. "Now for the grouse!" added he, as the two beefs disappeared, and they took their stations at the top and bottom of the table. "Fine birds, to be sure! Hope you havn't burked your appetites, gentlemen, so as not to be able to do justice to them--smell high--werry good--gamey, in fact. Binjimin. take an 'ot plate to Mr. Nimrod--sarve us all round with them." The grouse being excellent, and cooked to a turn, little execution was done upon the pastry, and the jellies had all melted long before it came to their turn to be eat. At length everyone, Mr. Jorrocks and all, appeared satisfied, and the noise of knives and forks was succeeded by the din of tongues and the ringing of glasses, as the eaters refreshed themselves with wine or malt liquors. Cheese and biscuit being handed about on plates, according to the _Spirit of Etiquette_. Binjimin and Batsay at length cleared the table, lifted off the windmill, and removed the cloth. Mr. Jorrocks then delivered himself of a most emphatic grace. The wine and dessert being placed on the table, the ceremony of drinking healths all round was performed. "Your good health, Mrs. J----.--Belinda, my loove, your good health--wish you a good 'usband.--Nimrod, your good health.--James Green, your good health.--Old _verd antique's_ good health.--Your uncle's good health.--All the Green family.--Stubbs, your good health.--Spiers, Crane, etc." The bottles then pass round three times, on each of which occasions Mrs. Jorrocks makes them pay toll. The fourth time she let them pass; and Jorrocks began to grunt, hem, and haw, and kick the leg of the table, by way of giving her a hint to depart. This caused a dead silence, which at length was broken by the Yorkshireman's exclaiming "horrid pause!" "Horrid paws!" vociferated Mrs. J----, in a towering rage, "so would yours, let me tell you, sir, if you had helped to cook all that dinner": and gathering herself up and repeating the words "horrid paws, indeed, I like your imperence," she sailed out of the room like an exasperated turkey-cock; her face, from heat, anger, and the quantity she had drank, being as red as her gown. Indeed, she looked for all the world as if she had been put into a furnace and blown red hot. Jorrocks having got rid of his "worser half," as he calls her, let out a reef or two of his acre of white waistcoat, and each man made himself comfortable according to his acceptation of the term. "Gentlemen," says Jorrocks, "I'll trouble you to charge your glasses, 'eel-taps off--a bumper toast--no skylights, if you please. Crane, pass the wine--you are a regular old stop-bottle--a turnpike gate, in fact. I think you take back hands--gentlemen, are you all charged?--then I'll give you THE NOBLE SPORT OF FOX-'UNTING! gentlemen, with three times three, and Crane will give the 'ips--all ready--now, ip, 'ip, 'ip, 'uzza, 'uzza, 'uzza--'ip, 'ip, 'ip, 'uzza, 'uzza, 'uzza--'ip, 'ip, 'ip, 'uzza, 'uzza, 'uzza.--one cheer more, 'UZZA!" After this followed "The Merry Harriers," then came "The Staggers," after that "The Trigger, and bad luck to Cheatum," all bumpers; when Jorrocks, having screwed his courage up to the sticking-place, called for another, which being complied with, he rose and delivered himself as follows: "Gentlemen, in rising to propose the toast which I am now about to propose--I feel--I feel--(Yorkshireman--'very queer?') J---- No, not verry queer, and I'll trouble you to hold your jaw (laughter). Gentlemen, I say, in rising to propose the toast which I am about to give, I feel--I feel--(Crane--'werry nervous?') J---- No, not werry nervous, so none of your nonsense; let me alone, I say. I say, in rising to propose the toast which I am about to give, I feel--(Mr. Spiers--'very foolish?' Nimrod--'very funny?' Crane--'werry rum?') J---- No, werry proud of the distinguished honour that has been conferred upon me--conferred upon me--conferred upon me--distinguished honour that has been conferred upon me by the presence, this day, of one of the most distinguished men--distinguished men--by the presence, this day, of one of the most distinguished men and sportsmen--of modern times (cheers.) Gentlemen--this is the proudest moment of my life! the eyes of England are upon us! I give you the health of Mr. Happerley Nimrod." (Drunk with three times three.) When the cheering, and dancing of the glasses had somewhat subsided, Nimrod rose and spoke as follows: "Mr. Jorrocks, and gentlemen", "The handsome manner in which my health has been proposed by our worthy and estimable host, and the flattering reception it has met with from you, merit my warmest acknowledgments. I should, indeed, be unworthy of the land which gave me birth, were I insensible of the honour which has just been done me by so enlightened and distinguished an assembly as the present. My friend, Mr. Jorrocks, has been pleased to designate me as one of the most distinguished sportsmen of the day, a title, however, to which I feel I have little claim: but this I may say, that I have portrayed our great national sports in their brightest and most glowing colours, and that on sporting subjects my pen shall yield to none (cheers). I have ever been the decided advocate of many sports and exercises, not only on account of the health and vigour they inspire, but because I feel that they are the best safeguards on a nation's energies, and the best protection against luxury, idleness, debauchery, and effeminacy (cheers). The authority of all history informs us, that the energies of countries flourished whilst manly sports have flourished, and decayed as they died away (cheers). What says Juvenal, when speaking of the entry of luxury into Rome?" Saevior armis Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem. "And we need only refer to ancient history, and to the writings of Xenophon, Cicero, Horace, or Virgil, for evidence of the value they have all attached to the encouragement of manly, active, and hardy pursuits, and the evils produced by a degenerate and effeminate life on the manners and characters of a people (cheers). Many of the most eminent literary characters of this and of other countries have been ardently attached to field sports; and who, that has experienced their beneficial results, can doubt that they are the best promoters of the _mens sana in corpore sano_--the body sound and the understanding clear (cheers)? Gentlemen, it is with feelings of no ordinary gratification that I find myself at the social and truly hospitable board of one of the most distinguished ornaments of one of the most celebrated Hunts in this great country, one whose name and fame have reached the four corners of the globe--to find myself after so long an absence from my native land--an estrangement from all that has ever been nearest and dearest to my heart--once again surrounded by these cheerful countenances which so well express the honest, healthful pursuits of their owners. Let us then," added Nimrod, seizing a decanter and pouring himself out a bumper, "drink, in true Kentish fire, the health and prosperity of that brightest sample of civic sportsmen, the great and renowned JOHN JORROCKS!" Immense applause followed the conclusion of this speech, during which time the decanters buzzed round the table, and the glasses being emptied, the company rose, and a full charge of Kentish fire followed; Mr. Jorrocks, sitting all the while, looking as uncomfortable as men in his situation generally do. The cheering having subsided, and the parties having resumed their seats, it was his turn to rise, so getting on his legs, he essayed to speak, but finding, as many men do, that his ideas deserted him the moment the "eyes of England" were turned upon him, after two or three hitches of his nankeens, and as many hems and haws, he very coolly resumed his seat, and spoke as follows: "Gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I am taken quite aback by this werry unexpected compliment (cheers); never since I filled the hancient and honerable hoffice of churchwarden in the populous parish of St. Botolph Without, have I experienced a gratification equal to the present. I thank you from the werry bottom of my breeches-pocket (applause). Gentlemen, I'm no horator, but I'm a honest man (cheers). I should indeed be undeserving the name of a sportsman--undeserving of being a member of that great and justly celebrated 'unt, of which Mr. Happerley Nimrod has spun so handsome and flattering a yarn, if I did not feel deeply proud of the compliment you have paid it. It is unpossible for me to follow that great sporting scholar fairly over the ridge and furrow of his werry intricate and elegant horation, for there are many of those fine gentlemen's names--French, I presume--that he mentioned, that I never heard of before, and cannot recollect; but if you will allow me to run 'eel a little, I would make a few hobservations on a few of his hobservations.--Mr. Happerley Nimrod, gentlemen, was pleased to pay a compliment to what he was pleased to call my something 'ospitality. I am extremely obliged to him for it. To be surrounded by one's friends is in my mind the 'Al' of 'uman 'appiness (cheers). Gentlemen, I am most proud of the honour of seeing you all here to-day, and I hope the grub has been to your likin' (cheers), if not, I'll discharge my butcher. On the score of quantity there might be a little deficiency, but I hope the quality was prime. Another time this shall be all remedied (cheers). Gentlemen, I understand those cheers, and I'm flattered by them--I likes 'ospitality!--I'm not the man to keep my butter in a 'pike-ticket, or my coals in a quart pot (immense cheering). Gentlemen, these are my sentiments, I leaves the flowers of speech to them as is better acquainted with botany (laughter)--I likes plain English, both in eating and talking, and I'm happy to see Mr. Happerley Nimrod has not forgot his, and can put up with our homely fare, and do without pantaloon cutlets, blankets of woe,[27] and such-like miseries." [Footnote 27: "Blanquette de veau."] "I hates their 'orse douvers (hors-d'oeuvres), their rots, and their poisons (poissons); 'ord rot 'em, they near killed me, and right glad am I to get a glass of old British black strap. And talking of black strap, gentlemen, I call on old Crane, the man what supplies it, to tip us a song. So now I'm finished--and you, Crane, lap up your liquor and begin!" (applause). Crane was shy--unused to sing in company--nevertheless, if it was the wish of the party, and if it would oblige his good customer, Mr. Jorrocks, he would try his hand at a stave or two made in honour of the immortal Surrey. Having emptied his glass and cleared his windpipe, Crane commenced: "Here's a health to them that can ride! Here's a health to them that can ride! And those that don't wish good luck to the cause. May they roast by their own fireside! It's good to drown care in the chase, It's good to drown care in the bowl. It's good to support Daniel Haigh and his hounds, Here's his health from the depth of my soul." CHORUS "Hurrah for the loud tally-ho! Hurrah for the loud tally-ho! It's good to support Daniel Haigh and his hounds. And echo the shrill tally-ho!" "Here's a health to them that can ride! Here's a health to them that ride bold! May the leaps and the dangers that each has defied, In columns of sporting be told! Here's freedom to him that would walk! Here's freedom to him that would ride! There's none ever feared that the horn should be heard Who the joys of the chase ever tried." "Hurrah for the loud tally-ho! Hurrah for the loud tally-ho! It's good to support Daniel Haigh and his hounds, And halloo the loud tally-ho!" "Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Jorrocks, clapping his hands and stamping as Crane had ceased. "A werry good song, and it's werry well sung. Jolly companions every one!" "Gentlemen, pray charge your glasses--there's one toast we must drink in a bumper if we ne'er take a bumper again. Mr. Spiers, pray charge your glass--Mr. Stubbs, vy don't you fill up?--Mr. Nimrod, off with your 'eel taps, pray--I'll give ye the 'Surrey 'Unt,' with all my 'art and soul. Crane, my boy, here's your werry good health, and thanks for your song!" (All drink the Surrey Hunt and Crane's good health, with applause, which brings him on his legs with the following speech): "Gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking (laughter), I beg leave on behalf of myself and the absent members of the Surrey 'Unt, to return you our own most 'artfelt thanks for the flattering compliment you have just paid us, and to assure you that the esteem and approbation of our fellow-sportsmen is to us the magnum bonum of all earthly 'appiness (cheers and laughter). Gentlemen, I will not trespass longer upon your valuable time, but as you seem to enjoy this wine of my friend Mr. Jorrocks's, I may just say that I have got some more of the same quality left, at from forty-two to forty-eight shillings a dozen, also some good stout draught port, at ten and sixpence a gallon--some ditto werry superior at fifteen; also foreign and British spirits, and Dutch liqueurs, rich and rare." The conclusion of the vintner's address was drowned in shouts of laughter. Mr. Jorrocks then called upon the company in succession for a toast, a song, or a sentiment. Nimrod gave, "The Royal Staghounds"; Crane gave, "Champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends"; Green sung, "I'd be a butterfly"; Mr. Stubbs gave, "Honest men and bonnie lasses"; and Mr. Spiers, like a patriotic printer, gave, "The liberty of the Press," which he said was like fox-hunting--"if we have it not we die"--all of which Mr. Jorrocks applauded as if he had never heard them before, and drank in bumpers. It was evident that unless tea was speedily announced he would soon become; O'er the ills of life victorious, for he had pocketed his wig, and had been clipping the Queen's English for some time. After a pause, during which his cheeks twice changed colour, from red to green and back to red, he again called for a bumper toast, which he prefaced with the following speech, or parts of a speech: "Gentlemen--in rising--propose toast about to give--feel werry--feel werry--(Yorkshireman, 'werry muzzy?') J---- feel werry--(Mr. Spiers, 'werry sick?') J---- werry--(Crane, 'werry thirsty?') J---- feel werry --(Nimrod, 'werry wise?') J---- no; but werry sensible --great compliment--eyes of England upon us--give you the health--Mr. Happerley Nimrod--three times three!" He then attempted to rise for the purpose of marking the time, but his legs deserted his body, and after two or three lurches down he went with a tremendous thump under the table. He called first for "Batsay," then for "Binjimin," and, game to the last, blurted out, "Lift me up!--tie me in my chair!--fill my glass!" XIII. THE DAY AFTER THE FEAST: AN EPISODE BY THE YORKSHIREMAN On the morning after Mr. Jorrocks's "dinner party" I had occasion to go into the city, and took Great Coram Street in my way. My heart misgave me when I recollected Mrs. J---- and her horrid paws, but still I thought it my duty to see how the grocer was after his fall. Arrived at the house I rang the area bell, and Benjamin, who was cleaning knives below, popped his head up, and seeing who it was, ran upstairs and opened the door. His master was up, he said, but "werry bad," and his misses was out. Leaving him to resume his knife-cleaning occupation, I slipped quietly upstairs, and hearing a noise in the bedroom, opened the door, and found Jorrocks sitting in his dressing-gown in an easy chair, with Betsey patting his bald head with a damp towel. "Do that again, Batsay! Do that again!" was the first sound I heard, being an invitation to Betsey to continue her occupation. "Here's the Yorkshireman, sir," said Betsey, looking around. "Ah, Mr. York, how are you this morning?" said he, turning a pair of eyes upon me that looked like boiled gooseberries--his countenance indicating severe indisposition. "Set down, sir; set down--I'm werry bad--werry bad indeed--bad go last night. Doesn't do to go to the lush-crib this weather. How are you, eh? tell me all about it. Is Mr. Nimrod gone?" "Don't know," said I; "I have just come from Lancaster Street, where I have been seeing an aunt, and thought I would take Great Coram Street in my way to the city, to ask how you do--but where's Mrs. Jorrocks?" _Jorrocks_. Oh, cuss Mrs. J----; I knows nothing about her--been reading the Riot Act, and giving her red rag a holiday all the morning--wish to God I'd never see'd her--took her for better and worser, it's werry true; but she's a d----d deal worser than I took her for. Hope your hat may long cover your family. Mrs. J----'s gone to the Commons to Jenner--swears she'll have a diworce, a _mensa et thorax_, I think she calls it--wish she may get it--sick of hearing her talk about it--Jenner's the only man wot puts up with her, and that's because he gets his fees. Batsay, my dear! you may damp another towel, and then get me something to cool my coppers--all in a glow, I declare--complete fever. You whiles go to the lush-crib, Mr. Yorkshireman; what now do you reckon best after a regular drench? _Yorkshireman._ Oh, nothing like a glass of soda-water with a bottom of brandy--some people prefer a sermon, but that won't suit you or I. After your soda and brandy take a good chivy in the open air, and you'll be all right by dinner-time. _Jorrocks._ Right I Bliss ye, I shall niver be right again. I can scarce move out of my chair, I'm so bad--my head's just fit to split in two--I'm in no state to be seen. _Yorkshireman._ Oh, pooh!--get your soda-water and brandy, then have some strong coffee and a red herring, and you'll be all right, and if you'll find cash, I'll find company, and we'll go and have a lark together. _Jorrocks._ Couldn't really be seen out---besides, cash is werry scarce. By the way, now that I come to think on it, I had a five-pounder in my breeches last night. Just feel in the pocket of them 'ere nankeens, and see that Mrs. J---- has not grabbed it to pay Jenner's fee with. _Yorkshireman_ (feels). No--all right--here it is--No. 10,497--I promise to pay Mr. Thos. Rippon, or bearer, on demand, five pounds! Let's demand it, and go and spend the cash. _Jorrocks._ No, no--put it back--or into the table-drawer, see--fives are werry scarce with me--can't afford it--must be just before I'm generous. _Yorkshireman._ Well, then, J----, you must just stay at home and get bullied by Mrs. J----, who will be back just now, I dare say, perhaps followed by Jenner and half Doctors' Commons. _Jorrocks_. The deuce! I forgot all that--curse Mrs. J---- and the Commons too. Well, Mr. Yorkshireman, I don't care if I do go with you--but where shall it be to? Some place where we can be quiet, for I really am werry bad, and not up to nothing like a lark. _Yorkshireman_. Suppose we take a sniff of the briny--Margate--Ramsgate--Broadstairs? _Jorrocks_. No, none of them places--over-well-known at 'em all--can't be quiet--get to the lush-crib again, perhaps catch the cholera and go to Gravesend by mistake. Let's go to the Eel Pye at Twickenham and live upon fish. _Yorkshireman_. Fish! you old flat. Why, you know, you'd be the first to cry out if you had to do so. No, no--let's have no humbug--here, drink your coffee like a man, and then hustle your purse and see what it will produce. Why, even Betsey's laughing at the idea of your living upon fish. _Jorrocks_. Don't shout so, pray--your woice shoots through every nerve of my head and distracts me (drinks). This is grand Mocho--quite the cordial balm of Gilead--werry fine indeed. Now I feel rewived and can listen to you. _Yorkshireman_. Well, then, pull on your boots--gird up your loins, and let's go and spend this five pounds--stay away as long as it lasts, in fact. _Jorrocks_. Well, but give me the coin--it's mine you know--and let me be paymaster, or I know you'll soon be into dock again. That's right; and now I have got three half-crowns besides, which I will add. _Yorkshireman_. And I've got three pence, which, not to be behind-hand in point of liberality, I'll do the same with, so that we have got five pounds seven shillings and ninepence between us, according to Cocker. _Jorrocks_. Between us, indeed! I likes that. You're a generous churchwarden. _Yorkshireman_. Well--we won't stand upon trifles the principle is the thing I look to--and not the amount. So now where to, your honour? After a long parley, we fixed upon Herne Bay. Our reasons for doing so were numerous, though it would be superfluous to mention them, save that the circumstance of neither of us ever having been there, and the prospect of finding a quiet retreat for Jorrocks to recover in, were the principal ones. Our arrangements were soon made. "Batsay," said J---- to his principessa of a cook, slut, and butler, "the Yorkshireman and I are going out of town to stay five pounds seven and ninepence, so put up my traps." Two shirts (one to wash the other as he said), three pairs of stockings, with other etceteras, were stamped into a carpet-bag, and taking a cab, we called at the "Piazza," where I took a few things, and away we drove to Temple Bar. "Stop here with the bags," said Jorrocks, "while I go to the Temple Stairs and make a bargain with a Jacob Faithful to put us on board, for if they see the bags they'll think it's a case of necessity, and ask double; whereas I'll pretend I'm just going a-pleasuring, and when I've made a bargain, I'll whistle, and you can come." Away he rolled, and after the lapse of a few minutes I heard a sort of shilling-gallery cat-call, and obeying the summons, found he had concluded a bargain for one and sixpence. We reached St. Catherine's Docks just as the Herne Bay boat--the _Hero_--moored alongside, consequently were nearly the first on board. Herne Bay being then quite in its infancy, and this being what the cits call a "weekday," they had rather a shy cargo, nor had they any of that cockney tomfoolery that generally characterises a Ramsgate or Margate crew, more particularly a Margate one. Indeed, it was a very slow cargo, Jorrocks being the only character on board, and he was as sulky as a bear with a sore head when anyone approached. The day was beautifully fine, and a thin grey mist gradually disappeared from the Kentish hills as we passed down the Thames. The river was gay enough. Adelaide, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, was expected on her return from Germany, and all the vessels hung out their best and gayest flags and colours to do her honour. The towns of Greenwich and Woolwich were in commotion. Charity schools were marching, and soldiers were doing the like, while steamboats went puffing down the river with cargoes to meet and escort Her Majesty. When we got near Tilbury Fort, a man at the head of the steamer announced that we should meet the Queen in ten minutes, and all the passengers crowded on to the paddle-box of the side on which she was to pass, to view and greet her. Jorrocks even roused himself up and joined the throng. Presently a crowd of steamers were seen in the distance, proceeding up the river at a rapid pace, with a couple of lofty-masted vessels in tow, the first of which contained the royal cargo. The leading steamboat was the celebrated _Magnet_--considered the fastest boat on the river, and the one in which Jorrocks and myself steamed from Margate, racing against and beating the _Royal William._ This had the Lord Mayor and Aldermen on board, who had gone down to the extent of the city jurisdiction to meet the Queen, and have an excuse for a good dinner. The deck presented a gay scene, being covered with a military band, and the gaudy-liveried lackeys belonging to the Mansion House, and sheriffs whose clothes were one continuous mass of gold lace and frippery, shining beautifully brilliant in the midday sun. The royal yacht, with its crimson and gold pennant floating on the breeze, came towering up at a rapid pace, with the Queen sitting under a canopy on deck. As we neared, all hats were off, and three cheers--or at least as many as we could wedge in during the time the cortège took to sweep past us--were given, our band consisting of three brandy-faced musicians, striking up _God save the King_--a compliment which Her Majesty acknowledged by a little mandarining; and before the majority of the passengers had recovered from the astonishment produced by meeting a live Queen on the Thames, the whole fleet had shot out of sight. By the time the ripple on the water, raised by their progress, had subsided, we had all relapsed into our former state of apathy and sullenness. A duller or staider set I never saw outside a Quakers' meeting. Still the beggars eat, as when does a cockney not in the open air? The stewards of these steamboats must make a rare thing of their places, for they have plenty of custom at their own prices. In fact, being in a steamboat is a species of personal incarceration, and you have only the option between bringing your own prog, or taking theirs at whatever they choose to charge--unless, indeed, a person prefers going without any. Jorrocks took nothing. He laid down again after the Queen had passed, and never looked up until we were a mile or two off Herne Bay. With the reader's permission, we will suppose that we have just landed, and, bags in hand, ascended the flight of steps that conduct passengers, as it were, from the briny ocean on to the stage of life. "My eyes!" said Jorrocks, as he reached the top, "wot a pier, and wot a bit of a place! Why, there don't seem to be fifty houses altogether, reckoning the windmill in the centre as one. What's this thing?" said he to a ticket-porter, pointing to a sort of French diligence-looking concern which had just been pushed up to the landing end. "To carry the lumber, sir--live and dead--gentlemen and their bags, as don't like to walk." "Do you charge anything for the ride?" inquired Jorrocks, with his customary caution. "Nothing," was the answer. "Then, let's get on the roof," said J----, "and take it easy, and survey the place as we go along." So, accordingly, we clambered on to the top of the diligence, "summâ diligentiâ," and seated ourselves on a pile of luggage; being all stowed away, and as many passengers as it would hold put inside, two or three porters proceeded to propel the machine along the railroad on which it runs. "Now, Mr. Yorkshireman," said Jorrocks, "we are in a strange land, and it behoves us to proceed with caution, or we may spend our five pounds seven and sixpence before we know where we are." _Yorkshireman_. Seven and ninepence it is, sir. _Jorrocks_. Well, be it so--five pounds seven and ninepence between two, is by no means an impossible sum to spend, and the trick is to make it go as far as we can. Now some men can make one guinea go as far as others can make two, and we will try what we can do. In the first place, you know I makes it a rule never to darken the door of a place wot calls itself an 'otel, for 'otel prices and inn prices are werry different. You young chaps don't consider these things, and as long as you have got a rap in the world you go swaggering about, ordering claret and waxlights, and everything wot's expensive, as though you must spend money because you are in an inn. Now, that's all gammon. If a man haven't got money he can't spend it; and we all know that many poor folks are obliged at times to go to houses of public entertainment, and you don't suppose that they pay for fire and waxlights, private sitting-rooms, and all them 'ere sort of things. Now, said he, adjusting his hunting telescope and raking the town of Herne Bay, towards which we were gently approaching on our dignified eminence, but as yet had not got near enough to descry "what was what" with the naked eye, I should say yon great staring-looking shop directly opposite us is the cock inn of the place (looks through his glass). I'm right P-i-e-r, Pier 'Otel I reads upon the top, and that's no shop for my money. Let's see what else we have. There's nothing on the right, I think, but here on the left is something like our cut--D-o-l dol, p-h-i-n phin, Dolphin Inn. It's long since I went the circuit, as the commercial gentlemen (or what were called bagmen in my days) term it, but I haven't forgot the experience I gained in my travels, and I whiles turn it to werry good account now. "Coach to Canterbury, Deal, Margate, sir, going directly," interrupted him, and reminded us that we had got to the end of the pier, and ought to be descending. Two or three coaches were drawn up, waiting to carry passengers on, but we had got to our journey's end. "Now," said J----, "let's take our bags in hand and draw up wind, trying the 'Dolphin' first." Rejecting the noble portals of the Pier Hotel, we advanced towards Jorrocks's chosen house, a plain unpretending-looking place facing the sea, which is half the battle, and being but just finished had every chance of cleanliness. "Jonathan Acres" appeared above the door as the name of the landlord, and a little square-built, hatless, short-haired chap, in a shooting-jacket, was leaning against the door. "Mr. Hacres within?" said Jorrocks. "My name's Acres," said he of the shooting-jacket. "Humph," said J----, looking him over, "not Long Acre, I think." Having selected a couple of good airy bedrooms, we proceeded to see about dinner. "Mr. Hacres," said Jorrocks, "I makes it a rule never to pay more than two and sixpence for a feed, so now just give us as good a one as you possibly can for that money": and about seven o'clock we sat down to lamb-chops, ducks, French beans, pudding, etc.; shortly after which Jorrocks retired to rest, to sleep off the remainder of his headache. He was up long before me the next morning, and had a dip in the sea before I came down. "Upon my word," said he, as I entered the room, and found him looking as lively and fresh as a four-year-old, "it's worth while going to the lush-crib occasionally, if it's only for the pleasure of feeling so hearty and fresh as one does on the second day. I feel just as if I could jump out of my skin, but I will defer the performance until after breakfast. I have ordered a fork one, do you know, cold 'am and boiled bacon, with no end of eggs, and bread of every possible description. By the way, I've scraped acquaintance with Thorp, the baker hard by, who's a right good fellow, and says he will give me some shooting, and has some werry nice beagles wot he shoots to. But here's the grub. Cold 'am in abundance. But, waiter, you should put a little green garnishing to the dishes, I likes to see it, green is so werry refreshing to the eye; and tell Mr. Hacres to send up some more bacon and the bill, when I rings the bell. Nothing like having your bill the first morning, and then you know what you've got to pay, and can cut your coat according to your cloth." The bacon soon disappeared, and the bell being sounded, produced the order. "Humph," said J----, casting his eyes over the bill as it lay by the side of his plate, while he kept pegging away at the contents of the neighbouring dish--"pretty reasonable, I think--dinners, five shillings, that's half a crown each; beds, two shillings each; breakfasts, one and ninepence each, that's cheap for a fork breakfast; but, I say, you had a pint of sherry after I left you last night, and PALE sherry too! How could you be such an egreggorus (egregious) ass! That's so like you young chaps, not to know that the only difference between pale and brown sherry is, that one has more of the pumpaganus aqua in it than the other. You should have made it pale yourself, man. But look there. Wot a go!" Our attention was attracted to a youth in spectacles, dressed in a rich plum-coloured coat, on the outside of a dingy-looking, big-headed, brown nag, which he was flogging and cramming along the public walk in front of the "Dolphin," in the most original and ludicrous manner. We presently recognised him as one of our fellow-passengers of the previous day, respecting whom Jorrocks and I had had a dispute as to whether he was a Frenchman or a German. His equestrian performances decided the point. I never in all my life witnessed such an exhibition, nor one in which the performer evinced such self-complacency. Whether he had ever been on horseback before or not I can't tell, but the way in which he went to work, using the bridle as a sort of rattle to frighten the horse forward, the way in which he shook the reins, threw his arms about, and belaboured the poor devil of an animal in order to get him into a canter (the horse of course turning away every time he saw the blow coming), and the free, unrestrained liberty he gave to his head, surpassed everything of the sort I ever saw, and considerably endangered the lives of several of His Majesty's lieges that happened to be passing. Instead of getting out of their way, Frenchmanlike, he seemed to think everything should give way to an equestrian; and I saw him scatter a party of ladies like a covey of partridges, by riding slap amongst them, and not even making the slightest apology or obeisance for the rudeness. There he kept, cantering (or cantering as much as he could induce the poor rip to do) from one end of the town to the other, conceiving, I make not the slightest doubt, that he was looked upon with eyes of admiration by the beholders. He soon created no little sensation, and before he was done a crowd had collected near the Pier Hotel, to see him get his horse past (it being a Pier Hotel nag) each time; and I heard a primitive sort of postman, who was delivering the few letters that arrive in the place, out of a fish-basket, declare "that he would sooner kill a horse than lend it to such a chap." Having fretted his hour away, the owner claimed the horse, and Monsieur was dismounted. After surveying the back of the town, we found ourselves rambling in some beautiful picturesque fields in the rear. Kent is a beautiful county, and the trimly kept gardens, and the clustering vines twining around the neatly thatched cottages, remind one of the rich, luxuriant soil and climate of the South. Forgetting that we were in search of sea breezes, we continued to saunter on, across one field, over one stile and then over another, until after passing by the side of a snug-looking old-fashioned house, with a beautifully kept garden, the road took a sudden turn and brought us to some parkish-looking well-timbered ground in front, at one side of which Jorrocks saw something that he swore was a kennel. "I knows a hawk from a hand-saw," said he, "let me alone for that. I'll swear there are hounds in it. Bless your heart, don't I see a gilt fox on one end, and a gilt hare on the other?" Just then came up a man in a round fustian jacket, to whom Jorrocks addressed himself, and, as good luck would have it, he turned out to be the huntsman (for Jorrocks was right about the kennel), and away we went to look at the hounds. They proved to be Mr. Collard's, the owner of the house that we had just passed, and were really a very nice pack of harriers, consisting of seventeen or eighteen couple, kept in better style (as far as kennel appearance goes) than three-fourths of the harriers in England. Bird, the huntsman, our cicerone, seemed a regular keen one in hunting matters, and Jorrocks and he had a long confab about the "noble art of hunting," though the former was rather mortified to find on announcing himself as the "celebrated Mr. Jorrocks" that Bird had never heard of him before. After leaving the kennel we struck across a few fields, and soon found ourselves on the sea banks, along which we proceeded at the rate of about two miles an hour, until we came to the old church of Reculvers. Hard by is a public-house, the sign of the "Two Sisters," where, having each taken a couple of glasses of ale, we proceeded to enjoy one of the (to me at least) greatest luxuries in life--viz. that of lying on the shingle of the beach with my heels just at the water's edge. The day was intensely hot, and after occupying this position for about half an hour, and finding the "perpendicular rays of the sun" rather fiercer than agreeable, we followed the example of a flock of sheep, and availed ourselves of the shade afforded by the Reculvers. Here for a short distance along the beach, on both sides, are small breakwaters, and immediately below the Reculvers is one formed of stake and matting, capable of holding two persons sofa fashion. Into this Jorrocks and I crept, the tide being at that particular point that enabled us to repose, with the water lashing our cradle on both sides, without dashing high enough to wet us. "Oh, but this is fine!" said J----, dangling his arm over the side, and letting the sea wash against his hand. "I declare it comes fizzing up just like soda-water out of a bottle--reminds me of the lush-crib. By the way, Mr. Yorkshireman, I heard some chaps in our inn this morning talking about this werry place, and one of them said that there used to be a Roman station, or something of that sort, at it. Did you know anything of them 'ere ancient Romans? Luxterous dogs, I understand. If Mr. Nimrod was here now he could tell us all about them, for, if I mistake not, he was werry intimate with some of them--either he or his father, at least." A boat that had been gradually advancing towards us now run on shore, close by where we were lying, and one of the crew landed with a jug to get some beer. A large basket at the end attracted Jorrocks's attention, and, doglike, he got up and began to hover about and inquire about their destination of the remaining crew, four in number. They were a cockney party of pleasure, it seemed, going to fish, for which purpose they had hired the boat, and laid in no end of bait for the fish, and prog for themselves. Jorrocks, though no great fisherman (not having, as he says, patience enough), is never at a loss if there is plenty of eating; and finding that they had got a great chicken pie, two tongues, and a tart, agreed to pay for the boat if they would let us in upon equal terms with themselves as to the provender, which was agreed to without a debate. The messenger having returned with a gallon of ale, we embarked, and away we slid through the "glad waters of the dark blue sea." It was beautifully calm, scarcely a breeze appearing on the surface. After rowing for about an hour, one of the boatmen began to adjust the lines and bait the hooks; and having got into what he esteemed a favourite spot, he cast anchor and prepared for the sport. Each man was prepared with a long strong cord line, with a couple of hooks fastened to the ends of about a foot of whalebone, with a small leaden plummet in the centre. The hooks were baited with sandworms, and the instructions given were, after sounding the depth, to raise the hooks a little from the bottom, so as to let them hang conveniently for the fish to swallow. Great was the excitement as we dropped the lines overboard, as to who should catch the first whale. Jorrocks and myself having taken the fishermen's lines from them, we all met upon pretty equal terms, much like gentlemen jockeys in a race. A dead silence ensued. "I have one!" cried the youngest of our new friends. "Then pull him up," responded one of the boatmen, "gently, or you'll lose him." "And so I have, by God! he's gone." "Well, never mind," said the boatmen, "let's see your bait--aye, he's got that, too. We'll put some fresh on--there you are again--all right. Now drop it gently, and when you find you've hooked him, wind the line quickly, but quietly, and be sure you don't jerk the hook out of his mouth at starting." "I've got one!" cries Jorrocks--"I've got one--now, my wig, if I can but land him. I have him, certainly--by Jove! he's a wopper, too, judging by the way he kicks. Oh, but it's no use, sir--come along--come along--here he is--doublets, by crikey--two, huzza! huzza! What fine ones!--young haddocks or codlings, I should call them--werry nice eating, I dare say--I'm blow'd if this arn't sport." "I have one," cries our young friend again. "So have I," shouts another; and just at the same moment I felt the magic touch of my bait, and in an instant I felt the thrilling stroke. The fish were absolutely voracious, and we had nothing short of a miraculous draught. As fast as we could bait they swallowed, and we frequently pulled them up two at a time. Jorrocks was in ecstasies. "It was the finest sport he had ever encountered," and he kept halloaing and shouting every time he pulled them up, as though he were out with the Surrey. Having just hooked a second couple, he baited again and dropped his line. Two of our new friends had hooked fish at the same instant, and, in their eagerness to take them, overbalanced the boat, and Jorrocks, who was leaning over, went head foremost down into the deeps! * * * * * A terrible surprise came over us, and for a second or two we were so perfectly thunderstruck as to be incapable of rendering any assistance. A great splash, followed by a slight gurgling sound, as the water bubbled and subsided o'er the place where he went down, was all that denoted the exit of our friend. After a considerable dive he rose to the surface, minus his hat and wig, but speedily disappeared. The anchor was weighed, oars put out, and the boat rowed to the spot where he last appeared. He rose a third time, but out of arms' reach, apparently lifeless, and just as he was sinking, most probably for ever, one of the men contrived to slip the end of an oar under his arm, and support him on the water until he got within reach from the boat. The consternation when we got him on board was tremendous! Consisting, as we did, of two parties, neither knowing where the other had come from, we remained in a state of stupefied horror, indecision, and amazement for some minutes. The poor old man lay extended in the bottom of the boat, apparently lifeless, and even if the vital spark had not fled, there seemed no chance of reaching Herne Bay, whose pier, just then gilded by the rich golden rays of the setting sun, appeared in the far distance of the horizon. Where to row to was the question. No habitation where effective succour could be procured appeared on the shore, and to proceed without a certain destination was fruitless. How helpless such a period as this makes a man feel! "Let's make for Grace's," at length exclaimed one of the boatmen, and the other catching at the proposition, the head of the boat was whipped round in an instant, and away we sped through the glassy-surfaced water. Not a word broke upon the sound of the splashing oars until, nearing the shore, one of the men, looking round, directed us to steer a little to the right, in the direction of a sort of dell or land-break, peculiar to the Isle of Thanet; and presently we ran the head of the boat upon the shingle, just where a small rivulet that, descending from the higher grounds, waters the thickly wooded ravine, and discharges itself into the sea. The entrance of this dell is formed by a lofty precipitous rock, with a few stunted overhanging trees on one side, while the other is more open and softened in its aspect, and though steep and narrow at the mouth, gently slopes away into a brushwood-covered bank, which, stretching up the little valley, becomes lost in a forest of lofty oaks that close the inland prospect of the place. Here, to the left (just after one gets clear of the steeper part), commanding a view of the sea, and yet almost concealed from the eye of a careless traveller, was a lonely hut (the back wall formed by an excavation of the sandy rock) and the rest of clay, supporting a wooden roof, made of the hull of a castaway wreck, the abode of an old woman, called Grace Ganderne, well known throughout the whole Isle of Thanet as a poor harmless secluded widow, who subsisted partly on the charity of her neighbours, and partly on what she could glean from the smugglers, for the assistance she affords them in running their goods on that coast; and though she had been at work for forty years, she had never had the misfortune to be detected in the act, notwithstanding the many puncheons of spirits and many bales of goods fished out of the dark woods near her domicile. To this spot it was, just as the "setting sun's pathetic light" had been succeeded by the grey twilight of the evening, that we bore the body of our unfortunate companion. The door was closed, but Grace being accustomed to nocturnal visitors, speedily answered the first summons and presented herself. She was evidently of immense age, being nearly bowed double, and her figure, with her silvery hair, confined by a blue checked cotton handkerchief, and palsied hand, as tremblingly she rested upon her staff and eyed the group, would have made a subject worthy of the pencil of a Landseer. She was wrapped in an old red cloak, with a large hood, and in her ears she wore a pair of long gold-dropped earrings, similar to what one sees among the Norman peasantry--the gift, as I afterwards learned, of a drowned lover. After scrutinising us for a second or two, during which time a large black cat kept walking to and fro, purring and rubbing itself against her, she held back the door and beckoned us to enter. The little place was cleanly swept up, and a faggot and some dry brushwood, which she had just lighted for the purpose of boiling her kettle, threw a gleam of light over the apartment, alike her bedchamber, parlour, and kitchen. Her curtainless bed at the side, covered with a coarse brown counterpane, was speedily prepared for our friend, into which being laid, our new acquaintances were dispatched in search of doctors, while the boatman and myself, under the direction of old Grace, applied ourselves to procuring such restoratives as her humble dwelling afforded. "Let Grace alone," said the younger of the boatmen, seeing my affliction at the lamentable catastrophe, "if there be but a spark of life in the gentleman, she'll bring him round--many's the drowning man--aye, and wounded one, too--that's been brought in here during the stormy nights, and after fights with the coast-guard--that she's recovered." Hot bottles, and hot flannels, and hot bricks were all applied, but in vain; and when I saw hot brandy, too, fail of having the desired effect, I gave my friend up as lost, and left the hut to vent my grief in the open air. Grace was more sanguine and persevering, and when I returned, after a half-hour's absence, I could distinctly feel a returning pulse. Still, he gave no symptoms of animation, and it might only be the effect produced by the applications--as he remained in the same state for several hours. Fresh wood was added to the fire, and the boatmen having returned to their vessel, Grace and I proceeded to keep watch during the night, or until the arrival of a doctor. The poor old body, to whom scenes such as this were matter of frequent occurrence, seemed to think nothing of it, and proceeded to relate some of the wonderful escapes and recoveries she had witnessed, in the course of which she dropped many a sigh to the memory of some of her friends--the bold smugglers. There were no such "braw lads" now as formerly, she said, and were it not that "she was past eighty, and might as weel die in one place as anither, she wad gang back to the bonny blue hulls (hills) of her ain canny Scotland." In the middle of one of her long stories I thought I perceived a movement of the bedclothes, and, going to look, I found a considerable increase in the quickness of pulsation, and also a generous sort of glow upon the skin. "An' ded I no tell ye I wad recover him?" said she, with a triumphant look. "Afore twa mair hours are o'er he'll spak to ye." "I hope so, I'm sure," said I, still almost doubting her. "Oh, trust to me," said she, "he'll come about--I've seen mony a chiel in a mickle worse state nor him recovered. Pray, is the ould gintleman your father or your grandfather?" _Yorkshireman._ Why, I can't say that he's either exactly--but he's always been as good as a grandmother to me, I know. Grace was right. About three o'clock in the morning a sort of revulsion of nature took place, and after having lain insensible, and to all appearance lifeless, all that time, he suddenly began to move. Casting his eye wildly around, he seemed lost in amazement. He muttered something, but what it was I could not catch. "Lush-crib again, by Jove!" were the first words he articulated, and then, appearing to recollect himself, he added, "Oh, I forgot, I'm drowned--well drowned, too--can't be help'd, however--wasn't born to be hanged--and that seems clear." Thus he kept muttering and mumbling for an hour, until old Grace thinking him so far recovered as to remove all danger from sudden surprise, allowed me to take her seat at the bedside. He looked at me long and intensely, but the light was not sufficiently strong to enable him to make out who I was. "Jorrocks!" at length said I, taking him by the hand, "how are you, my old boy?" He started at the sound of his name. "Jorrocks," said he, "who's that?" "Why, the Yorkshireman; you surely have not forgotten your old friend and companion in a hundred fights!" _Jorrocks._ Oh, Mr. York, it's you, is it? Much obliged by your inquiries, but I'm drowned. _Yorkshireman._ Aye, but you are coming round, you'll be better before long. _Jorrocks._ Never! Don't try to gammon me. You know as well as I do that I'm drowned, and a drowned man never recovers. No, no, it's all up with me, I feel. Set down, however, while I say a few words to you. You're a good fellow, and I've remembered you in my will, which you'll find in the strong port-wine-bin, along with nine pounds secret service money. I hopes you'll think the legacy a fat one. I meant it as such. If you marry Belinda, I have left you a third of my fourth in the tea trade. Always said you were cut out for a grocer. Let Tat sell my stud. An excellent man, Tat--proudish perhaps--at least, he never inwites me to none of his dinners--but still a werry good man. Let him sell them, I say, and mind give Snapdragon a charge or two of shot before he goes to the 'ammer, to prevent his roaring. Put up a plain monument to my memory--black or white marble, whichever's cheapest--but mind, no Cupids or seraphums, or none of those sort of things--quite plain--with just this upon it--_Hic jacet Jorrocks._ And now I'll give you a bit of news. Neptune has appointed me huntsman to his pack of haddocks. Have two dolphins for my own riding, and a young lobster to look after them. Lord Farebrother whips in to me--he rides a turtle. "And now, my good friend," said he, grasping my hands with redoubled energy, "do you think you could accomplish me a rump-steak and oyster sauce?--also a pot of stout?--but, mind, blow the froth off the top, for it's bad for the kidneys!" THE END 
44492	----	WHIP AND SPUR BY COL. GEORGE E. WARING, JR. NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMIV COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. CONTENTS. PAGE VIX 7 RUBY 34 WETTSTEIN 67 CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX 93 HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT 138 TWO SCOUTS 162 IN THE GLOAMING 186 FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND 201 WHIP AND SPUR. VIX. When the work on the Central Park had fairly commenced, in the spring of 1858, I found--or I fancied--that proper attention to my scattered duties made it necessary that I should have a saddle-horse. How easily, by the way, the arguments that convince us of these pleasant necessities find their way to the understanding! Yet, how to subsist a horse after buying one, and how to buy? The memory of a well-bred and keen-eyed gray, dating back to the earliest days of my boyhood, and forming the chief feature of my recollection of play-time for years; an idle propensity, not a whit dulled yet, to linger over Leech's long-necked hunters, and Herring's field scenes; an almost superstitious faith in the different analyses of the bones of the racer and of the cart-horse; a firm belief in Frank Forester's teachings of the value of "blood,"--all these conspired to narrow my range of selection, and, unfortunately, to confine it to a very expensive class of horses. Unfortunately, again, the commissioners of the Park had extremely inconvenient ideas of economy, and evidently did not consider, in fixing their schedule of salaries, how much more satisfactory our positions would have been with more generous emolument. How a man with only a Park salary, and with a family to support, could set up a saddle-horse,--and not ride to the dogs,--was a question that exercised not a little of my engineering talent for weeks; and many an odd corner of plans and estimates was figured over with calculations of the cost of forage and shoeing. Stable-room was plenty and free in the condemned buildings of the former occupants, and a little "over-time" of one of the men would suffice for the grooming. I finally concluded that, by giving up cigars, and devoting my energies to the pipe in their stead, I could save enough to pay for my horse's keep; and so, the ways and means having been, in this somewhat vague manner, provided, the next step was to buy a horse. To tell of the days passed at auction sales in the hope (never there realized) of finding goodness and cheapness combined,--of the stationery wasted in answering advertisements based on every conceivable form of false pretence; to describe the numberless broken-kneed, broken-winded, and broken-down brutes that came under inspection,--would be tedious and disheartening. Good horses there were, of course, though very few good saddle-horses (America is not productive in this direction),--and the possible animals were held at impossible prices. Those who rode over the new Park lands usually rode anything but good saddle-horses. Fast trotters, stout ponies, tolerable carriage-horses, capital cart-horses, there were in plenty. But the clean-cut, thin-crested, bright-eyed, fine-eared, steel-limbed saddle-horse, the saddle-horse _par excellence_,--may I say the only saddle-horse?--rarely came under observation; and when, by exception, such a one did appear, he was usually so ridden that his light was sadly dimmed. It was hard to recognize an elastic step under such an unelastic seat. Finally, in the days of my despair, a kind saddler,--kept to his daily awl by a too keen eye for sport, and still, I believe, a victim to his propensity for laying his money on the horse that ought to win but don't,--hearing of my ambition (to him the most laudable of all ambitions), came to put me on the long-sought path. He knew a mare, or he had known one, that would exactly suit me. She was in a bad way now, and a good deal run down, but he always thought she "had it in her," and that some gentleman ought to keep her for the saddle,--"which, in my mind, sir, she be the finest bit of 'orse-flesh that was hever imported, sir." That was enough. "Imported" decided my case, and I listened eagerly to the enthusiastic story,--a story to which this man's life was bound with threads of hard-earned silver, and not less by a real honest love for a fine animal. He had never been much given to saving, but he was a good workman, and the little he had saved had been blown away in the dust that clouded his favorite at the tail of the race. Still, he attached himself to her person, and followed her in her disgrace. "She weren't quite quick enough for the turf, sir, but she be a good 'un for a gentleman's 'ack." He had watched her for years, and scraped acquaintance with her different owners as fast as she had changed them, and finally, when she was far gone with pneumonia, he had accepted her as a gift, and, by careful nursing, had cured her. Then, for a time, he rode her himself, and his eye brightened as he told of her leaps and her stride. Of course he rode her to the races, and--one luckless day--when he had lost everything, and his passion had got the better of his prudence, he staked the mare herself on a perfectly sure thing in two-mile-heats. Like most of the sure things of life, this venture went to the bad, and the mare was lost,--lost to a Bull's Head dealer in single driving horses. "I see her in his stable ahfter that, sir; and, forbieten she were twelve year old, sir, and 'ad 'ad a 'ard life of it, she were the youngest and likeliest of the lot,--you'd swore she were a three-year-old, sir." If that dealer had had a soul above trotting-wagons, my story would never have been written; but all was fish that came to his net, and this thoroughbred racer, this beautiful creature who had never worn harness in her life, must be shown to a purchaser who was seeking something to drive. She was always quick to decide, and her actions followed close on the heels of her thought. She did not complicate matters by waiting for the gentleman to get into the wagon, but then and there--on the instant--kicked it to kindlings. This ended the story. She had been shown at a high figure, and was subsequently sold for a song,--he could tell me no more. She had passed to the lower sphere of equine life and usefulness,--he _had_ heard of a fish-wagon, but he knew nothing about it. What he did know was, that the dealer was a dreadful jockey, and that it would never do to ask him. Now, here was something to live for,--a sort of princess in disgrace, whom it would be an honor to rescue, and my horse-hunting acquired a new interest. By easy stages, I cultivated the friendship of the youth who, in those days, did the morning's sweeping-out at the Bull's Head Hotel. He had grown up in the alluring shades of the horse-market, and his daily communion from childhood had been with that "noble animal." To him horses were the individuals of the world,--men their necessary attendants, and of only attendant importance. Of course he knew of this black she-devil; and he thought that "a hoss that could trot like she could on the halter" must be crazy not to go in harness. However, he thought she had got her deserts now, for he had seen her, only a few weeks before, "a draggin' clams for a feller in the Tenth Avener." Here was a clew at last,--clams and the Tenth Avenue. For several days the scent grew cold. The people of the Licensed Vender part of this street seemed to have little interest in their neighbors' horses; but I found one man, an Irish grocer, who had been bred a stable-boy to the Marquis of Waterford, and who did know of a "poor old screw of a black mare" that had a good head, and might be the one I was looking for; but, if she was, he thought I might as well give it up, for she was all broken down, and would never be good for anything again. Taking the address, I went to a stable-yard, in what was then the very edge of the town, and here I found a knowing young man, who devoted his time to peddling clams and potatoes between New York and Sing Sing. Clams up, and potatoes down,--twice every week,--distance thirty miles; road hilly; and that was the wagon he did it with,--a heavy wagon with a heavy arched top, and room for a heavy load, and only shafts for a single horse. In reply to my question, he said he changed horses pretty often, because the work broke them down; but he had a mare now that had been at it for three months, and he thought she would last some time longer. "She's pretty thin, but you ought to see her trot with that wagon." With an air of idle curiosity, I asked to see her,--I had gone shabbily dressed, not to excite suspicion; for men of the class I had to treat with are usually sharp horse-traders,--and this fellow, clam-pedler though he was, showed an enthusiastic alacrity in taking me to her stall. She had won even his dull heart, and he spoke of her gently, as he made the most of her good points, and glossed over her wretched condition. Poor Vixen (that had been her name in her better days, and it was to be her name again), she had found it hard kicking against the pricks! Clam-carts are stronger than trotting-wagons, and even her efforts had been vain. She had succumbed to dire necessity, and earned her ignoble oats with dogged fidelity. She had a little warm corner in her driver's affections,--as she always had in the affections of all who came to know her well,--but her lot was a very hard one. Worn to a skeleton, with sore galls wherever the harness had pressed her, her pasterns bruised by clumsy shoes, her silky coat burned brown by the sun, and her neck curved upward, it would have needed more than my knowledge of anatomy to see anything good in her but for her wonderful head. This was the perfection of a horse's head,--small, bony, and of perfect shape, with keen, deer-like eyes, and thin, active ears; it told the whole story of her virtues, and showed no trace of her sufferings. Her royal blood shone out from her face, and kept it beautiful. My mind was made up, and Vixen must be mine at any cost. Still, it was important to me to buy as cheaply as I could,--and desirable, above all, not to be jockeyed in a horse-trade; so it required some diplomacy (an account of which would not be edifying here) to bring the transaction to its successful close. The pendulum which swung between offer and demand finally rested at seventy-five dollars. She was brought to me at the Park on a bright moonlight evening in June, and we were called out to see her. I think she knew that her harness days were over, and she danced off to her new quarters as gay as a colt in training. That night my wakefulness would have done credit to a boy of sixteen; and I was up with the dawn, and bound for a ride; but when I examined poor Vix again in her stable, it seemed almost cruel to think of using her at all for a month. She was so thin, so worn, so bruised, that I determined to give her a long rest and good care,--only I must try her once, just to get a leg over her for five minutes, and then she should come back and be cared for until really well. It was a weak thing to do, and I confess it with all needful humiliation, but I mounted her at once; and, although I had been a rider all my days, this was the first time I had ever really ridden. For the first time in my life I felt as though I had four whalebone legs of my own, worked by steel muscles in accordance with my will, but without even a conscious effort of will. That that anatomy of a horse should so easily, so playfully, handle my heavy weight was a mystery, and is a mystery still. She carried me in the same high, long-reaching, elastic trot that we sometimes see a young horse strike when first turned into a field. A low fence was near by, and I turned her toward it. She cleared it with a bound that sent all my blood thrilling through my veins, and trotted on again as though nothing had occurred. The five minutes' turn was taken with so much ease, with such evident delight, that I made it a virtue to indulge her with a longer course and a longer stride. We went to the far corners of the Park, and tried all our paces; all were marvellous for the power so easily exerted and the evident power in reserve. Yes, Frank Forester was right, blood horses are made of finer stuff than others. My intention of giving the poor old mare a month's rest was never carried out, because each return to her old recreation--it was never work--made it more evident that the simple change in her life was all she needed; and, although in constant use from the first, she soon put on the flesh and form of a sound horse. Her minor bruises were obliterated, and her more grievous ones grew into permanent scars,--blemishes, but only skin deep; for every fibre of every muscle, and every tendon and bone in her whole body, was as strong and supple as spring steel. The Park afforded good leaping in those days. Some of the fences were still standing around the abandoned gardens, and new ditches and old brooks were plenty. Vixen gave me lessons in fencing which a few years later, in time of graver need, stood me in good stead. She weighed less than four times the weight that she carried; yet she cleared a four-foot fence with apparent ease, and once, in a moment of excitement, she carried me over a brook, with a clear leap of twenty-six feet, measured from the taking-off to the landing. Her feats of endurance were equal to her feats of strength. I once rode her from Yorkville to Rye (twenty-one miles) in an hour and forty-five minutes, including a rest of twenty minutes at Pelham Bridge, and I frequently rode twenty-five miles out in the morning and back in the afternoon. When put to her work, her steady road gallop (mostly on the grassy sides) was fifteen miles an hour. Of course these were extreme cases; but she never showed fatigue from them, and she did good service nearly every day, winter and summer, from her twelfth to her fifteenth year, keeping always in good condition, though thin as a racer, and looking like a colt at the end of the time. Horsemen never guessed her age at more than half of what it actually was. Beyond the average of even the most intelligent horses, she showed some almost human traits. Above all was she fond of children, and would quiet down from her wildest moods to allow a child to be carried on the pommel. When engaged in this serious duty, it was difficult to excite her, or to urge her out of a slow and measured pace, although usually ready for any extravagance. Not the least marked of her peculiarities was her inordinate vanity. On a country road, or among the workmen of the Park, she was as staid and business-like as a parson's cob; but let a carriage or a party of visitors come in sight, and she would give herself the prancing airs of a circus horse, seeming to watch as eagerly for some sign of approval, and to be made as happy by it, as though she only lived to be admired. Many a time have I heard the exclamation, "What a beautiful horse!" and Vix seemed to hear it too, and to appreciate it quite as keenly as I did. A trip down the Fifth Avenue in the afternoon was an immense excitement to her, and she was more fatigued by it than by a twenty-mile gallop. However slowly she travelled, it was always with the high springing action of a fast trot, or with that long-stepping, sidelong action that the French call _á deux pistes_; few people allowed her to pass without admiring notice. Her most satisfactory trait was her fondness for her master; she was as good company as a dog,--better, perhaps, because she seemed more really a part of one's self; and she was quick to respond to my changing moods. I have sometimes, when unable to sleep, got up in the night and saddled for a ride, usually ending in a long walk home, with the bridle over my arm, and the old mare's kind face close beside my own, in something akin to human sympathy; she had a way of sighing, when things were especially sad, that made her very comforting to have about. So we went on for three years, always together, and always very much to each other. We had our little unhappy episodes, when she was pettish and I was harsh,--sometimes her feminine freaks were the cause, sometimes my masculine blundering,--but we always made it up, and were soon good friends again, and, on the whole, we were both better for the friendship. I am sure that I was, and some of my more grateful recollections are connected with this dumb companion. The spring of 1861 opened a new life for both of us,--a sad and a short one for poor Vix. I never knew just how much influence she had in getting my commission, but, judging by the manner of the other field officers of the regiment, she was evidently regarded as the better half of the new acquisition. The pomp and circumstance of glorious war suited her temper exactly, and it was ludicrous to see her satisfaction in first wearing her gorgeous red-bordered shabrack; for a time she carried her head on one side to see it. She conceived a new affection for me from the moment when she saw me bedecked with the dazzling bloom that preceded the serious fruitage of the early New York volunteer organizations. At last the thrilling day came. Broadway was alive from end to end with flags and white cambric and sad faces. Another thousand were going to the war. With Swiss bugle-march and chanted Marseillaise, we made our solemn way through the grave and anxious throng. To us it was naturally a day of sore trial; but with brilliant, happy Vixen it was far different; she was leaving no friends behind, was going to meet no unknown peril. She was showing her royal, stylish beauty to an admiring crowd, and she acted as though she took to her own especial behoof every cheer that rang from Union Square to Cortlandt Street. It was the glorious day of her life, and, as we dismounted at the Jersey ferry, she was trembling still with the delightful excitement. At Washington we were encamped east of the Capitol, and for a month were busy in getting settled in the new harness. Mr. Lincoln used to drive out sometimes to our evening drill, and he always had a pleasant word--as he always had for every one, and as every one had for her--for my charming thoroughbred, who had made herself perfectly at home with the troops, and enjoyed every display of the marvellous raiment of the regiment. On the 4th of July we crossed the Potomac and went below Alexandria, where we lay in idle preparation for the coming disaster. On the 16th we marched, in Blenker's brigade of Miles's division, and we passed the night in a hay-field, with a confusion of horses' feed and riders' bed, that brought Vix and me very closely together. On the 18th we reached the valley this side of Centreville, while the skirmish of Blackburn's Ford was going on,--a skirmish now, but a battle then. For three nights and two days we lay in the bushes, waiting for rations and orders. On Sunday morning McDowell's army moved out;--we all know the rest. Miles's thirteen thousand fresh troops lay within sight and sound of the lost battle-field,--he drunk and unable, even if not unwilling, to take them to the rescue,--and all we did was, late in the evening, to turn back a few troopers of the Black Horse Cavalry, the moral effect of whose unseen terrors was driving our herds, panting, back to the Potomac. Late in the night we turned our backs on our idle field, and brought up the rear of the sad retreat. Our regiment was the last to move out, and Vix and I were with the rear-guard. Wet, cold, tired, hungry, unpursued, we crept slowly through the scattered _débris_ of the broken-up camp equipage, and dismally crossed the Long Bridge in a pitiless rain, as Monday's evening was closing in. O, the dreadful days that followed, when a dozen resolute men might have taken Washington, and have driven the army across the Chesapeake, when everything was filled with gloom and rain and grave uncertainty! Again the old mare came to my aid. My regiment was not a pleasant one to be with, for its excellent material did not redeem its very bad commander, and I longed for service with the cavalry. Frémont was going to St. Louis, and his chief of staff was looking for cavalry officers. He had long known Vixen, and was kind enough to tell me that he wanted _her_ for the new organization, and (as I was her necessary appendage), he procured my transfer, and we set out for the West. It was not especially flattering to me to be taken on these grounds; but it was flattering to Vixen, and that was quite as pleasant. Arrived at St. Louis, we set about the organization of the enthusiastic thousands who rushed to serve under Frémont. Whatever there was of ostentatious display, Vixen and I took part in, but this was not much. Once we turned out in great state to receive Prince Plon-Plon, but that was in the night, and he didn't come after all. Once again there was a review of all the troops, and that _was_ magnificent. This was all. There was no coach and four, nor anything else but downright hard work from early morning till late bedtime, from Sunday morning till Saturday night. For six weeks, while my regiment of German horsemen was fitting up and drilling at the Abbey Race-track, I rode a cart-horse, and kept the mare in training for the hard work ahead. At last we were off, going up the Missouri, sticking in its mud, poling over its shoals, and being bored generally. At Jefferson City Vixen made her last appearance in ladies' society, as by the twilight fires of the General's camp she went through her graceful paces before Mrs. Frémont and her daughter. I pass over the eventful pursuit of Price's army, because the subject of my story played only a passive part in it. At Springfield I tried her nerve by jumping her over the dead horses on brave Zagonyi's bloody field; and, although distastefully, she did my bidding without flinching, when she found it must be done. The camp-life at Springfield was full of excitement and earnestness; Price, with his army, was near at hand (or we believed that he was, which was essentially the same). Our work in the cavalry was very active, and Vix had hard service on insufficient food,--she seemed to be sustained by sheer nervous strength. At last the order to advance was given, and we were to move out at daybreak; then came a countermanding order; and then, late in the evening, Frémont's farewell. He had been relieved. There was genuine and universal grief. Good or bad, competent or incompetent,--this is not the place to argue that,--he was the life and the soul of his army, and it was cruelly wronged in his removal. Spiritless and full of disappointment, we again turned back from our aim;--then would have been Price's opportunity. It was the loveliest Indian-summer weather, and the wonderful opal atmosphere of the Ozark Mountains was redolent with the freshness of a second spring. As had always been my habit in dreamy or unhappy moods, I rode my poor tired mare for companionship's sake,--I ought not to have done it,--I would give much not to have done it, for I never rode her again. The march was long, and the noonday sun was oppressive. She who had never faltered before grew nervous and shaky now, and once, after fording the Pomme-de-Terre in deep water, she behaved wildly; but when I talked to her, called her a good girl, and combed her silken mane with my fingers, she came back to her old way, and went on nicely. Still she perspired unnaturally, and I felt uneasy about her when I dismounted and gave her rein to Rudolf, my orderly. Late in the night, when the moon was in mid-heaven, he came to my tent, and told me that something was the matter with Vixen. My adjutant and I hastened out, and there we beheld her in the agony of a brain fever. She was the most painfully magnificent animal I ever saw. Crouched on the ground, with her forelegs stretched out and wide apart, she was swaying to and fro, with hard and stertorous breath,--every vein swollen and throbbing in the moonlight. De Grandèle, our quiet veterinary surgeon, had been called while it was yet time to apply the lancet. As the hot stream spurted from her neck she grew easier; her eye recovered its gentleness, and she laid her head against my breast with the old sigh, and seemed to know and to return all my love for her. I sat with her until the first gray of dawn, when she had grown quite calm, and then I left her with De Grandèle and Rudolf while I went to my duties. We must march at five o'clock, and poor Vixen could not be moved. The thought of leaving her was very bitter, but I feared it must be done, and I asked De Grandèle how he could best end her sufferings,--or was there still some hope? He shook his head mournfully, like a kind-hearted doctor as he was, and said that he feared not; but still, as I was so fond of her, if I would leave him six men, he would do his best to bring her on, and, if he could not, he would not leave her alive. I have had few harder duties than to march that morning. Four days after, De Grandèle sent a message to me at our station near Rolla, that he was coming on nicely, and hoped to be in at nightfall. "Vixen seems to be better and stronger." At nightfall they came, the poor old creature stepping slowly and timidly over the rough road, all the old fire and force gone out of her, and with only a feeble whinny as she saw me walking to meet her. We built for her the best quarters we could under the mountain-side, and spread her a soft bed of leaves. There was now hope that she would recover sufficiently to be sent to St. Louis to be nursed. That night, an infernal brute of a troop horse that had already killed Ludlow's charger, led by some fiendish spirit, broke into Vixen's enclosure, and with one kick laid open her hock joint. In vain they told me that she was incurable. I could not let her die now, when she was just restored to me; and I forced from De Grandèle the confession that she _might_ be slung up and so bound that the wound would heal, although the joint must be stiff. She could never carry me again, but she could be my pet; and I would send her home, and make her happy for many a long year yet. We moved camp two miles, to the edge of the town, and she followed, painfully and slowly, the injured limb dragging behind her; I could not give her up. She was picketed near my tent, and for some days grew no worse. Finally, one lovely Sunday morning, I found her sitting on her haunches like a dog, patient and gentle, and wondering at her pain. She remained in this position all day, refusing food. I stroked her velvet crest, and coaxed her with sugar. She rubbed her nose against my arm, and was evidently thankful for my caresses, but she showed no disposition to rise. The adjutant led me into my tent as he would have led me from the bedside of a dying friend. I turned to look back at poor Vixen, and she gave me a little neigh of farewell. They told me then, and they told it very tenderly, that there was no possibility that she could get well in camp, and that they wanted me to give her over to them. The adjutant sat by me, and talked of the old days when I had had her at home, and when he had known her well. We brought back all of her pleasant ways, and agreed that her trouble ought to be ended. As we talked, a single shot was fired, and all was over. The setting sun was shining through the bare November branches, and lay warm in my open tent-front. The band, which had been brought out for the only funeral ceremony, breathed softly Kreutzer's touching "Die Kapelle," and the sun went down on one of the very sad days of my life. The next morning I carved deeply in the bark of a great oak-tree, at the side of the Pacific Railroad, beneath which they had buried my lovely mare, a simple VIX; and some day I shall go to scrape the moss from the inscription. RUBY. I was a colonel commanding a regiment of German cavalrymen in South Missouri, and must have a horse; it was desirable to be conspicuously well mounted, and so it must be a showy horse; being a heavy weight and a rough rider, it must be a good horse. With less rank, I might have been compelled to take a very ordinary mount and be content: my vanity would not have availed me, and my rough riding must have ceased. But I was chief ruler of the little world that lay encamped on the beautiful banks of the Roubie d'Eaux; and probably life was easier to all under me when I was satisfied and happy. I am not conscious of having been mean and crabbed, or of favoring those who favored me to the disadvantage of those who did not. I cannot recall an instance of taking a bribe, even in the form of a pleasant smile. It was probably easier, in the long run, to be fair than to be unfair, and therefore the laziest private ever ordered on extra duty could not lay his hand on his heart and say he thinks it was done because he was not diligent in foraging for turkeys and hens for my private mess. I had very early in life been impressed with the consciousness that the way of the transgressor is not easy; and as I wanted my way to be easy, I fell into the way of not transgressing. This may not have been a very worthy motive to actuate the conduct of a military commander; but perhaps it was as good as the average in our Department of the Southwest, where, if the truth must be told, virtue did not have it all its own way,--we were different from troops farther east; and although it made me sometimes wince to have my conduct ascribed to a noble uprightness of purpose, and showed that it would really have been more honest not to have been quite so good, yet one should perhaps be satisfied with having carried out one's intention of treating every man in the command, officer or soldier, as nearly as he should be treated as the interests of the public service, the good of the individual himself, and one's own personal convenience would allow. Therefore, I say, I am not conscious of having favored those who favored me, to the disadvantage of those who did not; neither do I think that (at this stage of our acquaintance) the Grafs and Barons and simple Mister Vons, of whom the command was so largely composed, entertained the hope of personal benefit when they laid their kindnesses at my accustomed feet, and tried to smooth my way of life. The headquarters' mess was generally well supplied,--and no questions asked. My relations with most of the command were kindly, and it apparently came to be understood--for German cavalrymen are not without intelligence--that the happiness of the individual members of the regiment depended rather on the happiness of its colonel than on any direct bids for his favor. Be this as it may, I am not conscious of having received such direct appeals, and I am entirely conscious of the fullest measure of happiness that my circumstances would allow; not an ecstasy of delight,--far from that,--but a comfortable sense of such well-fed, well-paid, well-encamped, and pleasantly occupied virtue as had left nothing undone that my subordinates could be made to do, and did nothing that my conditions rendered difficult. My own good-humor was equalled by that of the regiment at large, and the beetling sides of the Ozark valleys nowhere sheltered a happier campful of jolly good fellows than the Vierte Missouri Cavalry. We lay on the marvellous Roubie d'Eaux, at its source; no such babbling brook as trickles from the hillside springs of New England, but a roaring torrent, breaking at once from a fathomless vent in the mountain. The processes of formation with these South Missouri rivers are all hidden from sight, but, far away in the topmost caves of the Ozark hills, the little streamlets trickle, and unite for a larger and ever larger flow, gorging at last the huge caverns of the limestone rock and bursting upon the world a full-grown river. Within our camp this wonderful spring broke forth, and close at hand was a large grist-mill that it drove. We were a self-sustaining community,--in this, that we foraged our own corn and ground our own meal. With similar industry we provided ourselves with fish, flesh, and fowl. The trees were bare with the November frosts, but the Indian summer had come, and, day after day, it bathed every twig and spray with its amber breath, warming all nature to a second life, and floating the remoter hills far away into a hazy dreamland. But personally, notwithstanding all this, I was not content: I was practically a dismounted cavalryman. Indeed, it would even have been a pity to see a colonel of infantry riding such brutes as fell to my lot, for good weight-carriers were rare in that section. I had paid a very high price for a young thoroughbred stallion (afterwards, happily, sold for a large advance), only to find him a year too young for his work, and the regiment had been scoured in vain for an available mount. I would have gone any reasonable length, even in injustice, to secure such an animal as was needed. It was not easy to make up one's mind to order a soldier to give up a horse he was fond of, and some soldier had an especial fondness for all but the worthless brutes. My reluctance to do this was perhaps not lessened by the fact that it was forbidden for officers to ride United States horses. It finally became evident that the chances were very small of ever finding a suitable animal, and I even went out, on one shooting excursion, mounted on a mule. Up to this time the regiment had been all that could be asked, but now it seemed to contain a thousand ill-tempered, sore-headed men. The whole camp was awry. Some of the officers intimated that this was all the fault of the adjutant; that the orders from headquarters had lately been unusually harsh. This officer, when remonstrated with, insisted that he had only transmitted the exact orders given him, and I knew that my own action had always been reasonable,--on principle so. Sometimes one almost wished himself back in civil life, away from such constant annoyances. We had in the regiment one Captain Graf von Gluckmansklegge, who was in many respects the most accomplished and skilful officer of us all. His life had been passed in the profession, and he had only left his position of major in a Bavarian Uhlan regiment to draw his sabre in defence of "die Freiheit," in America, as senior captain of the Fourth Missouri Cavalry. He was an officer of Asboth's selection, and had many of that veteran's qualities. Tall, thin, of elegant figure, as perfect a horseman as good natural advantages and good training could make, and near-sighted, as a German cavalry officer must be, he was as natty a fellow as ever wore an eye-glass and a blond mustache. He was, at the same time, a man of keen worldly shrewdness and of quick judgment,--qualities which, in his case, may have been sharpened by long practice at those games of chance with which it has not been unusual for European officers to preface their coming to draw their sabres in defence of "die Freiheit" in America. With Gluckmansklegge I had always been on friendly terms. Among the many lessons of his life he had learned none more thoroughly than the best way to treat his commanding officer; and there was in his manner an air of friendly deference and of cordial submission to rank, accompanied by a degree of personal dignity, that elevated the colonel rather than lowered the captain,--a manner that probably makes its way with a newly fledged officer more surely than any other form of appeal to his vanity. One sometimes saw a brand-new second-lieutenant made happier than a king by this same touch of skill from an old soldier in his company, whom he knew to be far his superior in all matters of service. To be quite frank, if I have an element of snobbishness in my own organization, it has been more nurtured into life by the military deference of better soldiers than myself under my command than by all other influences combined; thus modified do the best of us become in the presence of unmerited praise. One evening Gluckmansklegge came to my tent door: "Escoose, Col-o-nel, may I come?" And then, flinging out his eye-glass with a toss of the head, he went on, with his imperfect English, to tell me he had just learned from his lieutenant that I could find no horse to suit me; that he had a good one strong enough for my weight, and, he thought, even good enough for my needs. He had bought him in St. Louis from the quartermaster, and would I oblige him by trying him? He was quite at my service, at the government price, for he, being lighter, could easily replace him. Did I remember his horse,--his "Fuchs"? "He is good, nice, strong horse, an he yoomp!--yei!!" I did remember his horse, and I had seen him "yoomp." It had long been a subject of regret to think that such an animal should be in the regiment, yet not on my own picket-line. It was well known that great prices had been offered for him, only to make Gluckmansklegge fling his eye-glass loose, and grin in derision. "Fuchs is--how you call?--'heelty,' an gesund; wenn you like, your Ike will go to my company to bring him." I did like, and I had no scruples against buying him for one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Ike, a handsome contraband, went early the next morning with a halter for the Fuchs, and I was up bright and betimes to try him. I had only seen the horse before under the saddle, perfectly equipped, perfectly bitted, and perfectly ridden, an almost ideal charger. There was a great firebrand scar on the flat of each shoulder, where he had been fired for a cough,--so said Gluckmansklegge;--others intimated that this effaced a U. S. brand; but, except this, not a sign of a blemish. In form, action, style, color (chestnut), and training he was unexceptionably good, and might well excite the envy of all good horsemen who saw him _under the saddle_. Knowing him so well, I went rather eagerly to the picket-line to refresh myself with the added sensation that the actual ownership of such a horse must give. There stood the new purchase,--a picture of the most abject misery; his hind legs drawn under him; the immense muscles of his hips lying flabby, like a cart-horse's; his head hanging to the level of his knees, and his under-lip drooping; his eyes half shut, and his long ears falling out sidewise like a sleepy mule's. I had bought him for a safe price, and he would probably do to carry Ike and the saddle-bags; but I felt as far as ever from a mount for myself, and went back to my tent wiser and no happier than before. Presently Ike appeared with the coffee, and asked how I liked the new horse. "Not at all." "Don't ye? well now, I reckon he's a consid'able of a hoss." I sent him to look at him again, and he came back with a very thoughtful air,--evidently he had been impressed. At last he said, "Well now, Colonel, I don't reckon you bought that hoss to look at him on the picket-line, did ye?" "No, Ike, or he should be sold out very cheap; but he is not the _kind_ of horse I supposed he was; he ought to work in a mule-team." "Well now, Colonel, mebbe he is; but you can't never tell nothin' about a hoss till you get him between ye; and I reckon he's a consid'able of a hoss, I reckon he is." Ike was wise, in his way, and his way was a very horsy one,--so my hopes revived a little; and when Gluckmansklegge came up on a capital little beast he had been handling (secretly to replace the Fuchs), I had the new venture saddled and brought round. He came blundering along, head and ears and tail down, and stood like a leathern horse for me to mount, Gluckmansklegge dropping his eye-glass and grinning. It was as well to find out first as last whether he had anything in him or not, and I gathered up the curb-rein, which brought his head into superb position and settled him well back upon his haunches; but, as the movement had been made with dignity, I gave him both heels, firmly,--when we went sailing!--how high I don't know, probably not fifteen feet, but it seemed that, and covering a good stretch to the front. It was the most enormous lift I had ever had, and (after an appreciable time in the air), when he landed square on all four feet, it was to strike a spanking, even trot, the bit playing loose in his mouth, his head swaying easily with his step, and his tail flying. I had never been more amazed in my life than by the wonderful grace and agility of this splendid brute. As he trotted along with his high, strong, and perfectly cadenced step, he showed in the swing of his head all the satisfaction of an athlete turning, conscious, lightly away from the footlights, after his especial _tour de force_. As Gluckmansklegge rode up, he said, "Well, Col-o-nel, how you like? Nice pretty strong horse, what?" And then, his English failing him, he fell, through an attempt at French, into German, in which his tongue was far more ready than my ear. Still it was easy to gather enough to understand some of the processes by which the animal's natural qualifications for his work had been developed into such unusual accomplishments; and then he glided into the complimentary assertion that no one but the colonel of his regiment could ever have hoped to buy him at any price,--and of course he did not consider it a sale. His original outlay, which he could not afford to lose, had been reimbursed; but the true value of the horse, his education, he was only too glad to give me. And then, the pleasure of seeing his colonel suitably mounted, and the satisfaction of seeing the horse properly ridden, really threw the obligation on his side. Then, with his inimitable _naïveté_, he not only expressed, but demonstrated, in every look and gesture, more delight in watching our movements than he had felt in his own riding. "Praise a horseman for his horsemanship, and he will ride to the Devil." Gluckmansklegge (I did not suspect him of a desire for promotion) pointed to a strong rail-fence near by, and suggested that the combination of man and horse for that sort of thing was unusual. Whether it was a banter or a compliment, it would have been impossible for any man who properly esteemed himself and his riding to stop to consider. Turned toward the fence, the Fuchs, checking his speed, seemed to creep toward it, as a cat would, making it very uncertain what he proposed; but as he came nearer to it, that willingness to leap that an accustomed rider will always recognize communicated itself to me, and, with perfect judgment, but with a force and spirit I had never hoped to meet in a horse of this world, he carried me over the enormous height, and landed like a deer, among the stumps and brush on the other side, and trotted gayly away, athlete-like again, happier and prouder than ever horse was before. Sitting that evening at my tent door, opposite the spring, bragging, as the custom is, over the new purchase, it occurred to me that that stream of water and that bit of horse-flesh had some qualities alike; so I christened the latter "Roubie d'Eaux," which was soon translated and shortened to "Ruby,"--a name henceforth familiar throughout the regiment. To become my property was the only thing needed to make him perfect, for Ike was born in a racing stud in Kentucky, and had practised all the arts of the craft, up to the time when, being both jockey and "the stakes" in a race he rode, he was lost to a Missouri gentleman of fortune, and became a body-servant. He was once confidential:-- "Well, now, Colonel, you see, this is how it was: I hadn't nothin' ag'in my master,--he was a right nice man; but then, you see, he drinked, and I didn't know what might become of me some time. Then, you see, I knowed this man was stiddy, an' he'd jess done bought a yallar gal I kinder had a notion for, an' so,--don't ye see why?--well, the hoss could have won the _race_ fast enough, but then, you see, my master,--well, he was a drinkin' kind of a man, an' I thought I might as well fix it. I knowed I was up for stakes, an' that's how I come to Missouri; I ain't no Missouri man _born_, but that's how it was." He had become a good body-servant without forgetting his stable training, and his horses bore testimony to his skill and fidelity. After going through the routine of a well-regulated stable, he gave each horse a half-hour's stroking with the flat of his hands, brisk and invigorating; and the result was a more blooming condition and more vigorous health than is often seen in horses on a campaign. The best substitute that could be secured for a stable was a very heavy canvas blanket, covering the horse from his ears to his tail and down to his knees, water-proof and wind-proof. It was a standing entertainment with the less dignified members of the mess to invite attention to Ruby as he stood moping under this hideous housing. Certainly I never saw him thus without thinking that his time had at last come, and that he surely would never again be able to carry me creditably. Yet, as Ike's devotion continued, he grew better and better, commanding daily more of the respect and admiration of all who knew him, and attaching himself to me more and more as we learned each other's ways. One never loves but one horse entirely, and so Ruby never quite filled Vixen's place; but as a serviceable friend, he was all that could be desired. The unsupplied want of my life, that had made me restless and discontented, was now satisfied, and my duties became easy, and my pastimes (the principal times of South Missouri warfare) entirely agreeable. It was no slight addition to these sources of contentment to feel that the command had at last awakened to a sense of its dereliction, and was fast reforming its ways. I had hardly owned Ruby for a fortnight before the old cheerfulness and alacrity returned to the regiment, and by the time we broke up our camp on the Roubie d'Eaux and went over to Lebanon for the shooting season, the entire organization was in a most satisfactory condition. Our life in Lebanon was an episode of the war that we shall not soon forget. To the best of my knowledge and belief, after Price had retreated from Pea Ridge, the only organized forces of armed Rebels to be found north of the White River were local bands of jay-hawkers, whose rebellion was mainly directed against the laws of property, and the actuating motive of whose military movements was "nags." The stealing of horses, with the consequent application of Lynch law, was all that the native male population had to keep them out of mischief, for weeks and weeks together. There was just enough of this sort of armed lawlessness to furnish us with a semblance of duty; not enough seriously to interrupt our more regular avocations. Lebanon is on the high table-land of the Ozarks, in the heart of a country flowing with prairie-hens and wild turkeys, and bountifully productive of the more humdrum necessaries of life. Thanks to the fleeing of Rebel families, we found comfortable quarters without too severely oppressing those who had remained. What with moving the court-house away from the public square, leaving the space free for a parade, and substituting a garrison flag-staff for the town pump, we kept our men from rusting; and when, after a time, we had established a comfortable post-hospital and a commodious military prison, Lebanon was as complete and well-ordered a station as could be found in South Missouri. I had the questionable honor and the unquestionable comfort of holding its command from the end of January to the end of April,--three dreamy months, that seem now to have been passed in a shooting-lodge, under favorable auspices. As a legacy of the "Hundred Days," when the "Fourth Missouri" was the "Frémont Hussars," we had an able-bodied and extremely well-selected regimental band, that soothed our over-tasked senses when we came in from our work in the fields, gathering where our enemies had sown, and (under the suspended game-laws of the State) shooting grouse and quail in the early spring. Naturally, most of my official duties were such as could be performed by an extremely well-regulated adjutant; and I usually passed his busy half-hour (in private) with Ruby. There had been an impetuosity about the horse at the outset which it was desirable to quell, and I rode him regularly in a nicely fenced kitchen-garden, where, after he learned that fences are not always intended for leaping-bars, he fell slowly into the routine of the training-school, and easily acquired a perfect self-command and _aplomb_ that enabled him, under all circumstances, to await his rider's instructions. I wish that less account had been made, in the writings of those whose horse-stories have preceded mine, of the specified feats of their animals. The _rôle_ of a horse's performances is necessarily limited, and it is probably impossible for a well-constituted mind to recite the simple story of his deeds without seeming to draw largely on the imagination. Consequently, an unexaggerated account of what Ruby actually did (and I cannot bring my mind to an embellishment of the truth) would hardly interest a public whose fancy has been thus pampered and spoiled. But for this, these pages could be filled with instances of his strength and agility that would almost tax belief. Suffice it to say that while, like most good high leapers, he would cover but a moderate breadth of water, he would get over anything reasonable in the shape of a fence that could be found about the town. I was a heavy weight,--riding nearly two hundred pounds,--and necessarily rode with judgment. If there was a low place in a fence, we never chose a high one; but, at the same time, if there were no low places, we took the best we could find. Ruby seemed to know that the two of us were solid enough to break through any ordinary pile of rails, and what we could not jump over we jumped _at_. More than once did he carry away the top rail of a snake fence with his knees, and land fair and square on the other side; but it was a very high leap that made this necessary. He would jump on to the porch of the quartermaster's office (approached from the ground by four steps), and then jump over the hand-rail and land on the ground below again, almost wagging his tail with delight at the feat. His ear was quicker than mine for the peeping of quail and for the drumming of grouse, and, in the absence of a good dog, there is no doubt that my pot (for which alone I have been said to hunt) was better filled by reason of his intelligence in the field, and because he would allow one to shoot from the saddle. The birds never mistook me for a sportsman until I was quite in among them, blazing away. In coming home from the prairie, we generally rode round by the way of a certain sunken garden that stood a couple of feet below the level of the road. A five-foot picket-fence that stood at the roadside had fallen over toward the garden, so that its top was hardly four feet higher than the road. This made the most satisfactory leap we ever took,--the long, sailing descent, and the safe landing on sandy loam, satisfied so completely one's prudent love of danger. I think I missed this leap more than anything at Lebanon when, finally, we set out for Arkansas. We made our first considerable halt early in May, at Batesville, on the White River,--a lovely, rose-grown village, carrying, in the neatly kept home of its New England secessionists, evidence that they remembered their native land, where, in their day, before the age of railroads, the "village" flourished in all its freshness and simplicity. It had now acquired the picturesque dilapidation, in the manner of fences and gates and defective window-panes, that marked the Southern domicile during the war. Ruby had strained himself quite seriously during the march, and had been left to come on slowly with the quartermaster's train. This left me quite free for the social life, such as it was, to which we--the only available men that had been seen there since Price gathered his forces at Springfield--were welcomed with a reserved cordiality. Our facilities for forming a correct opinion of society were not especially good, but I fancied I should have passed my time to as good advantage in the saddle. We soon left for an active expedition in the direction of Little Rock, of which it is only necessary to say, here, that it lasted about a month, and brought the writer acquainted with some very unsatisfactory horses,--a fact which heightened his pleasure, on striking the White River bottom again, at finding that Ruby had been brought over the ferry to meet him. Tired as I was, I took a glorious brisk trot through the Canebrake Road, with a couple of leaps over fallen trees, that revived the old emotions and made a man of me again. While we lay at Batesville we were unusually active in the matter of drill and reorganization; and this, with our engagements in the town, kept us too busy for much recreation; but Ludlow and I managed to work in a daily swim in the White River, with old saddles on our horses, and scant clothing on our persons. Talk of aquatic sports! there is no royal bath without a plucky horse to assist; and a swim across the swift current at Batesville, with a horse like Ruby snorting and straining at every stroke, belittled even the leaping at Lebanon. From Batesville we commenced our memorable march to join the fleet that had just passed Memphis, following down the left bank of the river to Augusta, and then striking across the cotton country to Helena,--a march on which we enjoyed the rarest picturesqueness of plantation life, and suffered enough from heat and hunger and thirst, and stifling, golden dust to more than pay for it. Helena was a pestiferous swamp, worth more than an active campaign to our enemies, filling our hospitals, and furrowing the levee bank with graves. It was too hot for much drilling, and we kept our better horses in order by daybreak races. With the local fever feeling its way into my veins, I was too listless to care much for any diversion; but Ike came to me one evening to say that he "reckoned" Ruby was as good a horse as anybody had in the "camps," and he might as well take a hand in the games. I told him I had no objection to his being run, if he could find a suitable boy, but that both he and I were too heavy for race-riding. "I don't weigh only about a hundred and a half," said the ambitious man. "Well, suppose you don't, that is ten pounds too much." "I reckon a man can ride ten pound lighter 'n he is if he knows how to ride; anyhow, if Rube can't skin anything around here, I don't know nothin' about horses." "Ike, did you ever run that horse?" "Well, Colonel, now you ask me, I did jest give Dwight's darkey a little brush once." Conquering my indignation and my scruples, I went over, just for the honor of the establishment, and made up a race for the next day. I have seen crack race-horses in my time, but I never saw more artistic riding nor more capital running than that summer morning on the River Road at Helena, just as the sun began to gild the muddy Mississippi. The satisfaction of this conquest, and the activity with which new engagements were offered by ambitious lieutenants, who little knew the stuff my man and horse were made of, kept off my fever for some weeks; but I steadily declined all opportunity of racing with horses outside of our command, for I had been reared in a school of Puritan severity, and had never quite overcome my convictions against the public turf. A corporal of an "Injeanny rege_ment_" took occasion to crow lustily--so I heard--because "one of them French coveys" was afraid to run him a quarter for five dollars. It appeared that a cleanly European was always supposed by this gentry to be French; and in the army at large I was better known by the company I kept than by my New England characteristics. Naturally, Ike thought that, while Ruby was engaged in this more legitimate occupation, he ought not to be ridden for mere pleasure; and it was only when a visitor was to be entertained, or when I went out on plea of duty, that I could steal an opportunity to leap him; but he took one fence that fairly did him credit. It was a snake fence measuring four feet and two inches, with a deep ditch on each side cut close to the projecting angles of the rails. Ruby carried me over the first ditch into the angle between the rails, then over the fence into the narrow space on the other side, and then over the second ditch into the field. It was the most perfect combination of skill, strength, and judgment that was possible to horse-flesh; and I think Gluckmansklegge, who was with me and had suggested the venture, despaired of ever getting his promotion by any fair means, when we rejoined him by the return leap and rode safely to camp. Unhappily, even entire satisfaction with one's horse is powerless to ward off such malaria as that of the camp at Helena, and in due time I fell ill with the fever. The horse was turned over to the care of the quartermaster, and Ike and I came wearily home on sick-leave. Late in the autumn we returned to St. Louis, where one of the German officers told me that the regiment had joined Davidson's army at "Pilot K-nopp"; and after the Hun, our new adjutant, arrived from the East, we set out for headquarters, and took command of the cavalry brigade of Davidson's army. From November until January we were tossed about from post to post, wearing out our horses, wearying our men, and accomplishing absolutely nothing of value beyond the destruction of an enormous amount of the rough forage, which would otherwise have been used to feed "nags,"--stolen or to be stolen,--and would have thus tended to foster the prevailing vice of the region. At last we settled down in a pleasant camp at Thomasville,--a good twelve miles away from Davidson,--and were at rest; it was only those near him who suffered from his fitful caprices, and he was now encamped with the infantry. Pleasant as we found it with our little duty and much sport, I can never look back to Thomasville without sorrow. To say that I had acquired a tenderness for Ruby would not be strictly just; but I felt for him all the respect and admiration and fondness that is possible short of love. Vix had been my heroine, and my only one; but Ruby was my hero, and I depended on him for my duty and my pleasure more than I knew. With his full measure of intelligence he had learned exactly his _rôle_, and he was always eager, whenever occasion offered, to show the world what a remarkably fine horse I had,--being himself conscious, not only of his unusual virtues, but, no less, of the praise they elicited. One sunny Southern day, toward the end of January, Davidson had ridden over, with his following, to dine with us; and as we were sitting before our mess-tent, mellow with after-dinner talk of our guns and our dogs and our horses, the General was good enough to remember that he had seen me riding a chestnut that he thought much too finely bred for field work: had I been able to keep him? Then Ruby was discussed, and all his successes were recalled, first by one friend and then by another, until Davidson needed ocular proof of our truthfulness. Ike had taken the hint, and brought Ruby round in due time,--glistening like gold in the slanting rays of the setting sun, but blundering along with his head down and ears drooping in his old, dismal way. "O no, I don't mean that horse," said Davidson; "I mean a very high-strung horse I have seen you ride on the march." "Very well, General, that is the animal; he keeps his strings loose when he is not at his work." "No, I have seen you riding a far better horse than that; I am too old a cavalryman to be caught by such chaff." To the great glee of the Hun, whose faith in Ruby was unbounded, Davidson's whole staff turned the laugh on me for trying to deceive the General just because he had been dining. I mounted, and started off with one of Ruby's enormous lifts, that brought the whole company to their feet. It was the supreme moment with him. Full of consciousness, as though he knew the opportunity would never come again, and quivering in anticipation of his triumph, he was yet true to his training, and held himself subject to my least impulse. We had lain in our camp for more than a week, and there was not a vestige left of the recently substantial fences,--only the suggestive and conspicuous gateways that stood to mark the march of our armies from the Chesapeake to the Indian Nation. But Ruby built fences in his imagination higher than any he had ever faced, and cleared them without a scratch, landing close as though the Helena ditch were still to be taken. It would take long to tell all he did and how perfectly he did it; he went back at last to his canvas blanket, loaded with adulation, and as happy as it is given a horse to be. In his leaping he had started a shoe, and Ike took him in the morning to the smith (who had taken possession of an actual forge), to have it reset. A moment later, the Hun cried, "My God, Colonel, look at Ruby!" Hobbling along with one hind foot drawn up with pain, he was making his last mournful march, and we laid him that day to rest,--as true a friend and as faithful a fellow as ever wore a chestnut coat. He had reared in the shop, parted his halter, and fallen under a bench, breaking his thigh far up above the stifle. WETTSTEIN. It is a pleasant thing to be a colonel of cavalry in active field-service. There are circumstances of authority and responsibility that fan the latent spark of barbarism which, however dull, glows in all our breasts, and which generations of republican civilization have been powerless to quench. We may not have confessed it even to ourselves; but on looking back to the years of the war, we must recognize many things that patted our vanity greatly on the back,--things so different from all the dull routine of equality and fraternity of home, that those four years seem to belong to a dreamland, over which the haze of the life before them and of the life after them draws a misty veil. Equality and Fraternity! a pretty sentiment, yes, and full of sensible and kindly regard for all mankind, and full of hope for the men who are to come after us; but Superiority and Fraternity! who shall tell all the secret emotions this implies? To be the head of the brotherhood, with the unremitted clank of a guard's empty scabbard trailing before one's tent-door day and night; with the standard of the regiment proclaiming the house of chief authority; with the respectful salute of all passers, and the natural obedience of all members of the command; with the shade of deference that even comrades show to superior rank; and with that just sufficient check upon coarseness during the jovial bouts of the headquarters' mess, making them not less genial, but void of all offence,--living in this atmosphere, one almost feels the breath of feudal days coming modified through the long tempestuous ages to touch his cheek, whispering to him that the savage instinct of the sires has not been, and never will be, quite civilized out of the sons. And then the thousand men, and the yearly million that they cost, while they fill the cup of the colonel's responsibility (sometimes to overflowing), and give him many heavy trials,--they are his own men; their usefulness is almost of his own creation, and their renown is his highest glory. I may not depict the feelings of others; but I find in the recollection of my own service--as succeeding years dull its details and cast the nimbus of distance about it--the source of emotions which differ widely from those to which our modern life has schooled us. One of the colonel's constant attendants is the chief bugler, or, as he is called in hussar Dutch, the "Stabstrompaytr"; mine was the prince of Trompaytrs, and his name was Wettstein. He was a Swiss, whose native language was a mixture of guttural French and mincing German. English was an impossible field to him. He had learned to say "yes" and "matches"; but not one other of our words could he ever lay his tongue to, except the universal "damn." But for his bugle and his little gray mare, I should never have had occasion to know his worth. Music filled every pore of his Alpine soul, and his wonderful Swiss "Retreat" must ring to this day in the memory of every man of the regiment whose thoughts turn again to the romantic campaign of South Missouri. What with other buglers was a matter of routine training was with him an inspiration. All knew well enough the meaning of the commands that the company trumpets stammered or blared forth; but when they rang from Wettstein's horn, they carried with them a _vim_ and energy that secured their prompt execution; and his note in the wild Ozark Hills would mark the headquarters of the "Vierte Missouri" for miles around. From a hill-top, half a mile in advance of the marching command, I have turned the regiment into its camping-ground and dismounted it in perfect order by the melodious telegraphy of Wettstein's brazen lips alone. That other chief attribute of his, Klitschka, his little beast, stayed longer with me than his bugle did, and is hardly less identified with the varied reminiscences of my army life. I bought her, as a prize, with the original mount of the regiment, in Frémont's time, and was mildly informed by that officer that I must be careful how I accepted many such animals from the contractor, though a few for the smaller men might answer. Asboth, Frémont's chief of staff, with a scornful rolling up of his cataract of a mustache, and a shrug of his broad, thin shoulders, said, "Whyfor you buy such horses? What your bugler ride, it is not a horse, it is a cat." His remark was not intended as a question, and it ended the conversation. Months after that, he eagerly begged for the nine-lived Klitschka for one of his orderlies; being refused him, she remained good to the end. She was an animal that defied every rule by which casual observers test the merit of a horse; but analytically considered she was nearly perfect. Better legs, a better body, and a better head, it is rare to see, than she had. But she lacked the arched neck and the proud step that she needed all the more because of her small size. By no means showy in figure or in action, it took a second look to see her perfect fitness for her work. Her color was iron-gray, and no iron could be tougher than she was; while her full, prominent eye and ample brain-room, and her quick paper-thin ear, told of courage and intelligence that made her invaluable throughout four years of hard and often dangerous service. Like many other ill-favored little people, she was very lovable, and Wettstein loved her like a woman. He would never hesitate to relax those strict rules of conduct by which German cavalrymen are supposed to govern themselves, if it was a question of stealing forage for Klitschka; and he was (amiable fellow!) never so happy as when, from a scanty supply in the country, he had taken enough oat-sheaves to bed her in and almost cover her up, while other horses of the command must go hungry; and was never so shaken in his regard for me as when I made him give up all but double rations for her. Double rations she often earned, for Wettstein was a heavy youth, with a constitutional passion for baggage out of all proportion to his means of transportation. Mounted for the march, he was an odd sight. Little Klitschka's back, with his immense rolls of blankets and clothing before and behind, looked like a dromedary's. Planted between the humps, straight as a gun-barrel, the brightest of bugles suspended across his back by its tasselled yellow braid, slashed like a harlequin over the breast, his arms chevroned with gorgeous gold,--Wettstein, with his cap-front turned up so as to let the sun fall full on his frank blue eyes and his resolute blond mustache, was the very picture of a cavalry bugler in active campaign. Smoking, gabbling, singing, rollicking, from morning until night, and still on until morning again if need be, he never lost spirit nor temper. He seemed to absorb sunshine enough during the day to keep every one bright around him all night. When at last his bugle had been stilled forever, we long missed the cheer of his indomitable gayety; wearying service became more irksome than while his bubbling mirth had tempered its dulness; and even little Klitschka, although she remained an example of steady pluck, had never so potent an influence as while he had put his own unfailing mettle into her heels. After she was bequeathed to me, she was always most useful, but never so gay and frisky as while she carried her own devoted groom. No day was too long for her and no road too heavy; her brisk trot knew no failing, but she refused ever again to form the personal attachment that had sealed her and Wettstein to each other. The two of them together, like the fabled Centaur, made the complete creature. He with the hardened frame and bright nature of his Alpine race, and she with her veins full of the mustang blood of the Rocky Mountains, were fitted to each other as almost never were horse and rider before. Their performances were astonishing. In addition to a constant attendance on his commander (who, riding without baggage, and of no heavier person than Wettstein himself, sometimes fagged out three good horses between one morning and the next), the Trompaytr yet volunteered for all sorts of extra service,--carried messages over miles of bad road to the general's camp, gave riding-lessons and music-lessons to the company buglers, and then--fear of the guard-house and fear of capture always unheeded--he never missed an opportunity for the most hazardous and most laborious foraging. He was a thorough soldier,--always "for duty," always cleanly, always handsome and cheery, and heedlessly brave. If detected in a fault (and he was, as I have hinted, an incorrigible forager), he took his punishment like a man, and stole milk for himself or fodder for Klitschka at the next convenient (or inconvenient) opportunity, with an imperturbability that no punishment could reach. Once, when supplies were short, he sent me, from the guard-house where he had been confined for getting them, a dozen bundles of corn-blades for my horses; not as a bribe, but because he would not allow the incidents of discipline to disturb our friendly relations; and in the matter of fodder in scarce times he held me as a helpless pensioner, dependent on his bounty. When in arrest by my order, his "Pon chour, Herr Oberist," was as cordial and happy as when he strolled free past my tent. Altogether, I never saw his like before or since. The good fortune to get such a bugle, such a soldier, and such a mount combined, comes but once in the lifetime of the luckiest officer. It was only his uncouth tongue that kept him from being pilfered from me by every general who had the power to "detail" him to his own headquarters. So universal, by the way, was this petty vice of commanding officers, that one was never safe until he adopted the plan, in selecting a staff officer, of securing his promise to resign from the service, point-blank, if ordered to other duty, and more than one offended general has been made indignant by this policy. With Wettstein, I felt perfectly easy, for the average capacity of brigadier-generals stopped far short of the analysis of his dual jargon. Several tried him for a day, but they found that his comprehension was no better than his speech, and that his manifest ability was a sealed book to them. He always came home by nightfall with a chuckle, and "Le général versteht mich nicht. Je blase 'marrrsch' für 'halt.'" So it was that, for a couple of years, this trusty fellow trotted at my heels through rain and shine, by day and by night, with his face full of glee, and his well-filled canteen at the service of our little staff. Mud and mire, ditches and fences, were all one to him and Klitschka; and in Vix's day they followed her lead over many a spot that the others had to take by flank movement. Our work in Missouri was but little more than the work of subsistence. We were a part of an army too large for any Rebel force in that region to attack, and too unwieldy to pursue guerillas with much effect. But now and then we made a little scout that varied our otherwise dull lives; and at such times Wettstein always attached himself to the most dangerous patrolling party, and Klitschka was usually the first to bring back news of the trifling encounters. At last, in February, 1863, when we had lain for a month in delicious idleness in the heart of a rich country, literally flowing with poultry and corn-fodder, I, being then in command of a division of cavalry, received an order from Davidson to select six hundred of the best-mounted of my men, and to attack Marmaduke, who was recruiting, ninety miles away, at Batesville on the White River in Arkansas. His main body, three thousand five hundred strong, lay in the "Oil-Trough Bottom," on the other side of the river. A brigade of Western infantry was to march as far as Salem (thirty miles), and to support us if necessary; though we afterward found that at the only moment when we might have had grave occasion to depend on them, they were, with an inconsistency that was not the least attribute of our commanding officer, withdrawn without notice to us. We were to go in light marching order, carrying only the necessary clothing, and rations of salt and coffee. Wettstein's ideas of lightness differing from mine, I had to use some authority to rid poor Klitschka of saucepans, extra boots, and such trash; and after all, the rascal had, under the plea of a cold, requiring extra blankets, smuggled a neatly sewn sausage of corn, weighing some fifteen pounds, into one of his rolls. Eager men, too, whose horses were out of trim, had to be discarded, and the whole detail to be thoroughly overhauled. But the jovial anticipation of seeing Batesville once more--a New England village planted on a charming hillside in Arkansas, where we had sojourned with Curtis the summer before, and where we all had the pleasant acquaintance that even an enemy makes in a town from which the native men have long been gone, and only the women remain--made the work of preparation go smoothly, and long before dawn Wettstein's bugle summoned the details from the several camps. There was a ringing joyousness in his call, that spoke of the cosey, roaring fire of a certain Batesville kitchen to which his bright face and his well-filled haversack had long ago made him welcome, and prospective feasting gave an added trill to his blast. The little detachments trotted gayly into line, officers were assigned for special duty, temporary divisions were told off, and a working organization was soon completed. Before the sun was up, such a Ra, t't'ta, t't'ta, _t't'ta_! as South Missouri had never heard before, broke the line by twos from the right, and we were off for a promising trip. Marmaduke we knew of old, and personal cowardice would have deterred no one from joining our party, for he could be reached from our stronger army only by a complete surprise; and in a country where every woman and child (white, I mean) was his friend and our enemy, a surprise, over ninety miles of bad roads, seemed out of the question. Indeed, before we had made a half of the distance, one of his flying scouts told a negro woman by the roadside, as he checked his run to water his horse, "There's a hell's-mint o' Yanks a comin' over the mountain, and I must git to Marmyjuke"; and to Marmaduke he "got," half a day ahead of us, only to be laughed at for a coward who had been frightened by a foraging-party. The second night brought us to Evening Shade, a little village where one Captain Smith was raising a company. They had all gone, hours ahead of us, but had left their supplies and their fires behind them, and these, with the aid of a grist-mill (for which an Illinois regiment furnished a miller), gave us a bountiful supper. At daybreak we set out for our last day's march, still supposing that Marmaduke's men would put the river between themselves and us before night, but confident of comfortable quarters at Batesville. A few miles out, we began to pick up Rebel stragglers, and Wettstein soon came rattling through the woods, from a house to which he had been allowed to go for milk, with the story of a sick officer lodged there. Following his lead with a surgeon and a small escort, I found the captain of the Evening Shade company lying in a raging fever, with which he had found it impossible to ride, and nearly dead with terror lest we should hang him at once. His really beautiful young wife, who had gone to enliven his recruiting labors, was in tears over his impending fate. While we were talking with him concerning his parole, she bribed Wettstein with a royal pair of Mexican spurs to save his life, evidently thinking from his display of finery that he was a major-general at the very least. The kind fellow buckled the spurs on my heels, and they evidently gave me new consequence in his eyes as we rode on our way. Presently we struck a party of about twenty-five, under a Captain Mosby, who had been making a circuit after conscripts and had had no news of us. After a running fight, during which there occurred some casualties on the other side, we captured the survivors of the party and sent them to the rear. From midday on, we heard rumors of a sally in strong force from Batesville, and were compelled to move cautiously,--straggling parties of Rebel scouts serving to give credibility to the story. At sunset we were within six miles of the town; and, halting in the deep snow of a large farm-yard, I sent a picked party of thirty, under Rosa, to secure the ferry, if possible,--Wettstein and Klitschka accompanying to bring back word of the result. After two anxious hours, he came into camp with a note from Rosa: "Marmaduke is over the river and has the ferry-boat with him; three of his men killed. Wettstein did bravely." The poor fellow had a bad cut on his arm and was in pain, but not a moment would he give himself until brave little Klitschka, smothered in bright straw, was filling herself from the smuggled bag of corn. Then he came to the surgeon and had his wounded arm duly dressed. Although evidently suffering and weak from loss of blood, he gave us a cheering account of Rosa's fight, and dwelt fondly on the supper he had bespoken for us at good Mrs. ----'s house, where we had quartered in the summer. At nine o'clock, after Klitschka had fed and the patrols had come in, we set out on our march. It was still snowing hard, and even the dead men that marked Rosa's recent ride were fast being shrouded in purest white. One of them Wettstein pointed out as the man with whom he had crossed sabres, and he asked permission to stay with the party detailed to bury him, for he had been a "braff homme." With his tender sympathy for friend or foe, he was a truer mourner than a dead soldier often gets from the ranks of his enemy. Even this sad ride came to an end, as all things must, and at the edge of the town soldierly Rosa stood, to report that the pickets were posted and our quarters ready. Giving him a fresh detail to relieve his pickets, and asking his company at our midnight supper, we pushed on to our chosen house. Here we found all in order, save that the young lady of the family had so hastily put on the jacket bearing the U. S. buttons of her last summer's conquests, that she failed quite to conceal the C. S. buttons on a prettier one under it. She and her mother scolded us for driving the Rebel beaux from town, when there was to have been a grand farewell ball only the next night; but they seemed in no wise impressed with regret for the friends who had been killed and wounded in the chase. It turned out that Marmaduke had grown tired of reports that we were marching on him in force, and would not believe it now until his own men rode into town at nightfall with the marks of Rosa's sabres on their heads. The place had been filled with the officers of his command, and he with them, come for their parting flirtations before the ball. They were to march to Little Rock, and their men were nearly all collected in the "Bottom," over the river. On this sudden proof of the attack, they made a stampede for the flat-boat of the rope-ferry, and nearly sunk it by over-crowding, the hindmost men cutting the rope and swimming their horses across the wintry torrent. We had full possession of the town, and were little disturbed by the dropping shots from the Rebel side. We visited on our unfaithful friends such punishment as enforced hospitality could compass, and, on the whole, we hadn't a bad "time." The morning after our arrival we levied such contributions of supplies as were necessary for our return march, and, in order that the return might not look like a retreat, we loaded two wagons with hogsheads of sugar (which would be welcome in Davidson's commissariat), and made every arrangement for the establishment of the camping of the whole army in the country back of the town; for our force was so small that, with our tired horses, it would have been imprudent to turn our backs to Marmaduke's little army, if he supposed us to be alone. Keeping the town well picketed and making much show of laying out an encampment, we started the teams and the main body of the command at nightfall, holding back a hundred men for a cover until a later hour. During the evening the Rebels on the south side of the river became suspiciously quiet, and there was, apparently, some new movement on foot. The only possible chance for an attack was by Magnus's ferry, ten miles below, where the boat was so small and the river so wide that not more than twenty horses could be crossed in an hour, and our sharpshooters were sufficient to prevent the removal of the Batesville boat to that point. Still it was important to know what was going on, and especially important to prevent even a scouting-party of the enemy from harassing the rear of our tired column by the shorter road from Magnus's to Evening Shade; and I started at nine o'clock (when the moon rose), with twenty men, to go round that way, directing the remainder of the rear-guard to follow the main body at midnight. The ride to Magnus's was without other adventure than bad roads and almost impassable bayous always entail, and in a few hours we reached the plantation, where I had a former ally in an old negro who had done us good service during Curtis's campaign. He said that the Rebels had left the Bottom, and were going to Little Rock, but, as a precaution he took a canoe and crossed over to the house of another negro on the south bank, and returned with a confirmation of his opinion. As it was very important to know whether the only enemy of Davidson's army had really withdrawn from his front, and, as this might be definitely learned through the assistance of an old scout who lived in the edge of the Bottom, it seemed best to cross the river to give him instructions for his work. I took Ruby, my best horse. He was a sure reliance under all circumstances, and he and I knew each other perfectly. We were at home in every foot-path in the country, having had many a summer's swim in this very river; and now, accompanied only by Wettstein and Klitschka, I went on to the ferry-boat. It was what is known as a "swing" ferry. A stout rope is stretched between trees on the opposite shores, and the boat is attached to a couple of pulleys arranged to traverse the length of this rope. The attaching cords--one at each end of the up-stream side of the boat--are long enough to allow it to swing some rods down the stream; by shortening one of the ropes and lengthening the other, the boat is placed at an angle with the swift current, which propels it toward one shore or the other, the pulleys keeping pace in their course on the main rope. The main rope was rough from long use, and often the pulleys would halt in their course, until the pull of the advancing boat dragged them free. Then the rickety craft, shivering from end to end, would make a rapid shoot, until another defective place in the rope brought her to again. At each vibration, the horses nearly lost their feet, and the surging stream almost sent its muddy water over the gunwale. It was a long and anxious trip,--the rotten guy-rope hardly serving to hold us to our course. At last we reached the shore and rode on to Craikill's house in the Bottom. He had been "conscripted," and forced to go with the army, so his wife told us, and she had seen him march with the rest on the Fairview Road for Little Rock. The last bird had flown, and we could safely march back at our leisure. Wettstein filled his pipe, emptied his haversack for the benefit of Craikill's hungry children, and, cheery as ever, followed me to the ferry. On the way over he had been as still as a mouse, for he was too old a soldier to give an enemy any sign of our approach. But, as we set out on the return trip, in the cold moonlight, he sang the "Ranz des Vaches," fondled his little mare, and, unmindful of his wounded arm, gave way to the flow of spirits that the past few days' duty had checked. I never knew him more gay and delightful; and, as we stood leaning on our saddles and chatting together, I congratulated myself upon the possession of such a perpetual sunbeam. We were barely half-way across, when, suddenly, coming out of the darkness, riding half hidden in the boiling, whirling tide, a huge floating tree struck the boat with a thud that parted the rotten guy-rope, and carried us floating down the stream. For a moment there seemed no danger, but a branch of the tree had caught the corner of the boat, and the pulleys had become entangled in the rope. When this had been drawn to its full length, and the tree felt the strain, the boat dipped to the current, filled, and sank under our feet. I called to Wettstein to take Klitschka by the tail, but it was too late; he had grasped the saddle with the desperation of a drowning man, and made her fairly helpless. The boat soon passed from under us, and, relieved of our weight, came to the surface at our side; but, bringing the rope against poor Wettstein's wounded arm, it tore loose his hold, and soon went down again in the eddy, and Klitschka was free. "Adieu, Herr Oberist; tenez Klitschka pour vous! Adieu!" And that happy, honest face sank almost within reach of me. The weight of his arms prevented his rising again, and only an angry eddy, glistening in the moonlight, marked his turbid grave. Ruby, snorting, and struggling hard with the current, pulled me safely to the shore, and little Klitschka followed as well as her loaded saddle would permit. For the moment, with my own life and the lives of two tried companions to care for, I thought of nothing else; but as I sat drying at Magnus's roaring hearth the direst desolation overwhelmed me. Very far from home,--far even from the home-like surroundings of my own camp,--I had clung to this devoted fellow as a part of myself. He was a proven friend; with him I never lacked the sympathy that, in the army at least, is born of constant companionship, and he filled a place in my life that dearer friends at home might not find. He was the one comrade whose heart, I was sure, was filled only with unquestioning love for me. Henceforth I must look for support to companions who saw me as I was, who knew my faults and my weaknesses, and whose kind regard was tempered with criticism. The one love that was blind, that took me for better or for worse, had been, in an instant, torn from my life, and I was more sad than I can tell. But Duty knows no sentiment. A saddened party, we mounted, to join the main command; and, as we rode on through the rest of that desolate night, no word passed to tell the gloom that each man felt. The petty distinctions of earthly rank were swallowed up in a feeling of true brotherhood, and Wettstein--promoted now--rode at our head as a worthy leader, showing the way to a faithful performance of all duty, and a kindly and cheerful bearing of all life's burdens; and, through the long and trying campaigns that followed, more than one of us was the better soldier for the lesson his soldierly life had taught. CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. Union City was not a city at all; it was hardly a village, and "Disunion" would have been its fairer designation. It lay in the woods at the crossing of two railroads, one pointing toward Mobile and one toward Memphis, but neither leading anywhere. There was a tradition that trains had once been run upon each, but many bridges had had to be rebuilt to make the short line to Columbus passable, and the rest was ruin; for Forrest had been there with his cavalry. The land was just so much raised above the broad swamp of Northwestern Tennessee that whiskey with men to drink it, and a Methodist Church South with people to attend it, were possible. With these meagre facilities for life, and the vague inducement of a railroad-crossing. Union City had struggled into an amphibious subsistence; but it had never thriven, and its corner-lots had but feebly responded to the hopes of its projectors. For many a mile around, the forests and swamps were well-nigh impenetrable, and the occasional clearings were but desolate oases in the waste of marsh and fallen timber. The roads were wood-trails leading nowhere in particular, and all marked a region of the most scanty and unfulfilled promise. General Asboth, seeing (by the map) that it commanded two lines of railroad, sent us to occupy this strategic point, and we gradually accumulated to the number of twenty-five hundred cavalry and four thousand infantry, drawing our regular supplies from Columbus; and occupying our time with a happy round of drills, inspections, horse-races, cock-fights, and poker. It was not an elevating existence, but it was charmingly idle, and we passed the serene and lovely autumn of 1863 in a military dreamland, where nothing ever came to disturb our quiet, or to mar our repose with the realities of war. We built ourselves houses, we shot game for our tables, we made egg-nog for our evenings, and we were happy. The charm of camp-life--with just enough of occupation and responsibility, and with enough improvement in the troops for a reward--made even this wilderness enjoyable. I had the advantage of seniority and command, and the physical comforts that naturally gravitate toward a commanding officer did not fail me. My house, built with the mouse-colored logs of a Rebel block-house, covered with the roof of the post-office, and floored and ceiled with the smoke-mellowed lining of the Methodist church, was broad and low and snug. Its windows, also taken from the sanctuary in question, were set on their sides, and gave to each of the two rooms wide, low-browed outlooks into the woods and over the drill-ground, that would have made worse quarters agreeable. The bricks of an abandoned domestic fireside built a spacious fireplace across an angle of each of the rooms, and the clay of the locality plastered all our chinks "to keep the wind away." I have seen more pretentious houses and more costly, but never one in which three chosen spirits--I had, in a happy moment, selected Voisin and the Hun for my staff--got more that is worth the getting out of the simple and virtuous life of a cavalry headquarters. We were at peace with all the world (Forrest was in Mississippi), our pay was regular, our rations were ample,--and Asboth had been ordered to Pensacola. Old A. J., his successor,--every inch a soldier, and a good fellow to the very core,--used sometimes to roll up his camp mattress and run down from Columbus for an inspection. Those are marked days in our memories. He was a lynx in the field, and wry buttoning roused him to articulate wrath; but he unbuckled his sabre at the door, and brought only geniality within,--a mellow geniality that warmed to the influences of our modest hospitality, and lasted far into the night; and then, when the simple and inoffensive game was over, and its scores were settled, the dear old boy--usually with a smile of conquest wandering through his gray beard--would unroll his bundle before the fire and sleep like a baby until reveille. Happy, happy days,--and still happier nights! Naturally, in such a life as we led at Union City, our horses formed a very important element in our occupation and in our amusements. Soon after our arrival at Columbus,--an event which had taken place a few months before,--a spanking mare that I had bought to replace Ruby had gone hopelessly lame, and it became again important to all who were concerned in my peace of mind, that a satisfactory substitute should be found for her. I had still in my stable a little thoroughbred (Guy), who, though excellent in all respects, was a trifle under my weight, and not at all up to the rough riding that was a necessary part of our army life. He could go anywhere, could jump any practicable barrier, was fleet and sound, and in all respects admirable, but he was made for a lighter weight than mine, and, except for show and parade riding, must mainly be used to carry Ike and the saddle-bags, or to mount a friend when a friend favored me. In a second search, in which most of the officers of the regiment took a lively interest, there was found, in Frank Moore's Battalion of the Second Illinois Cavalry, a tall, gaunt, lean, haggard, thoroughbred-looking beast, which had been captured from Merryweather's men in Western Tennessee. He was not a handsome horse, nor was he to the ordinary eye in any respect promising; but a trial showed that he had that peculiar whalebone character, and wiry, nervous action, which come only with blood, and without which no horse is really fit for the saddle. The chances were very much against him. He did not possess the first element of beauty, save in a clean-cut head, a prominent eye, a quick ear, a thin neck, sloping shoulders, high withers, and the brilliant activity that no abuse had been able to conquer. He was held in abeyance until a careful examination of the two thousand horses at the post showed that, even as he stood, he had no equal there for my purposes. Since he had come into the army he had been in the possession of a private soldier, who had done much scouting duty, and he had been initiated (successfully) into the scrub-racing which Illinois soldiers much affected. The serious amount of one hundred and forty dollars was hazarded in the venture, and he was transferred to our stable. That increment of value which always follows the purchase of a new horse came rapidly in his case, and it needed only a few gallops on the breezy bluffs beyond Fort Halleck, to install him as prime favorite among the headquarters' mess. He was deemed worthy of the noble name of Max, and under Ike's careful grooming he returned daily toward the blooming condition that only Second Illinois abuse had been able to subdue. In an early race with the Hun we were ingloriously beaten; but the Hun rode a marvellous little blood mare, blooming with hundreds of bushels of oats, and with two years of careful handling. Max, though beaten, was not discouraged, and seemed to say that with time and good treatment he would be ready for a more successful trial. During his period of tutelage, and while he was kept from all excessive exertion, he was inducted into the mysteries of the art, to him quite new, of jumping timber. Columbus had been occupied by Rebel and Union soldiers since the outbreak of the war, and its fences, far and wide, had all disappeared; but nowhere in the world was there a greater variety nor a more ample stock of fallen trees, whose huge boles made capital leaping-bars; and over these, almost daily, for some months, beginning with the smaller ones and going gradually to the largest we could find, Max learned to carry a heavy weight with a power and precision that even Ruby could not have excelled. During all this time, ample feed, good shelter, regular exercise, and a couple of hours of Ike's hand-rubbing daily, worked an uninterrupted improvement in limb and wind and sinews and coat, until, by the time we were ordered to Union City, Max had become the pride of the camp. He was over sixteen hands high, of a solid dark bay color, glistening like polished mahogany, and active and spirited as a horse in training for the Derby. At Union City the headquarters' horses were stabled under a capital shed, close at hand, and all that master's eye and servant's labor could accomplish for their care and improvement was lavished upon them; so that, during our long months' stay, we were among the best-mounted men in the Western army. Our pleasure-riding and our work lay through swampy wood-roads, over obstructions of every sort, and across the occasional grass farms, with their neglected rail-fences. The weather was almost uninterruptedly fine, our few visiting neighbors were miles away from us, the shooting was good, and the enjoyment we got from our vagabond life in camp was well supplemented by the royal rides we almost daily took. Naturally, in a camp full of idle men given largely to sport, the elevating entertainment of horse-racing played a prominent part. Both Max and Guy were conspicuous by their successes until, long before the close of our leisurely career, but only after they had hung my walls with spurs and whips and other trophies of their successful competition with all comers, both were ruled out by the impossible odds they were obliged to give. The actual military service required was only enough to convince me that Max was a beast of endless bottom and endurance, and that, accidents apart, he would need no help in any work he might be called on to perform. For the rest of the war, with much duty of untold severity, I habitually rode no other horse for light work or for hard, for long rides or for short ones, on the march or on parade; and with all my sentiment for his charming predecessors, I had to confess that his equal as a campaigner had never come under my leg. He would walk like a cart-horse at the head of a marching column, would step like a lord in passing in review, would prance down the main street of a town as though vain of all applause, would leap any fence or ditch or fallen timber to which he might be put, would fly as though shot from a gun in passing along the line; and when, whether early or late, he was taken to his stable, would eat like a hungry colt and sleep like a tired plough-horse. In all weathers and under all circumstances he was steady, honest, intelligent, and ready for every duty. I had ridden before, at home and in the army, horses ideally good; I have ridden since, over the hunting country of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, horses that were counted of the best, but never, before or since, have I mounted such a magnificent piece of perfectly trained and perfectly capable horse-flesh. On one occasion, at Union City, word was brought in that a flag of truce from Faulkner had arrived at our picket line, and I rode out for a parley over a trifling matter of an exchange of prisoners. The officer in charge of the flag, with the company escorting him, had originally come from our neighborhood and had belonged to Merryweather's "band." As Max trotted up to their bivouac, he was greeted with cries of recognition, and a lieutenant of the company was kind enough to warn me that I had shown them a stronger inducement than they had hitherto had to make an attack on our position; for, since Frank Moore had captured the horse I rode, they had determined to regain him at any risk. Happily, this laudable wish was never fulfilled, and Max remained, in spite of the devices they may have laid for his recapture. During the five months of our stay at this post, we made some hard scouts in a hard country, and we held a good part of West Tennessee under strict surveillance, but the most memorable feature of all our scouting was generally the welcome dismounting under the wide eaves of our own house; not, I hope, that we had grown effeminate, but a week's tramp through the woods of West Tennessee offers little that memory can cherish, and prepares one for a sensation on the near approach of comfort. But five months of such life is enough, and I was not sorry when the order came that I must go for a soldier again. Sherman was about to advance eastward from Vicksburg, destroy the lines of railroad by which Forrest received supplies from the fertile prairie region of Northern Mississippi, and strike the Rebellion in the pit of its stomach. A. J. was to take all my infantry down the river, and the cavalry was to move to Colliersville, on the line of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and join a considerable cavalry force gathering there under Sooy Smith and Grierson; thence we were to move southeasterly through Mississippi, to engage Forrest's forces and to meet Sherman's army at the crossing of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad at Meridian. We lay in camp more than a week, ready to move, but awaiting orders. The country (a very wet one) was frozen hard and covered with snow. Our order to march and the thaw came together, on the 22d of January. We were to cross the Obion River (and bottom) at Sharp's Ferry, twenty-three miles southwest of our camp. The command consisted of the Fourth Missouri (with a battery), Second New Jersey, Seventh Indiana, Nineteenth Pennsylvania, and Frank Moore's Battalion of the Second Illinois; in all about twenty-five hundred well-mounted men present for duty. The roads were deep with mud and slush, and every creek was "out of its banks" with the thaw. We reached the ferry only at nightfall of the 23d, over roads that had hourly grown deeper and more difficult. Two regiments had crossed, through floating ice (eight horses at a trip), by a rope-ferry, and at nine o'clock in the evening, under a full moon and a summer temperature, I crossed with staff and escort. The river was already so swollen that we landed in two feet of water, and still it was rising. Our camp was fixed five miles away on the upland. The first mile was only wet and nasty, and the trail not hard to follow. Then we came to the "back slough," thirty feet wide, four feet deep, and still covered with four inches of ice. Those who had gone before had broken a track through this, and swept the fragments of ice forward until near the shore they were packed in for a width of ten feet or more, and to the full depth of the water. I can make no stronger statement than that we all got through safely, only wet to the skin. How it was done I do not pretend to know. Some went in one way and some in another. All I can assert is that my stalwart old Max, when he found himself standing, belly deep, in broken ice, settled quietly on his haunches and took my two hundred pounds with one spring on to dry land four feet higher than his starting-point, and twelve feet away,--but then, Max always was a marvel. Guy, who carried Ike, scrambled over the top of the broken ice as only he or a cat could do. The others fared variously. All were drenched, and some were hurt, but all got to the shore at last. Then came the hour-long tug to get my ambulance through with its store of tent-hold goods and we started for our remaining four miles. The trail, even of cavalry, is not easily followed by moonlight when covered with half a foot of water, and we lost our way; reaching camp, after fourteen miles of hard travel, at four o'clock in the morning. The river was still rising rapidly, and word was brought that Kargé, with more than half the brigade, would have to make a détour of fifty miles and cross the Three Forks of the Obion far to the eastward, joining us some days later, near Jackson. So we idled on, marching a few miles each day, camping early, cooking the fat of the land for our evening meal, cultivating the questionable friendship of the Rebel population by forced contributions of subsistence, and leading, on the whole, a peaceful, unlaborious, and charming picnic life. Finally, taking Kargé again under our wing, we pushed on, resolutely and rapidly, over flooded swamps, across deep, rapid rivers, and through hostile towns, to our rendezvous; whence, under the command of two generals, and as part of an army of eight thousand well-mounted cavalry and light artillery, and all in light marching order, we started for our more serious work. The chief in command was a young and handsome, but slightly nervous individual, who eschewed the vanities of uniform, and had about himself and his horse no evidence of his military character that could not be unbuckled and dropped with his sword-belt in case of impending capture. He was vacillating in his orders, and a little anxious in his demeanor, but he had shown himself cool and clear-headed under fire, and seemed resolutely bent on the destruction of the last vestige of Forrest's troublesome army. It would be tedious to tell all the adventures of our forward expedition; how we marched in three columns over different roads, each for himself, and with only a vague notion where and how we should meet, and how we should support each other. As it afterward proved, the details of the order of march had been given to the commanders of the other brigades, while I had been forgotten; so that the whole advance was vexed with cross-purposes and with the evidences of a hidden misunderstanding. The _contretemps_ that thus came about were annoying, and, in one instance, came near being serious: as we were going into camp at Prairie Station, my advance reported having come in sight of the camp-fires of the enemy; a skirmish-line was sent forward, and only on the eve of engaging did they discover that we were approaching Hepburn's Brigade, of our column, which had reached the same point by another road. The first days of our march in Mississippi were through Tippah County, as rough, hopeless, God-forsaken a country as was ever seen outside of Southern Missouri. Its hills were steep, its mud was deep, its houses and farms were poor, its facilities for the subsistence of a protecting army like ours were of the most meagre description, and its streams delayed us long with their torrents of bottomless muddy water, fast swelling from the thaw that had unlocked the snow of all the deep-buried hills and morasses of their upper waters. We built ferry-boats and swamped them, built bridges and broke them, and slowly and painfully, horse by horse, transferred the command across the nasty riverbeds. Tippah Creek detained us and kept us hard at work all day and all night, and we reached the Tallahatchee at New Albany barely in time to ford our last man across before it rose to an impassable depth. And then for two days we pressed forward, in company with the whole column, through the rough, rocky, and wooded country, reaching Okolona only at nightfall. Here we struck the marvellous prairie region of Northeastern Mississippi, literally a land flowing with milk and honey. An interminable, fertile, rolling prairie lay before us in every direction. The stern rule of the Confederacy had compelled the planters to offset every small field of cotton with a wide area of corn, until the region had become known as the granary of the Southern army. Not only must every land-owner devote his broadest fields to the cultivation of the much-needed cereal, but one tenth of all his crop must be stacked for public use in cribs at the side of the railroad. It was an important incident of our mission to destroy everything which directly or indirectly could afford subsistence to the Rebel forces; and during the two days following our arrival at Okolona, while we marched as far south as West Point, the sky was red with the flames of burning corn and cotton. On a single plantation, our flanking party burned thirty-seven hundred bushels of tithe corn, which was cribbed near the railroad; no sooner was its light seen at the plantation houses than hundreds of negroes, who swarmed from their quarters to join our column, fired the rail-built cribs in which the remaining nine-tenths of the crop was stored. Driven wild with the infection, they set the torch to mansion house, stables, cotton-gin, and quarters, until the whole village-like settlement was blazing in an unchecked conflagration. To see such wealth, and the accumulated products of such vast labor, swept from the face of the earth, gave to the aspect of war a saddening reality, which was in strong contrast to the peaceful and harmless life our brigade had thus far led. In all this prairie region there is no waste land, and the evidences of wealth and fertility lay before us in all directions. As we marched, the negroes came _en masse_ from every plantation to join our column, leaving only fire and absolute destruction behind them. It was estimated that during these two days' march two thousand slaves and one thousand mules were added to our train. The incidents of all this desolation were often sickening and heart-rending; delicate women and children, whom the morning had found in peace and plenty, and glowing with pride in the valor of Southern arms and the certainty of an early independence for their beloved half-country, found themselves, before nightfall, homeless, penniless, and alone, in the midst of a desolate land. Captain Frank Moore, the Cossack of our brigade, went at night to an outlying plantation, of which the showy mansion-house stood on a gentle acclivity in the edge of a fine grove. Here lived alone with an only daughter, a beautiful girl, a man who had been conspicuous in his aid to the Rebellion, and whose arrest had been ordered. The squadron drew up in front of the house and summoned its owner to come forth. He came, armed, sullen, stolid, and determined, but obviously unnerved by the force confronting him. Behind him followed his daughter, dressed in white, and with her long light hair falling over her shoulders. The sight of the hated "Yanks" crazed her with rage, and before her father could reply to the question with which he had been accosted, she called to him wildly, "Don't speak to the villains! Shoot! shoot them down, shoot them down!" wringing her hands, and screaming with rage. The excitement was too much for his judgment, and he fired wildly on the troops. He was riddled through and through with bullets; and as Moore turned away, he left that fine house blazing in the black night, and lighting up the figure of the crazy girl as she wandered, desolate and beautiful, to and fro before her burning home, unheeded by the negroes who ran with their hastily made bundles to join the band of their deliverers. Moore's description of this scene in the simple language that it was his unpretending way to use, gave the most vivid picture we had seen of the unmitigated horror and badness of war. As an instrument of destruction in the enemy's country, our raid had thus far been more successful than we could have anticipated; but we had come for even more serious business than this, and there were already indications that its main purpose would be a failure. Our commander had evidently no stomach for a close approach to the enemy, and his injunctions at Colliersville that we were to try always to "Fight at close quarters!" "Go at them as soon as possible with the sabre!" and other valorous ejaculations, were in singular contrast to the impressions he evinced as the prospect of an actual engagement drew near. Forrest was in our front with about our own number of cavalry, but without artillery, of which we had twenty good pieces. The open country offered good fighting ground, and gave to our better drilled and more completely organized forces a decided advantage, even without our great odds in artillery. There lay before us a fair opportunity for dispersing the most successful body of cavalry in the Rebel service; and, could we effect a junction with Sherman, we should enable him to divide the Confederacy from Vicksburg to Atlanta. One of the most brilliant and damaging campaigns of the war seemed ready to open. Its key lay in our successful engagement, on a fair field, with an inferior force. Yet all of us who were in a position to know the spirit with which we were commanded were conscious of a gradual oozing out at the finger-ends of the determination to make a successful fight; and it was a sad night for us all when, at West Point, with our skirmish-line steadily engaging the Rebel outposts, an order came that we were to fall back before daybreak toward Okolona. The brigade commanders and their staffs had had severe duty in the scattered work of destruction, and even Max, tough though he was, had been almost overworked with constant galloping to and fro, and with the frequent countermarching our varying orders had required. Still he was better than his comrades, and many a man was anxious for his mount, should our retreat be pressed. Early in the morning we were on our way toward the rear,--about eight thousand cavalry, ten sections of artillery, two thousand pack-mules, and an unnumbered cloud of fugitive slaves mounted on their masters' mules, often two or three on each, and clustering under our shadow as their only means of escape to the happy land of freedom. In an organized advance, all of this vast hanging on could be kept at the rear and in good order; but on a retreat the instinct of self-preservation always attacks first the non-combatant element, and during all the days that followed, we found our way constantly blocked with these throngs of panic-stricken people. No sooner had we turned tail than Forrest saw his time had come, and he pressed us sorely all day and until nightfall, and tried hard to gain our flanks. A hundred times we might have turned and given him successful battle, but, at every suggestion of this, we received from our general, who was well in advance of the retiring column, the order to push forward and give our rear a free road for retreat. Midnight found us again in the vicinity of Okolona, and the next daybreak showed the enemy's long column filing out of the woods and stretching well on toward our right flank. Even the plains of Texas could offer no field better suited for a cavalry engagement, and it was with satisfaction that we received, at five o'clock in the morning, an order to prepare at once for a fight; but our men were barely mounted and in line when an order came to turn our backs upon this open field, and to retreat with all expedition toward Memphis. When we left Okolona we left hope behind, for our road struck at once into a wooded, hilly country, full of by-ways and cross-roads known to the enemy and unknown to us, and we well knew that this movement would double Forrest's power and divide our own. Then, for a long day, tired and hungry from the hard work and constant movement we had just gone through, and with our horses half-fed and overworked, we pushed on, our rear often attacked and sometimes broken, our mule-train and negroes thrown into frequent confusion, one of our brigades demoralized and put to flight, and the enemy still pressing our rear and reaching for our flanks. At last, towards night, it became evident that a stand must be made or all would be entirely lost, and at Ivy Farm, near Pontotoc, we found a broad, open hill-top, with large fields, high fences, and stout log-houses, which offered an opportunity. By this time the command was too widely separated, and some of it too much disorganized, for the concentration of even a whole brigade, but a part of Hepburn's and a part of my own were disentangled from the corral of fugitives and brought into line. Both of our generals were upon the field, and to our surprise both seemed brave and resolute; and this not with the resolution of despair, for the actual immediate necessity of fighting often steadies nerves which are easily shaken by the anticipation of danger. Brave they were, but not always of the same mind, and conflicting orders continued to add to our embarrassment and insecurity. It is not worth while to detail all the incidents of the opening of the short engagement; it was ended by the only legitimate cavalry charge made by the "Vierte Missouri" during the whole of its four years' history. We had withdrawn from the line where we had been fighting on foot, had mounted, formed, and drawn sabre; the road about one hundred yards in front of us was swarming with Rebels, who crept along the fence-lines and in the edge of the bordering woods, and kept up a steady rain of fire well over our heads, where we heard that _pfwit_--_pfwit_--_pfwit_ of flying bullets which, happily, has no relative in the whole chorus of sounds, and which is heard above all the din of battle, and is felt through every remotest nerve. At the command "Forward," excitement ran down the line, and there was a disposition for an immediate rush. But "Steady--right dress--trot!" in a measured tone, taken up in turn by the company officers, brought back all the effect of our three years' discipline of the drill-ground. Later, "Steady--gallop--right dress!" accelerated the speed without disturbing the alignment, and then, at last, "Charge!" and with a universal yelling and brandishing of sabres we went forward like the wind. I then felt how mad a venture we had undertaken, for before us was the enemy, it is true, but the enemy behind a high and stout, staked and ridered rail-fence. As we drew very near this, still under heavy fire, which now at the short range was telling, the command became conscious that the six-foot fence would withstand our shock, and it wavered. I turned to my bugler to sound the recall, when I saw him out of the corner of my eye, his white horse rearing literally to his full height and falling backward with a crash that must have killed the poor boy at once. The recall was not needed: the regiment had turned and was running. The officers, being the best mounted and generally the lightest weights, soon reached the front, and "Steady--right dress--trot! Steady--right dress--trot!" was repeated along the line, until the drill-ground precision was regained, and then "By fours--right about--wheel!" and we stood facing the enemy again, ready for another advance. Max had been struck by a grazing bullet and had been plunging heavily, but the wound was not serious and he was soon quieted. We now saw that our charge, futile though it seemed, had done its work. The advance of the enemy was checked; the sight of troops that could retire and re-form for a new attack seemed to have a stunning effect upon them. Practically the engagement was ended. Subsequently, one of Forrest's staff officers told the Hun that the size of the division which had charged was variously estimated at from five to ten thousand, but that he had been accustomed to such things and knew that we were not more than two thousand. In fact, we were less than six hundred. Forrest's report of the battle of Pontotoc states that the engagement was ended "by a cavalry charge of the enemy, which was repulsed." There was still some sharp scrimmaging, and we had to make two or three more squadron and company charges to drive away small attacks upon our retreating guns; but the battle, as a battle, was over, and Forrest's whole advance had been stopped and ended by six hundred Fourth Missouri Dutchmen, galloping, yelling, and swinging their sabres at several thousand men well secured behind a rail-fence. I had before, in drill-ground charges, seen old soldiers and experienced officers jump down and run away from a fence on which they were sitting to watch the advance of charging cavalry which they knew must wheel before coming within five rods of them; but I had never supposed that hot-blooded soldiers, in the full excitement of a successful attack, could be unnerved and turned by the roar and thundering oncoming of a regiment that could by no possibility reach them. Our first setting out had driven back a thin skirmish-line which had to cross the fence under high speed; this, doubtless, aided in the _débâcle_; the charge had stunned them, but it was the rally that stopped the pursuit. The rest of our march was without interesting incident all the way to Memphis, but it was almost incessant, day and night; without incident, that is, that it is worth while to tell here, but our days and nights upon the road were filled with annoyance and disgust, and with a store of unhappy and ludicrous memories that will last the lifetime of all who knew them. One day, at New Albany, Max and I were feeding and sleeping in the door of an old mill while the command was slowly crossing the antiquated bridge over the Tallahatchie, when I was awakened by Grierson's riding up in great alarm, calling upon me "for God's sake" to use the ford as well as the bridge, for Hepburn was being cut to pieces in the rear, and I must give him the full road for his retreat. I had always been a respectful subordinate, but none of us were then in the best temper; I did not believe a word of it, and I frankly told him so. Even old Max pricked up his ears and snorted as if in derision. Almost as we were talking, there came an aid from Hepburn saying that he had found a good supply of forage and would be glad to go into camp for the night. But there was no camp to be thought of for that tired crew; the bogey of incessant pursuit loomed up portentously close upon our rear-guard, and sent its shadow deep into the bowels of our commander, who was miles away in the advance, and who would allow us only the fewest possible hours in the very dead of night for hasty cooking and scant repose. We were a worn and weary lot as we finally went into camp at the rear of the town; worn and weary, sadly demoralized, and almost dismounted. I had lost fifteen hundred good horses, and my men, who had been eager and ready for a successful campaign, were broken in spirit and sadly weakened in discipline. All who had been compelled to bear the brunt of the hard work now needed for themselves and their horses absolute rest for days; but being called into the city the morning after our arrival, my eyes were greeted with the spectacle of General Sooy Smith, no longer ill, and with no trace of shame or annoyance on his face. He had shed his modest and prudent attire, and shone out with all the brass radiance of a full-fledged major-general. From this time until the Fourth Missouri cavalry was mustered out of service, our headquarters were in the immediate neighborhood of Memphis, and our life was much more active than it had been at Union City. Not very much is to be said for Max during this time, except in connection with the Sturgis expedition, beyond the fact that we lay long in the immediate vicinity of the race-course, which we repaired and used faithfully, and, so far as he was concerned, with eminent success. The more frequent necessity for duty, the great labor of remounting, reorganizing, and redrilling the command, united with the greater publicity of our position to lay some restraint on our mode of life, and to make our conduct more circumspect. Still we were not miserable, and the neighborhood of a large town has, to a well-regulated headquarters' mess, its compensations as well as its drawbacks. Sturgis's expedition to Guntown and back--especially back--has passed into history, and its unwritten memories will always remain with those who took part in it. Guntown is far away in Northeastern Mississippi. It is not laid down on the map of the country, but it lies just across the Tishamingo Creek, and it consists mainly of two plantation houses and a school-house. Our stay there was not long, and we were too much occupied to study the locality minutely, but it is my impression that the most important incident in its history was connected with our visit. We were a force of about nine thousand infantry, cavalry, and artillery,--some black and some white, some good and some bad,--sent out by Sherman as a tub to the Forrest whale; a diversion to keep this commander from joining Hood in Northern Georgia; though I doubt if even General Sherman in his moments of wildest enthusiasm anticipated just the issue that followed. Our march out was not rapid, and it was well ordered. We were allowed to take our train, and old John Ellard's four stupendous mules drew our headquarters' wagon, well laden with the comforts we had accumulated during a long service, including a brand-new, well-furnished, and abundantly stored camp-chest that had just arrived from St. Louis. So far as the comforts of a home for five youngsters can be stored in one mule-wagon, we were well supplied for a campaign of any length; and judging from the mess-tables to which we were invited, others of the command were no less well provided. In due time we reached the town of Ripley, a rather pretty New-England-looking village, but, like all Southern towns at that time, entirely devoid of men and overflowing with women of the most venomous and spiteful sort, who did all in their power to add to the interest of the Sunday evening we passed in their company. We had some light skirmishing on our arrival, but whoever it was that attacked us withdrew and left us in undisturbed possession of the comfortable rooms and fireplaces of the town. Our next day's march brought us to a large open plantation on a commanding hill, whence our evening scouting-parties soon found the enemy posted in some force and apparently disposed for an engagement. It seemed always Forrest's plan to select his own fighting-ground, and the plan of our commanders to gratify him. Sturgis committed the usual folly of trying to hold every inch he had gained, and of forming his line of battle on the head of the column and under fire. We breakfasted at three in the morning, and marched at half past four. My command had the advance. The enemy allowed himself to be easily driven until half past eight, when he made some show of resistance. At this time the last of our regiments could hardly have left the camping-ground, and probably a judicious retreat would have drawn Forrest's whole force back to the open country we had left. But "retreat" was not yet written on our banners (of that day), and orders came from our general to support the advance-guard, form line of battle, and hold our position. So far as the cavalry brigade was concerned this was easily done, and we got into good line near the edge of a wood without difficulty. Here, for four mortal hours, or until half past twelve, we carried on a tolerably equal warfare, both sides blazing away at each other with little effect across the six hundred yards of cleared valley that lay between two skirts of wood. So far as the endurance of our troops was concerned, this engagement could have been kept up until nightfall, though our ranks were slowly thinning. Several desperate charges were made on our position, and were repulsed with considerable loss to both sides. Pending the arrival of the infantry it would have been folly for us to attempt a further advance, but had we been properly supported, or, better, had we at once fallen back upon our support, we might have given, as the _post bellum_ reports of Forrest's officers show, a better ending to the day's work. It was only at half past twelve, when our ammunition was reduced to five rounds per man, and when our battery had fired its last shot, that the infantry began to arrive, and then they came a regiment at a time, or only so fast as the Forrest mill could grind them up in detail. They had taken our place, and we had withdrawn to their rear, where we were joined by one after another of the defeated or exhausted infantry regiments. Little by little the enemy pressed upon us, gaining rod after rod of our position, until finally our last arriving troops, a splendid colored regiment, reached the field of battle at double-quick, breathless and beaten by their own speed, barely in time to check the assault until we could cross the creek and move toward the rear. The retreat was but fairly begun when we came upon our train of two hundred wagons piled pell-mell in a small field and blocked in beyond the possibility of removal. With sad eyes we saw John Ellard cut his traces and leave all that was dear to us--tents, camp-chest, poker-table, and all that we cherished--to inevitable capture. The train was _our_ tub to the whale; and while Forrest's men were sacking our treasures, and refilling the caissons of all our batteries, which they had captured, we had time to form for the retreat, more or less orderly according as we had come early or late off the field. The demoralizing roar of our own guns, and the howling over our heads of our own shells, together with the sharp rattle of musketry in our rear, hastened and saddened the ignominious flight of the head of our column, though, for some reason, the enemy's advance upon us was slow. All that long night we marched on, without food and without rest. At early dawn we reached Ripley, where we paused for breath. Max had been ridden almost uninterruptedly for twenty-four hours, and for four hours had done the constant hard work that the supervision of a long line in active engagement had made necessary; and he was glad to be unsaddled and turned for fifteen minutes into a scantily grown paddock, where he rolled and nibbled and refreshed himself as much as ordinary horses do with a whole night's rest. The ambulances with our groaning wounded men came pouring into the village, and to our surprise, those women, who had so recently given only evidence of a horrified hatred, pressed round to offer every aid that lay in their power, and to comfort our suffering men as only kind-hearted women can. With the increasing daylight the pursuit was reopened with vigor, and on we went, and ever on, marching all that day, our rear-guard being constantly engaged, and hundreds of our men being captured, thousands more scattering into the woods. My lieutenant-colonel, Von Helmrich, who had been for twenty-eight years a cavalry officer in Germany, and who, after thirteen months in Libby Prison, had overtaken us as we were leaving Memphis, was recaptured and carried back to Richmond,--to die of a good dinner on his second release, ten months later. At nightfall, the pursuit growing weak, we halted to collect together our stragglers, but not to rest, and after a short half-hour pushed on again; and all that interminable night, and until half past ten the next morning, when we reached Colliersville and the railroad, reinforcements, and supplies, we marched, marched, marched, without rest, without sleep, and without food. The cavalrymen were mainly dismounted and driving their tired jades before them, only Max and a few others carrying their riders to the very end, and coming in with a whinny of content to the familiar stables and back-yards of the little town. Most other officers whose service had been as constant as mine had had extra horses to ride for relief; but I had never yet found march too long for Max's wiry sinews, and trusted to him alone. He had now been ridden almost absolutely without intermission, and much of the time at a gallop or a rapid trot, for fifty-four hours. I had had for my own support the excitement and then the anxious despair of responsible service, and Ike had filled his haversack with hard-bread from John Ellard's abandoned wagon; an occasional nibble at this, and unlimited pipes of tobacco, had fortified me in my endurance of the work; but Max had had in the whole time not the half of what he would have made light of for a single meal. I have known and have written about brilliant feats of other horses, but as I look over the whole range of all the best animals I have seen, I bow with respect to the wonderful courage, endurance, and fidelity of this superbly useful brute. There is an elasticity in youth and health, trained and hardened by years of active field-service, which asserts itself under the most depressing circumstances. Even this shameful and horrible defeat and flight had their ludicrous incidents, which we were permitted to appreciate. Thus, for instance, during a lull in the engagement at Guntown, I had seated myself in a rush-bottomed chair under the lee of a broad tree-trunk; a prudent pig, suspecting danger, had taken shelter between the legs of the chair, leaving, however, his rear unprotected. Random bullets have an odd way of finding weak places, and it was due to one of these that I was unseated, with an accompaniment of squeal, by the rapid and articulate flight of my companion. During our last night's march, my brigade having the advance, and I being at its rear, Grierson ordered me to prevent the pushing ahead of the stragglers of the other brigades, who were to be recognized, he reminded me, by their wearing hats (mine wore caps). The order was peremptory, and was to be enforced even at the cost of cutting the offenders down. Grierson's adjutant was at my side; we were all sleeping more or less of the time, but constantly some hatted straggler was detected pushing toward the front, and ordered back,--the adjutant being especially sharp-eyed in detecting the mutilated sugar-loaves through the gloom. Finally, close to my right and pushing slowly to the front, in a long-strided walk, came a gray horse with a hatted rider,--an india-rubber poncho covering his uniform. I ordered him back; the adjutant, eager for the enforcement of the order, remonstrated at the man's disobedience; I ordered again, but without result; the adjutant ejaculated, "Damn him, cut him down!" I drew my sabre and laid its flat in one long, stinging welt across that black poncho: "----! who are you hitting?" Then we both remembered that Grierson too wore a hat; and I tender him here my public acknowledgment of a good-nature so great that an evening reunion in Memphis over a dozen of wine won his generous silence. One might go on with interminable gossip over incidents of camp and field for which at this late day only scant interest is felt; but nothing that I could say more would probably aid my purpose, which has been simply by a trifling sketch to recall the jollity, the comfort, the suffering, and the misery of campaign life, and to show how in the field more than anywhere else one learns to cherish and to depend upon a faithful and honest and willing comrade like my royal old Max. HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. (CIRCUMSTANTIALLY TRUE.) The war was not quite over, but my regiment was old enough to have grown too small for a colonel, and I sat, the dismalest of all men, a "mustered-out" officer, sated with such good things as a suddenly arrested income had allowed me, over an after-dinner table in a little room at the Athenæum Club. My coffee was gone to its dregs; the closing day was shutting down gloomily in such a weary rain as only a New York back-yard ever knows; and I was wondering what was to become of a man whom four years of cavalry service had estranged from every good and useful thing in life. The only career that then seemed worth running was run out for me; and, worst of all, my pay had been finally stopped. The world was before me for a choice, but I had no choice. The only thing I could do was to command mounted troops, and commanders of mounted troops were not in demand. Ages ago I had known how to do other things, but the knowledge had gone from me, and was not to be recalled so long as I had enough money left with which to be unhappy in idle foreboding. I had not laid down my life in the war, but during its wonderful four years I had laid down, so completely, the ways of life of a sober and industrious citizen, and had soaked my whole nature so full of the subtile ether of idleness and vagabondism, that it seemed as easy and as natural to become the Aladdin I might have dreamed myself to be as the delver I had really been. With a heavy heart, then, and a full stomach, I sat in a half-disconsolate, half-reminiscent, not wholly unhappy mood, relapsing with post-prandial ease into that befogged intellectual condition in which even the drizzle against the window-panes can confuse itself with the patter on a tent roof; and the charm of the old wanderings came over me again, filling my table with the old comrades, even elevating my cigar to a brier-wood, and recalling such fellowship as only tent-life ever knows. Such dreaming is always interrupted, else it would never end; mine was disturbed by a small card on a small salver, held meekly across the table by the meekest of waiters. The card bore the name "Adolf zu Dohna-Schlodien," and a count's coronet,--a count's coronet and "zu" (a touch above "von")! I remembered to have seen a letter from my adjutant to the Prussian Consul in Philadelphia, asking him to obtain information about a handsome young musical "Graf zu" something, who was creating a sensation in St. Louis society, and the "zu" seemed to indicate this as the party in question; he had spoken of him as having defective front teeth, which seemed to be pointing to the "color and distinguishing marks," known in Herd Book pedigrees, and human passports,--a means of identification I resolved to make use of; for my experience with the German nobility in America had been rather wide than remunerative. The "Herr zu" had waited in the hall, and was standing under the full light of the lamp. He was very tall, very slight, and very young, apparently not more than twenty, modestly dressed, and quiet in his manner. He was not strikingly handsome, though very well looking. His hands were the most perfect I ever saw, and the ungloved one showed careful attention. There was no defect noticeable in his front teeth. He bowed slightly and handed me a letter. It was from Voisin, my former adjutant, but it was not exactly a letter of introduction. At least, it was less cordial than Voisin's letters of introduction were wont to be. Yet it was kind. Without commending the Count as a bosom friend, he still said he was much interested in him, had reason to believe in him, was sorry for him, had given him material aid, and was very desirous that he should pull through some pecuniary troubles, which he could do only by enlisting in the Regular Army, and receiving his bounty. From this he would give me money to release his baggage, which was valuable, from some inconveniences that were then attending it in St. Louis. Would I get him enlisted? He said he would enlist, and would prefer to be known under the name Adolph Danforth. The gentleman himself took early occasion to express this preference. I debated a little what to do. He was not introduced as a friend, only as a person in need of help; yet Voisin believed in him, and he had asked a service that he would not have asked for an unworthy man. I engaged him in conversation and got him to smile. It was a very frank smile, but it displayed a singular defect far up on the front teeth. This decided me. He was the same Graf zu whose position had been asked of the Prussian Consul, and I knew he had learned that the Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, an officer in the Gardecorps Kürassier, was of the highest nobility and of a family of great wealth. There was evidently no technical reason why the poor fellow should not be received cordially and well treated. So we went back to the smoking-room, and with fresh coffee and cigars opened an acquaintance which resulted not altogether uneventfully. He was not obtrusive. His story was not forced upon me; but as I already had its thread, I was able to draw it from him in a natural way, and he told it very frankly, though halting a little at its more important turnings, as if wondering how its development would strike me. There was just enough of hesitancy over a harrowing tale to throw on myself the responsibility of learning it. He had been brought up by the tenderest of mothers at the castle of Schlodien (I think in Silesia), had early joined the Cuirassiers of the Body Guard, had fought a fatal duel in which he had been the aggressor, and had been condemned to the Fortress of Spandau. Only his mother's great influence (exercised without the knowledge of his stern and much older father, who was then on his distant estates) had secured for him an opportunity to escape. He had come directly to America, and had remained near Boston until he received intimation (again the result of his mother's influence with Baron Gerolt, the Prussian Minister at Washington) that his return under the Extradition Treaty was being urged at the solicitation of the family of his fallen antagonist. He had then taken refuge in a remote town in South Missouri, where he amused himself with shooting. His mother had written to him but once, and had not been able to send him money. He had at last returned to St. Louis, where he had contracted some small debts which Voisin and another kind friend had assumed. To reimburse them and to gain more perfect seclusion, he had resolved to enlist in the Regular Army. It was a sad conclusion of his career, but as an honorable man (and a pursued one) he had no choice but to accept it. It was the old story,--_noblesse oblige_. There was but one way out of a sad affair, and--like a very Graf zu--this stripling, who had been born and bred to a better fate, faced the penalty of his misfortune without flinching. I tried infinite suggestions, but nothing else offered the immediate money which alone could relieve him of debt and restore him his wardrobe and the portraits of his mother and sister, which with a few well-worn letters, were all he had to cheer him in his exile. We sat till far into the night and until my kindest sympathies were fully aroused by the utter and almost childlike simplicity and frankness with which the poor boy told of his sorrows. I had been taught by a very ample experience to look with much caution on German counts and barons,--an experience that, if it was worth what it had cost, I could not prize too highly; but here was an entirely new type, a combination of the gentlest breeding with an unsophistication that argued more of a mother's care than of garrison influences, and an utter absence of the devil-may-care manner that army life in Germany had hitherto seemed to give. With the improvidence of one who had never known the lack of money, he had lodged himself at the Everett House; and as I left him at its door, I resolved to lose no time in getting him enlisted and stopping an expense that would only add to his troubles. The next day I saw the official who had charge of the making up of the city's quota, and easily arranged for the examination of my candidate. Dohna begged me to secure his admission to a command whose officers would be able to appreciate his difficult position, and a weary time I had of it. At last it was all arranged; he had passed, with much shock to his sensibilities, the surgeon's examination, and had been enrolled in a company of Regular Infantry, whose captain (then serving on the general staff of the department) had acquired a sympathy for him not less than my own. His bounty (over seven hundred dollars) he put into my hands, and he went with me to Adams's Express office, where we sent more than half the sum to St. Louis,--the full amount of his indebtedness. One specified trunk was to be sent to the Everett House, and the rest of his luggage--which Voisin had described as valuable--to me. I received by an early mail the receipt of the St. Louis express-office for it, and found it most convenient to let it lie for the present, addressed to me personally, at the office in New York. It would be useless to Dohna in the army, and I was to take care of it for him. The captain of the company in which he was enlisted secured him a furlough for ten days, and, to show his gratitude, he invited us both to dine with him at the Everett. We sat down at seven, and we sat long. The best that either cellar or kitchen afforded was spread before us in wasteful profusion, and our host, temperate in his sipping, but eating with the appetite of youth, seemed only to regret the limit of our capacity. As we walked across the square, filled and with the kindest emotions, we planned means for so occupying the remaining days of the furlough as to allow but little opportunity for money-spending. His company was at Fort Trumbull, and after he joined he would be safe. The next day being Saturday, I took him to my father's house in the country, where his unfortunate story was already known, and where as much real interest was felt in him as the good people of Connecticut ever accord to a duellist. He had a friend living farther out on the New Haven road, and he took an early train to see her (this was a new feature), returning to me in the evening. I met him at the depot. He wore the superb uniform overcoat of the Gardecorps Kürassier, long, flowing, and rich, with a broad, scarlet-lined fur collar. It was caught across the throat with a scarlet snood, and hung loosely from the shoulders. It made his six feet two really becoming. At home he was easy but very quiet, saying little but saying it very well, and he won as much confidence as the stain on his moral character would allow. Like most of his class, he knew and cared absolutely nothing for what interests the New England mind, and he would early have palled on our taste but for his music. His performance was skilful; he played difficult music, and he played it very well, but without vanity or apparent consciousness. When not occupied in this way, and when not addressed, he neither spoke nor read, apparently he did not even think, but relapsed into a sad and somewhat vacant reticence. But for our knowledge of his misfortunes, he would have been uninteresting. On Sunday he gave me a new confidence. His friend up the road was an Everett House acquaintance, made when he first came from Boston. She was an angel! She knew his sad story, and she had given him her Puritan heart. In the trying days to come I was to be the link that should bind them in their correspondence. She must not know of his degraded position, and all letters were to pass under cover to me. Even _noblesse_ did not hide the tears that this prospect of long separation wrung from him, and he poured out his grief with most touching unrestraint. This was the one sorrow of his life that even his trained equanimity could not conquer. It made me still more respect his simple, honest nature and his unfeigned grief. I was doubly sorry that this last trial of separated love should be added to his cup of bitterness. In our long Sunday talk he told me of his home, and showed me the singularly beautiful photographs of his mother and sister, and--quite incidentally--one of himself in the full uniform of his regiment, bearing on its back the imprint of a Berlin photographer. He evinced a natural curiosity about the mode of our garrison life, and I prepared him as gently as I could for a decided change from his former customs. It was, of course, depressing to him, but he bore the prospect like a man, and gave it no importance as compared with his more essential downfall. He had seen enough of our troops to be especially uneasy at the prospect of an ill-fitting uniform. In the matter of linen he was well provided, but he was really unhappy over the thought of adapting his long and easy figure to a clothing-contractor's idea of proportion. So it was arranged that he should go to my tailor and be suitably clad, according to regulation of course, but also according to measure. He proposed, too, to leave his overcoat for some repairs and to be cared for while he should have no use for it. I gave the tailor assurances of prompt payment. One fine morning Dohna came to my room in his new rig and bade me a brave good-by. He was off for Fort Trumbull. I felt an almost parental sorrow over his going, and had much misgiving as to his ability to face his ill-bred soldier comrades. There came soon after a letter to say that he was well treated personally, only the rations were so horrible; pork and salt beef and beans and molasses. He could not eat such things, and he was growing faint for want of food. I had seen such dainty appetites cured too often to have any fear on this score, and only replied in general terms of encouragement, and asked for frequent letters. These came. There were no incidents of his life that were not described almost with wonder, for a noble officer of the Gardecorps of the king of Prussia knows really nothing of the ways of life of the men he is supposed to command. Often there were thick letters for the _fiancée_, and answers to these (also thick) had often to be forwarded. I felt the enthusiastic glow natural to one who carries alone the tender secrets of younger lovers, and was not altogether unhappy under the subjective romance of my mediation. Sometimes there were touching tales of trouble. Once he had been detailed to the "police" squad, and had to clean spittoons and do other menial work. This was a touch of reality that fairly opened his eyes to his abasement, and he wrote much more sadly than ever before, making me sad, too, to think how powerless I was to help him in any way. A few days later he sent a wail of real agony. While he had been out on drill, some scoundrel had broken into his satchel and had stolen all his papers,--his letters from his mother, her photograph, and those of his sister and his sweetheart, and all the bundle of affectionate epistles over which he had pored again and again in his desolation. The loss was absolutely heart-breaking and irreparable, and he had passed hours sitting on the rocks at the shore, pouring bitter tears into the Thames. This was a blow to me too. I knew that Dohna was of a simple mind, and utterly without resources within himself; but he was also of a simple heart, and one could only grieve over this last blow as over the sorrows of a helpless little child. However, I wrote all I could to encourage him, and was gratified, though a little surprised, to see how soon he became cheerful again, and how earnestly he seemed to have set about the work of becoming a really good soldier. After a time the captain of his company--still in New York and maintaining a lively interest in the poor fellow's case--procured an order for him to go to Annapolis to be examined for promotion. He was already a sergeant, and a pretty good one. He stopped in New York a few days on his way through for some refitting,--again at my tailor's. On his way back he stopped again to tell of his failure. I was delicate about questioning him too closely, but I learned enough to suppose that different ideas as to practical education are entertained by a board of army examiners and by a fond young mother in the remote castle of Schlodien; but I encouraged him to believe that a little more study would enable him to pass the second examination that had been promised him, and he rejoined his company. In the general mustering-out Voisin had been set free and had joined me in New York, and had, naturally, participated in all my interest in the quondam Count. He gradually, as an adjutant should, assumed the correspondence, which was voluminous, and by the time we were informed that Dohna was detailed for recruiting duty in the city, neither he nor I was glad to know it. Something more than a feeling of regretful sympathy is necessary to the enjoyment of frequent companionship, and we both felt that the fact of having credit with a tailor was a dangerous element in the possible future combinations. However, Dohna's arrival at our room followed close upon the announcement of the order. He was still simple in his way and of modest deportment, but he seemed to have accepted his new life almost too entirely, and he had come to look not very much out of place among his comrades. Their quarters were in a basement in Chambers Street, back of the City Hall, where we occasionally dropped in to see him. After a while he was always out when we called, and once when I stopped to give him a foreign letter, sent to my care, I was told that he had not been there for a week, but one of the men volunteered to find him. He came that night to the club for his letter, in civilian's dress, and appeared much as he did when I first saw him, except that he had two beautiful false teeth, in the place of the defective ones. I gave him his letter, a long one from Berlin, from his father. He showed Voisin the postscript, in which it was stated that a box containing a breech-loading shot-gun, a dozen shirts, and a draft for five hundred thalers would be forwarded by the Hamburg line to my care. On the strength of this he hoped it would not inconvenience us to advance him a couple of hundred dollars. It was thus far inconvenient that we were obliged to decline, which gave him no offence, and he invited us to dine with him the following day at the Everett House. At this point, in view of the extreme youth and inexperience of our friend, we took occasion to read him a short homily on the value of economy, and to urge him immediately to leave the Everett, return to his barracks in Chambers Street, and as he valued his future peace of mind to avoid running in debt; mildly hinting that, if found in the public streets without his uniform, he would be very likely to get himself into trouble. He begged that we would not expose him, and promised to return that very night. Then for some time we lost sight of him; his captain said that, so far as he knew, he was attentive to his duty with the recruiting squad, and he certainly kept out of our way. The box from Germany did not arrive. No more letters came, and we had no occasion to seek him out. It was evident that he was no longer unhappy, and so our interest in him, though still warm, remained inactive. * * * * * One night I was awakened, quite late, by Voisin, sitting on the side of my bed, big-eyed and excited, and with a wonderful story to tell. He had been, at the request of the counsel of the Prussian Consul, to the detectives' rooms at police headquarters. Here he had been questioned as to his knowledge of one Adolph Danforth, _alias_ Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, _alias_ Fritz Stabenow, and had subsequently had an interview with that interesting youth in the lock-up. The glory had all departed. He had been there forty-eight hours, was unwashed, uncombed, stolid, comfortable, and quite at home. There was no remnant left of the simple and modest demeanor of the well-bred aristocrat. It was hard to see a trace of likeness to the Kürassier officer with whose photograph we were familiar. The obligations of _noblesse_ seemed to be entirely removed, and there was nothing left but plain, ignoble Fritz Stabenow. An examination of his pockets developed a singular folly. He had kept every scrap of paper on which a word had ever been written to him. Tailors' bills, love-letters, duns, photographs of half a dozen different girls, all were huddled together. He had a package of the Count Dohna cards and the plate from which they had been printed,--made in Boston; a letter of credit from a banking-house in Berlin to its New York correspondent had the copperplate card of the firm on the paper, but the paper was ruled as a German banker's paper never is, and the plate from which the card had been printed (also made in Boston) was in the envelope with it. A letter from plain father Stabenow enclosed photographs of still plainer mother and sister Stabenow, which were a sad contrast to the glory of the Countess Dohna's picture. The father's letter was full of kindly reproof and affectionate regret. "Ach! Fritz, ich hätte das von Dir nicht gedacht,"--"I never thought that of you"; but it was forgiving too, and promised the remittance, clothing, and gun I have spoken of before. The papers, for the loss of which such tears had been shed at Fort Trumbull, were all there in their well-worn companionship with a soiled paper-collar, and that badge of dawning civilization, a tooth-brush. Here were also two photographs, one of the statue of Frederick the Great in Berlin on the card of a St. Louis photographer, and another of himself in Prussian uniform, on the card of a Berlin photographer. The pictures had been "lifted" and changed to the different cards. A more careful neglect of track-covering was never known. The evidence of all his deceptions had been studiously preserved. Voisin had given him a dollar to buy some necessary articles, and had left him to his fate. The disillusion was complete, and I saw that I had been swindled by a false count even more completely than I ever had been by real barons,--which is much to say. Voisin had gathered from the Consul's lawyer that this Stabenow, a valet of the veritable Count Dohna, had been one of a party who had robbed him and committed other serious crimes, and he had fled to this country, with his master's uniform, a valuable wardrobe, and costly jewels. He had here undertaken to personify the Count, and had had on the whole not an unhappy time, especially since he came to New York in recruiting service. He had finally been arrested on the complaint of a lady, one of the many whom he had attempted to blackmail, by threatening exposure through letters they had written him in the kindest spirit. Fortunately this one had had the good sense to refer the matter to her husband, who brought the interesting career to a close. He had obtained several thousand dollars in this way from different persons, and had contracted considerable debts in all directions. The Everett House was an especial sufferer. I felt that my claim was secured by the luggage at the express-office, and I called for it the next day. The gentlemanly clerk of the establishment blandly showed me my name, neatly written in a strange Teutonic hand, to a receipt for the property. Just then I had information that a box addressed to my care was lying at the Hoboken office of the German steamers. Indiscreetly mentioning this fact to the Prussian Consul's lawyer, I was informed that it would be necessary to take the box in evidence, and I prudently refrained from making further efforts for its recovery. It was with a chastened spirit that I paid a considerable bill at my tailor's and ordered the overcoat sent to my address; and it was with only mitigated satisfaction that I heard of the sending in irons to his company in California of deserter Stabenow. If the Herr Lieutenant Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien of the Gardecorps Kürassier is still living, I beg to inform him that his overcoat--the only memento of a grave _Schwindelei_--is now a comfortable wrap to a Rhode Island farmer, who hopes that its rightful owner is as snugly clad in his winter rides about Versailles. TWO SCOUTS. In the desultory and sporadic warfare carried on in the Southwest, the scout--or "skeout," according to the dialect of the region--was a very important element of our organization, and it is amusing now to recall the variety of odd-fish of every description who applied for the remunerative employment that this branch of the service afforded. The interest of our life at Union City was not a little enhanced by two specimens of this genus with whom we had much to do,--Pat Dixon and "The Blind Preacher." One day the guard brought in a suspicious character from the picket-line. He was about twenty-five years old, long, lank, and dusky,--a sort of half-Indian, half-Irish looking fellow, with uncombed hair and an over-prominent quid of tobacco. He rode the usual "nag" of the country,--an animal with more blood than bone and more vice than beauty. He dismounted, passed his bridle over his arm, and "squatted,"--the usual posture of the country. "The Hun," the professional bully of all our culprits, took this creature in hand, and presently came in with a suggestion that I had better see him alone. He followed me cautiously to one side, leading his horse with him, and squatted again when we had halted at a safe distance from curious ears. "I'm Pat Dixon. I live down Troy way on the North Fork. Ye see, when this yer muss fust broke out I didn't go to take no sides in it. But Merryweather's men they come along a little 'fore sun-up, last month was a year, an' they taken the only nag we had left. I'd had him hid out all summer, but some derned skunk done found him out. I heern the cusses a trampin' roun' an' I was goin' to take a crack at 'em for 'good mornin',' but, you see, I knowed if I did they'd just burn the old woman out, an' she don't git along but porely, anyhow, so I didn't. They _con_scripted the old man the year afore, an' he hain't been heern on sence. So I come to the conclushin that I wa'n't agoin' to stan' no such treatmint as that--by King! an' I jest took to the bresh, an' I reckon I've pestered them 'uns right smart. I ain't agoin' afoot long as theys hosses in West Tannisy,--you bet! I was agoin' to jine you Yanks, but thinks sez I: 'Old Pat, you kin do a heap better in the bresh nor what you kin in no army,' and so I stuck to it. O, now, I'm squar'! Frank Moore can tell you all 'bout me; I ain't no gum-game, I ain't. If you want a skeout, I'm on hand, an' I don't want no pass, I kin git 'roun' in this kentry. "Which? _hoss?_ Well, 't ain't much of a nag, but theys more on 'em roun', an' if this 'un tuckers out I'll git somethin' to ride. I ain't goin' afoot.--no, mam!" This was very much the sort of talk "Mr." Forrest's emissaries used in seeking our services for his purposes; so, partly to secure ourselves on this point, and partly to give Dixon a good character should he go out from our camp in his professional capacity, he was sent for a few days to the guard-house, until Frank Moore should return from an expedition. I believe Frank knew most of the vagabonds of Obion County, and he at once certified that this was no other than Pat Dixon; that his story was true; and that, while his controlling motives were not perhaps such as one would most admire, his unconquerable hatred of Merryweather's men and all their confederates might be relied on with implicit confidence; so Pat was engaged as an employé of our Secret Service Department, and sent outside the lines with a conspicuous assurance, as he left his fellow-prisoners, that if found again within our reach he would be hanged forthwith for a spy. I was riding on the road he took, and he gave me a leering wink as he departed,--with instructions to watch the movements of all guerilla bands in our front, and to bring speedily any information he might obtain. During the remaining months of our stay he was almost ubiquitous. Every scouting-party that we sent out in any direction, though entirely without notice to him, was pretty sure to meet him with important information, just when information was most needed. This part of his work was done perfectly, but he seemed to regard his relation with us as a warrant for unending private iniquities. After his own code of morals he was a strictly virtuous man, but his code was of an extremely loose and pliable character. It is probably safe to say that he never murdered a Union man, and that, unless sorely tempted by the difference in value of the animals, he never forcibly exchanged horses with a Union widow; neither, I believe, did he commit any offence against a known Rebel when there was a probability of his being found out and caught; but the complaints that came to us of the manner in which he vented his private wrongs and carried on the feuds of his ancestors gave us frequent annoyance. Sometimes it seemed necessary to recall his commission and declare him an outlaw, but just then there would transpire some particularly brilliant achievement that showed him invaluable for our purposes. More than once, when our patrols reported the immediate presence of the enemy, Pat would turn up with the assurance that it was only so-and-so's "band," who had come into the neighborhood on a visiting or a marauding expedition, but with no intention of putting themselves in our way; and invariably we found his report to be correct. Indeed, so frequently did this happen that we became almost too confident in his assistance, and when an excitable picket shot at a donkey or a cow in the night-time, although the patrol of the guard went through the usual routine of investigation, we felt that there could be no serious attack or Dixon would have notified us. How he obtained his information we could not guess, and his own account of the matter was never satisfactory; but I believe that no considerable force of the enemy ever crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad (the whole State's width to the south of us) without our being speedily notified; and through this means we were several times enabled to telegraph to Columbus early information of contemplated raids,--information that was not always heeded, as the surprise of Paducah (on the Ohio River) several days after our warning sufficiently proved. One ambition of this worthy man had to remain unsatisfied. How little this was due to the fact that we at the headquarters were all perfectly mounted, modesty makes it improper to state here; but in our frequent meetings as we rode outside the lines, he rarely failed to tell of some particularly fine horse belonging to some particularly bad man and especially virulent Rebel, which it would really be a virtue to "confisticate." The worthy fellow was not satisfied with his own conspicuous appropriations; he would fain have mounted our regiments on the weedy screws which the Rebel impressments had left for the horsing of the crippled region of Western Tennessee. Possibly, too, he may have had some lurking fear that there was a suspicion of iniquity in his thefts, and longed for the reassurance of similar conduct on the part of true men like ourselves. It was, of course, not long after the commencement of this active campaign against the rights of ownership, that we began to receive assurances on every hand that unless we could do something to repress Pat Dixon's vagabondage an outraged people would take the law into their own hands, and avenge the wrongs he had inflicted. With a laudable desire to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, I told him one day of the state of feeling against him, urging him to be more circumspect and to conduct himself like a decent man, else he would be hanged the first time he was caught; intimating, too, that it would be improper for us to continue to employ him to such needless injury to an inoffensive people. His reply was characteristic. "Inoffensive, _which_? Mebbe you know these people an' mebbe you don't. I do! and a dern'der lot of unhung cutthroats an' hoss-thieves you can't find nowheres. As for hangin', you needn't give yourself no worryment 'bout that. They're safe enough to hang me if they ketch me, an' I guess I sha'n't hang no higher if I go right on my own gait. If you don't want to employ me you needn't; theys enough corn an' bacon in th' Obion bottom to keep me awhile yet, and money ain't no 'count down here; but, by King! if I kin git a chance to tell you anything that them 'uns don't want you to know, you bet your skin I'll do it, an' you kin trust me every time, for I ain't goin' to lie,--not to your side, not if I know it. Why, you talk to me about inikities. I don't want to do no man any hurt; but my old dad _he_ was _con_scripted, an' me an' my brother Jake had to take to the bresh to save ourselves, an' then Jake he was shot in cold blood right afore my eyes, an' I made up my mind then an' there that I wouldn't give no quarter to the whole State of West Tannisy till this war was over an' ther' was some stronger hand than mine to do jestis an' to furnish revenge. That's all I've got to say about it. You needn't give yourself no oneasiness 'bout my doin's, I'll answer for the hull on 'em; an' p'r'aps the last thing you'll hear of Pat Dixon will be that he's hangin' to a tree somewheres down Troy way. I know I'm booked for that if I'm ketched, and till I am ketched I'm goin' my own gait." We had become too much accustomed to this state of feeling among the scanty Union population of the Southwest to be so shocked by it as we ought to have been, and it was not without sympathy with Dixon's wrongs that I let him go, with an earnest caution that he should mend his ways, if only for his own sake. It remains only to say that he _did_ go his own gait, and that he went it with a desperation and an _élan_ that I have never known equalled; and that, months later, after our snug quarters at Union City had been turned over to a feeble band of home-guards, word came that they had been burned to the ground, and that Pat Dixon, betrayed at last into the hands of the enemy, had been hanged in the woods near Troy. We could find no fault with the retribution that had overtaken him; for, viewed with the eyes of his executioners, he had richly merited it: but we had learned to like him for his frank and generous qualities, and to make full allowance for the degree to which his rough, barbaric nature had been outraged and inflamed by the wrongs inflicted on his family. * * * * * A returning patrol one afternoon led to the parade-ground a sorry horse drawing an open wagon in which were a man and a woman. The woman had a cold-blooded, stolid look, and her eyes were filled with the overflowing hatred we so often inspired among her sex at the South. Her husband was dressed in black, and wore a rather scrupulously brushed but over-old silk hat. In his hand was a ponderous and bulging cotton umbrella. They had been taken "under suspicious circumstances" at a house a few miles outside the lines,--the suspicion attaching only to the fact that they were not members of the family and seemed to have no particular business in that region. When asked for an explanation, the woman said she had nothing to say but that her husband was a blind clergyman intending to fulfil an engagement to preach, and that she had driven him, as was her habit. He said nothing. It was a rule of our system to follow Hoyle's instructions, and "when in doubt to take the trick": this pair were remanded to the guard-house. As they turned away, the reverend gentleman said, in a feeble voice, that if he could see me alone later in the evening, when he had recovered from the shock of his capture, I might be willing to talk with him. In the evening the Hun repaired to the dismantled warehouse where the prisoners were lodged, to hold conversation with the new-comers. When he came to the clergyman he found him so low spoken that their talk fell almost to a whisper, but it was whispered that he was to be taken alone, and subsequent disclosures led to his being brought to headquarters. He there informed me that he was a minister of the Methodist church, Canadian by birth and education, but married to a lady of that region, and had been for some years engaged there in his capacity as a circuit preacher. He was quite blind, and found it impossible to make his rounds without being driven. His sympathies were with the North, and he was burning to make himself useful in the only way left him by his infirmity. His wife was of a suspecting disposition, and their peaceful consorting required that she should always accompany him; but, unfortunately, she was a violent secessionist, and he had been compelled, in the interest of the peaceful consorting above named, to acknowledge sympathy with her views, and to join her in her revilings of the Union army. All this made his position difficult, yet he believed that, if the opportunity were given him, he could hide his intention even from her, and could gather for us much useful information. He was a welcome visitor at the houses of the faithful, far and near, and warmed their hearts with frequent and feeling exhortation, as he gathered his little meetings at his nightly stopping-places. He was now about starting for the southern circuit, and had appointments to preach and to pray at every town between us and Bolivar. Evidently, if this man were honest in his intentions, he could be of great service, but I suggested the difficulty that having once started for an appointed round he could not return to bring us any information he might receive. To this he replied that his wife believed him to be in Forrest's service, and that he could at any time come as a spy into our lines. It seemed a very questionable case, but, after consultation with Voisin and the Hun, it was determined to give him a trial, to prevent his wife from seeing more than was necessary of our position, and to believe so much as we liked of the information he might give us. The conditions of the engagement were agreed upon, and after a severe public admonition, and threats especially appalling to his wife, he was sent outside the lines, with hints of the serious consequences that would follow his second capture. We were never quite sure that his wife was wrong in crediting him with complicity with Forrest; but the worst that could be said of him (and this was very likely true) was that he was pre-eminently a man of peace, and if he gave information to both sides, it was always information in compliance with the injunctions of his sacred calling. The Rebel forces several times crossed into Tennessee, and came toward us in numbers that indicated foul intentions, but, from the time our pious friend first visited us, they invariably withdrew without an engagement. Frequently small expeditions of our own forces went scouting to the southward, and were checked and turned back by the reports of this benevolent man. He may have kept us from the successful fulfilment of some bloody intentions, but we had occasion to know from other sources that he sometimes kept small detachments of our troops from falling in with overpowering numbers of the enemy. Be the theory what it may, from November until February there was no conflict of arms in all the counties we traversed, and neither side advanced to within deadly range of the other. The processes of this emissary were hidden and curious. He was employed in a much more regulated manner than Dixon, and we generally knew his whereabouts. Every interview had with him, either within our own camp or when we were abroad, had to be so skilfully managed that no suspicion, even in the eyes of his catlike wife, should attach to him. He never came into our lines except as an unwilling prisoner, and was never sent without them without dire admonition as to the consequences of his return. On one occasion Pat Dixon reported that a detachment of Forrest's command, about three hundred strong, had crossed the railroad and was moving north in the direction of our camp. At this time the preacher was near us, and I had an interview with him. He doubted the report, but would investigate. I told him we would start the next day, with five hundred men, in the direction of Trenton,--where he was to hold a prayer-meeting at the house of one of Forrest's captains. The meeting was held, and after it was over, the subject of the advance was talked over very freely by the officers present, he sitting in a rapt state of unconsciousness--his thoughts on higher things--at the chimney-corner. Pleading an early appointment at McKenzie's Station for the following day, he left as soon as the moon was up, and drove to the house of a friend in the village. His wife supposed that he was coming with a false report to lead us into a trap laid for us. We arrived at McKenzie's at one o'clock in the morning, after a detestably cold, hard ride, and took up our quarters in a half-finished and half-furnished house, where we struggled the whole night through in the endeavor to get heat out of a fire of wet dead-wood. Early in the morning the Hun started out, in his fiercest mood, with a small escort, seeking for information and hunting up suspicious characters. At breakfast-time he came upon a large family comfortably seated at table, with our preacher and his wife as guests. He was asked to "sit by." "Thank you; I have come for more serious business. Who is at the head of this house? I should like to see you alone, sir." The trembling, invalided paterfamilias was taken into an adjoining room, and put through the usual course of questions as to his age, place of birth, occupation, condition as to literacy, the number of negroes owned, the amount of land, what relatives in the Rebel army, to what extent a sympathizer with the Rebellion, when he had last seen any Rebel soldiers or scouts or guerillas or suspicious persons of any description, and so on, through the tortuous and aggravating list that only a lawyer could invent. Questions and answers were taken down in writing. The sterner questions were spoken in a voice audible to the terror-stricken family in the adjoining room. The man, of course, communicated nothing, and probably knew nothing, of the least consequence. He was sent to a third room and kept under guard. His case disposed of, his wife was examined in like manner, and then the other members of the family. Finally, the coast being clear, our emissary was sent for. He came into the room chuckling with delight over this skilful exercise of the art of deceit, in which he was himself such an adept, and laying his hand on the Hun's arm, said, "My dear fellow, I respect you. This has been the most brilliant dodge I ever knew,--capital,--capital!" And he then went on to recount all that he had heard the evening before. A large detachment of Forrest's command was advancing under Faulkner's leadership, and they doubtless had by this time a full report of our position, for he had met acquaintance on the road who had reported it to him. If we were able to engage a body of three thousand men without artillery, we might find them that night in Trenton,--he was confident that that was about their number. The family were now notified that they had been guilty of a great offence in harboring a known spy of the enemy; but they insisted that they knew him only as a devout and active minister, and had no suspicion, nor could they believe, that he had the least knowledge of or interest in either army. With due warning as to the consequences of a repetition of their crime, they were allowed to return to their breakfast, and their guest was brought under guard to headquarters. Being satisfied, after a close examination of the report, that it would be imprudent to remain so far from our camp, which could be best reached from Trenton by another road, we left a party of observation, and returned to Union City, directing our scout to go to the vicinity of Trenton and bring to our detachment any information he might obtain. Twelve hours after our arrival home, the detachment returned with the news that Faulkner, with a large force, had moved toward Mayfield, Kentucky, and the event proved that every item of the intelligence we had received had been substantially correct. In this manner we were enabled to learn pretty definitely the character of any movement of the enemy anywhere in Western Tennessee, and so far as we had opportunity to investigate the reports they generally proved to be essentially true. These two scouts were worth more as a source of information, than would have been two regiments of cavalry in active service. Sometimes our Methodist friend acted under definite orders, but more often only according to his own judgment of what was necessary. A few days before Christmas we received word that Forrest in person was in Jackson, with a large force, and we moved against him with nearly the whole body of our troops, under the command of old A. J. himself. We reached Jackson at night, after three days' hard marching, only to find that Forrest's army had left that morning, destroying the bridges over the swollen rivers and making organized pursuit impossible. We took up quarters for some days in the town, where we enjoyed the peculiarly lovely climate of the "sunny South" with the thermometer seven degrees below zero, six inches of snow on the ground, and a howling wind blowing. Our own mess was very snugly entertained at the house of a magnate, where we had an opportunity to study the fitness of even the best Southern architecture for an Arctic winter climate. On New Year's day, as we were sitting at a sumptuous dinner, and mitigating so far as we could the annoyance to our hosts of being invaded by a rollicking party of Northern officers, Voisin, who had been called out, returned to the table to tell me that a man and a woman would like to see me in my room. I was not prompt to respond, and asked who they were. He replied, "O, who can tell? I suppose somebody with a complaint that our men have 'taken some hams of meat' ["meat" being the Tennessee vulgate for hog flesh only], or something of that sort; the man seemed to have something the matter with his eyes." And he gave me a large and expressive wink. Ensconced, with such comfort as large and rattling windows permitted, before our blazing fire, sat our serene Methodist friend and his sullen wife. Taking me aside, he told me that he had passed the previous evening at a private house between Jackson and Bolivar in religious exercises, which were attended by Forrest and officers of his command. After the devotions there was much cheerful and unrestrained talk as to the plans and prospects of the future campaign, disclosing the fact that as there seemed no chance of doing efficient service in Tennessee, the whole body would move at once to Central Mississippi and operate in connection with the army in Georgia. This report, which we had no reason to disbelieve, decided A. J. to abandon a difficult and unpromising pursuit, and to return to Union City and Columbus. We found, on our return, a communication from the headquarters at Memphis to the effect that Forrest had crossed the railroad and gone far south into Mississippi. We had no further service of importance or interest in this region. "Jackson's Purchase" was thenceforward quite free from any considerable body of the enemy; and when our clergyman found, a few weeks later, that we were all ordered to the south, he came for a settlement of his accounts, saying that he had been able to deceive his wife only up to the time of our interview at Jackson, and as his life was no longer safe in the country, he must depart for the more secure region of his former home in Canada,--where let us hope that he has been allowed to answer the behests of his sacred vocation with a mind single to his pious duties, and that domestic suspicion no longer clouds his happy hearthstone. Happily, neither A. J. nor Forrest himself had further occasion for his peaceful intervention, the fortunate absence of which may have had to do with the notable encounter between these two generals at Tupelo. IN THE GLOAMING. The sun had gone, and above the dreamy blue of the far-lying woods, the early evening had hung the sky with mellow, summery, twilight loveliness. The casements of the old house at Whittington glowed ruddy and warm through their marvellous clustering ivy, and it was the idlest luxury to hang over the crumbling road-wall, peopling its suggestive chambers with the spirits of their long-gone tenants. It is a farm-house now, and there is no available record to tell the stranger the story of its more glorious days. No rigid history hampers the fancy, and the strolling lover of the by-ways and roadsides of our dear Mother England may let his imagination run with flowing rein, sweeping away the hayricks and marigold beds, and calling back the peacocks and bagwigs of the halcyon days. Perhaps for the last time in my life I was taking the breath of an English twilight,--sweetest to those whose childhood and youth have fed on the rhyme and tale the green old land has sent to her world-wide brood, and who come, in riper life, to find the fancies of early years warm and living on every side, in hedge and field, in cowslip and primrose, in nightingale and lark. The thick-coming impressions such musing brings are vague and dreamy, so that there seemed a shade of unreality in the quiet voice that bade me "Good evening," and added, "Yes, it is an engaging old house, and it has a story that you may be glad to hear." It was not from perversity that I turned the subject, but no tale of real life could have added interest to the fancies with which the old manse had clad itself in the slowly waning day. Wayside impressions lose their charm if too much considered, and, as my new companion was walking toward Lichfield, I was glad to turn away and join him,--ending a long day's tramp with the slow and quiet gait that his age compelled. There was the least shade of the uncanny in his bearing, and his speech was timorous and gentle. His threadbare and seedy look betokened a native unthrift, but there was an undercurrent of refinement in his mien and in his manner, and a trusting outlook from his large blue eyes that made him the fittest of companions for a summer evening's walk in a country filled with the mingled flavor of history and romance. He was a man of the intensest local training. To him "the County of the City of Lichfield" was of more consequence than all Staffordshire besides, and far more than all England and all that vague entity called the World. Even the County of the City of Lichfield was large for his concentrated attachment: he knew it as one must know a small town in which he has passed the whole of a long life; but his heart lay within the cathedral close, and the cathedral close lay deep within his heart,--deep and warm, with its history and its traditions, its romance and its reality, so interlaced that he had long since ceased to ask what was real and what unreal. All was unreal in the sense of being of more than worldly consequence in his estimation, and all real as a part of the training of his whole life. To him Lichfield Cathedral was no mere pile of sculptured stone, built round with the facts of recorded history; it was the fairy handiwork of times and scenes long past, its walls raised by the hand of pious enthusiasm, shattered and cemented by the strife and blood of the civil war, hallowed by the returning glory of the Restoration, blessed by the favor of royal presence, and now made admirable in his daily sight by the dignity and grace of those holy men its dean and chapter. As it was the cathedral I had come to see, and as I had come for no architect's measurements, for no student's lore, only to bathe in the charmed atmosphere of its storied past, I had fallen upon a guide after my own heart, and it was as pleasant as it was easy to lend full credence to all he so honestly believed and told. In early life he had had gentler training, but he had long been a Poor Brother of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist in Lichfield, and had, for many years, held, by seniority, the right of presenting a rose, on St. John's nativity day, to the heirs of William Juvenis (goldsmith), who, by grants made in consideration of this ceremony, had secured perennial prayers for the souls of his ancestors and a fragrant memory for his own. Hedged about by the traditionary customs and quaint observances of an ancient charitable foundation, deadened in a way, if you please, by the aristocratic pauperism of his condition, my gentle companion had grown to his present dreamy estate. As we reached Stow Pool, near the old parish church of St. Chad, he pointed out the spring of pure water where, twelve hundred years ago, this future Bishop of Lichfield--who during his hermit life supported himself on the milk of a doe--was wont to pray naked in the water, standing upon the stone still seen at the bottom of the well, and where St. Ovin heard the angels sing as his good soul passed away. Then, with the trusting look of a little child, the Poor Brother went on to tell of the virtues and good deeds of this holy life;--how even the King of the Mercians, struck with remorse for the crimes he had committed, visited the saint in person, yielded to his eloquent persuasion, became a convert to the true faith, and banished all idolatry from his realm; how he became the head of the church of Lichfield and laid its strong foundations of piety and faith; and how his virtues so outlived him that his very tomb swallowed the ill-humors of diseased minds resorting to its serene presence, that the dust from his grave healed all ills of man and beast, and that the shrine built in his honor after his canonization was so sought by numberless devotees that Lichfield itself began thereupon to increase and flourish. To our left, as he ceased, the evening's lingering glow gilded the silent pool, where lay the unrippled reflection of the three spires of the cathedral, hardly more unsubstantial than the fairy silhouette that stood clean-cut against the sky, and dividing with the reality the rapt admiration of the Poor Brother of St. John's. We stood by the water's edge, and he turned toward the phantom spires reversed within it, his talk wandering back to the days of the church's troubles,--when the cathedral close was a fortress, with strong walls and well-filled moat; when the beautiful west gate, which only our own age was vile enough to destroy, kept stout ward against the outer world, and protected the favored community who formed within the walls a county independent of Lichfield and of Staffordshire. Within the sacred pale no law had force save that of the Ecclesiastical Court, and then, as now, none could there be taken for debt or crime save on the warrant of the dean and chapter. He knew by heart the long list of bishops, and would gladly have held me to hear of the good deeds of Langton and Hackett. He was fairly launched in his favorite enthusiasm, and told warmly the more striking features of the church's history, but he told them rapidly lest I should reach the storied pile with less than a full appreciation of its traditional interest. From his nervous lips I learned how King Richard II. kept Christmas revels here with a splendor that lavished two hundred tuns of wine, and roasted two thousand oxen, whose bones are still found in Oxenbury field hard by; how Elizabeth passed three whole days in the close; and how the solidity of its fortification, the consummate grace and finish of its architecture, the richness of its sculpture, and the surpassing beauty and magnificence of the nine windows of its lady chapel marked it as the crowning glory of the Western Church, until the dark days of the Revolution lowered. Then its sore trials were recounted, and I learned of the fanatical attack of Lord Brooke, "with his horde of impious Roundheads," made by strange fatality on St. Chad's day; of the shooting of Lord Brooke by "Dumb Dyott," who was perched in the steeple with a fowling-piece that now hangs over the fireplace of Colonel Dyott's house; of the surrender of the close by Lord Chesterfield; of the sack and bout that followed; of the recapture by Prince Rupert. He told of the foul desecration by the Roundheads, who used every species of havoc, plunder, and profanation,--pulling down the sacred effigies which were the glory of the western front, hacking to pieces the curious carvings of the choir, mashing the noses of the monumental statues, destroying the valuable evidences and records of the church and the city, shattering the glass of the costly windows,--save only that of the marvellous nine of the lady chapel, which a pious care was said to have removed to a place of safety. They kept courts of guard in the cross aisles, broke up the pavements, and every day hunted a cat with hounds throughout the church, delighting in the echoes from the vaulted roof; they wrapped a calf in linen, and "in derision and scorn of the sacrament of baptism," sprinkled it at the font and gave it a name. How the King, after the defeat of Naseby, came from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and passed the night in the close,--how Cromwell's defaming crew completed the work of demolition and desecration, and smashed the old bell called "Jesus," with its legend "I am the bell of Jesus, and Edward is our King; Sir Thomas Heywood first causéd me to ring,"--how, finally, the chapter-house alone had a roof under which service might be said,--how the good Hackett on the first day of his bishopric set his own servants and his own coach-horses at work removing the rubbish, and never tired until in eight years' time the magnificence of the cathedral was restored, except for the forever irreparable loss of the decorations, and especially of the lady chapel windows, which all the cost of the restoration would not have sufficed to renew,--how the church was reconsecrated with great pomp and solemnity,--all this he told me in detail, and he would gladly have told more, for this Poor Brother had made these few rich historic acres nearly his whole world, and had peopled it with all who throughout the long ages had marred it or had made it. To have given "two good trees" for the rebuilding of the church was a title to his lasting and grateful recognition. But the light was fast waning, and the cathedral must be seen now or perhaps never. It was already past the hour for closing, but one of the vergers had formerly been a Poor Brother of St. John's, and my companion went to him to secure our admission. I stood before the west front of the cathedral, which was then bathed in the lingering light of the after-day, its great central window gleaming as though the altar lamps were still burning behind it, and the western spires almost losing themselves in the sky. The quaint effigies that fill the niches across the whole façade lost their grotesqueness in the dusk, and seemed really the sacred sculptures they were meant to be. Fair though this rich front must be at high midday, it needs for its full beauty the half-light of a Northern evening. As seen on that rarest of all evenings, it was a fit introduction to the subdued glory which greeted us in the dim religious light to which we entered as the great central door closed behind us. We stood, uncovered and reverent, beneath the vaulted nave, looking down the long curved aisle, bordered by the majesty of the clustered columns, through the light illuminated screen of the choir, full upon the sculptured and gem-set alabaster reredos, above and beyond which stood the famed group of windows of the lady chapel, mellowed by the light of the streaming full moon. Rich in the blended mosaic of the floor, in the dimmed canopy overhead, in the lightly arched gallery of the triforium, in the mellow cross-lights of the side windows, in the sombre carvings of the choir, and above all in the marvellous glass of the chapel, it was the very perfection of a worshipful church. It was too nearly dark to examine the details of the decoration, and we wandered down the aisles, remarking here and there the bruised statues of the tombs, and halting before the sleeping children of Chantrey to marvel how much somnolent repose can be cut in chiselled stone. "But come," said the gentle Brother, "we have only light enough left for the storied glass which alone of all the richness of the old church outlived its desecration, and, as by a miracle, was preserved to tell these later generations of the higher art our forefathers' sons forgot." As he spoke, we stood within the charmed light of the nine windows of the apse,--windows which have perhaps no remaining equals in the world, and before which one can only bow in admiration and regret for an art that seems forever lost. Holding me fast by the arm, he went on:-- "In the restoration of the church, the spandrels of the old windows were rebuilt, and the frames were set with plain glass, to the sad defacement of the edifice; and so they stood for nigh two hundred years, no art being equal to their worthy replacement, and no ancient store to the supplying of so large a demand. "But listen, now, how the hand of Heaven sheltered its own, and how true servants of the Church are ever guided to reclaim its lost splendor. "A few years ago, a canon of the cathedral, travelling in Flanders, wishing to contribute to the renewed work of restoration, visited the dismantled convent of Herkenrode in the ancient bishopric of Liege. Here he sought among the rubbish of the lumber-room for wood-carvings which might be used in the rebuilding of the prebendal stalls. His search discovered many boxes of colored glass, the origin of which no one knew, and whose existence even had been forgotten. Thinking to embellish some of the curious triangular windows above the triforium, he purchased the whole store for two hundred pounds of our money, and presented it to the dean and chapter as a tribute of affectionate devotion to the cathedral. There was more than he had supposed, and the large figures of some of the fragments indicated a coherent design. "This chapel was fenced off from the aisles, and here the canon's wife and daughter, devoting themselves to the solution of the puzzle, slowly pieced out the varying connections. They worked patiently for weeks, with a steadily increasing excitement of success, until [and here his grasp grew tremulous and close], lying collated on this pavement where we stand, only a bit wanting here and there, marking the exact sizes of the varied openings, the grand old Lichfield windows, perfect as you see them now in this softened moonlight, had come back to enrich forevermore the dear old church to whose glory they had shone in the bygone centuries, and whose sore trials their absence had so long recalled. "Kind stranger," said he, "this is a true tale. Sceptics have questioned it, but it is true! true! And I thank Heaven that it has been permitted to me, who have grown old in the love of this sacred pile, to live to see, in this crowning act of its restoration, the higher help the hand of man has had in performing its holy work." His upturned blue eyes were moistened with tears, and his voice trembled with emotion. I led him gently away and to the doorstep of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, where we parted in silence, and forever. Supping at the Swan Inn, I took the late train for Liverpool and home, bringing with me an ideal Lichfield, to which it would perhaps have been rash to hold the light of a Lichfield day. FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. On entering the Regent Hotel at Leamington the first object that attracts attention, after the stuffy old porter who hobbles about to see some one else handle the luggage, is a small frame, over the smoking coal-fire, which contains the following notice, decorated with an old cut of a fox's mask:-- MERRY & CO.'S HUNTING APPOINTMENTS, AND GUIDE TO THE DIFFERENT COVERTS. December 30, 1872. WARWICKSHIRE,--at 10.45. _Days._ _Meet at_ _Miles._ _To go through_ M. Goldicote House. 11. Wellerbourne and Loxley. Tu. Radway Grange. 12. Tachbrook and Kineton. W. Snitterfield. 7. Warwick and Stratford Road. Th. Red Hill. 13. Warwick and Snitterfield. F. Pebworth. 16. Warwick and Stratford. NORTH WARWICKSHIRE,--at 11. M. Solihull. 14. Warwick and Hatton. Tu. Cubbington Gate. 2. Lillington. Th. Stoneleigh Abbey. 4. On Kenilworth Road. F. Tile Hill. 9. By Kenilworth Castle. PYTCHLEY,--at 10.45. M. Naseby. 26. Princethorpe and Rugby. Tu. Hazlebeach. 31. Dunchurch and Crick. W. Dingley. 33. Rugby and Swinford. F. Cransley. 36. Maidwell. S. Swinford. 19. Princethorpe and Rugby. ATHERSTONE,--at 11. M. Coombe. 12. Bubbenhall and Wolston. W. Harrow Inn Gate. 20. Coventry and Nuneaton. F. Brinklow Station. 12. Bubbenhall and Wolston. S. Corley. 14. Stoneleigh and Coventry. BICESTER,--at 10.45. M. Fenny Compton. 12. Radford and Ladbrook. Tu. Trafford Bridge. 19. Southam and Wormleighton. Th. Hellidon. 14. Southam and Priory Marston. S. Steeple Claydon. 40. Gaydon and Banbury. Twenty-two meets in the week, all within easy reach, by road or rail. Let us dine and decide. At table we will leave the _menu_ to the waiter; but let him bring for consideration during the meal the list of _meets_. "Brinklow Station, twelve miles"; that seems the most feasible thing in the catalogue for the morrow, and who has not heard that the Atherstone is a capital pack? But then the Pytchley is even better known, and the train reaches Rugby in time for the meet. Let the choice be decided with the help of coffee and cigars and possible advice, during the soothing digestive half-hour in the smoking-room. Dinner over, wander away through the tortuous, dim passage that leads to the sombre hall where alone in English inns the twin crimes of billiards and smoking are permitted, and, while writhing under the furtive glances of the staid and middle-aged East-Indian who evidently knows you for an American, and who is your only companion, decide, with your nation's ability to reach conclusions without premises, whether it shall be Pytchley or Atherstone. Don't ask your neighbor: he is an Englishman, and have we not been told that Englishmen are gruff, reticent men, who wear thick shells, and whose warm hearts can be reached only with the knife of a regular introduction? However, you must make up your mind what to do, and you need help which neither the waiter nor the porter can give; the "gentlemanly clerk" does not exist in England (thank Heaven!) and you have not yet learned what an invaluable mine of information "Boots" is,--faithful, useful, helpful, and serviceable to the last degree. I salute him with gratitude for all he has done to make life in English hotels almost easier and more home-like than in one's own house. It is safe to advise all travellers to make him an early ally, to depend on him, to use him, almost to abuse him, and, finally, on leaving, to "remember" him. Not yet having come to know the Boots, I determined to throw myself on the tender mercies of my stern, silent companion, and I very simply stated my case. My stern, silent companion was an exception to the rule, and he told me all I wanted to know (and more than I knew I needed to know) with a cordiality and frankness not always to be found among the genial smokers of our own hotels. His voice was in favor of the Atherstone as being the most acceptable thing for the next day. Ford, the veterinary surgeon of Leamington, had, on several occasions, done good service for friends who had gone before me over the hedges of North Warwickshire, and I went to him for advice about a mount. Here I found that I had made a mistake in not engaging horses in advance. To get a "hunter" for the next day would be impossible, but he would do what he could for a few days hence. All he could promise for the morning would be to lend me a horse of his own, a thoroughbred mare, not up to my weight, but tough and wiry, and good for any amount of road-work. He kindly volunteered to arrange for our going by the first train to Coventry, only a couple of miles from Brinklow (it turned out to be nine miles), so that we should arrive fresh on the ground. At seven o'clock in the morning he came to my room to say that everything was arranged, and that I should find the mare at the station in an hour. Swallowing a glass of milk as a stay-stomach,--my usual habit,--I put myself, for the first time since the war ended, into breeches and boots, and drove to the station. On a turn-out stood a "horse-box," one of the institutions of England,--a three-stabled freight-car for the transportation of horses. Paying five shillings for a horse-ticket to Coventry (only twice the cost of my own seat), I saw the mare snugly packed into one of the narrow stalls and made fast for the journey. Passing through a beautiful farming country, we came in due time to the quaint old town of Coventry, where several horse-boxes, coming from Birmingham and other stations, were discharging their freight of well-bred hunters. As we rode from this station another hard-shelled Englishman in brown top-boots and spotless white leather breeches accosted me pleasantly, reminding me that we had come from London together the day before, and asking, as he had recognized me for an American, if he could be of service to me. "Pray how did you know that I am from America?" "Only by your asking if you should change 'cars' at Rugby. An Englishman would have said 'carriages.'" "Very well; I am glad my ear-mark was no greater. Can you direct me to a hotel where I can get a bite before I go on?" "Certainly: you will find the Angel very comfortable; take the next street to the right, and you will soon reach it. Good morning; it is nine miles to the meet, and I will move on slowly. Command me if I can help you when you come up." I did find the Angel comfortable, (as what English inn is not?) and soon fortified myself with cold pheasant and sherry,--a compact and little-burdensome repast to ride upon,--served in a cosey old coffee-room by the neatest and most obliging of handmaidens. On the road I fell in with straggling groups of horsemen, in red coats and black coats, leather breeches and cords, white tops and black; all neat and jaunty, and all wearing the canonical stove-pipe hat. My little mare was brisk, and I had no hard riding to save her for, so I passed a dozen or more of the party, getting from each one some form or other of pleasant recognition, and finally from a handsome young fellow on a very spicy mount, "Excuse me, are you going to Brinklow? You must turn to the right." Confound these Englishmen, thought I, where is their traditional coldness and reserve? And I reined up for a chat. My companion came from the vicinity of Birmingham. Like so many of his class, he devotes three days a week to systematic hunting, and he was as enthusiastic as an American boy could have been in telling me all I wanted to know about the sport. To get hold of a grown man who had never seen a foxhound seemed an event for him, and my first instructions were very agreeably taken. Our road ran past the beautiful deer-stocked park of Coombe Abbey, where the green grass of a moist December and the thick clustering growth of all-embracing ivy carried the fresh hues of our summer over the wide lawn and to the very tops of the trees about the grand old house. The few villages on our way were neither interesting nor pleasant, but the thatched farm-houses and cottages, and the wonderful ivy, and the charming fields and hedges were all that could have been asked. And then the roadsides! and the stiles and the foot-paths, and the look of age and the richness of the well-kept farms; and again and everywhere the ivy clinging fast to each naked thing, and clothing it with luxuriant beauty! There is in all our hearts an inherited chord that thrills in the presence of this dear old home of our race. Not this spot and not these scenes, but the air, the tone, the spirit of it all,--these are as familiar to our instincts as water to the hen-brooded duckling. Brinklow Station has the modern hideousness and newness of railroad stations everywhere in country neighborhoods, and it was pleasant to leave it behind and follow the gay crowd down a sloping and winding road into the real country again, and into a handsome and well-kept park, beyond which there stood a fine old house of some pretension, and well set about with terraced lawn and shrubbery,--a charming English country-seat. Here my eyes were greeted with the glory of my first "meet," and a glory it was indeed! Pictures and descriptions had suggested it, but they had only suggested it. This was the reality, and it far exceeded my anticipation. The grounds were fairly alive with a brilliant company of men and women,--happy and hearty, and just gathered for the day's sport. Red coats, white breeches, and top-boots were plenty, and the neat holiday air of the whole company was refreshing and delightful. Scattered about singly and in groups, mounted, on foot, and in carriages, were a couple of hundred people of all ages and of all conditions. Chatting from the saddle and over carriage-doors, lounging up and down the Drive, or looking over the hounds, the company were leisurely awaiting the opening of the ball. They had come from a circuit of twenty miles around, and they appeared to be mainly people who habitually congregate at the cover-side throughout the hunting-season, and to be generally more or less acquainted with each other. The element of coquetry was not absent; but coquetry is apparently not a natural product of the English soil, and that sort of intercourse was not conspicuous. The same number of handsome young men and women would be more demonstrative at a similar gathering in America. A similar gathering, however, would not be possible in America. We have no occasion on which people of all sorts come so freely and so naturally together, interested in a traditional and national sport, which is alike open to rich and poor, and meeting, not for the single occasion only, but several times a week, winter after winter, often for many years. Noblemen, gentlemen, farmers, manufacturers, professional men, snobs, cads, errand-boys,--everybody, in short, who cared to come seemed to have the right to come, and, so far as the hunt was concerned, seemed to be on an equal footing. Of course the poorer element was comparatively small, and mainly from the immediate neighborhood. The _habitués_ of a hunt are seldom below the grade of well-to-do farmers. Servants from the house were distributing refreshments, riders were mounting their hunters, grooms were adjusting saddle-girths, too fiery animals were being quieted, and there was generally an air of preparation about the whole assemblage. A little at one side, kept well together by the huntsman and a couple of whippers-in, were the hounds (the Atherstone pack), about forty of them, or, technically, "twenty couples," strong-limbed, large-eared, party-colored, wholesome-looking fellows. They attracted much attention and elicited frequent commendation, for they were said to be the very finest pack in England,--as was also each of the three other packs that I saw. To the unskilled eye, and simply viewed as dogs, they were not remarkable; but it was a case in which the judgment of an unskilled person could have no value. The horses appealed to me much more strongly. Certainly I had never before seen together the same number of the same average excellence; and some of them were fit to drive one wild with envy. There was, on the whole, less of the "blood" look than would be expected by a man who had got his ideas of the hunting-field from Leech's drawings, but there was a good deal of it, nevertheless, and in its perfection too; and where it was wanting there was plenty of bone to make up for it. At eleven the hounds were led out to the cover, and the whole field followed slowly and irregularly and at some distance. There were about one hundred and fifty mounted for the hunt. Perhaps one third of these wore scarlet coats, white breeches, and top-boots; another third had black coats and some of them black boots; and the remainder of the field was made up of half a dozen ladies, a few stout old gentlemen of seventy or so on stout old cobs of discreet age, little boys on smart ponies, farmers and tradesmen and their clerks mounted on whatever they could get, and men of every intermediate grade, and with all sorts of horses. A certain amount of riff-raff, not mounted at all, but good on their pins and ready for a run, were hanging about for a chance to pick up a whip or a hat, or to catch a horse, or brush a muddy coat, or turn an honest shilling in any way that might offer in the chances of the day. Some of these fellows, rigged out with the cast-off clothing of their betters, sported red coats, black velvet caps, and leather leggings. One added to all this gorgeousness the refinement of bare feet. The hounds were taken into the cover, a brambly, tangled wood near by, which had probably been planted and made a little wilderness to serve as a cover for foxes. They soon found a fox, drove him to the open, and followed him out of the wood with a whimpering sort of cry which was disappointing after the notion that the "full cry" of the books had given, and which is heard in the very different fox-hunting of our Southern woods. The run lay up a steepish hill, several fields wide and across an open country. One bold rider (not a light one), mounted on a staving black horse, went to the right of the cover, and made a splendid leap up hill, over a stiff-looking hedge, and landed at the tail of the pack. The "master" and his assistants had got away with the hounds. The rest of the field went to the left, waiting their turns, through a farm-gate. Once through, some twenty of them dashed up the hill, cleared a clever hedge, and kept the pack in sight. The rest took an easier place, where a farm laborer had pulled away the stakes by which a gap had been filled. Here there was much very light jumping, and much more of waiting until predecessors had made it lighter. In the mean time other gaps were found, and it was not many minutes before all were through; but during these minutes the fox, the hounds, and the harder riding men were putting a wide space between themselves and us, who were at the tail of the field. Yet there were some in the party who did not look like laggards, and whose horses were good enough for any work such a country could give them. Even when across the gap, these men went with the rest of us, by gates and lanes, toward a point to which it was thought by the knowing ones that the fox would double,--and the knowing ones were right. Gradually, as their judgment indicated, they left the roads and took to the fields. This course was taken by three well-mounted young ladies. I followed the gate-openers for about half an hour, when, coming out on a high-road, I concluded that, with seventeen miles to ride home, it was only just to my little mare to give the thing up and head for Leamington. The hounds were far away on my right and quite out of sight. Having come to look on and learn, I had probably seen and heard all that day had in store for me,--surely enough for one's first day at fox-hunting. When I had ridden for a few minutes I saw, far across the fields, that the hounds had turned to the left and were making for my road. Pressing forward, I came up in time to see them cross to the front, and go scurrying away over the grass, nosing out the scent as they ran. There had been a check, and "the field" was well up. The road was lower than the fields, and was bordered by a ditch at each side. From this the ground rose a little, and on each bank stood a three-and-a-half-foot thorn hedge. Neither leap was difficult, but the one out of the road was not easy. Here I sat and saw fully a hundred horsemen, dressed in the gay colors of the hunting-field and mounted as men rarely are mounted out of England, all, horses as well as men, eager and excited in the chase, flying over hedge and ditch into the carriage-way and over ditch and hedge into the higher field, beyond and away, headlong after the hounds, every man for himself, and every man for the front, and on they went over another hedge, and out of sight. In the thick of the flight were two ladies, riding as well and as boldly as the men, and two men were brushing their hats in the road, their empty saddles keeping well up with the run. More than satisfied with this climax of my first day's experience, I trotted out for home. The result of the run I never heard, and I leave its description where I lost sight of it. A mile farther on I did see a fagged-looking fox making his rapid way across my road again, and sneaking off under the hedge toward a thicket, and I halted to listen to what sounded like the horn of a huntsman at check over the hill to the left; but possibly the conclusion I drew was not a correct one. I wish that words could give an idea of the life and action of the headlong flight I had just seen; but the inadequacy of all I had read to convey it to me makes it seem useless to try. Photography and description may, in a measure, supply the place of travel; but he who would realize the most thrilling intensity of eager horsemanship must stand in a hedge-bound English lane, and see with his own eyes, and for the first time in his life, a hundred gayly dressed and splendidly mounted fox-hunters flashing at full speed across his path; and it is worth the while to see. Rain never fell on a more lovely country than that part of Warwickshire through which my wet way lay. For ten miles of the seventeen it rained, gently as it rains with us in April; nor is our grass more green in April than this was in Christmas week. The all-prevailing ivy was filled with berries, and the laurustinus was already in bloom. No born Englishman could have cared less for the soaking rain; and, wet to the skin, tired to the bone, and stiff to the marrow, I have rarely been more exuberant than when I gradually regained the use of my legs in the half-mile walk to the hotel, resolving that not even the glories of American citizenship should ever keep me away from England in winter were I only able to afford the luxury of regular hunting. But the exuberance was moral rather than physical. I had not been so tired for years,--stiff as an old horse, after over thirty miles of really hard riding (the last seventeen miles in two hours). The cure was a hot bath and a dish of hot soup, followed by a log-like sleep of two hours on a sofa before a blazing hot fire, a sharp half-hour's walk, a very plain dinner, and a couple of hours' chat with my interested East-Indiaman in the smoking-room: the cure was complete; and all that was left of the day's sport was its brilliant recollection. * * * * * My second day was near Stratford-on-Avon,--on _Ay_-von, the misguided English call it. The meet was to be at Goldicote House, one of the "fixtures" of the Warwickshire Hunt. There were about a hundred persons, including a few ladies, and one little bareheaded "blue-coat" school-boy (from Charles Lamb's school), who, with his folded umbrella, long skirt, low shoes, and yellow hose, was in for as much sport as his Christmas holiday could give him. As a farther penalty for want of forethought, I was reduced to riding a friend's coach-horse. However, the reduction was not great, for whether by early instruction or by inheritance, he was more than half a hunter, and gave me a capital look at the whole day's chase; while his owner, on a most charming black blood mare, being out of condition for hard riding, kindly applied himself to urging me to severer work than one likes to do with a borrowed horse. He introduced me to a venerable old gentleman in a time-and-weather-stained red coat, velvet cap, and well-used nether gear, mounted on a knowing-looking old gray, and attended by his granddaughter. He could not have been less than eighty years old, and his days of hard riding were over; but constant hunting exercise every winter for over sixty years had protected him wonderfully well against the ravages of time, and it is rare to see an American of sixty so hale and hearty, and so cheerful and jolly. I was told that if I would take him for my leader, I would see more of the run than I could in any other way with such a mount as I had. He seemed to know the habits of the foxes of South Warwickshire as thoroughly as he did every foot-path and gate of the country, and he led us by cross-cuts to the various points to which Reynard circled, so that we often had the whole field in sight. It was not an especially interesting day, and the fox got away at last, among a tangle of railway lines that blocked our passage. My old mentor, who had given me much valuable instruction in the details of hunting, was vastly disgusted at the result, and broke out with, "Ah! it's all up with old England, I doubt; these confounded railways have killed sport. There's no hunting to be had any longer, for their infernal cutting up the country in this way. I've hunted with these hounds under fifteen different masters, but I've about done, and I sha'n't lose much,--it's all up. However, I suppose we could never pay the interest on the national debt without the railways; but it's all up with hunting." At that, he called away the young lady, bade me a melancholy "good-by," and rode half sadly home. I galloped back to Stratford with my handsome old host,--a little more knowing in the ways of the field, but without yet having had a fair taste of the sport. * * * * * Seven miles from Peterborough, in the dismal little village of Wansford, near the borders of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, is, perhaps, the only remaining old posting-inn in England that is kept up in the unchanged style of the ante-railroad days. The post-horses are gone, but the posting-stables are filled with hunters; the travelling public have fled to the swifter lines, and Wansford is forever deserted of them; but the old Haycock keeps up its old cheer, and Tom Percival, who boasts that he has had the Princess Victoria for a guest, and has slept five dukes in one night, has little occasion to complain of neglect. The good wine that needs no bush still makes his cellar known, and no one should criticise English cooking until he has dined once at the Haycock. Nowhere is the inn-maid of whom we have read so much to be found in such simple, tidy, and courtesying perfection; and nowhere, in short, can one find so completely the solid comfort of hostelry life. Half old farm-house and half wayside-inn; with a marvellous larder, through whose glass-closed side the guest sees visions of joints and jams and pastry in lavish profusion; backed by a stable-yard where boys are always exercising good horses; and flanked by a yardful of quaint clipped yews,--the old house at Wansford (in spite of its dull-looking road front) is worth a visit from those who would get out of the sight and sound of steam, and see the old, old country life of England. The visitor is not numbered and billeted and pigeon-holed, as in the modern hotel; but the old fiction of host and guest is well kept up. Your coming should be announced in advance; and you are received as in some sort a member of the family, whose ways are made to conform more or less to the wishes of yourself and your convives, mainly young swells from London, who are few, and who are there, as you are, not for business, but for rest, good living, and regular sport. Three packs of hounds are within reach; and on the days when none of the meets is near, there is always the "larking"--the training of young horses--to supply a good substitute, so far as the riding goes. One who cares for hunting pure and simple, rather than for the gayer life of Leamington and Cheltenham, cannot do better than to make the season, or a part of it, at the Haycock, with regularly engaged horses for as many days in the week as he may choose to ride. It costs,--but it pays. One is none the less welcome among the guests for being an American. I there had a day with the George Fitz William hounds. Not being, as yet, quite at home in the field, I took a wise old horse, "Cock Robin," who was well up to my weight, and who, as Percival told me, would teach me more than I could teach him. He was sent on early with the other hunters, and I took a "hack" to ride to cover. We were a party of four, and we went through the fields and the lawns and the rain, to where the meet was fixed for eleven o'clock, at Barnwell Castle, a fine old Norman ruin,--square and low, with four large corner towers draped in magnificent ivy. It was a dreary morning, and not more than sixty were out; but among these, as always, there were ladies, and there was more than the usual proportion of fine horses. One cover was drawn blank, and we moved to another, where a fox was found, and whence the run was sharp and too straight for a prudent novice to see very much of it; and it was some minutes before Cock Robin and his rider came up with the hounds, who had come to a check in a large wood. Throughout the day there was a good deal of waiting about different covers, between which the fox ran back and forth. Finally he broke away for a long, quick burst over the fields, which lay to the left of a farm-road down which we were riding, and which was flanked by a high and solid-looking hedge. Near the head of the party was a well-mounted blonde of seventeen, who had hitherto seemed to avoid the open country and to keep prudently near to her mother and her groom. The sight of the splendid run, fast leaving us behind, was too much for her, and she turned straight for the hedge, clearing it with a grander leap than I had seen taken that day, and flying on over hedges and ditches in the direct wake of the hounds. A young German who followed her said, as we rode back to the Haycock, "It is vort to come from America or from Owstria to see zat lofely Lady ---- go over ze cowntry"; and it was. Luck often favors the timid; Cock Robin and I were quite alone--he disgusted, and I half ashamed with my prudence--when the fox, who had found straight running of no avail, came swerving to the right over the crest of a distant hill, closely followed by the hounds, and, in splendid style, by the first flight of the field. Soon he crossed a brook which was fenced in with rails, and the horsemen all had to make a long détour, so that I, who had been last, now became first. I had the fox and the hounds all to myself; my horse was fresh, and the way was easy. My monopoly lasted only a moment, but it was not a moment of tranquillity. Finding an open gate and bridge, I followed the pack into a large low field, surrounded on three sides by the wide brook. The fox was turned by this and ran to the right along the bank; at the corner of the field he turned again to the right, still keeping by the edge of the stream; this gave the hounds an immense advantage, and cutting off the angle, they came so closely upon him that with still another turn of the brook ahead of him, he had but one chance for his life, and that was a desperate one for a tired fox to consider. He did not consider, but went slap at the brook, and cleared it with a leap of nearly twenty feet. The foremost hounds whimpered for a moment on the bank before they took to the water, and when they were across Reynard was well out of sight, and they had to nose out his trail afresh. He brought them again to a check, and finally, after half an hour's skirmishing, he ran down a railway cutting in the wake of a train, and got away. Incidentally, here was an opportunity for an English gentleman to show more good temper and breeding than it is one's daily lot to see. He was one of a bridgeful of horsemen watching the hounds as they vainly tried to unravel the fox's scent from the bituminous trail of the locomotive, when, full of eager curiosity, one of the ladies, middle-aged and not "native and to the manner born," but not an American, rode directly on to his horse's heels. To the confusion of my lady, the horse, like a sensible horse as he was, resented the attack with both his feet. His rider got him at once out of the way, and then returned, bowing his venerable head in regretful apology, and trusting that no serious harm had been done. "How can you ride such a kicking brute!" was the gracious acknowledgment of his forbearance. In this storied little island one is never for long out of the presence of places on the traditions of which our life-long fancies have been fed. Our road home lay past the indistinct mass of rubbish, clustered round with ivy and with the saddest associations, which was once Fotheringay Castle; and as we turned into the village my companions pointed out the still serviceable but long-unused "stocks" where the minor malefactors of the olden time expiated their offences. We reached the Haycock at three, a moist but far from unpleasant body of tired and dirty men, having ridden, since nine in the morning, over fifty-five miles, mostly in the rain, and often in a shower of mud splashed by galloping hoofs. By six o'clock we were in good trim for dinner, and after dinner for a long, cosey talk over the events of the day, and horses and fox-hunting in general. My own interest in the sport is confined mainly to its equestrian side, and I am not able to give much information as to its details. Any stranger must be impressed with the firm hold it has on the affections of the people, and with the little public sympathy that is shown for the rare attempts that are made to restrict its rights. It would seem natural that the farmers should be its bitter opponents. It can hardly be a cheerful sight, in March, for a thrifty man to see a crowd of mad horsemen tearing through his twenty acres of well-wintered wheat, filling the air with a spray of soil and uprooted plants. But let a non-riding reformer get up after the annual dinner of the local Agricultural Association and suggest that the rights of tenant-farmers have long enough lain at the mercy of their landlord and his fox-hunting friends, with the rabble of idle sports and ruthless ne'er-do-weels who follow at their heels, and that it is time for them to assert themselves and try to secure the prohibition of a costly pastime, which leads to no good practical result, and the burdens of which fall so heavily on the producing classes,--and then see how his brother farmers will second his efforts. The very man whose wheat was apparently ruined will tell him that in March one would have said the whole crop was destroyed, but that the stirring up seemed to do it good, for he had never before seen such an even stand on that field. Another will argue that while hunting does give him some extra work in the repair of hedges and gates, and while he sometimes has his fields torn up more than he likes, yet the hounds are the best neighbors he has; they bring a good market for hay and oats, and, for his part, he likes to get a day with them himself now and then. Another raises a young horse when he can, and if he turns out a clever fencer, he gets a much larger price for him than he could if there were no hunting in the country. Another has now and then lost poultry by the depredations of foxes, but he never knew the master to refuse a fair claim for damages; for his part, he would scorn to ask compensation; he likes to see the noble sport, which is the glory of England, flourishing, in spite of modern improvements. At this point, and at this stage of the convivial cheer, they bring in the charge at Balaklava, and other evidences that the noble sport, which is the glory of old England, breeds a race of men whose invincible daring always has won and always shall win her honor in the field;--and Long live the Queen, and Here's a health to the Handley Cross Hunt, and Confusion to the mean and niggardly spirit that is filling the country with wire fences and that would do away with the noble sport which is the glory of old England! Hear! hear!! And so it ends, and half the company, in velvet caps, scarlet coats, leathers and top-boots, will be early on the ground at the first meet of the next autumn, glad to see their old cover-side friends once more, and hoping for a jolly winter of such healthful amusements and pleasant intercourse as shall put into their heads and their hearts and into their hearty frames and ruddy faces a tenfold compensation for the trifling loss they may sustain in the way of broken gates and trampled fields. I saw too little to be able to form a fair opinion as to the harm done; but when once the run commences no more account is made of wheat, which is carefully avoided when going at a slow pace, than if it were so much sawdust; fences are torn down, and there is no time to replace them; if gates are locked, they are taken off the hinges or broken; if sheep join the crowd in an enclosure and follow them into the road, no one stops to see that they are returned: we are after the hounds, and sheep must take care of themselves. I saw one farmer, in an excited manner, open the gates of his kitchen-garden and turn the hounds and twenty horsemen through it as the shortest way to where he had seen the fox go; his womenfolk eagerly calling "Tally-ho!" to others who were going wrong. I have never seen a railroad train stopped because of the conductor's interest in a passing hunt, but I fancy that is the only thing in England that does not stop when the all-absorbing interest is once awakened. Whatever may be the effect on material interests, the benefit of this eager, vigorous, outdoor life on the health and morals of the people is most unmistakable. Such a race of handsome, hale, straight-limbed, honest, and simple-hearted men can nowhere else be found as in the wide class that passes as much of every winter as is possible in regular fox-hunting; and to make an application of their example, we could well afford to give over many of our fertile fields to ruthless destruction, and many of our fertile hours to the most senseless sport, if it would only replace our dyspeptic stomachs, sallow cheeks, stooping shoulders, and restless eagerness with the hale and hearty and easy-going life and energy of our English cousins. Hardly enough women hunt in England to constitute an example; but those who do are such models of health and freshness as to make one wish that more women had the benefit of such amusement both there and here. It is very common to see men of over sixty following the hounds in the very _élite_ of the field; they seem still in the vigor of youth. At seventy many are yet regular at their work; and it is hardly remarkable when one finally hangs up his red coat only at the age of eighty. Considering all this, it almost becomes a question whether, patriotism to the contrary notwithstanding, it would not be a good thing for a prosperous American, instead of settling down at the age of forty-five to a special partnership and a painful digestion, to take a smaller income where it would bring more comfort, and by a judicious application of the pig-skin to rehabilitate his enfeebled alimentation. Fox-hunting is a costly luxury if one goes well mounted and well appointed. It can hardly be made cheap, even when one lives in his own house and rides his own horses. With hotel bills and horse-hire, it costs still more. As an occasional indulgence it is always a good investment. My own score at the Haycock was as follows,--by way of illustration, and because actual figures are worth more than estimates. (I was there from Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning, went out with a shooting-party on Friday, dined out on Friday night, and hunted on Saturday.) THE HAYCOCK INN. £ _s._ _d._ Jan. 2. Dinner and wine, 10 6 Bed and fire, 3 6 " 3. Breakfast, 2 6 Apartments,[A] bed and fire, 5 0 Attendance,[B] 1 6 Jan. 4. Breakfast, 2 6 Dinner and wine, 10 6 Apartments, bed and fire, 5 6 Attendance, 1 6 " 5. Breakfast, 2 6 STABLE. Conveying luggage from station, 2 6 Dog-cart to Sharks Lodge, 10 6 " " " Oundle, 12 6 " " " Peterborough, 8 0 THOMAS PERCIVAL. Jan. 4. Hire of hunter to Barnwell, 4 4 0 " hack " " 10 6 [A] The run of the house. [B] We are apt to consider this a petty swindle, but it has the advantage that you get what you pay for. Eight pounds, twelve shillings, and sixpence; which being interpreted means $47.30 in the lawful currency of the United States. The hunter and hack for one day cost $23.52. An American friend living with his family in Leamington (much more cheaply than he could live at home), kept two hunters and a hack, and hunted them twice a week for the whole season (nearly six months) at a cost, including the loss on his horses, which he sold in the spring, of less than $1,500. I think this is below the average expense. The cost of keeping up a pack of hounds is very heavy. The hounds themselves, a well-paid huntsman, two or three whippers-in, two horses a day for each of these attendants (hunting four days a week, this would probably require four horses for each man), and no end of incidental expenses, bring the cost to fully $20,000 per annum. This is sometimes paid wholly or in part by subscription and sometimes entirely by the Master of the Hounds. One item of my friend's expenses at Leamington was a subscription of ten guineas each to the Warwickshire, North Warwickshire, Atherstone, and Pytchley hunts. Something of this sort would be necessary if one hunted for any considerable time with any subscription pack, but an occasional visitor is not expected to contribute. A stranger participating in the sport need only be guided by common modesty and common-sense. However good a horseman he may be, he cannot make a sensation among the old stagers of the hunting-field. Probably he will get no commendation of any sort. If he does, it will be for keeping out of the way of others,--taking always the easiest and safest road that will bring him well up with the hounds, not flinching when a desperate leap must be taken, and following (at a respectful distance) a good leader, rather than trying to take the lead himself. However promising the prospect may be, he had better not do anything on his own hook; if he makes a conspicuous mistake, he will probably be corrected for it in plainer English than it is pleasant to hear. * * * * * One of the memorable days of my life was the day before New-Year's. Ford had secured me a capital hunter, a well-clipped gelding, over sixteen hands high, glossy, lean, and wiry as a racer. "You've got a rare mount to-day, sir," said the groom as he held him for me to get up; and a rare dismount I came near having in the little measure of capacity with which Master Dick and I commenced our acquaintance, before we left the Regent. He was one of those horses whose spirits are just a little too much for their skins, and all the way out he kept up a restless questioning of his prospect of having his own way. Still he was in all this, as in his manner of doing his work when he got into the open country, such a perfect counterpart of old Max, who had carried me for two years in the Southwest, that I was at home at once. If I had had a hunter made to order, I could not have been more perfectly suited. The meet (North Warwickshire) was at Cubbington Gate, only two miles from Leamington, and a very gay meet it was. The road was filled with carriages, and there was a goodly rabble on foot. About three hundred, in every variety of dress, were mounted for the hunt, a dozen or so of ladies among them. Three of these kept well up all day, and one of them rode very straight. The hounds were taken to a wood about a mile to the eastward of Cubbington, where they soon found a fox, which led us a very straight course to Princethorpe, about three miles to the northeast. I had done little fencing for seven or eight years, and the sort of propulsion one gets in being carried over a hedge is sufficiently different from the ordinary impulses of civil life to suggest at first the element of surprise. Consequently, though our initial leap was a modest one, I landed with only one foot in the stirrup and with one hand in the mane; but I now saw that Dick was but another name for Max, and this one moderate failure was enough to recall the old tricks of the craft. As the opportunity would perhaps never come again, this one was not to be neglected, and I resolved to have one fair inside view of real fox-hunting. Dick was clearly as good a horse as was out that day; the leaping was less than that to which we were used among the worm-fences, fallen timber, and gullies of Arkansas and Tennessee; and there was but a plain Anglo-Saxon name for the only motive that could deter me from making the most of the occasion. Mr. Lant, the Master of the Hounds, was not better mounted for his lighter weight than was I for my fourteen stone; and his position as well as his look indicated that he would probably go by the nearest practicable route to where the fox might lead, so we kept at a safe distance behind him and well in his wake. The hesitation and uncertainty which had at first confused my bridle-hand being removed, my horse, recognizing the changed position of affairs, settled down to his work like a well-trained and sensible but eager beast as he was. From the covert to Princethorpe we took seven fences and some small ditches, and we got there with the first half-dozen of the field, both of us in higher spirits than horse and rider ever get except by dint of hard going and successful fencing. Here there was a short check, but the fox was soon routed out again and made for Waveley Wood, a couple of miles to the northwest. Waveley Wood is what is called in England a "biggish bit of timber," and the check here was long enough to allow the whole field to come up. As we sat chatting and lighting our cigars, "Tally-ho!" was called from the other side of the cover, and we splashed through a muddy cart-road and out into the open just as the hounds were well away. Now was a ride for dear life. Every one had on all the speed the heavy ground would allow. In front of us was a "bullfinch" (a neglected hedge, out of which strong thorny shoots of several years' growth have run up ten or twelve feet above it). I had often heard of bullfinches, and no hunting experience could be complete without taking one. It was some distance around by the gate, the pace was strong, and the spiny fringe had just closed behind Mr. Lant's red coat as he dropped into the field beyond. "Follow my leader" is a game that must be boldly played; so, settling my hat well down, holding my bridle-hand low, and covering my closed eyes with my right elbow, with the whip-hand over the left shoulder, I put my heart in my pocket and went at it, and through it with a crash! An ugly scratch on the fleshy part of the right hand was the only damage done, and I was one of the very few near the pack. Dick and I were now up to anything; we made very light of a thick tall hedge that came next in order, and we cleared it like a bird; but we landed in a pool of standing water, covering deeply ploughed ground, the horse's forefeet sinking so deeply that he could not get them out in time, and our headway rolled us both over in the mud, I flat on my back. Dick got up just in time for his pastern to strike me in the face as I was rising, giving me a cut lip, a mouthful of blood, and a black and blue nose-bridge. My appearance has, on occasions, been more respectable and my temper more serene than as I ran, soiled and bleeding, over the ploughed ground, calling to some workmen to "catch my horse." I was soon up and away again. There seemed some confusion in the run, and the master being out of sight, I followed one of the whips as he struck into a blind path in a wood. It was a tangled mass of briers, but he went in at full pace, and evidently there was no time to be lost. At the other side of the copse there was a set of low bars, and beyond this a small, slimy ditch. My leader cleared the bars, but his horse's hind feet slipped on the bank of the ditch, and he fell backwards with an ugly kind of sprawl that I had no time to examine, for Dick took the leap easily and soon brought me into a field where, on a little hillock, and quite alone, stood the huntsman, dismounted, holding the dead fox high in his left hand, while with his long-leashed hunting-crop he kept the hungry and howling pack at bay. The master soon came up, as did about a dozen others, including a bright little boy on a light little pony. The fox's head (mask), tail (brush), and feet (pads) were now cut off and distributed as trophies under the master's direction. The carcass was then thrown to the pack, that fought and snarled over it until, in a twinkling, the last morsel had disappeared. This was the "death,"--by no means the most engaging part of the amusement. From the find to the killing was only twenty-five minutes, into which had been crowded more excitement and more physical happiness than I had known for many a long day. The second cover drawn was not far away. With this fox we had two hours' work, mainly through woods at a walk and with the hounds frequently at fault, but with some good leaping. Finally he was run to earth and abandoned. We then went to a cover near Bubbenhall, but found no fox, and then, with the same luck, to another east of Baggington. It was now nearly four o'clock, growing dusk, and beginning to rain. The hounds started for their kennels, and Dick and I took a soft bridle-path skirting the charming road that leads, under such ivy-clad tree-trunks and between such hedges as no other land can show, through Stoneleigh Village and past Stoneleigh Abbey to Leamington, and a well-earned rest. * * * * * My memorandum for that day closes: "Horse, £2 12_s._ 6_d._; Fees, 2_s._; and well worth the money." THE END. 
40301	----	BOOKS FOR SPORTSMEN PUBLISHED BY BELLAIRS & CO., 9 HART STREET, BLOOMSBURY. IN SCARLET AND SILK. Recollections of Hunting and Steeplechase riding. By FOX RUSSELL. With two drawings in colour by FINCH MASON. 5s. net. NEW SPORTING STORIES. By G. G. 3s. 6d. net. _The Times_ says:--"New Sporting Stories are written by a man who evidently knows what he is writing about.... The sketches are short, racy and to the point." TRAVEL AND BIG GAME. By PERCY SELOUS and H. A. BRYDEN. With Illustrations. [_In the Press._ THE CHASE: a Poem. By WILLIAM SOMERVILLE. Illustrated by HUGH THOMSON. 5s. net. In this fine old poem now ably illustrated by Mr Hugh Thomson are the original lines, quoted by the immortal Jorrocks-- "My hoarse-sounding horn Invites thee to the chace, the sport of kings, Image of war, without its guilt." GREAT SCOT THE CHASER, and other Sporting Stories. By G. G. 3s. 6d. net. _The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"G. G. is a benefactor to his species." CURIOSITIES OF BIRD LIFE. 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CALDECOTT.] SPORTING SOCIETY OR _SPORTING CHAT AND SPORTING MEMORIES_ STORIES HUMOROUS AND CURIOUS; WRINKLES OF THE FIELD AND THE RACE-COURSE; ANECDOTES OF THE STABLE AND THE KENNEL; WITH NUMEROUS PRACTICAL NOTES ON SHOOTING AND FISHING FROM THE PEN OF VARIOUS SPORTING CELEBRITIES AND WELL-KNOWN WRITERS ON THE TURF AND THE CHASE EDITED BY FOX RUSSELL Illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. _IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. I._ LONDON BELLAIRS & CO. 1897 CONTENTS PAGE THE INFLUENCE OF FIELD SPORTS ON CHARACTER 1 By Sir COURTENAY BOYLE OLD-FASHIONED ANGLING 21 By Captain R. BIRD THOMPSON PARTRIDGE DAY AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS 36 By "AN ELDERLY SPORTSMAN" SIMPSON'S SNIPE 53 By TERENCE LE SMITHE PODGERS' POINTER 80 By BEN B. BROWN THE DEAD HEAT 101 By "OLD CALABAR" ONLY THE MARE 134 By ALFRED E. T. WATSON HUNTING IN THE MIDLANDS 155 By T. H. S. ESCOTT A MILITARY STEEPLECHASE 171 By Captain R. BIRD THOMPSON HOW I WON MY HANDICAP 181 Told by the Winner THE FIRST DAY OF THE SEASON AND ITS RESULTS 193 By "SABRETACHE" A DAY WITH THE DRAG 210 By the EDITOR STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR 221 By Captain REDWAY SPORT AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 237 By "SARCELLE" A BIRMINGHAM DOG SHOW 251 By "OLD CALABAR" HUNTINGCROP HALL 268 By ALFRED E. T. WATSON A DOG HUNT ON THE BERWYNS 286 By G. CHRISTOPHER DAVIES SOME ODD WAYS OF FISHING 298 By G. CHRISTOPHER DAVIES SHOOTING 306 By Captain R. BIRD THOMPSON [Symbol: asterism] "THE DEAD HEAT," by "OLD CALABAR," was originally contributed by the veteran sportsman to the pages of "BAILY'S Magazine," and is here reproduced by the permission of the Proprietors. THE INFLUENCE OF FIELD SPORTS ON CHARACTER Field sports have been generally considered solely in the light of a relaxation from the graver business of life, and have been justified by writers on economics on the ground that some sort of release is required from the imprisoned existence of the man of business, the lawyer, or the politician. Apollo does not always bend his bow, it is said, and timely dissipation is commendable even in the wise; therefore by all means, let the sports which we English love be pursued within legitimate bounds, and up to an extent not forbidden by weightier considerations. But there seems to be somewhat more in field sports than is contained in this criticism. The influence _of_ character on the manner in which sports are pursued is endless, and reciprocally the influence of field sports _on_ character seems to deserve some attention. The best narrator of schoolboy life of the present day has said that, varied as are the characters of boys, so varied are their ways of facing or not facing a "hilly," at football; and one of the greatest observers of character in England has written a most instructive and amusing account of the way in which men enjoy fox-hunting. If, therefore, a man's character and his occupations and tastes exercise a mutual influence upon each other, it follows that while men of different dispositions pursue sports in different ways, the sports also which they do pursue will tell considerably in the development of their natural character. Now, the field sport which is perhaps pursued by a greater number of Englishmen than any other, and which is most zealously admired by its devotees, is fox-hunting. It is essentially English in its nature. "A fox-hunt to a foreigner is strange, 'Tis likewise subject to the double danger Of falling first, and having in exchange Some pleasant laughter at the awkward stranger." And it is this very falling which adds in some degree to its popularity; _suave mari magno_, it is pleasant to know that your neighbour A.'s horse, which he admires so much, has given him a fall at that very double over which your little animal has carried you so safely; and it is pleasant to feel yourself secure from the difficulties entailed on B, by his desire to teach his four-year-old how to jump according to his tastes. But apart from this delight--uncharitable if you like to call it--which is felt at the hazards and failures of another, there is in fox-hunting the keenest possible desire to overcome satisfactorily these difficulties yourself. Not merely for the sake of explaining to an after-dinner audience how you jumped that big place by the church or led the field safely over the brook, though that element does enter in; but from the strong delight which an Englishman seems by birthright to have in surmounting any obstacles which are placed in his way. Put a man then on a horse, and send him out hunting, and when he has had some experience ask him what he has discovered of the requirements of his new pursuit, and what is the lesson or influence of it. He will probably give you some such answer as the following. The first thing that is wanted by, and therefore encouraged by, fox-hunting, is decision. He who hesitates is lost. No "craner" can get well over a country. Directly the hounds begin to run, he who would follow them must decide upon his course. Will he go through that gate, or attempt that big fence, which has proved a stopper to the crowd? there is no time to lose. The fence may necessitate a fall, the gate must cause a loss of time, which shall it be? Or again, the hounds have come to a check, the master and huntsmen are not up (in some countries a very possible event), and it devolves upon the only man who is with them to give them a cast. Where is it to be? here or there? There is no time for thought, prompt and decided action alone succeeds. Or else the loss of shoe or an unexpected fall has thrown you out, and you must decide quickly in which direction you think the hounds are most likely to have run. Experience, of course, tells considerably here as everywhere; but quick decision and promptitude in adopting the course decided on will be the surest means of attaining the wished for result of finding yourself again in company with the hounds. Further, fox-hunting teaches immensely self-dependence; every one is far too much occupied with his own ideas and his own difficulties to be able to give more than the most momentary attention to those of his neighbour. If you seek advice or aid you will not get much from the really zealous sportsman; you must trust to yourself, you must depend on your own resources. "Go on, sir, or else let me come," is the sort of encouragement which you are likely to get, if in doubt whether a fence is practicable or a turn correct. Thirdly, fox-hunting necessitates a combination of judgment and courage removed from timidity on the one side and foolhardiness on the other. The man who takes his horse continually over big places, for the sake of doing that in which he hopes no one else will successfully imitate him, is sure in the end to kill his horse or lose his chance of seeing the run; and on the other hand, he who, when the hounds are running, shirks an awkward fence or leaves his straight course to look for a gate, is tolerably certain to find himself several fields behind at the finish. "What sort of a man to hounds is Lord A----?" we once heard it asked of a good judge. "Oh, a capital sportsman and rider," was the answer; "never larks, but will go at a haystack if the hounds are running." It is partly from the necessity of self-dependence which the fox-hunter feels, that his sport is open to the accusation that it tends to selfishness. The true fox-hunter is alone in the midst of the crowd; he has his own interests solely at heart--each for himself, is his motto, and the pace is often too good for him to stop and help a neighbour in a ditch, or catch a friend's runaway horse. He has no partner, he plays no one's hand except his own. This of course only applies to the man who goes out hunting, eager to have a run and keen to be in at the death. If a man rides to the meet with a pretty cousin, and pilots her for the first part of a run, he probably pays more attention to his charge than to his own instincts of the chase; but he is not on this occasion purely fox-hunting; and, if a true Nimrod, his passion for sport will overcome his gallantry, and he will probably not be sorry when his charge has left his protection, and he is free to ride where his individual wishes and the exigencies of the hunt may lead him. What a knowledge of country fox-hunting teaches! A man who hunts will, at an emergency, be far better able than one who does not to choose a course, and select a line, which will lead him right. Generals hold that the topographical instinct of the fox-hunter is of considerable advantage in the battle-field; and it is undoubtedly easy to imagine circumstances in which a man accustomed to find his way to or from hounds, in spite of every opposition and difficulty, will make use of the power which he has acquired and be superior to the man who has not had similar advantages. Finally, fox-hunting encourages energy and "go." The sluggard or lazy man never succeeds as a fox-hunter, and he who adopts the chase as an amusement soon finds that he must lay aside all listlessness and inertness if he would enjoy to the full the pleasures which he seeks. A man who thinks a long ride to cover, or a jog home in a chill, dank evening in November, a bore, will not do as a fox-hunter. The activity which considers no distance too great, no day too bad for hunting, will contribute first to the success of the sportsman, and ultimately to the formation of the character of the man. Fishing teaches perseverance. The man in _Punch_, who on Friday did not know whether he had had good sport, because he only began on Wednesday morning, is a caricature; but, like all caricatures, has an element of truth in it. To succeed as an angler, whether of the kingly salmon, or the diminutive gudgeon, an ardour is necessary which is not damped by repeated want of success; and he who is hopeless because he has no sport at first will never fully appreciate fishing. So too the tyro, who catches his line in a rock, or twists it in an apparently inexplicable manner in a tree, soon finds that steady patience will set him free far sooner than impetuous vigour or ruthless strength. The skilled angler does not abuse the weather or the water in impotent despair, but makes the most of the resources which he has, and patiently hopes an improvement therein. Delicacy and gentleness are also taught by fishing. It is here especially that-- "Vis consili expers mole ruit suâ, Vim temperatam di quoque provehunt in majus." Look at the thin link of gut and the slight rod with which the huge trout or "never ending monster of a salmon" is to be caught. No brute force will do there, every struggle of the prey must be met by judicious yielding on the part of the captor, who watches carefully every motion, and treats its weight by giving line, knowing at the same time--none better--when the full force of the butt is to be unflinchingly applied. Does not this sort of training have an effect on character? Will not a man educated in fly-fishing find developed in him the tendency to be patient, to be persevering, and to know how to adapt himself to circumstances. Whatever be the fish he is playing, whatever be his line, will he not know when to yield and when to hold fast? But fishing like hunting is solitary. The zealot among fishermen will generally prefer his own company to the society of lookers-on, whose advice may worry him, and whose presence may spoil his sport. The salmon-fisher does not make much of a companion of the gillie who goes with him, and the trouter does best when absolutely alone; and nothing is so apt to prove a tyrant, and an evil one, as the love of solitude. On the other hand, the angler is always under the influence, and able to admire the beauties of nature. Whether he be upon the crag-bound loch or by the sides of the laughing burn of highland countries, or prefer the green banks of southern rivers, he can enjoy to the full the many pleasures which existence alone presents to those who admire nature. And all this exercises a softening influence on his character. Read the works of those who write on fishing--Scrope, Walton, Davy, as instances. Is there not a very gentle spirit breathing through them? What is there rude or coarse or harsh in the true fisherman? Is he not light and delicate, and do not his words and actions fall as softly as his flies? Shooting is of two kinds, which, without incorrectness, may be termed wild and tame. Of tame shooting the tamest, in every sense of the word, is pigeon-shooting; but as this is admittedly not sport, and as its principal feature is that it is a medium for gambling, or, at least, for the winning of money prizes or silver cups, it may be passed over in a few words. It undoubtedly requires skill, and encourages rapidity of eye and quickness of action; but its influence on character depends solely on its essential selfishness, and the taint which it bears from the "filthy" effect of "lucre." Other tame shooting is battue shooting, where luxuriously clad men, who have breakfasted at any hour between ten and twelve, and have been driven to their coverts in a comfortable conveyance, stand in a sheltered corner with cigarettes in their mouths, and shoot tame pheasants and timid hares for about three hours and a half, varying the entertainment by a hot lunch, and a short walk from beat to beat. Two men stand behind each sportsman with breech-loaders of the quickest action, and the only drawback to the gunner's satisfaction is that he is obliged to waste a certain time between his shots in cocking the gun which he has taken from his loader. This cannot but be enervating in its influence. Everything, except the merest action of pointing the piece and pulling the trigger, is done for you. You are conveyed probably to the very place where you are to stand; the game is driven right up to you; what you shoot is picked up for you; your gun itself is loaded by other hands; you have no difficulty in finding your prey; you have no satisfaction in outwitting the wiliness of bird or beast; you have nothing whatever except the pleasure--minimised by constant repetition--of bringing down a "rocketter," or stopping a rabbit going full speed across a ride. The moral of this is that it is not necessary to do anything for yourself, that some one will do everything for you, probably better than you would, and that all you have to do is to leave everything to some person whom you trust. Or, again, it is, get the greatest amount of effect with the least possible personal exertion. Stand still, and opportunities will come to you like pheasants--all you have to do is to knock them over. But it is not so with wild-shooting. Not so with the man, who, with the greatest difficulty, and after studying every available means of approach, has got within range of the lordly stag, and hears the dull thud which tells him his bullet has not missed its mark. Nor with him, who, after a hurried breakfast, climbs hill after hill in pursuit of the russet grouse, or mounts to the top of a craggy ridge in search of the snowy ptarmigan. Not so either with him, who traverses every bit of marshy ground along a low bottom, and is thoroughly gratified, if, at the end of a long day, he has bagged a few snipe; nor with him, who, despite cold and gloom and wet, has at last drawn his punt within distance of a flock of wild duck. In each of these, endurance and energy is taught in its fullest degree. It is no slight strain on the muscles and lungs to follow Ronald in his varied course, in which he emulates alternately the movements of the hare, the crab, and the snake; and it is no slight trial of patience to find, after all your care, all your wearisome stalk, that some unobserved hind, or unlucky grouse, has frightened your prey and rendered your toil vain. But, _en avant_, do not despair, try again, walk your long walk, crawl your difficult crawl once more, and then, your perseverance rewarded by a royal head, agree that deer-stalking is calculated to develop a character which overcomes all difficulties, and goes on in spite of many failures. The same obstinate determination which is found in this, the _beau ideal_ of all shooting, is found similarly in shooting of other kinds; and it is a question whether to the endurance inculcated by this pursuit may not be attributed that part of an Englishman's character which made the Peninsular heroes "never know when they were licked." It is objected by foreigners to many of our national sports that they involve great disregard for animal life. "Let us go out and kill something," they say, is the exhortation of an Englishman to his friend when they wish to amuse themselves. Sport consists, they hold, in slaughter; sport therefore is cruel, and teaches contempt for the feelings of creatures lower than ourselves in the scale of existence. I do not wish to enter into this question, which has been a source of considerable controversy; but I would say three things in reference to it. First, that it is difficult to answer the question, Why should man be an exception to the rule of instinct--undoubtedly prevalent throughout the world--which leads every animal to prey upon its inferior? Secondly, that every possible arrangement is made by man for the comfort and safety of his prey--salmon, foxes, pheasants or stags--until the actual moment of capture, and that every fair chance of escape is given to it; and thirdly, that whatever the premises may be, the conclusion remains, that there is no race so far removed from carelessness of animal life and happiness as the English. There are, however, other field sports which do not involve any destruction of life, and which, from the general way in which they are pursued, may fairly be called national. Foremost amongst these is racing. Were racing freed from any influence, other than that which distinguished the races of past epochs, the desire of success; were the prize a crown of parsley or of laurel, and the laudable desire of victory the only inducement to contention, the effect on the men who are devoted to it could not be otherwise than for good. In modern racing, however, the element of pecuniary gain comes in so strongly, that the worst points of the human character are stimulated by it instead of the best, and the improvement of horseflesh and the breed of horses is sacrificed to the temporary advantage of owners of horses. To say, now, that a man is going on the turf, is to say, that he had almost be better under it; and though a few exceptional cases are found, in which men persistently keeping race horses have maintained their independence and strict integrity in spite of the many temptations with which they are assailed, yet, even they, have probably done so at the sacrifice of openness of confidence and perhaps of friendship. Trust no one is the motto of turfites. Keep the key of your saddle-room yourself; let no one, not even your trainer, see your weights. Pay your jockey the salary of a judge, and then have no security that he will not deceive you. The state of the turf is like the state of Corcyræa of old. Every man thinks, that unless he is actually plotting against somebody, he is in danger of being plotted against himself, and that the only safety he has lies in taking the initiative in deceit. The sole object is to win-- "Rem Si possis recte, si non quocunque modo rem." Take care you are not cheated yourself, and make the most of any knowledge of which you believe yourself to be the sole possessor. What is the result of such a pursuit? what its moral? The destruction of all generosity, all trust in others, all large-mindedness: and the encouragement instead, of selfishness, of extravagance, and of suspicion. The man whose friendship was warm and generous, who would help his friend to the limit of his powers, goes on the turf and becomes warped and narrow, labouring, apparently, always under the suspicion, that those whom he meets are trying, or wish to try, to get the better of him, or share, in some way, the advantages which he hopes his cunning has acquired for himself. A thorough disregard for truth, too, is taught by horse-racing; not, perhaps, instanced always by the affirmation of falsehood, but negatively by the concealment or distortion of fact. An owner seldom allows even his best friend to know the result of his secret trials, and in some notable cases such results are kept habitually locked in the breast of one man, who fears to have a confidant, and doubts the integrity of everyone. Whether this is a state of things which can be altered, either by diminishing the number of race-meetings in England, or by discouraging or even putting down betting, I have no wish to consider; but that the present condition of horse-racing and its surroundings is very far removed from being a credit to the country, I venture to affirm. Cricket is another field sport, the popularity of which has rapidly increased; partly from the entire harmlessness which characterises it, and leads to the encouragement of it by schoolmasters and clergymen, and partly from the fact that it is played in the open air, in fine weather, and in the society of a number of companions. I do not propose to inquire whether there is benefit in the general spreading of cricket through the country, or whether it may not be said that it occupies too much time and takes men away from other more advantageous occupations, or whether the combination of amateur and professional skill which is found in great matches is a good thing; but I wish, briefly, to point out one or two points in human nature which seem to me to be developed by cricket. The first of these is hero-worship. The best player in a village club, and the captain of a school eleven, if not for other reasons unusually unpopular, is surrounded by a halo of glory which falls to the successful in no other sport. Great things are expected of him, he is looked upon with admiring eyes, and is indeed a great man. "Ah, it is all very well," you hear, "but wait till Brown goes in, Smith and Robinson are out, but wait till Brown appears, then you will see how we shall beat you, bowl him out if you can." His right hand will atone for the shortcomings of many smaller men, his prowess make up the deficiency of his side. Or look at a match between All England and twenty-two of Clodshire, watch the clodsmen between the innings, how they throng wonderingly round the chiefs of the eleven. That's him, that's Abel, wait till he takes the bat, then you'll "see summut like play." Or go to the "Bat and Ball" after the match, when the eleven are there, and see how their words are dwelt on by an admiring audience, and their very looks and demeanour made much of as the deliberate expressions of men great in their generation. Again, see the reception at Kennington Oval of a "Surrey pet" or a popular amateur, or the way in which "W. G." Grace is treated by the undemonstrative aristocracy of "Lord's," and agree with me that cricket teaches hero-worship in its full. What power the captain of the Eton or the Winchester eleven has, what an influence over his fellows, not merely in the summer when his deeds are before the public, but always from a memory of his prowess with bat or ball. There is one awkward point about this; there are many cricket clubs, and therefore many captains, and when two of these meet a certain amount of difficulty arises in choosing which is the hero to be worshipped. In a match where the best players of a district are collected, and two or more good men, known in their own circle and esteemed highly, there play together, who is to say which is the best; who is to crown the real king of Brentford? Each considers himself superior to the other, each remembers the plaudits of his own admirers, forgets that it is possible that they may be prejudiced, and ignores the reputation of his neighbour. The result is a jealousy among the chieftains which is difficult to be overcome, and which shows itself even in the best matches. On the other hand, the effect of this hero-worship which I have described, is to produce a harmony and unity of action consequent on confidence in a leader which is peculiar to cricket. Watch a good eleven, a good university or public school team, and see how thoroughly they work together, how the whole eleven is like one machine, "point" trusting "coverpoint," "short slip" knowing that if he cannot reach a ball, "long slip" can, and the bowler feeling sure that his "head" balls, if hit up, will be caught, if hit along the ground, will be fielded. Or see two good men batting, when every run is of importance, how they trust one another's judgment as to the possibility of running, how thoroughly they act in unison. Such training as this teaches greatly a combination of purpose and of action, and a confidence in the judgment of one's colleagues which must be advantageous. The good cricketer is obedient to his captain, does what he is told, and does not grumble if he thinks his skill underrated: the tyro, proud of his own prowess, will indeed be cross if he is not made enough of, or is sent in last; but the good player, who really knows the game, sees that one leader is enough, and obeys his orders accordingly. There are other lessons taught by cricket, such as caution by batting, patience and care by bowling, and energy by fielding; but I have no space to dwell on these, as I wish to examine very briefly one more sport, which, though hardly national, is yet much loved by the considerable number who do pursue it. Boating is seen in its glory at the universities or in some of the suburbs of London which are situated on the Thames. It is also practised in some of the northern towns, especially Newcastle, where the Tynesiders have long enjoyed a great reputation. By boating, I do not mean going out in a large tub, and sitting under an awning, being pulled by a couple of paid men or drawn by an unfortunate horse, but boat-racing, for prizes or for honour. The Oxford and Cambridge race has done more than anything to make this sport popular, and the thousands who applaud the conquerors, reward sufficiently the exertions which have been necessary to make the victory possible. The chief lesson which rowing teaches is self denial. The university oar, or the member of the champion crew at Henley, has to give up many pleasures, and deny himself many luxuries, before he is in a fit state to row with honour to himself and his club; and though in the dramatist's excited imagination the stroke-oar of an Oxford eight may spend days and nights immediately before the race, in the society of a Formosa, such is not the case in real life. There must be no pleasant chats over a social pipe for the rowing man, no dinners at the Mitre or the Bull, no _recherché_ breakfasts with his friends; the routine of training must be strictly observed, and everything must give way to the paramount necessity of putting on muscle. In the race itself, too, what a desperate strain there is on the powers! How many times has some sobbing oarsman felt that nature must succumb to the tremendous demand made on her, that he can go no further; and then has come the thought that others are concerned besides himself, that the honour of his university or his club are at stake, which has lent a new stimulus and made possible that final spurt which results in victory. The habits taught by rowing, whether during training or after the race has commenced, lead to regularity of life, to abstemiousness, and to the avoidance of unwholesome tastes, and their effect is seen long after the desire for aquatic glory have passed away. Such are some of the most prominent influences of English field sports, and as long as amusements requiring such energy, such physical or mental activity, and such endurance as fox-hunting, stalking, and cricket, are popular, there is little fear of the manly character of the English nation deteriorating, or its indomitable determination being weakened. OLD-FASHIONED ANGLING Angling is, I think, one of the most popular of British field sports; certainly, for one book written about any other kind, there must be half-a-dozen on the subject of fishing. I met lately with a most amusing old book on the "Art of Angling," published in 1801; and illustrated with very quaint old wood engravings of both fresh and sea water fish. It commences with a long anatomical and physiological description of fish, giving an account of their habits, method of feeding, &c. For this last the author draws considerably on his own imagination. For instance, he declares that mussels and oysters open their shells for the purpose of catching crabs, closing them when one creeps in, and thus securing their prey. The oyster also is declared to change sides with each tide, lying with the flat shell uppermost one time, and the convex the next. After this the author goes regularly through the alphabet, treating everything connected with fresh-water angling under its respective initial letter. I suppose that at this time there were few, if any tackle shops, for most elaborate directions are given for making lines. These were to be of horse hair, and twisted in a "twisting instrument," whatever that was. The hair was to be with the top of one to the tail of the other, so that every part might be equally strong, and turned slowly, so as to allow it "to bed" properly; the different lengths were to be tied together either "by a water knot, or Dutch knot, or a weaver's." The line was to taper, beginning with three hairs down to a single one, where the hook was whipped on. The rod, as a matter of the greatest importance, is duly treated. The wood was to be procured between the middle of November and Christmas Day; the stock or butt to be made of ground hazel, ground ash, or ground willow, not more than two or three feet long. The wood chosen to be that which shot directly from the ground--not from any stump--and every joint beyond was to taper to a top made preferably of hazel, though yew, crab, or blackthorn might be used. If it had any knots or excrescences, which were to be avoided if possible, they must be removed with a sharp knife. Five or six inches of the top were to be cut off, and a small piece of round, smooth, taper whalebone spliced on with silk and cobbler's wax, and the whole finished with a strong noose of hair to fasten the line to. This was for an ordinary rod; the best sort was made as follows:--A white deal or fir board, thick, free from knots, and seven to eight feet long, was to be procured, and a dexterous joiner was to divide this with his saw into several breadths; then with a plane to shoot them round, smooth, and rush-grown or taper. One of these would form the bottom of the rod, seven or eight feet long in the piece. To this was fastened a hazel six or seven feet long, proportioned to the fir; this also rush-grown, and it might consist of two or three pieces, to the top of which a piece of yew was to be fixed about two feet long--round, smooth, and taper; and, finally, a piece of round whalebone, five or six inches long. Some rings or eyes were to be placed on the rod in such a manner that when you laid your eye to one, you could see through all the rest. A wheel or winch must be fixed on, about a foot from the end of the rod, and, as a finish, a feather dipped in _aqua fortis_ was passed over it, so as to make it a pure cinnamon colour. "This," the author adds, "will be a curious rod if artificially worked!" The subject of fly-making, and how and when to use flies, is treated most exhaustively--no less than twenty-four pages being devoted to the subject. The materials named for fly-dressing are very good indeed, and very much the same as used now; but when the author tries to explain the _actual_ method of using them he utterly fails. Anyone who attempted to tie flies in the way explained would produce most extraordinary specimens. The author has taken very great pains, not only in naming the flies to be used each month, but the actual time of day for them, and the hours between which they must be used. Worms for bait are described and named with great exactness, and the best way to catch and keep them, also how best to scour them previous to use. I think, however, the method recommended for scouring one kind would be too much for any but a _very_ enthusiastic angler--namely, to put them in a woollen bag, and keep them in your waistcoat pocket. Few persons could stand that, I think. Many recipes for different sorts of pastes are given, but it is hard to believe that any fish would take them--"bean flour, the tenderest part of a kitten's leg, wax and suet beaten together in a mortar," scarcely sounds alluring; neither does a mixture of "fat old cheese (the strongest rennet), suet, and turmeric," appear to be very nice. To any of these pastes you may add "assafoetida, oil of polypody of the oak, oil of ivy, or oil of Peter." Well, I do not suppose that they would make much difference. A great number of recipes for unguents, to smear over the worms used so as to make them more attractive, are given; and most extraordinary they are:--assafoetida, three drachms; camphire, one drachm; Venice turpentine, one drachm; beaten up with oils of lavender and camomile, is one recipe. Another is, "mulberry juice, hedgehog's fat, oil of water-lilies and oil of pennyroyal," mixed together; but the most elaborate one is as follows:--"Take the oils of camomile, lavender, and aniseed, of each a quarter of an ounce; heron's grease and the best of assafoetida, each two drachms; two scruples of cummin seed finely beaten to powder; Venice turpentine, camphire, and galbanum, of each a drachm; add two grains of civet and make into an unguent. This must be kept close in a glazed earthenware pot, or it loses much of its virtue; anoint your line with it and your expectation will be abundantly answered. Some anglers, however, place more confidence in a judicious choice of baits and a proper management of them, than in the most celebrated unguents." I think the concluding paragraph is delightful. I suppose it did at length dawn on the author's mind that people might object to carrying about such hideously stinking compositions. The angler is told that "his apparel must not be of a light or shining colour, but of a dark brown, fitting closely to the body, so as not to fright the fish away." The impediments to our anglers' recreation are named. "The fault may be occasioned by his tackle, as when his lines or hooks are too large, when his bait is dead or decaying. If he angles at a wrong time of day, when the fish are not in the humour of taking his bait. If the fish have been frightened by him or with his shadow. If the weather be too cold. If the weather be too hot. If it rains much or fast. If it hails or snows. If it be tempestuous. If the wind blows high or be in the east or north. Want of patience and the want of a proper assortment of baits." Anglers are also warned "never to fish in any water that is not common without leave of the owner, which is seldom denied to any but those that do not deserve it." Another direction is given that would greatly horrify any Blue Ribbon army man who might see it, namely, "if at any time, you happen to be over-heated with walking or other exercise, you must avoid small liquors as you would poison, and rather take a glass of brandy, the instantaneous effects of which in cooling the body and quenching drought are amazing." The laws as to angling and fishing generally are quoted at considerable length and seem most of them to be aimed at preventing immature fish being taken and preserves damaged. The penalties did not err on the side of clemency. By 5th Elizabeth, destroying any dam of any pond, moat or stew, &c., with intent to take the fish, was punished with three months' imprisonment and to be bound to good behaviour for seven years after; also by 21st Elizabeth, "no servant shall be questioned for killing a trespasser within his master's liberty who will not yield; if not done out of former malice. Yet if the trespasser kills any such servant it is murder." I fancy the following, if carried out now, would rather astonish many fish dealers in the city of London:--"Those that sell, offer, or expose to sale or exchange for any other goods, bret or turbot under sixteen inches long; brill or pearl under fourteen; codlin twelve; whiting six; bass and mullet twelve; sole, plaice, and dab eight; and flounder seven, from their eyes to the utmost extent of the tail; are liable to forfeit twenty shillings, by distress, or to be sent to hard labour for not less than six or more than fourteen days, and to be _whipped_." I suppose most, if not all, of these enactments are now repealed, but if not, and they were enforced, a considerable sensation would be created by them. One paragraph is very remarkable, as showing that over ninety years ago, the same views were promulgated, relating to the profit that might be obtained from fish in ponds, as have been brought forward in the _Times_ and other papers during recent years. Our author says: "It is surprising that, considering the benefit which may accrue from making ponds and keeping of fish, it is not more generally put in practice. For, besides furnishing the table and raising money, the land would be vastly improved and be worth forty shillings an acre; four acres converted into a pond will return every year a thousand fed carp from the least size to fourteen or fifteen inches long, besides pike, perch, tench, and other fish. The carp alone may be reckoned to bring one with another, sixpence, ninepence, or perhaps twelvepence apiece, amounting at the lowest rate to twenty-five pounds, and at the highest to fifty, which would be a very considerable as well as useful improvement." Exactly; this has been written and pointed out in the papers year after year. There are wood-cuts of every fish and full directions how to angle for them. For pike, trolling, live baiting, fishing with frogs, are all lengthily described; and also a curious sort of spinning, the motion being caused by cutting off one of the fins close to the gills and another behind the vent on the contrary side. I am sorry to say the author winds up by full directions for snaring and snatching. It seems curious to be told that good places for roach fishing are by Blackfriars, Westminster and Chelsea Bridges, or by the piles at London Bridge; but that the best way by far was to go below the bridges and fasten your boat to the "stern of any collier or other vessel whose bottom was dirty with weeds," to angle there, as "you would not fail to catch many roach, and those very fine ones." The sailors on board colliers must have been a very different set in those days from what they are now. I fancy anyone trying to tie his boat to the stern of a collier, whether for fishing or any other purpose, would have a pretty hot time of it. The Thames, of course, is mentioned as one of the rivers where salmon were caught, though the localities are not named. Exact particulars are given for fishing for eels, but in those days they must have been a very amiable sort of fish, not at all like the obstinate and perverse creatures they are now, if they allowed themselves to be caught by sniggling in the way mentioned. You were to "get a strong line of silk and a small hook bated with a lob worm; next get a short stick with a cleft in it, and put the line into it near the bait; then thrust it into such holes as you suppose him to lurk in. If he is there, it is great odds that he will take it." The stick was then to be detached from the line and the eel allowed to gorge the bait. You were not to try and draw him out hastily, but to give him time to tire himself out by pulling. All I can say is, that if anyone ever managed to get an eel out in this way he must have had an uncommon share of luck. My own experience shows me that when an eel gorges your bait and gets into his hole, it is quite hopeless to attempt to get him out, and the only plan is to pull until something gives way, and that is never the eel, but usually your hook, and sometimes the line. Our author having given every kind of advice and direction about angling, adds the following admonition:--"Remember that the wit and invention of mankind were bestowed for other purposes than to deceive silly fish, and that, however delightful angling may be, it ceases to be innocent when used otherwise than as a mere recreation"; and he winds up all he has to say about fresh-water angling thus:--"The editor having gone through the English alphabet, takes the liberty to tell gentlemen that the best way to secure fish is to transport poachers." A very wise piece of advice, no doubt much acted on in those days. In the second part of the book, devoted to sea fish, no directions are given for fishing, but merely descriptions of them, and very curious some of these are. We are told of dolphins, that "they sleep with their snouts out of water," and that "some have affirmed that they have heard them snore; they will live three days out of water, during which time they sigh in so mournful a manner as to affect those with concern, who are not used to hear them." Another fish, the "sea-wolf, taken off Heligoland, is a very voracious animal, and well furnished with dreadful teeth. They are so hard that if he bites the fluke of an anchor you may hear the sound and see the impression of his teeth." Certainly the engraving of it makes it an awful-looking thing, with a body like a codfish and an enormous head, with a huge mouth full of teeth like spikes. When the herring fishery is mentioned, it is curious that the author gives a full account of the Dutch fishery but passes over the English with a very brief notice. The account of the former is remarkable. Their vessels were a kind of barque called a buss, from forty-five to sixty tons burden, carrying two or three small cannon; none were allowed to steer out of port without a convoy unless they carried twenty pieces of cannon amongst them all. What can have been the use of this regulation I cannot imagine. A pirate would never attack a fishing-boat, and against a vessel of war they would have been useless. The regulations for fishing were very distinct. No man was to cast his net within 100 fathoms of another's boat; whilst the nets were cast, a light was to be left in the stern; if a boat was by any accident obliged to leave off fishing, the light was to be thrown into the sea, and when the greater part of the fleet left off fishing and cast anchor, the rest were to do the same. Of the English fishery, the date of its commencement, the size of the nets and the names of the different sorts of herrings are merely given; these names are very curious, I wonder whether they are known on the coast now. Six sorts are given,--the Fat Herring, the largest and best; the Meat Herring, large, but not so thick as the first; the Night Herring, a middle-sized one; the Pluck, which has been hurt in the net; the Shotten Herring, which has lost its spawn; and the Copshen, which by some accident or other has been deprived of its head. When the whale fishery is mentioned, here too the description given relates entirely to the Dutch. As to the English it only says that in 1728 the South Sea Company began to work it with pretty good success at first, but that it dwindled away until 1740, when Parliament thought fit to give greater encouragement to it. The discipline in the Dutch whale fleet seems to have been very good; the following are some of the standing regulations:--In case a vessel was wrecked and the crew saved, the first vessel they met with was to take them in and the second half of those from the first, but were not obliged to take in any of the cargo; but if any goods taken out of such vessel are absolutely relinquished and another ship finds and takes them, the captain was to be accountable to the owner of the wrecked ship for one-half clear of all expenses. If the crew deserted any wrecked vessel, they would have no claim to any of the effects saved, but the whole would go to the proprietor. However, if present when the effects were saved and they assisted therein, they would have one-fourth. That if a person piked a fish on the ice, it was his own so long as he left anyone with it, but the minute he left it, the fish became the property of the first captain that came along. If it was fastened to the shore by an anchor or rope, though left alone it belonged to its first captor. If any man was maimed or wounded in the Service, the Commissioners of the Fishery were to procure him reasonable satisfaction, to which the whole fleet were to contribute. They likewise agreed to attend prayers morning and evening, on pain of a forfeit at the discretion of the captain; not to get drunk or draw their knives on forfeiture of half their wages, nor fight on forfeiture of the whole. They were not to lay wagers on the good or ill-success of the fishing, nor buy or sell with the condition of taking one or more fish on the penalty of twenty-five florins. They were likewise to rest satisfied with the provisions allowed them and never to light candle, fire, or match, without the captain's leave on the like penalty. These regulations were read out before the voyage commenced and the crew were then called over to receive the customary gratuity before setting out and were promised another on return in proportion to the success of the voyage. The vessels went north leaving Iceland on the left, to parallel 75°, but some, the author says, ventured as far as 80° or 82°. I fancy he had rather vague ideas on the subject of North latitude, as it was not until 1827 that Sir E. Parry reached 82°, the farthest point north ever attained up to that time. Amongst other fish "stock fish" is mentioned, which is described as "cod fish caught in the North of Norway by fishermen who cut holes in the ice for the purpose. On hooking one, as soon as they pulled it out, it was opened, cleaned, and then thrown on the rocks where it froze and became as hard as a deal board, and never to be dissolved. This the sailors beat to pieces, often calling it fresh fish, though it may have been kept seven years and worms have eaten holes in it." But if the letter-press is curious, the engravings with which the book is illustrated are still quainter. The fish, whether minnows or salmon, reach the same length; the only difference being made in their breadth, even the whale is merely represented as rather thicker and with two little men with axes in their hands walking on it. The author undoubtedly took great pains in compiling his work, and in spite of all eccentricities there are many hints and suggestions that are useful even nowadays. PARTRIDGE DAY AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS BY AN ELDERLY SPORTSMAN The world advances--good. Having accepted which tenet, it would be unreasonable to deny that the pleasures and indulgences of the world advance also. Luxury is one of the pleasures and indulgences of the world. Therefore luxury advances. The syllogism is complete and sound; there is fault in neither major nor minor premiss; and we have therefore arrived at the ultimate conclusion that luxury is on the move--that is, has increased. I have seldom come across a more perfect illustration of my argument than in the early days of this month of September. I am not an old fogey; I do not set up pretensions to a claim for talking, with a kind of accompanying sigh, of the days "when I was a boy," when "we managed things so much better," &c., &c. Yet perhaps I am not exactly middle-aged either, and can at all events look sufficiently far back to note a material change in the manner in which old September is ushered in now as compared with its reception some years ago. There are probably few, who, if lacking experience of its pleasures, can duly appreciate the ardour with which a sportsman looks forward to the "glorious first." But let the appreciative observer note how manifestly that ardour has of late years abated. It has been my frequent custom ere autumn has made her final curtsey, to take up my quarters at the country house of a certain relative, and witness the unprovoked assault on, and reckless massacre of divers unoffending partridges in the ensuing month. The relative referred to is an elderly gentleman, and, in addition to the possession of lands of his own, and liberties to shoot over those of other people, is also the happy father of three stalwart sons, not to mention the complementary portion of the family with whom at present I have nothing to do. These three stalwart sons, beknown to me as mere brats, I have watched grow up with some interest, and that not only as regards their moral and intellectual training, but also as regards the physical culture of their frames, and the sporting bent of their mind. The youngsters were always fond of me. I have always been their _fidus Achates_, in their adventures by land and water, from teaching them to swim and row, down to setting night lines for eels, or traps for rats. Well do I recollect arriving, on the evening of the 31st of August, some years ago, at the old place in Lincolnshire, and finding all three in a state of wild exuberance of spirits in anticipation of the morrow's sport; Jack, the eldest, just then promoted to a gun of his own, of which he was enormously proud, and the other two contenting themselves with the exciting prospect of plodding after us the whole day in the hopes of being allowed to let off our charges at its conclusion. Everybody was eager enough then, and the Squire after an evening spent--much to the disgust of the ladies--in discussing the all-engrossing topic of "the birds," sends us off early to bed, that we may all be up betimes in the morning. We wake at seven, or rather are awoke, for the boys have been up since five, "chumming" (I know no word so appropriate) with the keepers; and even the Squire himself overhead I have heard stamping across his room to look out at the weather several times since four o'clock. We are awoke, then, at seven, and ere we have had time to take that fatal turn, the sure forerunner of a second sleep, a knock, or rather a thunderclap, is heard on the outer panels of the door, and Uncle Sam (they always call me Uncle Sam, though I am not their uncle, and my name is not Samuel) is summoned to "look sharp, and dress." Too cognizant of the fact that Uncle Sam's only chance of peace is to obey, we splash into our tub forthwith, encase our person in an old velveteen and gaiters, and having gulped our coffee and hastily devoured our toast, find ourself at nine o'clock standing on the hall steps, and comparing guns with Jack, previous to a start for the arable. Two keepers, a brace of perfect pointers, and a retriever, are awaiting, even at that hour, impatiently, our departure for the scene of action. Two miles' walk in the soft September air serves to brace our nerves for the work before us; and the head keeper and the Squire having conferred together like two generals, on our arrival at the seat of war, we at length find ourselves placed--I should perhaps rather say marshalled--in the turnips and ready for the fray. What a picture it is! how truly English! each sportsman's eye glistening with excitement and pleasure, as he poises his gun, each in his own readiest manner and favourite position, the Squire casting his eye along the line with the careful scrutiny of a field-marshal examining his forces previous to a final and decisive struggle; the two pointers, too well disciplined to show their ardour in gestures, standing mute behind the keeper; Jack with his gun full-cocked and ready to fire almost before the quarry is started; and his two brothers bursting with excitement, talking in hurried and ceaseless whispers behind the back of Uncle Sam, bearing no distant resemblance, as far as their half-checked ardour is concerned, to the brace of pointers behind the keeper. But there is no time for indulging in reverie as to the scene; a low "Hold up, then!" is heard from the head-keeper, the two graceful dogs bound forward, the line advances, and the action has commenced. A rabbit starts from under Jack's feet: Bang!--and the shot enters a turnip, a yard behind the little white stern hopping and popping to his burrow, despite the reiterated assurances of Master Jack that he is hit, and who forgets to reload accordingly. "Hold up!" to the crouching pointers, and away we move again, watching the graceful movements of the dogs as they work the field before us. Rake, a young dog in his first season, is breaking a little too much ahead; but ere the keeper's "Gently, boy!" had reached him, he has suddenly pulled up, and, with tail stiff and leg up, is standing, motionless as a statue, over a covey. We advance, in the highest excitement:--whirr! goes bird after bird almost singly; and our first covey of the season leaves two brace and a half on the field. One o'clock comes; we have steadily beaten turnips and stubble, clover and mustard, and we spy a man with a donkey and panniers on the brow of the hill in front of us. We beat up to him, bagging a hare and a single bird on our way, and during the half-hour that is allowed us for our bread and cheese and one glass of sherry, we enjoy to our heart's content the large delights of loosing our tongues, after several hours' rigid silence. But "time is up," and we are again on the move till six; we are tired, but we don't know it; we are hungry and thirsty, but we feel not their pangs, till, with our five-and-twenty brace behind us in the bags, we strike across the park on our homeward journey. Uncle Sam's gun is yielded up to Master Tom to let off the charge with the shot drawn; but he manages surreptitiously to obtain our shot-flask, and joins us on the hall steps with a dead rabbit, somewhat mauled, however, from the young rascal's having fired at it at ten paces. We sit down to dinner in high good-humour:--who is not, after a good day? We defend our sport before the ladies from the charge of cruelty, and retire to roost so tired that we take the precaution to lock our door, to prevent the too early and too sure incursion of the young Visigoths in the morning. Alas! for the days that are no more. Seven or eight years have passed since that pleasant day, and Downcharge Hall again welcomes Uncle Sam on the evening of the 31st, under its hospitable roof; I find the boys all grown into young men; Jack is a captain of Hussars, Tom is a subaltern in the Engineers, and Dick has just left Christ Church. They are still as fond as ever of Uncle Sam, though they occasionally venture so far nowadays, as to offer an opinion adverse to his on sporting matters, in which his word was formerly supreme. As I descend to dinner, I pass Jack's room. Hailed by its tenant, of course. I enter, and find him occupied, with care above his years, in the adjustment of his spotless white necktie, two of which articles, crumpled too much in the operation, are at present adorning the floor. "Think of shooting to-morrow, Sam?" (The title of "uncle" has been dropped since Jack first stroked his downy upper lip as a second lieutenant). I stand aghast. Here is a young man, full of health and vigour, on the evening of the 31st August, questioning a fellow-man, who has just travelled some hundred miles and more to Downcharge Hall, with his arm round his gun-case, as to his intention of shooting on the 1st of September. Entertaining a faint hope that, in the exuberance of his youthful spirits, he may be chaffing his old relative, I gasp out an affirmative, and, obeying the summons of the dinner-bell, descend the stairs. There is a large party of guests, but dinner proceeds with but one allusion to the morrow and that is from Dick, who exclaims, as he fingers the delicate stem of his champagne glass, "By-the-by, to-morrow will be the 1st." The piece of fowl I was that moment in the act of swallowing stuck in my throat; my appetite was destroyed, and I silently, but sorrowfully, resolved that for the future no prodigy could have power to amaze me. Our guests stayed late, and at half-past eleven o'clock, mindful of my early rising the next day, I began to grow fidgetty. By twelve o'clock, however, they had all gone; and having despatched the ladies of the house to bed, my hand was already grasping my bed-candle, when Tom arrested my intention, bidding me, in a voice of manifest astonishment at what he was pleased to call my "early roost," to come and do a pipe or two first in Dick's room. Labouring under the delusion that a quarter of an hour was about to be devoted to arranging our sporting plans, I obeyed, and after two hours in Dick's room, spent almost entirely in discussing the relative merits and demerits of certain ladies and horses, found myself between the sheets at last. Awaking with a start, in the morning, to discover it is eight o'clock, I dress with all possible speed, haunted the while with terrible pictures of impatient sportsmen below anathematizing my tardiness as they wait breakfast for me. I hurry down stairs,--the breakfast room is tenantless. My first impression is that they have been unable to curb their sporting ardour, and have started without me. Hearing a footstep on the gravel sweep without, I step through the open casement, and confront a pretty dairymaid bringing in the milk and cream for breakfast. "Fine mornin', sir." "Yes. Which way have they gone--can you tell me?" "Same gait as ever, sir. Joe have druv 'em down agin the fenny pasture, arter milkin' up hinder." "Ah! but the gentlemen, not the cows." "The gentlemen, is it? Maybe if ye look in their beds ye'll see 'em this time o' day." Heaving a mighty sigh, I leave the dairymaid, and stroll up and down the garden, listening with increasing impatience to the distant call of the partridges in the park. Nature at Downcharge Hall that morning was at all events beautifully still; there was a slight mist, too, gradually clearing off from the distance, which betokened very surely a broiling day, and made me long the more to get our seven or eight brace before the mid-day heat should come upon us. My longings and reflections, however, were suddenly cut short by a pitying butler, who had brought me out the _Times_, with the remark that "Master and the young gentlemen seldom has their breakfasts before ten." This was cheerful; however, I consoled myself with the paper, and just as I had finished discovering who was born, married, or dead, and had commenced reading the entreaties to return to afflicted initial letters, &c., &c., Dick's terrier entered the room, the forerunner of his master, who, remarking on my actually being an earlier bird than himself, was followed, in the course of about twenty minutes, by the others. "I suppose we shoot to-day: where shall we begin?" asks Tom. "Oh! we will shoot up from Brinkhill," answers the Squire. "Brinkhill--two miles;--must have a trap," says Jack. The two-mile walk used to be part of the order of the day; it gave us a little time for conversation, prohibited from its conclusion till lunch; it braced one up, and made one, in sporting phraseology, "fit"; but nowadays a carriage is necessary, and the young Nimrod is unequal to any fatigue beyond that which he must necessarily undergo in pursuit of his game. However, we are late, so I can't object to it; and, burning my throat in my hasty disposal of my second cup of coffee, I rush upstairs to get ready my trusty Westley Richards, which, by the way, is a muzzle-loader, yet does not take so long to load as to require a man behind me with a second gun. Five minutes, and fully equipped I re-enter the breakfast-room, where I am astonished to find my "get-up" creates unfeigned amazement. "What! ready now!" says Tom; "what's the use of being in such a hurry?--let's do a pipe and a game of billiards first." "Ah, by-the-by," adds Dick, "what time shall we start? Better have the trap at twelve--quite early enough, eh?" So Jack betakes himself to the newspaper; I am dragged off in disgust to the billiard-room; and the Squire goes off to show old Jones, who is staying here, all about the gardens, &c. How I loathe the gardens from that moment!--how every shrub became a bugbear, every flower a poisonous weed, to my jaundiced eye, as I mentally abused my host for not turning out everybody sooner, and doing things smarter! My temper is rapidly vanishing; I have been beaten in two games by Tom, to whom I used formerly to allow fifteen out of fifty; I am smoking a cigar of Dick's (a bad one I think it, of course), when suddenly the sound of wheels breaks on my ear, and rushing madly to my room again, I don my shot-belt, I pocket wads, powder, and caps, shoulder my gun, and in two minutes am seated in the elegant little double dog-cart, waiting in a broiling sun for these tardy sportsmen. I have sat for full a quarter of an hour, when Jack strolls out, and, in a voice as though nothing had or was about to happen, exclaims-- "Hallo, Sam! are you ready? I must go and dress." And this to a man who has been gaitered since half-past eight. At half-past twelve he reappeared, dressed in magnificent apparel, the result of Poole's and Anderson's united efforts, and examining, to the increase of my impatience, the elaborate locks of a brand new breech-loader. Formerly, we used to take care of that sort of thing the night before at the latest. However, our horses are good ones, and Dick, who knows very well how to handle them--about the only thing I can say for him--puts them along in very neat form at a brisk pace to Brinkhill. This is all very pleasant; and as we near the ground my spirits begin to rise again. It takes us, however, at least twenty minutes to discuss which is the most advantageous beat--a matter which used to be settled as we came along; but I am at last on the move, and begin to forget the past grievances, only hoping they won't strike work too early. It is the same old field in which I so well remember Jack making his _debût_ and missing the rabbit; but I miss the eager faces of those days sadly; it doesn't seem the same thing to me; half the pleasure of a thing, after all, is in enjoying it in company; but that half is sadly marred if the said company are cool in their enjoyment. The dogs, too, are disgustingly wild now. Old Rake breaks fence and flushes our first covey long out of gunshot, my disgust at which is further augmented by one of the keepers, as wild as the dog, breaking line and starting a hare, as remote as the partridges, by his loud imprecations after the miscreant, who is utterly deaf alike to whistle, threats, and entreaties. There is fault enough here; but it doesn't lie entirely with the keeper; it is too evident there is an absence of the eye of the master. If the Squire grows indifferent to their proceedings, he can scarcely expect his dogs and keepers to be what they were; the keeper gets lazy or dishonest, the dogs' training is neglected, and by-and-by they become useless or worse than useless, and their services are discarded. Now if there is one thing more than another which enhances the pleasure of a day's partridge-shooting, it is to watch a brace of well-trained pointers work a field. Why is it then--for obviously it is so--that the use of dogs, and especially of setters and pointers in the field, is gradually being discarded? But to proceed. As soon as order is tolerably restored, we advance again, and pretty steadily beat two or three fields, bagging, with an unheard-of amount of missing, about two brace of birds. We are just entering the next field, when the Brinkhill tenant rides up and asks us all in to lunch. Ye gods, what a feast! Some years ago some bread and cheese, and perhaps a couple of glasses of sherry under a hedge was considered ample on these occasions. Now, however, I have before me an elegant repast of ham and tongue, of fowls and lamb, of pies and fruit, of beer and sherry, port and claret, such as would have shamed the epicurean deities of heathen mythology quaffing ambrosial nectar on the heights of Olympus. With a hopeless shudder I deposit my gun in a corner of the room and take my seat. We breakfasted at ten, but the "unwonted" exercise (alas! it should be so) has given the youngsters an appetite, and their tongues are tied for ten minutes, before worthy Mr Shorthorn, the tenant, produces a bottle of "that very fine old port" he so wishes the Squire to taste. I am not exaggerating when I state that lunch lasted a good hour. Then his pigs are inspected, and what with the wine and the waiting, I can well foresee what will happen to our sport: tongues will be loosed; misses will, if possible, increase; and I feel convinced that the partridges will have little to fear from us for this afternoon, at all events. However, we do manage at last to get away by about half-past three or four o'clock, and commence beating a very promising piece of stubble. I have just bagged a hare, and the dogs have been reduced, by dint of much rating, into a state of downcharge whilst I load, when something is heard galloping behind us, and Dick, who had stayed behind, as we thought, to fill his powder-flask, appears in the field trying the paces of the tenant's young one. Although he is well behind the beat, the galloping horse forms a disturbing element to the guns. Dick rides over the low fence at the end, round the next field, and finally returns right in the way of a shot I might have had at a landrail. I don't swear, because I don't approve thereof, and, moreover, am moderate in my temper; but this is indeed trying, and, to make matters worse, the fellow doesn't appear in the least bit ashamed of himself, but quietly dismounts, feels the legs of the colt carefully down, and, refusing to take his gun from the keepers, remarks that he is tired of missing, and (to my joy) shall go home. A prudent resolve, as he had fired at least twenty or thirty shots without touching a feather, as it seemed to my heated imagination; but the keeper, with a presence the late Duc de Morny might have envied, urges him "not to give over yet; he might 'ave a haccident and hit summut." Laughter is irresistible, but Dick's ardour is not equal to trusting to this remote contingency, so he wends his way homewards, for a wonder, on his own legs. The rest of us proceed again, but the shooting is, if possible, worse than before lunch; and as we enter the park again I ask, in a dejected tone of the head keeper, "What is the bag?" "Seven brace, three hares, and one rabbit." I turn away with a sigh, and mentally resolve to remove from my head, in the solitude of my chamber, on my return, the hairs--the many hairs--that must have turned grey during that terrible day; and I join the rest to reseek the hall, a sadder and a sulkier man. We enter the billiard-room at six, to find Dick engaged in a game of billiards with his pretty cousin, Lucy Hazard--the dog! but feeling that he deserves nothing at our hands, we break the _tête-à-tête_ and summon the other ladies for a pool. Lucy has been chaffing Master Dick about "being such a muff as to return so soon." Quite right--an uncommonly nice girl is Miss Lucy, and with £50,000 of her own, too, they say. If I were ten years younger, I think I would marry her (I am far too vain to doubt her consent), and get some shooting of my own,--some shooting, sir, conducted on my own principles: I don't care much for the Downcharge Hall style of doing business. "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre," remarked a French general, as he levelled his glass at our light squadrons charging through the bloody vale of Balaklava. "C'est luxurieux, mais ce n'est pas le sport," remarks the writer of this grumble, as he levels his pen at the sportsmen of Downcharge Hall and all who may resemble them. SIMPSON'S SNIPE "Who is Mr Simpson?" asked my wife, tossing a letter across the breakfast-table. This same little lady opens my correspondence with the _sang-froid_ of a private secretary. "Who is Mr Simpson?" she repeated. "If he is as big as his monogram, we shall have to widen all the doors, and raise the ceilings, in order to let him in." The monogram referred to resembled a pyrotechnic device. It blazed in all the colours of the rainbow, and twisted itself like the coloured worsted in a young lady's first sampler. "Simpson," I replied, in, I must confess, a tremulous sort of way, "is a very nice fellow, and a capital shot." "I perceive that you have asked him to shoot." "Only for a day and a night, my dear." "Only for a day and a night! And where is Willie to sleep, and where is Blossie to sleep? You know the dear children are in the strangers' rooms for change of air, and really I _must_ say it is very thoughtless of you;" and my wife's _nez retroussé_ went up at a very acute angle, whilst a general hardness of expression settled itself upon her countenance, like a plaster cast. I had a bad case. I had been dining with a friend, my friend Captain de Britska. I had taken sherry with my soup, hock with my fish, champagne with my entrée, and a nip of brandy before my claret. What I imbibed after the Lafitte I scarcely remember. Mr Simpson was of the party, and sat next to me. He forced a succession of cigars into my mouth, and subsequently a mixture of tobacco, a special thing. (What smoker, by the way, hasn't a special thing in the shape of a mixture? what _gourmet_ has no special tip as regards salad-dressing?) We spoke of shooting. He asked me if I had any. I replied in the affirmative, expressing a hope that he would at some time or other practically discuss that fact. Somehow I was led into a direct invitation, and this was the outcome. I had committed myself beneath my friend's mahogany, and under the influence of my friend's generous wine. I was in a corner; and now, ye gods! I had to face Mrs Smithe. There are moments when a man's wife is simply awful. Snugly entrenched behind the unassailable line of defence, duty, and with such "Woolwich Infants" as her children to hurl against you, which she does in a persistent remorseless way, she is a terror. No man, be he as brave as Leonidas or as cool as Sir Charles Coldstream, is proof against the partner of his bosom when she is on the rampage; and, as I have already observed, Mrs S. was "end on." "Another change will do the children good, Maria," I observed. "Yes, I suppose so. It will do Willie's cold good to sleep in your dressing-room without a fire, won't it? and Blossie can have a bed made up in the bath. Is this Mr Simpson married or single?" _Hinc illæ lachrymæ._ I couldn't say. I never asked him. "What does it matter?" I commenced, with a view to diplomatising. "Yes, but it does," she interposed. "If he is a respectable married man, which I very much doubt, he must have dear Willie's room." "I am very sorry that I asked him at all, Maria; but as he has been asked, and as I must drive over to meet him in a few minutes, for Heaven's sake make the best of it." "Oh, of course; I receive my instructions, and am to carry them out. All the trouble falls upon me, while you drive off to the station smoking a shilling cigar, when you know that every penny will be wanted to send Willie to Eton." I got out of it somehow. Not that Mrs S. was entirely pacified. She still preserved an armed neutrality; yet even this concession was very much to be coveted. She's a dear good little creature, but she has fiery moods occasionally; and I ask you, my dear sir, is she one whit the worse for it? How often does your good lady fly at _you_ during the twenty-four hours? How often! The theme is painful. _Passons._ My stained-wood trap was brought round by my man-of-all-work, Billy Doyle. Billy is a tight little "boy," over whose unusually large skull some fifty summers' suns have passed, scorching away his shock hair, and leaving only a few streaks, which he carefully plasters across his bald pate till they resemble so many cracks upon the bottom of an inverted china bowl. Billy is my factotum. He looks after my horse, dogs, gun, rod, pipes, and clothes, with a view to the reversion of the latter. He was reared, "man an' boy," on the estate, and is upon the most familiar yet respectful terms with the whole family. Billy continually lectures me, imparting his opinions upon all matters appertaining to my affairs, as though he were some rich uncle whose will in my favour was safely deposited with the family solicitor. "We've twenty minutes to meet the train, Billy," I observed, giving the reins a jerk. "Is it for to ketch the tin-o'clock thrain from Dublin?" he asked. "Yes." "Begorra, ye've an hour! She's like yourself--she's always late." "There's a gentleman coming down to spend the day and shoot," I said, without noticing Billy's sarcasm. "Shoot! Arrah, shoot what?" "Why, snipe, plover--anything that may turn up." "Be jabers, he'll have for to poach, thin." "What do you mean, Billy?" "Divvle resave the feather there is betune this an' Ballybann; they're dhruv out av the cunthry." "Nonsense, man. We'll get a snipe in Booker's fields." "Ye will, av ye sind to Dublin for it." I felt rather down in the mouth, for I had during the season given unlimited permission to my surrounding neighbours to blaze away--a privilege which had been used, if not abused, to the utmost limits. Scarce a day passed that we were not under fire, and on several occasions were in a state of siege, in consequence of a succession of raids upon the rookeries adjoining the house. "We can try Mr Pringle's woods, Billy." "Yez had betther lave _thim_ alone, or the coroner 'ill be afther havin' a job. Pringle wud shoot his father sooner nor he'd let a bird be touched." "This is very awkward," I muttered. "Awkward! sorra a shurer shake in Chrisendom. It's crukkeder nor what happened to ould Major Moriarty beyant at Sievenaculliagh, that me father--may the heavens be his bed this day!--lived wud, man an' boy." Billy was full of anecdote, and being anxious to pull my thoughts together, I mechanically requested him to let me hear all about the dilemma in which the gallant Major had found himself. "Well, sir, th' ould Major was as dacent an ould gintleman as ever swallied a glass o' sperrits, an' there was always lashins an' lavins beyant at the house. If ye wor hungry it was yerself that was for to blame, and if ye wor dhry, it wasn't be raisin av wantin' a _golliogue_. Th' ould leddy herself was aiqual to the Major, an' a hospitabler ould cupple didn't live the Shannon side o' Connaught. Well, sir, wan mornin' a letther cums, sayin' that some frind was comin' for to billet on thim. "'Och, I'm bet!' says the Mrs Moriarty. "'What's that yer sayin' at all at all?' says th' ould Major; 'who bet ye?' says he. "'Shure, here's Sir Timothy Blake, and Misther Bodkin Bushe, an' three more comin',' says she, 'an' this is only Wednesday.' "'Arrah, what the dickens has that for to say to it?' says the Major. "'There's not as much fresh mate in the house as wud give a brequest to a blackbird,' says she; 'an' they all ate fish av a Friday, an' how are we for to get it at all at all? An' they'll be wantin' fish an' game.' "Ye see, sir," said Billy, "there was little or no roads in thim ould times, an' the carriers only crassed that way wanst a week." "'We're hobbled, sure enough,' says the Major, 'we're hobbled, mam,' says he, 'an' I wish they'd had manners to wait to be axed afore they'd come into a man's house,' he says. "'Couldn't ye shoot somethin'?' says Mrs Moriarty. "'Shoot a haystack flyin', mam,' says the Major, for he was riz, an' when he was riz the divvle cudn't hould him; 'what is there for to shoot, barrin' a saygull? an' ye might as well be aitin' saw-dust.' "'I seen three wild duck below on the pond,' she says. "'Ye did on Tib's Eve!' says the Major. "'Och, begorra, it's thruth I'm tellin' ye', says she; 'I seen thim this very mornin', when I was comin' from mass--an' be the same token,' says she, lukkin' out av the windy, 'there they are, rosy an' well.' "'Thin upon my conscience, mam,' roared the Major, 'if I don't hit thim I'll make them lave that!' "So he ups an' loads an ould blundherbuss wud all soarts av combusticles, an' down he creeps to the edge av the wather, and hides hisself in some long grass, for the ducks was heddin' for him. Up they cum; an' the minnit they wor within a cupple av perch he pulls the thrigger as bould as a ram, whin by the hokey smut it hot him a welt in the stummick that levelled him, an' med him feel as if tundher was inside av him rumblin'. He roared millia murdher, for he thought he was kilt; but howsomever he fell soft an' aisy, an' he put out his hand for to see if he was knocked to bits behind, whin, begorra, he felt somethin' soft an' warm. 'Arrah, what the puck is this?' sez he; an' turnin' round, what was he sittin' on but an illigant Jack hare. 'Yer cotch, _ma bouchal_,' sez he; 'an' yer as welkim as the flowers o' May.' "Wasn't that a twist o' luck, sir?" asked Billy pausing to take breath. "Not a doubt of it. But what became of the ducks?" "Troth, thin, ye'll hear. The Major dhropped two av thim wud the combusticles in the blundherbuss, but th' ould mallard kep' floatin' on the wather in a quare soart av a way, an' yellin' murdher. When the Major kem nigh him, he seen that he was fastened like to somethin' undher the wather; an' whin he cotch him, what do you think he found? It's truth I'm tellin' ye, an' no lie: he found the ramrod, that he neglected for to take out o' the gun, run right through th' ould mallard. Half av it was in the mallard, an' be the hole in me coat, th' other half was stuck in a lovely lump av a salmon; and the bould Major cotch thim both. 'Now,' says he, 'come on, Sir Tim an the whole creel of yez, who's afeard?' An' I'm just thinkin' sir," added Billy, as we dashed into the railway yard, "that if ye don't get a slice av luck like Major Moriarty's, yer frind might as well be on the Hill o' Howth." The force of Billy's remark riveted itself in my mind, and the idea of asking a man so long a distance to shoot nothing was very little short of insult. Mr Simpson arrived as we drove in, arrayed in an ulster just imported from Inverness. His hat was new; his boots were new; his gloves awfully new, yellow and stiff, and forcing his fingers very far apart, as though his hands were wooden stretchers. His portmanteau, solid leather, was brand new; the very purse from which he extracted a new sixpence to tip the porter was of the same virgin type. He was mistaken for a bridegroom, and the fair bride was eagerly sought for by the expectant porter whilst removing a new rug from the compartment in which Mr Simpson had been seated. To crown all this newness, his gun-case, solid leather, had never seen the open air till this day, and the iron which impressed upon it Mr Rigby's brand could scarcely have had time to grow cold. "Begorra, it's in the waxworks he ought for to be," muttered Billy Doyle, grimly surveying him from head to foot. Mr Simpson's thick moustache possessed a queer sort of curl, his nose too, followed this pattern, so that his face somewhat resembled those three legs which are impressed upon a Manx coin. His eyes were long slits, with narrow lids, not unlike a cut in a kid glove: one of these eyes he kept open by means of an eyeglass. This eyeglass was perpetually dropping into his bosom and disappearing, never coming to the surface when required, and only coming up to breathe after a succession of prolonged and abortive dives. "It's very cold," he exclaimed, grasping my hand, or rather endeavouring to grasp it, for the new gloves would admit of no loving contact. "There's likker over beyant at the rifrishmint-bar," observed Billy, whose invariable habit it was to cut into the conversation with such comments or observations as suggested themselves to him at the moment. Perceiving an inclination on the part of my guest to profit by the hint, I interposed by informing him that the refreshment was of the meanest possible character, in addition to its possessing a very inflammatory tendency. "Thrue for ye, sir. The sperrits is that sthrong that it wud desthroy warts, or burn the paint off av a hall dure." "That will do, Billy," I said, as Simpson's face bore silent tokens of wonder at the garrulity of my retainer. "We don't require your opinion at present." "Och, that's hapes, as Missis Dooley remarked whin she swallird the crab," said Billy very sulkily, as he mounted behind. "How is our friend De Britska?" I asked. "Oh, very well indeed. He quite envied me my trip. He says your shooting is about the best thing in this part of the world." "Oh, it's not bad," I replied, assuming an indifference that I was far from participating in; "but there are times when I assure--ha, ha! it may appear incredulous, that we cannot stir a single feather." "Have you much snipe, Mr Smithe?" "Sorra a wan," replied Billy. "Your gamekeeper?" asked Simpson, jerking his head in the direction of my retainer. "My _factotum_. He is one of the family. A regular character, and I trust you will make allowances for him." "I love characters. Depend upon it we shall not fall out." Simpson chatted very agreeably, and very small. He had read the _Irish Times_ during the rail journey, and was master of the situation. Some men take five shillings-worth out of a penny paper. This was one of them. He had sucked it all in, and the day's news was coming out through the pores of his skin. As a rule, such men are to be avoided. The individual who persistently asks you "What news?" or "Is there anything new to-day?" is a wooden-headed gossiping bore, who cannot start an idea, and oils the machinery inside his skull with the twopenny-halfpenny daily currency. Simpson spoke a great deal of the army, quoted the various changes mentioned in that day's _Gazette_ with a vigour of memory that was perfectly astounding. Although personally unknown to the countrymen around me, he seemed thoroughly acquainted with their respective pedigrees, their intermarriages, their rent-rolls, and in fact with their most private concerns; so that before we reached our destination I knew considerably more of my neighbours than I, or my father before me, had ever known. His shooting experiences were of the most extensive and daring character. He had tumbled tigers, stuck pigs, iced white bears, and ostracised ostriches. He had been in the tiger's mouth, on the boar's tusks, and in the arms of the bear. His detailed information on the subject of firearms was worthy of a gunmaker's pet 'prentice. "I've shot with Greener's patent central-fire choke-bore, and I pronounce it a handy tool. Westley Richards has made some good instruments, and Purdy's performances are crack. I've taken down one of Rigby's with me, as I have some idea of experimentalising; Rigby is a very safe maker. I expect to do some damage to-day, friend Smithe." What a laughing-stock I should be, when this man unfolded the tale of his being decoyed into the country by a fellow who bragged about his preserves, upon which there wasn't a feather! Would I make a clean breast of it? would I say that-- While this struggle was waging beneath my waistcoat, we arrived, and there was nothing for it but to trust to luck and Billy Doyle. When we alighted, I asked Simpson into the drawing-room, as his bed-chamber had not yet been allotted to him. My wife was still sulky and did not appear, so I had to discover her whereabouts. "Simpson has arrived, my dear." "I suppose so," very curtly. "He is a very agreeable entertaining fellow." "I suppose so," she snapped. "Where have you decided on putting him?" "In your dressing-room." "My dressing-room?" "Yes, your dressing-room. I wouldn't disturb the children for the Prince of Wales." Now this was very shabby of my wife. My dressing-room was my _sanctum sanctorum_. There were my papers, letters, pipes, boots, knick-knacks, all laid out with a bachelor's care, and each in its own particular place. To erect a bedstead meant an utter disturbance of my effects, which weeks could not repair, especially as regards my papers. I expostulated. "There is no use in talking," said my wife; "the bed is put up." Tableau. Whilst my guest was engaged in washing his hands before luncheon, I held a conference with Billy Doyle with reference to the shooting, our line of country, and the tactics necessary to be pursued. "Me opinion is that he is a _gommoch_. He doesn't know much. Av he cum down wud an old gun-case that was in the wars, I'd be peckened; but wud sich a ginteel tool, ye needn't fret. We'll give him a walk, anyhow. He'll get a bellyful that will heart scald him." "But the honour of the country is at stake, Billy. I asked Mr Simpson to shoot, promising him good sport, and surely _you_ are not going to let him return to Dublin to give us a bad name." This appeal to Billy's feelings was well timed. He knew every fence and every nest in the barony, and it was with a view to putting things into a proper training that I thus appealed to his better feelings. Billy scratched his head. "Begorra, he must have a bird if they're in it; but they're desperate wild, and take no ind of decoyin'." Simpson's politeness to my wife was unbounded. He professed himself charmed to have the honour of making her acquaintance, took her in to luncheon with as much tender care as though she had been a cracked bit of very precious china ware; invited her to partake of everything on the table, shoving the dishes under her chin, and advising her as to what to eat, drink, and avoid. He narrated stories of noble families with whom he was upon the most intimate terms, and assured my wife that he was quite startled by her extraordinary likeness to Lady Sarah Macwhirter; which so pleased Mrs S. that later on she informed me that as Blossie was so much better, she thought it would be more polite to give Mr Simpson the blue bedroom. I found this ardent sportsman very much inclined to dally in my lady's boudoir, in preference to taking the field, and I encouraged this proclivity, in the hope of escaping the shooting altogether, and thus save the credit of my so-called preserves. But here again I was doomed to disappointment. Mrs S., who now began to become rather anxious about the domestic arrangements, politely but firmly reminded him of the object of his visit, and insisted upon our departing for the happy hunting-grounds at once. And at length, when very reluctantly he rose from the table, he helped himself to a stiff glass of brandy-and-water, in order, as he stated, to "steady his hand." I must confess that I was rather startled when he announced his intention of shooting in his ulster. The idea of dragging this long-tailed appendage across ditches and over bogs appeared _outré_, especially as the pockets bulged very considerably, as though they were loaded with woollen wraps; but I was silent in the presence of one who had sought his quarry in the jungle, and shoved my old-fashioned idea back into the fusty lumber-room of my thoughts. Billy Doyle awaited us with the dogs at the stable gate. These faithful animals no sooner perceived me than they set up an unlimited howling of delight; but instead of bounding forward to meet me, as was their wont, they suddenly stopped, as if struck by an invisible hand, and commenced to set at Simpson. This extraordinary conduct of these dogs--there are no better dogs in Ireland--incensed Billy to fever heat. "Arrah, what the puck are yez settin' at? Are yez mad or dhrunk? Whoop! gelang ow a that, Feltram! Hush! away wud ye, Birdlime!" "Take them away; take them away!" cried Simpson, very excitedly. "I don't want them; I never shoot with dogs. Remove them, my man." Billy caught Feltram, but Birdlime eluded his grasp; and having released Feltram and captured Birdlime, the former remained at a dead set, whilst the latter struggled with his captor, as though the lives of both depended on the issue. "May the divvle admire me," panted Billy, "but this bangs Banagher. Is there a herrin' stirrin', or anything for to set the dogs this way?--it bates me intirely." I naturally turned to my guest, who looked as puzzled as I did myself. "I have it!" he cried; "it's the blood of the sperm-whale that's causing this." "Arrah, how the blazes cud the blood av all the whales in Ireland make thim shupayriour animals set as if the birds were foreninst them?" demanded Billy, his arms akimbo. "I will explain," said Simpson. "Last autumn I was up whaling off the coast of Greenland. We struck a fine fish; and after playing him for three-and-twenty hours, we got him aboard. Just as we were taking the harpoon out, he made one despairing effort and spurted blood; a few drops fell upon this coat, just here," pointing to the inside portion of his right-hand cuff, "and I pledge you my veracity no dog can withstand it. They invariably point; and I assure you, Smithe, you could get up a drag hunt by simply walking across country in this identical coat, built by John Henry Smalpage." This startling and sensational explanation satisfied me. Not so my _factotum_, who gave vent in an undertone to such exclamations as "_Naboclish! Wirra, wirra!_ What does he take us for? Whales, begorra!" The riddance of the dogs was a grand _coup_ for me. In the event of having no sport the failure could be easily accounted for, and I should come off with flying colours. "I make it a point" observed Simpson, "to shoot as little with dogs as possible. I like to set my own game, shoot it, and bag it; nor do I care to be followed by troublesome and often impertinent self-opinionated game-keepers" (Billy was at this moment engaged in incarcerating Feltram and Birdlime). "These fellows are always spoilt, and never know their position." I was nettled at this. "If you refer to----" "My dear Smithe, I allude to my friend Lord Mulligatawny's fellows, got up in Lincoln green and impossible gaiters, who insist upon loading for you, and all that sort of thing. You know Mulligatawny, of course?" I rather apologised for not having the honour. "Then you shall, Smithe. I'll bring you together when you come to town. Leave that to me; a nice little party: Mulligatawny, Sir Percy Whiffler, Colonel Owlfinch of the 1st Life Guards--they're at Beggar's Bush now, I suppose--Belgum, yourself, and myself." This was very considerate and flattering; and I heartily hoped that by some fluke or other we might be enabled to make a bag. When we arrived upon the shooting-ground, I observed that it was time to load; and calling up Billy Doyle with the guns, I proceeded to carry my precept into practice. My weapon was an old-fashioned muzzle-loader, one of Truelock & Harris's; and as I went through the process of loading, I could see that Mr Simpson was regarding my movements with a careful and critical eye. "I know that you swells despise this sort of thing," I remarked; "but I have dropped a good many birds with this gun at pretty long ranges, and have wiped the eyes of many a breech-loading party." "I--I like that sort of gun," said Simpson. "I'd be glad if you'd take this," presenting his, with both barrels covering me. "Good heavens, don't do that!" I cried, shoving the muzzle aside. "What--what--" he cried, whirling round like a teetotum--"what have I done?" "Nothing as yet; but I hate to have the muzzle of a gun turned towards me since the day I saw poor cousin Jack's brains blown out." "What am I to do?" exclaimed Simpson. "I'll do anything." "It's all right," I replied; "you won't mind my old-world stupidity." My guest's gun was a central-fire breech-loader of Rigby's newest type, which he commenced to prepare for action in what seemed to me to be a very bungling sort of way. He dropped it twice, and in releasing the barrels, brought them into very violent collision with his head, which caused the waters of anguish to roll silently down his cheeks and on to his pointed moustache. If I had not been aware of his manifold experiences in the shooting line, I could have set him down as a man who had never handled a gun in his life; but knowing his powers and prowess, I ascribed his awkwardness to simple carelessness, a carelessness in all probability due to the smallness of the game of which he was now in pursuit. I therefore refrained from taking any notice, and from making any observation until he deliberately proceeded to thrust a patent cartridge into the _muzzle_ of the barrel of his central-fire. "Hold hard, Mr Simpson; you are surely only jesting." "Jesting! How do you mean?" "Why, using that cartridge in the way you are doing." "What other way should I use it?" "May I again remind you that I am utterly averse to facetiousness where firearms are concerned, and----" "My dear Smithe, I meant nothing, I assure you. I pledge you my word of honour. Here, load it yourself;" and he handed me the gun. "There'll be a job for the coroner afore sunset," growled Billy. "What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed Simpson, rather savagely. "Mane! There's widdys and lone orphans enough in the counthry, sir--that's what I mane," and Billy started in advance with the air of a man who had to do or die. Mr Simpson was silent for some time, during which he found himself perpetually involved in his gun, which appeared to give him the uttermost uneasiness. First, he held it at arm's length as if it was a bow; then he placed it under his arm, and held on to it with the tenacity of an octopus; after a little he shifted it again, sloping it on his shoulder, ever and anon glancing towards the barrels to ascertain their exact position. He would pause, place the butt against the ground, and survey the surrounding prospect with the scrutinising gaze of a cavalry patrol. "Hush!" he suddenly exclaimed. "We lost something that time; I heard a bird." "Nothin', barrin' a crow," observed Billy. "A plover, sir; it was the cry of a plover," evasively retorted the other. "Holy Vargin! do ye hear this? A pluvver! Divvle resave the pluvver ever was seen in the barony!" "Silence, Doyle!" I shouted, finding that my retainer's observations were becoming personal and unpleasant. "Troth, we'll all be silent enough by-an'-by." We had been walking for about half an hour, when Mr Simpson suggested that it might be advisable to separate, he taking one direction, I taking the other, but both moving in parallel lines. Having joyfully assented to this proposition, as the careless manner in which he handled his gun was fraught with the direst consequences, I moved into an adjacent bog, leaving my guest to blaze away at what I considered a safe distance. I took Billy with me, both for company and for counsel, as my guest's assumed ignorance of the fundamental principles of shooting had somewhat puzzled me. "It's a quare bisniss intirely, Masther Jim. He knows no more how to howld a gun nor you do to howld a baby, more betoken ye've two av the finest childre--God be good to them!--in Europe. I don't like for to say he's coddin' us, wud his tigers an' elephants an' combusticles, but, be me song, it luks very like it. I'd like for to see him shootin', that wud putt an ind to the question." At this moment, bang! bang! went the two barrels of my guest's gun. Billy and I ran to the hedge, and peeping through, perceived Simpson running very fast towards a clump of furze, shouting and gesticulating violently. I jumped across the fence, and was rapidly approaching him, when he waved me back. "Stop! don't come near me! I'm into them. There are quantities of snipe here." "Arrah, what is he talkin' about at all at all?" panted Billy. "Snipes! Cock him up wud snipes! There ain't a snipe----" Here Simpson, who had been groping amongst the furze, held up to our astonished gaze _two brace of snipe_. Billy Doyle seemed completely dumbfounded. "That bangs anything I ever heerd tell of. Man nor boy ever seen a snipe in that field afore. Begorra, he's handy enough wud the gun, after all." I was very much pleased to find that our excursion had borne fruit, and that my vaunted preserves were not utterly barren. "That's a good beginning, Simpson," I cried. "Go ahead; you'll get plenty of birds by-and-by." "I'll shoot at nothing but snipe," he replied. "Here you, Billy, come here and load for me." "Let's look at the birds, av ye plaze, sir," said Billy, who began to entertain a feeling akin to respect for a man who could bring down his two brace at a shot. "I'll be bound they're fat an' cosy, arter the hoighth av fine feedin' on this slob." "They're in my bag. By-and-by," replied Simpson curtly. "Now, my man, follow your master, and leave me to myself;" and my guest strode in the opposite direction. Bang! bang! "Be the mortial, he's at thim agin. This is shupayriour," cried my retainer, hurrying towards the place whence the report proceeded. Simpson again held up _two brace of snipe_, and again plunged them into his bag; nor would he gratify the justifiable longings of our gamekeeper by as much as a peep at them. "This is capital sport. Why, this place is swarming with snipe," cried my guest, whilst his gun was being reloaded. "Depend upon it, it's a mistake to take dogs. The birds smell them. I'll try that bit of bog now." "Ye'll have to mind yer futtin'," observed Billy. "It's crukked an' crass enough in some spots; I'd betther be wid ye." "Certainly not," said my guest. "I always shoot alone." "Och, folly yer own wish, sir; only mind yer futtin'." Mr Simpson disappeared into the hollow in which the bog was situated, and, as before, bang! bang! we heard the report of both barrels. "Be jabers, I'm bet intirely. Thim snipes must have been dhruv from the say, an' have come here unknownst to any wan. Ay, bawl away! Whisht! be the hokey, he's into the bog!" A dismal wailing, accompanied by cries for help, arose from out the bog, where we found poor Simpson almost up to his chin, and endeavouring to support himself by his elbows. "Ugh! ugh! lift me out, for heaven's sake! My new clothes--this coat that I never put on before" (his whaling garment)--"why did I come to this infernal hole. Ugh! ugh!" We dragged him up, leaving his patent boots and stockings behind him. Billy bore him on his back to the house, where he was stripped and arrayed in evening costume. From the pockets of his ulster, which it was found necessary to turn out for drying purposes, Mr William Doyle extracted no less than _six brace of snipe_. Unfortunately for Mr Simpson the bill was attached to the leg of one of the birds. They had been purchased at a poulterer's in Dublin. * * * * * Mr Simpson did not remain to dine or to sleep. He pleaded a business engagement which he had completely overlooked, and left by the 4.50 train. "Av all th' imposthors! and his tigers an' elephants no less, an' bears an' algebras! An' goin' for to cod me into believin' there was snipes growin' in a clover-field, an' thin never to gi' me a shillin'! Pah! the naygur!" and Billy Doyle's resentment recognised no limits. It is scarcely necessary to observe that I was _not_ invited to meet Lord Mulligatawny, Sir Percy Whiffler, and Colonel Owlfinch of Her Majesty's Guards, and that my wife holds Simpson over me whenever I hint at the probability of a visit to the metropolis. PODGER'S POINTER I am not a sporting man--I never possessed either a dog or a gun--I never fired a shot in my life, and the points of a canine quadruped are as unknown to me as those of the sea-serpent. The 12th of August is a mystery, and the 1st of September a sealed book. I have been regarded with well-merited contempt at the club by asking for grouse in the month of June, and for woodcock in September. I think it is just as well to mention these matters, lest it should be supposed that I desire to sail under false colours. I am acquainted with several men who shoot, and also with some who have shooting to give away. The former very frequently invite me to join their parties at the moors, turnip-fields, and woods; the latter press their shooting on me, especially when I decline on the grounds of disinclination and incapacity. "I wish I had your chances, Brown," howls poor little Binks, who can bring down any known bird at any given distance. "You're always getting invitations because you _can't_ shoot; and I cannot get one because I _can_. It's too bad, by George!--it's too bad!" One lovely morning in the month of September I was sauntering along the shady side of Sackville Street, Dublin, when a gentleman, encased in a coat of a resounding pattern, all over pockets, and whose knickerbockers seemed especially constructed to meet the requirements of the coat, suddenly burst upon, and clutched me. "The very man I wanted," he exclaimed. "I've been hunting you the way O'Mulligan's pup hunted the fourpenny bit through the bonfire." "What can I do for you, Mr Podgers?" I asked. "I want a day's shooting at O'Rooney's of Ballybawn," responded Podgers. Now, I was not intimate with Mr O'Rooney. We had met at the club; but as he was a smoking man, and as I, after a prolonged and terrific combat with a very mild cigar (what must the strong ones be!), had bidden a long farewell to the Indian weed, it is scarcely necessary to mention that, although Mr O'Rooney and myself were very frequently beneath the same roof, we very seldom encountered one another, save in a casual sort of way. "I assure you, Mr Podgers, that I----" "Pshaw! that's all gammon," he burst in anticipatingly. "You can do it if you like. Sure we won't kill _all_ the game. And I have the loveliest dog that ever stood in front of a bird. I want to get a chance of showing him off. He'll do you credit." I was anxious to oblige Podgers. He had stood by me in a police-court case once upon a time, and proved an _alibi_ such as must have met the approval even of the immortal Mr Weller himself; so I resolved upon soliciting the required permission, and informed Podgers that I would acquaint him with the result of my application. "That's a decent fellow. Come back to my house with me now, and I'll give you a drop of John Jameson that will make your hair curl." Declining to have my hair curled through the instrumentality of Mr Jameson's unrivalled whisky, I wended my way towards the club, and, as luck would have it, encountered O'Rooney lounging on the steps enjoying a cigar. After the conventional greetings, I said, "By the way, you have some capital partridge shooting at Ballybawn." "Oh, pretty good," was the reply, in that self-satisfied, complacent tone in which a crack billiard-player refers to the spot-stroke, or a rifleman to his score when competing for the Queen's Prize. "I'm no shot myself--I never fired a gun in my life; but there's a particular friend of mine who is most anxious to have _one_ day's shooting at Ballybawn. Do you think you could manage to let him have it?" I emphasised the word "one" in the most impressive way. "I would give one or two days, Mr Brown, with the greatest pleasure; but the fact is, I have lent my dogs to Sir Patrick O'Houlahan." "Oh, as to that, my friend has a splendid dog--a most remarkable dog. I hear it's a treat to see him in front of a bird." I stood manfully by Podgers' exact words, adding some slight embellishments, in order to increase O'Rooney's interest in the animal. "In that case, there can be no difficulty, Mr Brown. I leave for Ballybawn on Saturday--will you kindly name Monday, as I would, in addition to the pleasure of receiving you and your friend, like to witness the performance of this remarkable dog; and I _must_ be in Galway on Wednesday." Having settled the preliminaries so satisfactorily, I wrote the following note to Podgers:-- "DEAR PODGERS, "It's all right. Mr O'Rooney has named Monday. _Be sure to bring the dog, as his dogs are away._ Come and breakfast with me at eight o'clock, as the train starts from the King's Bridge Terminus at nine o'clock.--Yours, "BENJAMIN B. BROWN. "P.S.--_I praised the dog sky high._ O'R. is most anxious to see him in front of the birds." I received a gushing note in reply, stating that he would breakfast with me, and bring the dog, adding, "It's some time since he was shot over; but that makes no difference, as he is the finest dog in Leinster." Knowing Podgers to be a very punctual sort of person, I had ordered breakfast for eight o'clock sharp, and consequently felt somewhat surprised when the timepiece chimed the quarter past. I consulted his letter--day, date, and time were recapitulated in the most businesslike way. Some accident might have detained him. Perhaps he preferred meeting me at the station. I had arrived at this conclusion, and had just made the first incision into a round of buttered toast, when a very loud, jerky, uneven knocking thundered at the hall door, and the bell was tugged with a violence that threatened to drag the handle off. I rushed to the window, and perceived Podgers clinging frantically to the area railings with one hand, whilst with the other he held a chain, attached to which, at the utmost attainable distance, stood, or stretched, in an attitude as if baying the moon, the fore legs planted out in front, the hind legs almost _clutching_ the granite step, the eyes betraying an inflexible determination not to budge one inch from the spot--a bony animal, of a dingy white colour, with dark patches over the eyes, imparting a mournfully dissipated appearance--the redoubtable dog which was to afford us a treat "in front of the birds." "Hollo, Podgers!" I cried, "you're late!" "This cursed animal," gasped Podgers; "he got away from me in Merrion Square after a cat. The cat climbed up the Prince Consort statue. This brute, somehow or other got up after her. She was on the head, and he was too high for me to reach him, when I got the hook of this umbrella and----" At this moment the hall-door opened, and the dog being animated with an energetic desire to explore the interior of the house, suddenly relaxed the pull upon the chain, which utterly unexpected movement sent Podgers flying into the hall as though he had been discharged from a catapult. My maid-of-all-work, an elderly lady with proclivities in the direction of "sperrits," happened to stand right in the centre of the doorway when Podgers commenced his unpremeditated bound. He cannoned against her, causing her to reel and stagger against the wall, and to clutch despairingly at the nearest available object to save herself from falling. That object happened to be the curly hair of my acrobatic friend, to which her five fingers clung as the suckers of the octopus cling to the crab. By the aid of this substantial support she had just righted herself, when the dog, finding himself comparatively free, made one desperate plunge into the hall, entwining his chain round the limbs of the lady in one dexterous whirl which levelled her, with a very heavy thud, on the body of the prostrate Podgers. Now, whether she was animated with the idea that she was in bodily danger from both master and dog, and that it behoved her to defend herself to the uttermost extent of her power, I cannot possibly determine; but she commenced a most vigorous onslaught upon both, bestowing a kick and a cuff alternately with an impartiality that spoke volumes in favour of her ideas upon the principles of even--and indeed I may add, heavy-handed justice. I arrived upon the scene in time to raise the prostrate form of my friend, and to administer such words of consolation and sympathy as, under the circumstances, were his due. His left eye betrayed symptoms of incipient inflammation, and his mouth gave evidence of the violence with which Miss Bridget Byrne (the lady in the case) had brought her somewhat heavy knuckle-dusters into contact with it. "Bringin' wild bastes into a gintleman's dacent house, as if it was a barn, that's manners!" she muttered. "Av I can get a clout at that dog, I'll lave him as bare as a plucked thrush!" At this instant a violent crash of crockery-ware was heard in the regions of the kitchen. "Holy Vargin! but the baste is on the dhresser! _I'll_ dhress the villian!" and seizing upon a very stout ash stick which stood in the hall, she darted rapidly in the direction from whence the dire sounds were proceeding. "Hold hard, woman!" cried Podgers. "He's a very valuable animal. I'll make good any damage. Use your authority, Brown," he added, appealing to me. "She's a terrible person this; she'd stop at nothing." Ere I could interpose, a violent skirmishing took place, in which such exclamations as "Take that, ye divvle! Ye'll brake me chaney, will ye? There's chaney for ye!" followed by very audible whacks, which, if they had fulfilled their intended mission, would very speedily have sent the dog to the happy hunting-grounds of his race. One well-directed blow, however, made its mark, and was succeeded by a whoop of triumph from Miss Byrne and a yell of anguish from her vanquished foe. "Gelang, ye fireside spaniel! Ye live on the neighbours. How dar' ye come in here? Ye'll sup sorrow. I'll give a couple more av I can get at ye." Podgers rushed to the rescue, and, after a very protracted and exciting chase, during which a well-directed blow, intended by Bridget for the sole use and benefit of the dog, had alighted on the head of its master, succeeded in effecting a capture. This, too, was done under embarrassing circumstances; for the dog had sought sanctuary within the sacred precincts of Miss Byrne's sleeping apartment, beneath the very couch upon which it was the habit of that lady to repose her virgin form after the labours of the day; and her indignation knew no bounds when Podgers, utterly unmindful of the surroundings, hauled forth the dog. "There's no dacency in man nor baste. They're all wan, sorra a lie in it!" At this crisis Podgers must have developed his pecuniary resources, for her tone changed with marvellous rapidity, and her anger was melted into a well-feigned contrition for having used her fists so freely. "Poor baste! shure it's frightened he is. I wudn't hurt a fly, let alone an illigant tarrier like that. Thry a bit o' beefsteak in regard o' yer eye, sir. Ye must have hot it agin somethin' hard; it will be as black as a beetle in tin minits." Podgers uttered full-flavoured language. I looked at my watch and found that we could only "do" the train. Having hailed an outside car, the breakfastless Podgers seated himself upon one side, whilst I took the other, and after a very considerable expenditure of hard labour and skilful strategy, in which we were aided by the carman and Miss Byrne, we succeeded in forcing Albatross (the pointer) into the well in the middle. I am free to confess that I sat with my back to that animal with considerable misgivings. He looked hungry and vicious, and as though a piece of human flesh would prove as agreeable to his capacious maw as any other description of food. It was his habit, too, during our journey, to elevate his head in the air, and to give utterance to a series of the most unearthly howlings, which could only be partially interrupted, not by any means stopped, by Podgers' hat being pressed closely over the mouth, whilst Podgers punched him _a tergo_ with no very light hand. "That's the quarest dog I ever seen," observed the driver. "He ought to be shupayrior afther badgers. He has a dhrop in his eye like a widdy's pig, and it's as black as a Christian's afther a ruction." "He's a very fine dog, sir," exclaimed Podgers, in a reproving tone. "He looks as if he'd set a herrin'," said the cab-man jocosely. "Mind your horse, sir!" said Podgers angrily. The driver, who was a jovial-tempered fellow, finding that his advances towards "the other side" were rejected, turned towards mine. "Are you goin' huntin' wid the dog, sir?" he asked. "We're going to shoot," I replied, in a dignified way. "To shoot! Thin, begorra, yez may as well get off the car an' fire away at wanst. There's an illigant haystack foreninst yez, and--but here we are"--and he jerked up at the entrance to the station. The jerk sent Albatross flying off the car, and his chain being dexterously fastened to the back rail of the driver's seat, the luckless animal remained suspended whilst his collar was being unfastened, in order to prevent the not very remote contingency of strangulation. Finding himself at liberty, he bounded joyously away, and, resisting all wiles and blandishments on the part of his master, continued to bound, gambol, frisk, bark, and yowl in a most reckless and idiotic way. It would not be acting fairly towards Podgers were I to chronicle his language during this festive outbreak. If the dog was in a frolicsome mood, Podgers was not, and his feelings got considerably the better of him when the bell rang to announce the departure of the train within three minutes of that warning. Finding that all hopes of securing the animal in the ordinary way were thin as air, Podgers offered a reward of half-a-crown to any of the grinning bystanders who would bring him the dog dead or alive. This stimulus to exertion sent twenty corduroyed porters and as many amateurs in full pursuit of Albatross, who ducked and dived, and twisted and twined, and eluded detention with the agility of a greased sow; and it was only when one very corpulent railway official fell upon him in a squashing way, and during a masterly struggle to emerge from beneath the overwhelming weight, that he was surrounded and led in triumph, by as many of his pursuers as could obtain a handful of his hair, up to his irate and wrathful master. Each of the captors who were in possession of Albatross claimed a half-crown, refusing to give up the animal unless it was duly ransomed; and it was during a fierce and angry discussion upon this very delicate question that the last bell rang. With one despairing tug, Podgers pulled the dog inside the door of the station, which was then promptly closed, and through the intervention of a friendly guard our _bête noire_ was thrust into the carriage with us. Having kicked the cause of our chagrin beneath one of the seats, I ventured to remark that in all probability the dog, instead of being a credit to us, was very likely to prove the reverse. "It's only his liveliness, and be hanged to him," said Podgers. "He has been shut up for some time, and is as wild as a deer." He would not admit a diminished faith in the dog; but his tone was irresolute, and he eyed the animal in a very doubting way. "His liveliness ought to be considerably toned down after the rough handling he received from my servant, and----" "By the way," Podgers went on, "that infernal woman isn't safe to have in the house; she'll be tried for murder some day, and the coroner will be sitting upon _your_ body. Is my eye very black?" "Not very," I replied. It had reached a disreputable greenish hue, tinged with a tawny red. At Ballybricken Station we found a very smart trap awaiting us, with a servant in buckskin breeches, and in top-boots polished as brightly as the panels of the trap. "You've a dog, sir?" said the servant. "Yes, yes," replied Podgers, in a hurried and confused sort of way. "In the van, sir?" "No; he is here--under the seat. Come out, Albatross!--come out, good fellow!" And Podgers chirruped and whistled in what was meant to be a seductive and blandishing manner. Albatross stirred not. "Hi! hi! Here, good fellow!" Albatross commenced to growl. "Dear me, this is very awkward!" cried Podgers, poking at the animal in a vigorous and irritated way. "Time's up, sir," shouted the guard, essaying to close the door. "Hold hard, sir! I can't get my dog out!" cried Podgers. "I'll get him out," volunteered the guard; and, seizing upon the whip which the smart driver of the smart trap held in inviting proximity, he proceeded to thrust and buffet beneath the seat where Albatross lay concealed. The dog uttered no sound, gave no sign. "There ain't no dog there at all," panted the guard, whose exertions rendered him nearly apoplectic, proceeding to explore the recesses of the carriage--"there ain't no dog here." A shout of terror, and the guard flung himself out of the carriage, the dog hanging on not only to his coat-tails, but to a portion of the garment which their drapery concealed. "Take off your dog--take off your dog. I'll be destroyed. Police! police! I'll have the law of you!" he yelled, in an extremity of the utmost terror. Podgers, who was now nearly driven to his wits' end, caught Albatross by the neck, and, bestowing a series of well-directed kicks upon the devoted animal, sent him howling off the platform, but right under the train. The cry of "The dog will be killed!" was raised by a chorus of voices both from the carriages and the platform. Happily, however, the now wary Albatross lay flat upon the ground, and the train went puffing on its way; not, however, until the guard had taken Podgers' name and address, with a view to future proceedings through the medium of the law. "I had no idea that the O'Rooneys were such swells," observed my companion as we entered, through the massive and gilded gates, to the avenue which sweeps up to Ballybawn House. "Somehow or other, I wish I hadn't fetched Albatross, or that you hadn't spoken about him;" and Podgers threw a gloomy glance in the direction of the pointer, who lay at our feet in the bottom of the trap, looking as if he had been on the rampage for the previous month, or had just emerged from the asylum for the destitute of his species. "He won't do us much credit as regards his appearance," I said; "but if he is all that you say as a sporting dog--of which I have my doubts--it will make amends for anything." Podgers muttered something unintelligible, and I saw dismal forebodings written in every line of his countenance. Mr O'Rooney received us at the hall-door. Beside him crouched two magnificent setters, with coats as glossy as mirrors, and a bearing as aristocratic as that of Bethgellart. "Where's the dog?" asked our host, after a warm greeting. "I hope that you have brought him." I must confess that I would have paid a considerable sum of money to have been enabled to reply in the negative. I muttered that we had indeed fetched him, but that owing to his having met with some accidents _en voyage_, his personal appearance was considerably diminished; but that we were not to judge books by their covers. As if to worry, vex, and mortify us, Albatross declined to stir from the bottom of the trap, from whence he was subsequently rooted out in a most undignified and anti-sporting way. The expression upon Mr O'Rooney's face, when at length the animal, badger-like, was drawn, was that of an intense astonishment, combined with a mirth convulsively compressed. The servants commenced to titter, and the smart little gentleman who tooled us over actually laughed outright. Albatross was partly covered with mud and offal. His eyes were watery, and the lids were of a dull pink, imparting a sort of maudlin idiotcy to their expression. His right ear stood up defiantly, whilst his left lay flat upon his jowl, and his tail seemed to have disappeared altogether, so tightly had he, under the combined influence of fear and dejection, secured it between his legs. "He's not very handsome," observed our host laughingly, "but I dare say he will take the shine out of York and Lancaster, by-and-by," pointing to the two setters as he spoke. This hint was enough for Albatross, as no sooner had the words escaped the lips of O'Rooney than, with a yowl which sent the rooks whirling from their nests, he darted from the trap, and, making a charge at York, sent that aristocratic animal flying up the avenue in a paroxysm of terror and despair; whilst Lancaster, paralysed by the suddenness of the onslaught, allowed himself to be seized by the neck, and worried, as a cat worries a mouse, without as much as moving a muscle in self-defence. This was too much. I had borne with this hideous animal too long. My patience was utterly exhausted, and all the bad temper in my composition began to boil up. I had placed myself under an obligation to a comparative stranger for the purpose of beholding his magnificent and valuable dogs scared and worried by a worthless cur. Seizing upon a garden-rake that lay against the wall, I dealt at Albatross what ought to have proved a crushing blow, which he artfully eluded. It only grazed him, and fell, with almost its full swing and strength, upon the passive setter, who set up a series of unearthly shrieks, almost human in their painful shrillness. "Chain up that dog at once!" shouted O'Rooney in fierce and angry tones, "and look to Lancaster. I fear that his ribs are broken. This is very unfortunate," he added, addressing himself to me. "I don't know what's come over the animal!" exclaimed Podgers. "I wish to heaven I had never seen him. I'll part with him to-morrow, if I have to give him to the Zoological Gardens for the bears." Luckily, it turned out, upon examination, that Lancaster was not in any way seriously injured. This put us into somewhat better spirits, so that by the time breakfast was concluded we were on good terms with each other, and even with the wretched Albatross, in whom we still maintained a sort of sickly confidence. Later on we started for the turnips, Mr O'Rooney and Podgers in front--the latter hauling Albatross along as if he was a sack of wheat; whilst I brought up the rear with a gamekeeper and York. "I don't think that animal is used to be out at all, at all," observed the keeper. "I'm afraid you are quite right," I replied; "but I hear that he is a very good sporting dog." "Sportin'! Begorra, he'll give yez sport enough before the day is half over," said the keeper, with a gloomy grin. "There is always a covey to be found in this field," observed our host to Podgers, "so we'll give your dog the first chance." "I--I--I'd rather you'd let him see what your dog will do," blurted Podgers. "Oh, dear no!" returned Mr O'Rooney. "Let him go now. You'll take the first shot." Very reluctantly indeed did Podgers unloose his pointer, uttering into the dog's ear in a low tone the most terrific and appalling threats should he fail to prove himself all that my fancy had painted him. With a loud bark of defiance Albatross darted away, scurrying through the turnips at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, utterly unmindful of whistle, call, blandishment, or threat, appearing now in one direction, now in another, and barking as though it had been part of its training. "Stop that dog," cried our host, "he won't leave us a bird," as covey after covey of partridges rose beyond range and flew away, Albatross joyously barking after them. "You said I was to have the first shot, Mr O'Rooney," said Podgers, in a tone full of solemnity. "Certainly, if you can get it; which I doubt," was the curt reply. Albatross had dashed within twenty yards of us, and was plunging off in another direction, when Podgers ran forward, raised his gun. Bang! Albatross was sent to the happy hunting-grounds of his race. "He frightened the partridge," observed Podgers, proceeding to reload; "_let him frighten the crows now_." THE DEAD HEAT No, never had there been such a state of excitement in any ball-room before, when it became known that Captain O'Rooney had entrapped Lieutenant Charles Fortescue, of the Stiffshire Regiment, into a thousand guineas match P.P., owners up, twelve stone each, and four miles over the stiffest country in Galway. The match had been made at the supper-table, after the ladies had left; but nevertheless, the news had been carried to them, and they were furious. "Fancy," said one, a tall, handsome brunette, "that that little wretched bandy-legged O'Rooney should have got round our handsome friend in such a mean way. He is jealous and disgusted with Fortescue's waltzing, and he _is_ the best waltzer in Ireland." "I'll make him a set of colours to ride in," returned the toast of five counties, the beautiful Alice Gwynne. "I never made any before, but 'there's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More,' and so he is sure to win in them." "Too bad," exclaimed the gray-haired Colonel of Fortescue's regiment to some gentlemen standing by him at the supper-table, "to have hounded the lad into it. O'Rooney is a noted steeplechase rider, and my boy" (he always called the youngsters of his regiment his boys), "though a workman across country, never rode a race in his life; but I hear that Captain O'Rooney has the character of looking up the Griffs." "Faith, Colonel, ye are about right there," said a jolly-looking young Irishman; "he is just the boy that can do that same; he is mad now because Fortescue's English horse cut him down to-day, and pounded him--a thing that has never been done before." "Bedad, you're out there, Mat," put in another; "I'd be after thinking it is because the Leaftenent has been making mighty strong running entirely with Alice Gwynne all this blessed night. O'Rooney, by my faith, does not like _that_, devil a hap'orth; he considers himself the favoured one--the consated spalpeen." "He the favoured one!" remarked big H----, of Fortescue's regiment; "why, he cannot suppose he would have a ghost of a chance with that pug nose and whisky-toddy countenance of his against Fortescue of ours. Why, Old Nick himself could not boast of an uglier face than Pat Rooney. Fortescue is about the handsomest and nicest fellow in the service, and though only a poor man, yet there are devilish few girls, at least of any taste, who would give him the 'cold shoulder.'" The conversation was put an end to by the redoubtable Captain O'Rooney they were descanting on, and with whom all seemed to be on such bad terms, walking towards them. "I will make one endeavour now," said the Colonel, "to put a stop to this match." "Captain O'Rooney," said he, as that gentleman joined them, "I am sorry to hear of this proposed steeplechase, and for such a sum. Mr Fortescue is a young man, and has acted very foolishly; moreover, though he holds the post of adjutant, he has little, I know, but his pay, and such a loss as a thousand pounds would seriously inconvenience him. Let me recommend, Captain O'Rooney, that Fortescue give you a hundred pounds to-morrow morning and draw the bet. What say you, gentlemen all, is the proposal fair?" "Nothing fairer," they exclaimed. "See now, Colonel," said Captain O'Rooney, "let us hear what Mr Fortescue says: he is not here; he'll be found in the ball-room, I'm after thinking." "True for ye, Captain dear," said the jolly-looking young Irishman before alluded to. "Divil a bit," he continued, with a sly and malicious twinkle of his blue eye, "is Fortescue in the ball. Be jabers, he is seated in the card-room alone by Alice Gwynne, playing with her bouquet and fan. I'll go and fetch him; but it's a pity to disturb him. I'd almost take my oath he has been asking her to be Mrs Fortescue, and by my soul I don't think she has said no." So saying, the young man, without giving the other time to answer, vanished from the room. "What is it, Colonel?" said Fortescue, coming in almost immediately after. "See now," said O'Rooney, interrupting him; "the Colonel says this is a foolish match we have entered into, and proposes that ye should pay me a hundred down to-morrow to let ye off. What d'ye say?" "What do I say?" replied the young man; "why, I'll do anything the Colonel likes. I think it is a foolish match. I was excited and out of humour when I made it. I'm better now, and if you like to take a hundred and draw, why I'll send you a cheque to-morrow morning for the amount, or run you for a hundred, which you like." "See, now," said the Captain, his naturally red face getting purple with anger and excitement. "I've heard ye both--the Colonel and yourself; now both of ye hear me. If ye were to offer me nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds, d--n me if I'd take it, for by the Rock of Cashel, I'll lick ye and break your heart and neck over the country; and see now, Fortescue," he continued, "steer clear of the heiress." "What do you mean, sir," retorted the young man, firing up. "Steer clear of the heiress? you forget yourself; do you presume to put a lady in the question?" and saying this, he turned away. "All devilish fine," said O'Rooney, sticking his hands in his pockets and sauntering away from the supper-table, humming a verse of Harry Lorrequer's well-known song:-- "The King of Oude Is mighty proud, And so were onst the Caysars (Cæsars); But ould Giles Eyre Would make them stare, Av he had them with the Blazers. "To the devil I'd fling--ould Runjeet Singh He's only a prince in a small way; And knows nothing at all of a six-foot wall, Oh! he'd never do for Galway." "Won't he?" muttered Fortescue to himself, as he caught the last words, "perhaps I'll show you he will." If the Captain had not been so blind with passion, he might have heard the gallant Adjutant singing _sotto voce_ a verse of a song from the same author, as he strode carelessly from the room:-- "Put his arm round her waist, Gave ten kisses at laste, 'Oh!' says he, 'you're my Molly Malone, 'My own, 'Oh!' says he, 'you're my Molly Malone!'" What did he mean? "By the great gun of Athlone, I'm mighty glad entirely they're both gone from the room," said a hard-riding Galway squire, as the illustrious Captain O'Rooney disappeared from sight. "I thought there was an illigant row brewing. Better as it is. Where O'Rooney is to get the coin from if he loses, divil a one of me knows. He's in 'Quare Street' long ago. Never mind, boys; let us have the groceries. 'O Punch! you are my darling,' and the devil fly away with dull care. Now Colonel," he continued, "upon my conscience, as O'Rooney won't listen to reason, you must look after Fortescue's interests. O'Rooney will endeavour to pick out a country. I mean he will go building up walls, and so on. You must have your own way a little, or, begorra, he'll do as he likes entirely. Now, there is one thing that will beat him if anything will--you must insist on that, or I would not give a trauneen for Fortescue's chance--and that is" (he dropped his voice to a whisper) _one_ if not _two_ WATER-jumps; if anything will stop Mad Moll it is WATER." "It shall be done," said the Colonel; "I'll see that the lad is not taken advantage of." And the old field-officer kept his word, as will be seen in the sequel. O'Rooney was greatly disturbed when he knew there were to be one or more water-jumps. He fought hard and gallantly against it; but the Colonel was obdurate. "By Gad, sir," said he, "you do not want it entirely your own way, do you? I have not interfered with the country in any way. I have said nothing as to the six-foot wall you have built up, and others equally dangerous, and now you cavil at a paltry ditch." "Ditch do ye call it, Colonel? fifteen feet of water, hurdled and staked, a ditch, and another of eleven. By my troth, no such like ditches are found between this and Ballinasloe. But never mind. Glory be to Moses, I'll get over them. And then, h--ll to my soul, if the English horse will ever come near Mad Moll's girths again." "We think nothing of nineteen feet, sir," said the Colonel. "In England, fifteen feet is nothing; but my youngster shall have a chance." Great was the excitement throughout the country--indeed, in all parts of Ireland. Such a match had not been known for years--"a thousand pounds!" What could the English soldier have been thinking of! The nags went on well in their training, closely guarded by their respective admirers. The English horse took to wall-jumping beautifully; but it was doubted whether, even with his great turn of speed, he had the foot of the Irish mare--a clipper. Then again, though Fortescue was a cool and daring horseman, he had not the experience of the Captain, who had ridden many a hard-contested race before, across country and over the flat. The stakes had been made good and deposited according to agreement with the Colonel. The Captain had found friends to share in the bet, for though he was generally disliked, yet they had confidence in his horse and his horsemanship. Fortescue, too, had friends, nor had his commanding officer been idle. Men from his own regiment had come forward, so all he stood to lose was two hundred and fifty; this and other matters made him sanguine and light-hearted. In addition to all, he had received a beautiful cap and jacket from Miss Gwynne. The sporting papers, English and Irish, teemed with the forthcoming match. "Lieut. Charles Fortescue's bay horse Screwdriver, aged, against Capt. O'Rooney's chestnut mare Mad Moll, six years old, for ONE THOUSAND guineas a side," appeared in the _County Chronicle_. The excitement was intense. Such a stiff bit of country had not been seen or ridden over for years. The betting would have been decidedly in favour of the Captain, but his mare's well-known dislike to water prevented anything like odds being laid--so they were both about equal favourites. "By George, old fellow!" said one of Fortescue's chums to him one morning, some six days previous to the race, "I really think your chance is becoming more rosy every hour. The more O'Rooney's mare sees the water the less she likes it. A sergeant in my company, a Galway man, has a country cousin in the barracks who knows all about it. Just go to Sergeant Blake," he said, turning to a bugler passing by, "and tell him to come here, and bring his cousin with him. Mr Fortescue wishes to see him." The man soon appeared. "Salute your supareor," said the Sergeant, as he squared his heels. "Touch your caubeen." "Arrah, now, Patrick, wasn't I after doing it?" "Well, do it at onst, ye murdering ruffian, and tell all ye know." "Yes, sir, yer honour," commenced the man, "Faix, the Captain 'av' been trying the mare day after day at the water. Onst she jumped finely. The Captain made a brook close by our cabin, and is often wid her there. Sometimes she jumps and sometimes she won't; and when she won't, mille murther! maybe don't he larrup her! Long life to your honour! but I don't think the mare likes water, at all, at all. And by my troth, there's many a man thinks the same. The devil's luck to him! he's been all over the fresh-planted praties, and cut them to smithereens, bad cess to him! But av course, Leiftenent, ye won't tell on a poor boy, more by token as he is after doing yer honour a little sarvice. I wouldn't give a handful of prayers for my life if he found me out; for sorra a one knows the Captain better than myself, death to his sowl! Tear-an-ages! he's a terrible bad man entirely, is the Captain. The top of the morning, and long life to your honour!" said the gossoon, as the Sergeant led him away, pocketing half a crown. "There, Fortescue, what do you think of that?" said his friend, as they sauntered away to the anteroom for a whiskey and soda. "It's evident Mad Moll is no water jumper. By Jupiter! I think you will pull through. Quite fair my giving the lad half-a-crown. O'Rooney's friends have been doing the same--fair play is a jewel!" Somehow the public at last began to lean towards the English horse. He did his work quietly and openly, without any attempt at concealment. But what is this excitement in the barrack yard? Officers are rushing to the mess-room. Two gentlemen have been driven up there in a car. Lord Plunger and his friend Bradon have arrived. They are old friends of the Stiffshire battalion. "By George! Plunger and Bradon, I'm delighted to see you," said the warm-hearted Colonel, hastening in, while endeavouring to make his sword-belt meet about his somewhat bulky waist. "I did not tell the boys I had written for you both. Lunch ready in ten minutes--glass of sherry first to wet your mouths. Now, Fortescue will have a little good advice. You will ride the last gallop to-morrow morning, Bradon, and give us your opinion. Dammee, I'm so glad to see you both in the wild west. Here, some one tell the captain of the day I won't have another roll-call. Obliged to do this kind of thing here, Bradon--never know what's going to happen from one minute to another. Shooting landlords like the devil. Potted Lambert last week; five shots in him, and the only one that did no harm was the one that took him in the forehead. Rest his sowl, as the Irishmen say, a near escape for him. Lucky dog! Here is the sherry!" In this way did the popular Colonel rattle on. The gallop is over, and Screwdriver has been tried at even weights against a good one. George Bradon had thought it better that Fortescue should ride his own horse in the trial, which he did. "By Jove, you've got a clipper, Fortescue!" said the former, as they pulled up; "you don't know how good. I deceived you all when I told you I had borrowed this nag to try you. Keep your mouth shut, hermetically sealed, old fellow, and I'll tell you something you will care to know. It is no commoner you have galloped against to-day. Mind, on your life, not a word to your dearest friend. It's my own horse, GUARDSMAN, you have had a spin with--the winner of the Cheltenham Grand Annual!" The young man thus addressed sat like one in a dream, at this revelation. "It's all old Mason's doing, Fortescue," said he. "He advised me to bring him over. I'm off now. Look at that knot of people coming over the hill; there are some who crossed the Channel yesterday with me who would know my old pet, and I would not have it blown upon for a trifle--the horse has been in Ireland for a week on the quiet. I'm now off, across country to Athenry, where Mason is, and has a stable for him. The horse will leave by the late train to-night for England with a lad; so no one will be a bit the wiser. My old stud-groom will come to your diggings this evening with me to give you a help. So _au revoir_ till mess-time, when you will see yours truly;" and putting his horse at a five-foot wall, he sent him over, hurling the loose stones behind him in a cloud, and was quickly out of sight. "So your friend has gone," said the gallant Colonel, as Fortescue walked his horse up to a host of his brother-officers and friends assembled in a knot on the hill, amongst which several strangers were distinguishable. "Yes," replied Fortescue, carelessly, "he will be with us at mess. Here, take the horse home, Forester"--to his man--"see no one comes near him." "That's a horse to back," said a sly-looking little man in a large drab overcoat; and coming up to Fortescue he whispered quietly to him: "I'm on your nag for a plumper. I keep my own counsel, and shall not split. I never come except with a rush at the last minute. My glasses are good. You've had a spin with one of the best cross-country horses in England. Clever and fast as that nag is, he can't give you seven pounds. You ran him to a length or two. I know George Bradon and Guardsman well. I've won a pot full of money on them before. There, don't look scared; you are a youngster. Sit well down on Screwdriver, hold him together, don't give a lead over the water, and you will land him a winner. I know more than you think; but for my own sake I'm MUM!" "News for you all!" said the Colonel of Fortescue's regiment, bursting into the mess-room, where some nine or ten officers were at breakfast, amongst whom were Lord Plunger and Bradon. "Here, Fortescue," continued the excited old gentleman, "this letter"--holding out one--"concerns you more immediately. Read it out." The young man thus addressed took the letter and read the following:-- "DEAR COLONEL, "As you all know, this is the morning of the race. Something has happened. For God's sake ride over and see me at once.-- "Yours faithfully, "P. O'ROONEY. "Clough-bally-More Castle, Friday morning." "There, gentlemen, what do you think of that?" cried the Colonel, as Fortescue slowly folded up the letter and returned it to him. "Something in that--no race for a guinea." "Race or no race," said Lord Plunger, "the money is lodged with you. It is a p.p. bet, and must be paid." "Mare gone amiss," put in Bradon. "I knew he was giving her too much of it. This is a hard, stony country; horses won't stand much continued work. Poor brutes! they are galloped shin sore--all the life and energy taken out of them--sweated to death, and made as thin as whipping-posts, and they are said to be in condition. Serves him right." "Hold, Bradon, my boy," interrupted Lord Plunger, "you do not know that such is the case. The mare was all right last night, that I am certain of. She is about six miles from here, at a Mr Blake's. I am inclined to think O'Rooney has got into trouble." "At any rate we shall soon know," returned the Colonel; "for here is my horse coming round. I shall be back in an hour or a little more. I'll look after your interests, Fortescue," he continued. "It is only half-past ten now. The race is not till three. Keep cool, and don't take too many brandy-and-sodas, till you see me again." And so saying, he took his departure. What was up? Had the mare broken down? Was O'Rooney arrested? It must be one or the other. It could not be about the stakes, for these were lodged to the Colonel's credit in the Bank of Ireland. What could it be then? "I cannot help thinking, Fortescue," said Lord Plunger, "that somehow or other you will have to don the new colours, doeskins, and tops, and give us a sight of your way of crossing the Galway country." As he was speaking, one of the mess waiters came in and said a few words to Fortescue, which made that gentleman immediately leave the room. On reaching his quarters he found seated there a sly-looking little man in a large drab overcoat. "I beg your pardon," said the stranger to the officer as he entered. "You know me, I think?" Fortescue slightly inclined his head. "The object of my coming," continued the sly-looking little man, "is to tell you that there is a writ out against Captain O'Rooney for four hundred pounds. He will not show up to-day. He is a _Sunday man_: now the race is ours--yours I ought to say--you will only have to go over the course. Good-morning." But he was not allowed to depart in that way. He was soon in the mess-room, and all were put in possession of the facts. In the meantime the good Colonel rode on at a rapid pace, wondering at the contents of the note, and conjuring up all sorts of things. Five-and-twenty minutes brought him to the gate, or what should have been the gate, of Clough-bally-More Castle, but it was gone. Cantering up the neglected wilderness-like avenue, he was soon in front of a ruinous-looking pile. This was Clough-bally-More Castle--a place best described by a quotation from Hood's beautiful poem of "The Haunted House"-- "Unhinged the iron gates half open hung, Jarr'd by the gusty gales of many winters, That from its crumbled pedestal had flung One marble globe in splinters. * * * * * "With shatter'd panes the grassy court was starr'd; The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after; And through the ragged roof the sky shone, barr'd With naked beam and rafter." Getting off his horse and walking up the broken, moss-covered steps, the Colonel rang the bell, which gave forth a melancholy sound that scared a colony of jackdaws who had established themselves unmolested for many a year in the chimneys and uninhabited rooms. On the second summons a shock head was cautiously poked out of an upper window. "Sure now, it's no use at all, at all, av yer ringing away like that: the master's gone abroad these six months; he told me to say so last night. Divil a writ can you serve him wid, my honey; av ye don't be off the master will be after shooting ye for a thafe from the hall windy." "I'm no writ server," returned the Colonel. "I come in consequence of a note I received from Captain O'Rooney this morning." "Troth, then, ye are the English soldier colonel. His honour the master will be wid ye at onst," and the head disappeared. Presently that of the Captain protruded. "See now, Colonel," said he, "ould Mat thought you were a Bum. I'm sorry to say I'm a _Sunday man_ now. The thundering thieves they've been about the place all the morning to serve me. I wish they may get it. Nabocklish! catch a weasel asleep. I'll let you in." In a minute or so the front door was slowly and cautiously unchained, and the Colonel found himself in the hall of Clough-bally-More Castle. It was a perfect ruin, and, if possible, more ghastly and miserable-looking on the inside than the outside. The Captain's room was, however, pretty cosy, and in decent repair. A bright turf fire burnt on the hearth; a couple of guns adorned the walls; rods, fishing-tackle, and various other sporting paraphernalia were scattered about the room in indescribable confusion. "Be seated, Colonel," said the steeple-chase rider; "I may as well come to the point at once. D----, of Galway, has a writ out against my person for four hundred pounds. They tried to serve it on me last night, and again this morning, the divil fly away with them! May the flames of----" "What is to be done, Capt. O'Rooney?" interrupted the Colonel. "You know it is a p.p. bet, and out of my power to do anything. Mr Fortescue has only two hundred and fifty on it. The rest is made up by gentlemen who will insist on the terms of the bet being adhered to. You ridiculed our offer of scratching the bet for a hundred: far better for yourself had you done so. I should not like any advantage taken of you, and you ought to have a run for your money. What is it you propose?" "See, now, Colonel; the only way is, that if you do not hold me to the day, we can run it off on Sunday." "Sir! Captain O'Rooney!" hotly interrupted the Colonel; "you must be mad! Ride a steeple-chase on a Sunday! Do you suppose, sir, any of my officers would be guilty of such a thing, or that I would allow it?" "See, now, Colonel," interposed the Captain, "then there is no other way but Mr Fortescue letting me off altogether. I've five hundred on it on my own account. I'll give a hundred and scratch it." "Quite impossible," said the Colonel; "you know I can't do it. I am really very sorry for you, but stay, there is yet one way, and if I can manage it the race may yet come off. D----, who has the writ out against you, does the wine for the mess. Now, will you agree to this--that if you win, I pay him the four hundred and the balance to yourself? If you do not win you shall be exactly in the same position you are now, namely, locked up in your own house." "Tare an' ages, a capital idea! Colonel, I agree." And it was forthwith signed and sealed between them. "I'll send out to you in an hour," said the Colonel, as he took his departure. "I will write and tell you how it is to be, race or no race. Depend on me; I'll do all I can." The Colonel succeeded, and the terms he mentioned were acceded to by D----, who thought it was his only chance of ever getting a farthing. "Hang it, gentlemen," said the light-hearted old officer, "we could have got the money without a race; but I should not have liked it said of the regiment that we took any advantage. Now, win or lose, everyone must say that we have behaved pluckily in this matter." Such a crowd as there was on the road all the way to the hill of Thonabuckey, where a good view could be had of the race! Cars, donkey-carts, wiry-looking horses with wiry and sporting squireens on them crowded the road--all on their way to see the thousand-guinea steeple-chase between the English soldier gentleman and the famous Captain O'Rooney. Such excitement, such running and jostling of the dirty unwashed to get along! There was the old blind fiddler, Mat Doolan, in a donkey-cart, and perched on the top of a porter-barrel, scraping away, and occasionally giving a song. "Sure it's himself that can bring the music out of the instrument. He is the best fiddler in the west," sang out one. Then a chorus of voices would break in asking for various tunes and songs. "Arrah, now, give us 'Croppies lie down.'" "'Wreath the bowl,'" cried another. "Hell to the bowl, let's 'ave 'Tater, Jack Walsh,' or 'Vinegar Hill,'" demanded a sturdy ruffian. "No, no; 'The breeze that blows the barley,' 'St Patrick's day in the morning,' or 'Garry-owen' for me." "Begorra, no; 'Larry before he was stretched,' is my favourite," said a ragged urchin. "Hurrah! here comes the Captain," bawled another; and the dirty unwashed yelled as he passed in a tax-cart driven by a friend. "Which is the Captain?" demanded a soldier. "Death! don't you know him? Musha, why that one forenent ye in the white caubeen and frieze coat. Troth, he's a broth of a boy! devil a one in Ireland can bate him on Mad Moll across country. Sure he's an illigant rider." "Hould yer noise, here comes Squire Gwynne and the ladies in the coach, and the English soldier gentleman wid 'em. Agra! but he's a mighty fine young man is that same. Bedad, it's Miss Alice that's looking swate on him entirely." It was true: there was Charles Fortescue of the Stiffshire Regiment going to the scene of action in the Squire's waggonette, and sitting beside his affianced bride, the beautiful Alice Gwynne with eight thousand a year the instant she married. "Hurroo!" shouted the people as the carriage dashed past. "Three cheers for the Master of Gwynne! And another for the lady!" They were in the humour to shout at everything and everybody. The course is reached at last. It is a circular one, and everything has to be jumped twice; hardly anything is to be seen but dark frowning walls. Many cars and carriages have got down by the water-jump. There is no end of youth and beauty. All the county _élite_ are there as lookers-on. A place has been kept for Mr Gwynne, and also one for the large waggonette of the officers. Eager spectators are scattered all over the course, but the big wall and the two water-jumps are the centre of attraction. The wall is a fearful one, six feet high, built up of large loose stones. The water-jump is also a pretty good one. A little mountain stream has been dammed up. It is fifteen feet wide, four feet deep, and hurdled and staked on the taking off side. "By Jingo, it is a twister!" said Mr Gwynne, a hunting man, as he looked at it. "I say, Ally," to his daughter, "you would not like to ride over that, would you?" "No, indeed, papa," said the poor girl, with her beautiful eyes full of tears--she was terribly agitated. "I never shall be able to look at Charles as he jumps it: it's fearful to look at, and it has to be done twice too!" "Never mind, Alice, dear," said Fortescue, "the old horse will carry me over like a bird. The only difficulty in the whole thing is the big wall; that is a rattler! but in your colours, of course, I shall get over all right. Let me do that wall and I am pretty safe, for I know Screwdriver has the foot of Mad Moll; and these colours, too, they must not play second fiddle. Cheer up!" and he whispered something that made the fair girl smile through her tears. "Now, Fortescue," said George Bradon, taking his friend aside, "let me give you a little advice: this is your maiden effort: whatever you do be cool; don't flurry or worry yourself; you have a knowing fellow to ride against, who is well up to these things. Now the wall is the principal thing, and my opinion is, he will try and baulk your horse there; therefore, my boy, don't let him give you a lead over it, _but lead him_. That you have the speed of the mare there is not a doubt. Remember, too, you must not go at the wall too fast: keep him well together, with his hind legs well under him, and pop him over. Now, with regard to the brook, on no account give him a lead there; if necessary, walk your horse to it rather than go first. Keep your head, old fellow, and where you dare, make the pace a cracker, if you can do it without pumping your horse; the mare is overtrained, and will not last if she is bustled. I don't know that I can say any more: now, go and sit by your lady fair till it is time to weigh." The officers had sent their two cricket tents down, the scoring one for the scales, and the other for luncheon. The latter one was filled with gentlemen discussing the merits of the different horses. "Here comes your nag, Fortescue," said a young sub, running up to the carriage. "Oh, what a beauty he is!" said Miss Gwynne. "Who is the little fat man leading him?" "That," said Bradon, who had joined them, "is my old stud-groom, one of the best men in Europe; he says Screwdriver's trained to the hour. Here, Mason, turn the horse round and show him to the lady." The old man touched his hat as he did so. "He's a good 'un, miss," he said, "and nothing but a good 'un; and if Mr Fortescue rides him patiently, I think that no Mad Moll will have a chance with him." And touching his hat again he turned and walked the horse away. The regimental champion was then immediately surrounded by the men of the Stiffshire Regiment. The weighing is over, and Screwdriver mounted. Fortescue's colours are crimson, with gold braiding. Capt. O'Rooney's are all green. Both gentlemen look thorough jocks, and sit their horses easily and well; but there is a look of the older hand about the Captain. "Who will lay me two to one against Screwdriver?" cried out a sly-looking little man in a large drab overcoat. "I'll do it to any amount up to a thousand." "I'll take you even money for a hundred," said a flashily-dressed man on a bay horse. "I want odds, sir," said the little man; "but as I see there is no betting to be done here, make it two hundred and I'll take you." "Done," said the other. And the bets were booked. All is now excitement, for the horses are walking away to the starting-post. The judge had locked himself up in the little box allotted to him, which has been lent by the race committee, but little did he think he would see such a close finish. "They're off!" is the cry, as the two horses are seen cantering across a field. "Fortescue's leading," said Lord Plunger, with his field-glasses to his eyes. "Oh, papa, hold me up so that I may see," said the beautiful and anxious Miss Gwynne. The eyes of scores were on her as she stood up, for all the gentry were well aware in what relation she stood to Fortescue. "Well lepped!" roared the multitude, as the horses topped a wall. "Capital jumpers both," said the sly-looking little man; "the horse for my money. Will nobody bet?" he roared out. But all were too eager to attend to him. Fortescue is in front, and going at a good rate across some grass. The first brook is now approached, and the Captain in his turn, leads at a strong pace. All are anxiously looking to see how Mad Moll will like it, for she is twisting her head from side to side. Fortescue has taken a pull at Screwdriver, who is some six lengths behind. "Hang me if she means jumping!" said Bradon, as he saw the mare's spiral movements. But he was wrong: a resolute man and a good one was on her back. She jumped the brook, but in bad style, her hind legs dropped in, and as she just righted herself, Fortescue's crimson jacket flashed in the air and cleared it splendidly, amidst the shouts of hundreds. "Splendidly jumped!" said Lord Plunger. "Fortescue is a fine horseman, Bradon, and is riding the horse patiently and well." "He is," was the quiet reply. All eyes are now directed to the wall, which the horses are rapidly approaching. Fortescue is seen to lead at it, and the old horse clears it at a bound, as did the mare. "It's all up," said Bradon, as he closes his glasses; "Fortescue will win in a canter." "The Captain's down!" screamed a host of voices, as he and the mare came to grief at the second water-jump. "May he stick there for the next ten minutes!" muttered the sly little man, a wish in which not a few joined--a certain fair lady especially. But he is up and at work again, none the worse. The horses were going at a great pace, and the jumps were taken with beautiful precision by both. Bradon began to look anxious, the sly little man fidgety, and Lord Plunger wore a thoughtful look. The anxious girl's face was flushed to scarlet with excitement and emotion, and she trembled fearfully. "It will be a close thing," said the sly-looking little man; "the mare is better than I thought." There were only a few things to be jumped now of any consequence--the two brooks and the big wall. The horses there turned, ran through an opening made in the wall, and finished on the flat in front of the carriages. The brook is now approached for the second time: the mare comes at it first, jumps it, and topples down on her nose on the opposite side; the Captain is pitched forward on her ears, but recovers himself like lightning, and is away again, leading Fortescue at a terrific pace. But what is the little sly man doing? As the mare recovers herself he is seen to dart across the course and pick up something flat, and put it into his pocket. "By G--d! turn out as it will we are saved," he muttered. "I'll lay any money against the mare," he screamed out. But no one took him. The wall is now approached again; the Captain leads; but as the mare is about to rise he turns her sharply round and gallops in a different direction. Screwdriver refuses it too. "Damnation! I thought it," said Bradon; "there's a blackguard's trick!" "Oh! poor Charles," ejaculated the beautiful Alice; "my poor colours!" "The Captain's cleared it!" shouted out the multitude, as the mare was seen to take the wall splendidly. "Where's your soldier now?" shouted out a chorus of voices. "Shure it's myself," said the captain, "could never be licked." "Most unfortunate!" said the old Colonel, "a dirty trick; and after my kindness to him, too!" "The soldier is going at it again!" cried the people; and the horse is seen to rise gallantly at it, but both horse and rider came down on the other side. "Och, wirra wirra, vo vo! Mother of Moses, he's kilt entirely!" bawled out a countryman; "poor young fellow!" "Miss Gwynne's fainted," said a young sub, running into the tent for water. "By G--d! he's up and at it again," screamed out the sly little man: "the mare's baked too; look at her tail." All faces were flushed and eager. The horse was coming along at a tremendous pace. The captain was at work: his legs could be seen sending the spurs deeply into her; and he took an anxious look over his shoulder every now and then. "The mare's beaten!" resounded on all sides, as she was seen to swerve in her stride. "Oh that the finish were only a hundred yards farther!" said Lord Plunger. The winning-post is approached. The old horse has not been touched by Fortescue, whose face is seen, even at that distance, to be deluged with blood. He holds Screwdriver well in hand; he sees the mare is flagging. "Green wins!" "Red wins!" shouts the crowd. It is an anxious moment. Both horses are seen locked closely together. But the strain on Screwdriver's jaw is relaxed, and Fortescue is seen to shake him up; the whip hand is at work, and they pass the post abreast. The Colonel dashes off, as does the sly little man, and a host of others. "What is it?" said the Colonel, as he galloped up. "A DEAD HEAT," replied the judge. The sly little man smiles grimly as he hears these words. "Is Charles hurt, papa?" said the beautiful occupant of the Master of Gwynne's carriage, opening her eyes languidly, as she rose from her faint. "No, dearest; cut a little, I believe. It is a dead heat." Both horses were now returning to scale. "Dead heat?" said the Captain. "Well, we must run it off in an hour. I won't give in." "Hurt, sir?" inquired old Mason, as he took hold of the old horse's bridle and led him back. "A bit of a cut on the forehead," returned Fortescue, "that is all. Captain O'Rooney pulled his mare round at the wall--little cad!" "A scoundrel's trick," said the Colonel. Fortescue goes to weigh in first. "All right, sir," said the man in charge of the scales. The Captain now approaches, saddle and saddle-cloths in hand, and seats himself. "Eleven stone eleven," said he of the scales, looking at them intently. "Three pounds short, Captain." "What?" yelled out O'Rooney. "Look again, man, look again!" "Eleven stone eleven," replied the clerk. "Give me my bridle!" roared the Captain. "What the h--ll is the matter?" "Ay, give him his bridle!" said the sly-looking little man; "he can claim a pound for it; but that won't make him right. Look at your saddle-cloth, sir. You will see it has burst and a three-pounds lead gone. You did it at the big water-jump the second time, and I picked it up. Here it is." Cheer after cheer rent the air as the fact was announced. The soldiers, of course, went almost frantic. "Here, come away," said Lord Plunger and Bradon, seizing Charley's arm, "Get away as quickly as you can. There will be a row. Your horse has already gone, with seventy or eighty of our men with him. You rode the race splendidly, old fellow!" "That he did," said the sly-looking little man. The Captain had lost the race. He was short by two pounds, allowing him one for his bridle. The scene of confusion that followed was indescribable. Fortescue was taken to the carriage and quickly driven away. "Ah, Alice!" said he, "I told you I should carry your colours to the fore." "Thank God you did so! This is your first and last race, promise me." The Captain went back to Clough-bally-More Castle; but in a day or two he was _non est_, and his creditors were done. The regiment had a jovial night of it. Fortescue's health was drunk in bumper after bumper; but he was not there to acknowledge the compliment; some one else had him in charge. A short time after the Stiffshire were quartered in Manchester, and the Colonel one day encountered no less a person than Captain O'Rooney. "See now, Colonel," said the latter, "you must bear me no ill-will. I did a shabby trick, I'll allow, at the wall, but I was a ruined man. I'm all right now. I've married a rich cotton-spinner's widow with some three thousand a year; but it's all settled on her." Fortescue and Miss Gwynne are long ago married; and at the different race meetings that they attended they often saw the celebrated Captain O'Rooney performing; but in all the numerous races he was engaged in, he never rode--at any rate in a steeple-chase--another DEAD HEAT. ONLY THE MARE When one opens a suspicious-looking envelope and finds something about "Mr Shopley's respectful compliments" on the inside of the flap, the chances are that Mr Shopley is hungering for what we have Ovid's authority for terming _irritamenta malorum_. Not wishing to have my appetite for breakfast spoiled, I did not pursue my researches into a communication of this sort which was amongst my letters on a certain morning in November; but turned over the pile until the familiar caligraphy of Bertie Peyton caught my eye: for Bertie was Nellie's brother, and Nellie Peyton, it had been decided, would shortly cease to be Nellie Peyton; a transformation for which I was the person chiefly responsible. Bertie's communication was therefore seized with avidity. It ran as follows:-- "The Lodge, Holmesdale. "MY DEAR CHARLIE, "I sincerely hope that you have no important engagements just at present, as I want you down here most particularly. "You know that there was a small race-meeting at Bibury the other day. I rode over on Little Lady, and found a lot of the 14th Dragoons there; that conceited young person Blankney amongst the number. Now, although Blankley has a very considerable personal knowledge of the habits and manners of the ass, he doesn't know much about the horse; and for that reason he saw fit to read us a lecture on breeding and training, pointing his moral and adorning his tale with a reference to my mare--whose pedigree, you know, is above suspicion. After, however, he had kindly informed us what a thoroughbred horse ought to be, he looked at Little Lady and said, 'Now I shouldn't think that thing was thoroughbred!' It ended by my matching her against that great raw-boned chestnut of his: three and a half miles over the steeplechase course, to be run at the Holmesdale Meeting, on the 5th December. "As you may guess, I didn't want to win or lose a lot of money, and when he asked what the match should be for, I suggested '£20 a-side.' 'Hardly worth while making a fuss for £20!' he said, rather sneeringly. '£120, if you like!' I answered, rather angrily, hardly meaning what I said; but he pounced on the offer. Of course I couldn't retract, and so very stupidly, I plunged deeper into the mire, and made several bets with the fellows who were round us. They laid me 3 to 1 against the mare, but I stand to lose nearly £500. "You see now what I want. I ride quite 12 stone, as you know; the mare is to carry 11 stone, and you can just manage that nicely. I know you'll come if you can, and if you telegraph I'll meet you. "Your's ever, BERTIE PEYTON. "P.S.--Nellie sends love, and hopes to see you soon. No one is here, but the aunt is coming shortly." I was naturally anxious to oblige him, and luckily had nothing to keep me in town; so that afternoon saw me rapidly speeding southwards, and the evening, comfortably domiciled at The Lodge. Bertie, who resided there with his sister, was not a rich man. £500 was a good deal more than he could afford to lose, and poor little Nellie was in a great flutter of anxiety and excitement in consequence of her brother's rashness. As for the mare, she could gallop and jump; and though we had no means of ascertaining the abilities of Blankney's chestnut, we had sufficient faith in our Little Lady to enable us to "come up to the scratch smiling;" and great hopes that we should be enabled to laugh at the result in strict accordance with the permission given in the old adage, "Let those laugh who win." It was not very pleasant to rise at an abnormal hour every morning, and arrayed in great-coats and comforters sufficient for six people, to rush rapidly about the country; but it was necessary. I was a little too heavy, and we could not afford to throw away any weight, nor did I wish to have my saddle reduced to the size of a cheese-plate, as would have been my fate had I been unable to reduce myself. Breakfast, presided over by Nellie, compensated for all matutinal discomforts; and then she came round to the stables to give the mare an encouraging pat and a few words of advice and endearment which I verily believe the gallant little mare understood, for it rubbed its nose against her shoulder as though it would say, "Just you leave it in my hands--or, rather, to my feet--and I'll make it all right!" Then we started for our gallop, Bertie riding a steady old iron-grey hunter. The fourth of December arrived, and the mare's condition was splendid. "As fit as a fiddle," was the verdict of Smithers, a veterinary surgeon who had done a good deal of training in his time, and who superintended our champion's preparation; and though we were ignorant of the precise degree of fitness to which fiddles usually attain, he seemed pleased, and so, consequently, were we. Unfortunately on this morning Bertie's old hunter proved to be very lame, so I was forced to take my last gallop by myself; and with visions of success on the morrow, I passed rapidly through the keen air over the now familiar way; for the course was within a couple of miles of the house, and so we had the great advantage of being able to accustom the mare to the very journey she would have to take. Bertie was in a field at the back of the stables when I neared home again. "Come on!" he shouted, pointing to a nasty hog-backed stile, which separated us. I gave Little Lady her head, and she cantered up to it, lighting on the other side like a very bird! Bertie didn't speak as I trotted up to him, but he looked up into my face with a triumphant smile more eloquent than words. "You've given her enough, haven't you?" he remarked, patting her neck, as I dismounted in the yard. "You've given her enough," usually signifies "you've given her too much." But I opined not, and we walked round to the house tolerably well convinced that the approaching banking transactions would be on the right side of the book. Despite a walk with Nellie, and the arrival of a pile of music from town, the afternoon passed rather slowly; perhaps we were too anxious to be cheerful. To make matters worse, dinner was to be postponed till past eight, for the aunt was coming, and Nellie was afraid the visitor would be offended if they did not wait for her. "You look very bored and tired, sir!" said Nellie pouting prettily; "I believe you'd yawn if it wasn't rude!" I assured her that I could not, under any circumstances, be guilty of such an enormity. "It's just a quarter past seven. We'll go and meet the carriage, and then perhaps you'll be able to keep awake until dinner-time!" and so with a look of dignity which would have been very effective if the merry smile in her eyes had been less apparent, the little lady swept out of the room; to return shortly arrayed in furs, and a most coquettish-looking hat, and the smallest and neatest possible pair of boots, which in their efforts to appear strong and sturdy only made their extreme delicacy more decided. "Come, sleepy boy!" said she, holding out a grey-gloved hand. I rose submissively, and followed her out of the snug drawing-room to the open air. Bertie was outside, smoking. "We are going to meet the aunt, dear," explained Nellie. "I'm afraid she'll be cross, because it's so cold." "She's not quite so inconsequent as that, I should fancy; but it is cold, and isn't the ground hard!" I said. "It is hard!" cried Bertie, stamping vigorously. "By Jove! I hope it's not going to freeze!" and afflicted by the notion--for a hard frost would have rendered it necessary to postpone the races--he hurried off to the stables, to consult one of the men who was weather-wise. Some stone steps led from the terrace in front of the house to the lawn; at either end of the top-step was a large globe of stone, and on to one of these thoughtless little Nellie climbed. I stretched out my hand, fearing that the weather had made it slippery, but before I could reach her she slipped and fell. "You rash little person!" I said, expecting that she would spring up lightly. "Oh! my foot!" she moaned; and gave a little shriek of pain as she put it to the ground. I took her in my arms, and summoning her maid, carried her to the drawing-room. "Take off her boot," I said to the girl, but Nellie could not bear to have her foot touched, and feebly moaned that her arm hurt her. "Oh! pray send for a doctor, sir!" implored the maid, while Nellie only breathed heavily, with half-closed eyes; and horribly frightened, I rushed off, hardly waiting to say a word to the poor little sufferer. "Whatever is the matter?" Bertie cried, as I burst into the harness-room. "Where's the doctor?" I replied, hastily. "Nellie's hurt herself--sprained her ankle, and hurt her arm--broken it, perhaps!" "How? When?" he asked. "There's no time to explain. She slipped down. Where's the doctor?" "Our doctor is ill, and has no substitute. There's no one nearer than Lawson, at Oakley, and that's twelve miles, very nearly." "Then I must ride at once," I reply. "Saddle my horse as quickly as possible," said Bertie to the groom. "He's lame, sir, can't move!" the man replied, and I remembered that it was so. "Put a saddle on one of the carriage horses--anything so long as there's no delay." "They're out, sir! Gone to the station. There's nothing in the stable--only the mare; and to gallop her to Oakley over the ground as it is to-night, will pretty well do for her chance to-morrow--to say nothing of the twelve miles back again. The carriage will be home in less than an hour, sir," the man remonstrated. "It may be, you don't know, the trains are so horridly unpunctual. Saddle the mare, Jarvis, as quickly as you can--every minute may be of the utmost value!" As Bertie spoke the _faintest_ look of regret showed itself on his face for a second; for of course he knew that such a journey would very materially affect, if it did not entirely destroy, the mare's chance. Jarvis, who I think had been speculating, very reluctantly took down the saddle and bridle from their pegs, but I snatched them from his arms, and assisted by Bertie, was leading her out of the stable in a very few seconds. "Hurry on! Never mind the mare--good thing she's in condition," said Bertie, who only thought now of his sister. "I'll go and see the girl." "I can cut across the fields, can't I, by the cross roads?" I asked, settling in the saddle. "No! no! Keep to the highway; it's safer at night. Go on!" I heard him call as I went at a gallop down the cruelly hard road. The ground rang under the mare's feet, and in spite of all my anxiety for Nellie I could not help feeling one pang of regret for Little Lady, whose free, bounding action, augured well for what her chances would have been on the morrow--chances which I felt were rapidly dying out; for if this journey didn't lame her nothing would. Stones had just been put down as a matter of course; but there was no time for picking the way, and taking tight hold of her head we sped on. About a mile from the Lodge I came to the crossroads. Before me was a long vista of stone--regular rocks, so imperfectly were they broken: to the right was the smoother and softer pathway over the fields--perfect going in comparison to the road. Just over this fence, a hedge, and with hardly another jump I should come again into the highway, saving quite two miles by the cut. Bertie had said "Don't," but probably he had spoken thoughtlessly, and it was evidently the best thing to do, for the time I saved might be of the greatest value to poor little suffering Nellie! I pulled up, and drew the mare back to the opposite hedge. She knew her work thoroughly. Three bounds took her across the road: she rose--the next moment I was on my back, shot some distance into the field, and she was struggling up from the ground. There had been a post and rail whose existence I had not suspected, placed some six feet from the hedge on the landing side. She sprang up, no legs were broken; and I, a good deal shaken and confused, rose to my feet, wondering what to do next. I had not had time to collect my thoughts when I heard the rattle of a trap on the road; it speedily approached, and the moonlight revealed the jolly features of old Tom Heathfield, a friendly farmer. "Accident, sir?" he asked, pulling up. "What! Mr Vaughan!" as he caught sight of my face. "What's the---- why! that ain't the mare, sure-_lie_?" All the neighbourhood was in a ferment of excitement about the races, and the sight of Little Lady in such a place at such a time struck horror to the honest old farmer. "Yes, it is--I'm sorry to say. Miss Peyton has met with an accident. I was going for the doctor, and unfortunately there was nothing else in the stable." "You was going to Oakley, I s'pose, sir? It'll be ruination to the mare. Miss Peyton hurt herself! I'll bowl over, sir; it won't take long; this little horse o' mine can trot a good 'un; and I can bring the doctor with me. The fences, there, is mended with wire. You'd cut the mare to pieces." "I can't say how obliged to you I am----" "Glad of the opportunity of obliging Miss Peyton, sir; she's a real lady!" He was just starting when he checked himself. "There's a little public house about a hundred yards further on; if you don't mind waiting there I'll send Smithers to look at the mare. I pass his house. All right, sir." His rough little cob started off at a pace for which I had not given it credit; and I slowly followed, leading the mare towards the glimmering light which Heathfield had pointed out. My charge stepped out well, and I didn't think that there was anything wrong, though glad, of course, to have a professional opinion. A man was hanging about the entrance to the public-house, and with his assistance the mare was bestowed in a kind of shed, half cow-house, half stable; and as the inside of the establishment did not look by any means inviting, I lit a cigar and lounged about outside, awaiting the advent of Smithers. He didn't arrive; and in the course of wandering to and fro I found myself against a window. Restlessly I was just moving away when a voice inside the room repeated the name of _Blankney_. I started, and turning round, looked in. It was a small apartment, with a sanded floor, and two persons were seated on chairs before the fire conversing earnestly. One of them was a middle-aged man, clad in a brown great-coat with a profusion of fur-collar and cuffs which it would scarcely be libel to term "mangy." He was the owner of an unwholesome-looking face, decorated as to the chin with a straggling crop of bristles which he would have probably termed an imperial. "Wust year I ever 'ad!" he exclaimed (and a broken pane in the window enabled me to hear distinctly). "The Two Thousand 'orse didn't run; got in deep over the Derby; Hascot was hawful; and though I had a moral for the Leger, it went down." His own morals, judging from his appearance and conversation, appeared to have followed the example of that for the Leger. "I can't follow your plans about this race down here, though," said his companion, a younger man, who seemed to hold the first speaker in great awe despite his confessions of failure. "Don't you say that this young Blankney's horse can't get the distance?" "I do. He never was much good, I 'ear; never won nothing, though he's run in two or three hurdle-races; and since Phil Kelly's been preparing of 'im for this race he's near about broke down. His legs swell up like bolsters after his gallops; and he can't get three miles at all, I don't believe, without he's pulled up and let lean agin something on the journey to rest hisself." "And yet you're backing him?" "And yet I'm backing of him." "This young Peyton's mare can't be worse?" said the younger man, interrogatively. "That mare, it's my belief, would be fancied for the Grand National if she was entered, and some of the swells saw 'er. She's a real good 'un!" replied the man with the collar. "I see. You've got at her jockey. You're an artful one, you are." As the jockey to whom they alluded, I was naturally much interested. "No, I ain't done that, neither. He's a gentleman, and it's no use talkin' to such as 'im. They ain't got the sense to take up a good thing when they see it--though, for the matter o' that, most of the perfessionals is as bad as the gentlemen. All's fair in love and war," says I; "and this 'ere's war." "Does Blankney know how bad his horse is?" "No, bless yer! That ain't Phil Kelly's game." (Kelly was, I knew, the man who had charge of my opponent's horse.) "Well, then, just explain, will you; for _I_ can't see." From the recesses of his garment the elder man pulled out a short stick about fifteen inches in length, at the end of which was a loop of string; and from another pocket he produced a small paper parcel. "D'yer know what that is? That's a 'twitch.' D'yer know what that is? That's medicine. I love this 'ere young feller's mare so much I'm a-goin' to give it some nicey med'cine myself; and this is the right stuff. I've been up to the 'ouse to-day, and can find my way into the stable to-night when it's all quiet. Just slip this loop over 'er lip, and she'll open 'er mouth. Down goes the pill, and as it goes down the money goes into my pocket. Them officer fellers and their friends have been backing Blankney's 'orse; but Phil Kelly will take care that they hear at the last moment that he's no good. Then they'll rush to lay odds on the mare--and the mare won't win." They laughed, and nudged each other in the side, and I felt a mighty temptation to rush into the room and nudge their heads with my fist. Little Lady's delicate lips, which Nelly had so often petted, to be desecrated by the touch of such villains as these! While struggling to restrain myself a hand was laid on my shoulders, and, turning round, I saw Smithers. We proceeded to the stable; and I hastily recounted to him what had happened, and what I had heard, as he examined the mare by the aid of a bull's-eye lantern. He passed his hand very carefully over her, whilst I looked on with anxious eyes. "She's knocked a bit of skin off here, you see." He pointed to a place a little below her knee, and drawing a small box from his pocket, anointed the leg. "But she's all right. All right, ain't you, old lady?" he said, patting her; and his cheerful tone convinced me that he was satisfied. "We'll lead her home. I'll go with you, sir; and it's easy to take means to prevent any games to-night." When we reached home the doctor was there, and pronounced that, with the exception of a sprained ankle, Nelly had sustained no injury. Rejoicing exceedingly, we proceeded to the stable; Heathfield, who heard my story, and who was delighted at the prospect of some fun, asking permission to accompany us. "Collars" had doubtless surveyed the premises carefully, for he arrived about eleven o'clock, and clambered quietly and skilfully into the hayloft above the stable, after convincing himself that all was quiet inside. He opened the trap-door, and down came a foot and leg, feeling about to find a resting-place on the partition which divided Little Lady's loose box from the other stalls. Bertie and I took hold of the leg, and assisted him down, to his intense astonishment; while Heathfield and a groom gave chase to, and ultimately captured his friend, the watcher on the threshold. * * * * * "If I'm well enough to do _anything_ I'm well enough to lie on the sofa; and there's really _no_ difference between a sofa and an easy-chair--if my foot is resting--and I'm sure the carriage is _easier_ than any chair; and it can't matter about my foot being an inch or two higher or lower--and as for shaking, that's all nonsense. It's very unkind _indeed_ of you not to want to take me; and if you won't, directly you've gone I'll get up, and walk about, _and stamp_!" Thus Nelly, in answer to advice that she should remain at home. How it ended may easily be guessed; and though we tried to be dignified, as we drove along, to punish her for her wilfulness, her pathetic little expressions of sorrow that she should "fall down, and hurt herself, and be such a trouble to everybody," and child-like assurances that she would "not do it again," soon made us smile, and forget our half-pretended displeasure. So with the aunt to take care of her, in case Bertie and I were insufficient, we reached the course. The first three races were run and then the card said:-- 3·15 Match, £120 a side, over the Steeple-chase Course, about three miles and a half. 1. Mr Blankney, 14th Dragoons, ch. h. Jibboom, 5 years, 11 st. 7 lb., rose, black and gold cap. 2. Mr Peyton, b. m. Little Lady, 6 years, 11 st., sky-blue, white cap. Blankney was sitting on the regimental drag, arrayed in immaculate boots and breeches, and, after the necessary weighing ceremony had been gone through he mounted the great Jibboom, which Phil Kelly had been leading about: the latter gentleman had a rather anxious look on his face; but Blankney evidently thought he was on a good one, and nodded confidently to his friends on the drag as he lurched down the course. Little Lady was brought up to me, Smithers being in close attendance. "I _shall_ be so glad, if you win," Nellie found opportunity to whisper. "What will you give me?" I greedily inquire. "_Anything_ you ask me," is the reply; and my heart beats high as, having thrown off my light wrapper and mounted, Little Lady bounds down the course, and glides easily over the hurdle in front of the stand. Bertie and Smithers were waiting at the starting-post; and, having shaken hands with Blankney, to whom Bertie introduced me, I went apart to exchange the last few sentences with my friends. Bertie is a trifle pale, but confident; and Smithers seems to have a large supply of the latter quality. In however high esteem we hold our own opinions, we are glad of professional advice when it comes to the push; and I seek instructions. "No, sir, don't you wait on him. Go away as hard as you can directly the flag drops. I don't like the look of that chestnut's legs--or, rather, I do like the look of them for our sakes. Go away as hard as ever you can; but take it easy at the fences; and, excuse me, sir, but just let the mare have her head when she jumps, and she'll be all right. People talk about 'lifting horses at their fences:' I only knew one man who could do it, and he made mistakes." I nod; smiling as cheerfully as anxiety will permit me. The flag falls, and Little Lady skims over the ground, the heavy chestnut thundering away behind. Over the first fence--a hedge--and then across a ploughed field; rather hard going, but not nearly so bad as I expected it would have been: the mare moving beautifully. Just as I reach the second fence a boy rushes across the course, baulking us; and before I can set her going again Jibboom has come up level, and is over into the grass beyond a second before us; but I shoot past and again take up the running. Before us are some posts and rails--rather nasty ones; the mare tops them, and the chestnut hits them hard with all four legs. Over more grass; and in front, flanked on either side by a crowd of white faces, is the water-jump. I catch hold of her head and steady her; and then, she rises, flies through the air, and lands lightly on the other side. A few seconds after I hear a heavy splash; but when, after jumping the hurdle into the course, I glance over my shoulder, the chestnut is still pounding away behind. As I skim along past the stand the first time round and the line of carriages opposite, I catch sight of a waving white handkerchief: it is Nellie; and my confused glimpse imperfectly reveals Bertie and Smithers standing on the box of the carriage. I had seen visions of a finish, in which a certain person clad in a light-blue jacket had shot ahead just in the nick of time, and landed the race by consummate jockeyship after a neck-and-neck struggle for the last quarter of a mile. This did not happen, however, for, as I afterwards learned, the chestnut refused a fence before he had gone very far, and, having at last been got over, came to grief at the posts and rails the second time round. Little Lady cantered in alone; Blankney strolling up some time afterwards. There is no need to make record of Bertie's delight at the success. We dined next day at the mess of the 14th, Blankney and his brethren were excessively friendly, and seemed pleased and satisfied; as most assuredly were we. Blankney opines that he went rather too fast at the timber; but a conviction seemed to be gaining ground towards the close of the evening that he had not gone fast enough at any period of the race. And for Nellie? She kept her promise, and granted my request; and very soon after the ankle was well we required the services of other horses--grey ones! HUNTING IN THE MIDLANDS "Jem Pike has just come round, gentlemen, to say that they will be able to hunt to-day, after all: and as it's about starting time, and you've some distance to go, I will, if you wish, gentlemen, order your horses round." The announcement, as it came to us over our breakfast at a hostelry which I will call the Lion, in a market town which I will call Chippington--a highly convenient hunting rendezvous in the Midlands--was not a little welcome. Jem Pike was the huntsman of the pack, and Jem Pike's message was an intimation that the frost of last night had not destroyed our sport for the day. The morning broke in what Jem would call a "plaguey ugly fashion:" from an artistic point of view it had been divine: for hunting purposes it had been execrable. A thin coating of ice on one's bath indoors, a good stiff hoar frost out, crystallized trees, and resonant roads--all this was seasonable, very, and "pretty to look at, too." But it was "bad for riding:" and we had not come to the Lion at Chippington in order to contemplate the beauties of nature, but to brace our nerves with the healthy excitement of the chase. Full of misgivings we descended to breakfast, in hunting toggery notwithstanding. As the sun shone out with increased brilliance we began to grow more cheerful. The frost, we said, was nothing, and all trace of it would be gone before noon. The waiter shook his head dubiously, suggested that there was a good billiard-table, and enquired as to the hour at which we would like to dine. But the waiter, as the event proved, was wrong, and we were still in the middle of breakfast when the message of the huntsman of the Chippington pack arrived--exactly what we had each of us said. Of course the frost was nothing: we had known as much; and now the great thing was to get breakfast over, and "then to horse away." After all there is nothing for comfort like the old-fashioned hunting hotels, and unfortunately they are decreasing in number every year. Still the Lion at Chippington remains; and I am happy to say that I know of a few more like the Lion. They are recognisable at a glance. You may tell them by the lack of nineteenth century filagree decoration which characterises their exterior, by the cut of the waiters, by the knowing look of the boots. Snug are their coffee-rooms, luxurious their beds, genial their whole atmosphere. It is just possible that if you were to take your wife to such an establishment as the Lion, she would complain that an aroma of tobacco smoke pervaded the atmosphere. But the hunting hotel is conspicuously a bachelor's house. Its proprietor, or proprietress, does not lay himself or herself out for ladies and ladies' maids. It is their object to make single gentlemen, and gentlemen who enjoy the temporary felicity of singleness, at home. If it is your first visit, you are met in a manner which clearly intimates that you were expected. If you are an old _habitué_ you find that all your wants are anticipated, and all your peculiar fancies known. The waiter understands exactly--marvellous is the memory of this race of men--what you like for breakfast: whether you prefer a "wet fish" or a "dry:" and recollects to a nicety your particular idea of a dinner. Under any circumstances a week's hunting is a good and healthy recreation: but it is difficult to enjoy a week's hunting more perfectly than in one of these hostelries, which have not, I rejoice to say, yet been swept away by the advancing tide of modern improvement. Of whom did our company consist? We were not a party of Meltonian squires, such as it would have delighted the famous Nimrod to describe. We were neither Osbaldestones nor Sir Harry Goodrickes: neither Myddelton Biddulphs nor Holyoakes. A Warwickshire or an Oxfordshire hunting field differs very materially, so far as regards its _personnel_, from a Leicester or a Northamptonshire gathering. The latter still preserves the memories and the traditions of a past _régime_, when hunting was confined to country gentlemen, farmers, and a few rich strangers: the former is typical of the new order of things under which hunting has ceased to be a class amusement, and has become a generally popular sport. Now it is not too much to claim for hunting at the present day this character. The composition of the little band which on the morning now in question left the Lion Hotel at Chippington, bound for covert, was no unimportant testimony to this fact. We were half a dozen in number, and comprised among ourselves a barrister, a journalist, a doctor, and a couple of Civil servants, who had allowed themselves a week's holiday, and who, being fond of riding, had determined to take it in this way. In an average hunting field of the present day you will discover men of all kinds of professions and occupations--attorneys, auctioneers, butchers, bakers, innkeepers, artists, sailors, authors. There is no town in England which has not more than one pack of hounds in its immediate vicinity; and you will find that the riders who make up the regular field are inhabitants of the town--men who are at work four or five days in the week at their desk or counter, and who hunt the remaining one or two. There is no greater instrument of social harmony than that of the modern hunting field: and, it may be added, there is no institution which affords a healthier opportunity for the ebullition of what may be called the democratic instincts of human nature. The hunting field is the paradise of equality: and the only title to recognition is achievement. "Rank," says a modern authority on the sport, "has no privilege; and wealth can afford no protection." Out of the hunting field there may be a wide gulf which separates peasant from peer, tenant from landlord. But there is no earthly power which can compel the tenant to give way to the landlord, or the peasant to the peer, when the scent is good and hounds are in full cry. As we get to the bottom of the long and irregularly-paved street which constitutes the main thoroughfare--indeed, I might add, the entire town of Chippington--we fall in with other equestrians bound for Branksome Bushes--the meet fixed for that day--distant not more than two miles from Chippington itself. There was the chief medical man of the place, mounted on a very clever horse, the head of the Chippington bank, and some half-dozen strangers. As we drew near to "the Bushes" we saw that there had already congregated a very considerable crowd. There were young ladies, some who had come just to see them throw off, and others with an expression in their faces, and a cut about their habits, which looked like business, and which plainly indicated that they intended, if possible, to be in at the death. There were two or three clergymen who had come from adjoining parishes, and one or two country squires. There were some three or four Oxford undergraduates--Chippington is within a very convenient distance of the city of academic towers--who were "staying up" at their respective colleges for the purpose of reading during a portion of the vacation, and who found it necessary to vary the monotony of intense intellectual application by an occasional gallop with the Chippington or Bicester pack. Then, of course, there was the usual contingent of country doctors: usual, I say, for the medical profession gravitates naturally towards equestrianism. If a country doctor rides at all, you may be sure he rides well, and is well mounted, moreover. There was also a very boisterous and hard-riding maltster, who had acquired a considerable reputation in the district: a fair sprinkling of snobs; one or two grooms and stable cads. There was also an illustrious novelist of the day, the guest of Sir Cloudesley Spanker, Bart., and Sir Cloudesley Spanker, Bart., himself. We had drawn Branksome Bushes and the result was a blank. Local sportsmen commence to be prolific of suggestions. There was Henham Gorse, for instance, and two gentlemen asseverated most positively, upon intelligence which was indisputably true, that there was a fox in that quarter. Another noble sportsman, who prided himself especially on his local knowledge, pressed upon Jem Pike the necessity of turning his attention next to the Enderby Woods, to all of which admonitions, however, Mr Pike resolutely turned a deaf ear. These are among the difficulties which the huntsman of a subscription pack has to encounter or withstand. Every Nimrod who pays his sovereign or so a year to the support of the hounds considers he has a right to a voice in their management. Marvellous is the sensitiveness of the amateur sportsman. It is a well-established fact, that you cannot more grievously wound or insult the feelings of the gentleman who prides himself upon his acquaintance with horses than by impugning the accuracy of his judgment in any point of equine detail. Hint to your friend, who is possessed with the idea that he is an authority upon the manners and customs of foxes in general, and upon those of any one neighbourhood in particular, that there exists a chance of his fallibility, and he will resent the insinuation as a mortal slight. Jem Pike had his duty to do to the pack and to his employers, and he steadfastly refused to be guided or misguided by amateur advice. So, at Jem's sweet will, we jogged on from Branksome Bushes to Jarvis Spinney, and at Jarvis Spinney the object of our quest was obtained. 'Tis a pretty sight, the find and the throw off. You see a patch of gorse literally alive with the hounds, their sterns flourishing above its surface. Something has excited them, and there "the beauties" go, leaping over each other's backs. Then issues a shrill kind of whimper: in a moment one hound challenges, and next another. Then from the huntsman comes a mighty cheer that is heard to the echo. "He's gone," say half a score of voices. Hats are pressed on, cigars thrown away, reins gathered well up, and lo and behold they are off. A very fair field we were on the particular morning to which I here allude. The rector, I noticed, who had merely come to the meet, was well up with the first of us. Notwithstanding remonstrances addressed by timid papas and well-drilled grooms in attendance, Alice and Clara Vernon put their horses at the first fence, and that surmounted had fairly crossed the Rubicon. Nay, the contagion of the enthusiasm spread, as is always the case on such occasions, for their revered parents themselves were unable to resist the attraction. Sir Cloudesley Spanker asserted his position in the first rank, as did also the distinguished novelist, his guest. It has been remarked that all runs with foxhounds are alike on paper and different in reality. We were fortunate enough to have one that was certainly above the average with the Chippington hounds. Our fox chose an excellent line of country, and all our party from the Lion enjoyed the distinction of being in at the death. Mishaps there were, for all the bad jumpers came signally to grief. Old Sir Cloudesley related with much grim humour the melancholy aspect that two dismounted strangers presented who had taken up their lodging in a ditch. The two Miss Vernons acquitted themselves admirably; so did the rector, and I am disposed to think that the company both of the ladies and the farmers vastly improved our hunting field. It is quite certain that clergymen, more than any other race of men, require active change, and they need what they can get nowhere better than in a hunting field. Nor in the modern hunting field is there anything which either ladies or clergymen need fear to face. The strong words and the strange oaths, the rough language--in fine, what has been called "the roaring lion element," these are accessories of the chase which have long since become things of the past. And the consummation is a natural consequence of the catholicity which hunting has acquired. There are no abuses like class abuses. Once admit the free light of publicity, and they vanish. There are hunting farmers and hunting parsons, clergymen who make the chase the business of their lives, and those who get a day with the hounds as an agreeable relief to their professional toils. There is not much to be said in favour of the former order, which has, by the way, nearly become extinct. It survives in Wales and in North Devon yet, and curious are the authentic stories which might be narrated about these enthusiastic heroes of top-boots and spur. There is a little village in North Devon where, till within a very few years, the meet of the staghounds used to be given out from the reading desk every Sunday after the first lesson. Years ago, when one who is now a veteran amongst the fox-hunting clerics of that neighbourhood first entered upon his new duties, he was seized with a desire to reform the ways of the natives and the practices of the priests. Installed in his new living, he determined to forswear hounds and hunting entirely. He even carried his orthodoxy to such a point as to institute daily services, which at first, however, were very well attended. Gradually his congregation fell off, much to the grief of the enthusiastic pastor. One day, observing his churchwardens lingering in the aisle after the service had been concluded, he went up and asked them whether they could at all inform him of the origin of the declension. "Well, sir," said one of the worthies thus addressed, "we were a-going to speak to you about the very same thing. You see, sir, the parson of this parish do always keep hounds. Mr Froude, he kept foxhounds, Mr Bellew he kept harriers, and least ways we always expect the parson of this parish to keep _a small cry of summut_." Whereupon the rector expressed his entire willingness to contribute a sum to the support of "a small cry" of harriers, provided his congregation found the remainder. The experiment was tried and was completely successful, nor after that day had the new rector occasion to complain of a deficiency in his congregation. Tories of the old school, for instance Sir Cloudesley Spanker, who has acquitted himself so gallantly to-day, would no doubt affirm that fox-hunting has been fatally injured as a sport by railways. The truth of the proposition is extremely questionable, and it may be dismissed in almost the same breath as the sinister predictions which are never verified of certain naval and military officers on the subject of the inevitable destiny of their respective services. Railways have no doubt disturbed the domestic tranquillity of the fox family, and have compelled its various members to forsake in some instances the ancient Lares and Penates. But the havoc which the science of man has wrought, the skill of man has obviated. Foxes are quite as dear to humanity as they can be to themselves; and in proportion as the natural dwellings of foxes have been destroyed artificial homes have been provided for them. Moreover, railways have had the effect of bringing men together, and of establishing all over the country new fox-hunting centres. Hunting wants money, and railways have brought men with money to the spots at which they were needed. They have, so to speak, placed the hunting field at the very doors of the dwellers in town. In London a man may breakfast at home, have four or five hours' hunting fifty miles away from the metropolitan chimney-pots, and find himself seated at his domestic mahogany for a seven o'clock dinner. Nor is it necessary for the inhabitant of London to go such a distance to secure an excellent day's hunting. To say nothing of her Majesty's staghounds, there are first-rate packs in Surrey, Essex, and Kent, all within a railway journey of an hour. Here again the inveterate _laudator temporis acti_ will declare he discerns greater ground for dissatisfaction than congratulation. He will tell you that in consequence of those confounded steam-engines the field gets flooded by cockneys who can't ride, who mob the covert, and effectually prevent the fox from breaking. Of course it is indisputable that railways have familiarised men who never hunted previously with horses and with hounds, and that persons now venture upon the chase whose forefathers may have scarcely known how to distinguish between a dog and a horse. Very likely, moreover, it would be much better for fox-hunting if a fair proportion of these new-comers had never presented themselves in this their new capacity. At the same time with the quantity of the horsemen there has been some improvement also in the quality of the horsemanship. Leech's typical cockney Nimrod may not have yet become extinct, but he is a much rarer specimen of sporting humanity than was formerly the case. It is a great thing for all Englishmen that hunting should have received this new development among us, and for the simple reason that salutary as is the discipline of all field sports, that of hunting is so in the most eminent degree. "Ride straight to hounds and talk as little as possible," was the advice given by a veteran to a youngster who was discussing the secret mode in which popularity was to be secured; and the sententious maxim contains a great many grains of truth. Englishmen admire performance, and without it they despise words. Performance is the only thing which in the hunting field meets with recognition or sufferance, and the braggart is most inevitably brought to his proper level in the course of a burst of forty minutes across a good country. Again, the hunting field is the most admirably contrived species of discipline for the temper. Displays of irritation or annoyance are promptly and effectively rebuked; and the man who cannot bear with fitting humility the reprimand, when it is merited, of the master or huntsman, will not have long to wait for the demonstrative disapproval of his compeers. Hunting has been classed amongst those sports--_detestata matribus_--by reason of the intrinsic risk which it involves. Is it in any degree more dangerous than cricket or football, shooting or Alpine climbing? In Great Britain and Ireland there are at present exactly two hundred and twenty packs of hounds. Of these some hunt as often as five days a week, others not more frequently than two. The average may probably be fixed at the figure three. Roughly the hunting season lasts twenty-five weeks, while it may be computed that at least ninety horsemen go out with each pack. We thus have one million four hundred and fifty-eight thousand as the total of the occasions on which horse and rider feel the perils of the chase. "If," said Anthony Trollope, in the course of some admirable remarks on the subject, "we say that a bone is broken annually in each hunt, and a man killed once in two years in all the hunts together, we think that we exceed the average of casualties. At present there is a spirit abroad which is desirous of maintaining the manly excitement of enterprise in which some peril is to be encountered, but which demands at the same time that it should be done without any risk of injurious circumstances. Let us have the excitement and pleasure of danger, but for God's sake no danger itself. This at any rate is unreasonable." These observations have somewhat diverted me from the thread of the original narrative. Should, however, the reader desire more precise information as to the particular line of country taken up by the fox on that eventful day with the Chippington hounds, will he not find it written for him in his favourite sporting paper? So we met, so we hunted, and so we rode home and dined; and if any person who is not entirely a stranger to horses wishes to enjoy a few days' active recreation and healthy holidays, he cannot, I would submit, for the reasons which I have above attempted to enumerate, do better than go down to the Lion at Chippington, and get a few days with the Chippington hounds. A MILITARY STEEPLE-CHASE We were quartered in a very sporting part of the country, where the hunting season was always wound up by a couple of days' steeple-chasing. The regiment stationed here had usually given a cup for a military steeple-chase, and when we determined to give one for an open military handicap chase, the excitement was very great as to our chances of winning the cup we had given. As there were some very good horses and riders in the regiment, it appeared a fair one, eight nominations having been taken by us. There were also about the same number taken by regiments in the district. Our Major, who was a first-rate horseman, entered his well-known horse Jerry; I and others nominated one each, but one sub., a very celebrated character amongst us, took two. This man's father had made a very large fortune by nursery gardens, and put his son into the army, where, of course, he was instantly dubbed "The Gardener." He was by no means a bad sort of fellow, but he never could ride. The riding-master almost cried as he said he never could make "The Gardener" even look like riding; not that he was destitute of pluck, but he was utterly unable to stick on the horse. He had a large stud of hunters, but when out he almost invariably tumbled off at each fence. Amongst those who nominated horses was the celebrated Captain Lane, of the Hussars, who was said to be so good a jockey that the professionals grumbled greatly at having to give him amateurs' allowance. No one was better at imperceptibly boring a competitor out of the course; and at causing false starts and balking at fences he was without a rival. The way he would seem to be hard on his horse with his whip, when only striking his own leg, was quite a master-piece. Report declared that he trained all his own horses to these dodges, and I believe it was quite true, as his were quite quiet and cool under the performances when the rest were almost fretted out of their lives. When the handicap came out I found, to my great disgust, that such a crusher had been put on my horse that I at once put the pen through his name--not caring to run him on the off-chance of his standing up and the rest coming to grief, or with the probability, anyhow, of a punishing finish. However, the next night after mess, the Major called me up to him in the ante-room, and said: "I hear you have scratched your horse, and quite right, too. I have accepted, and if you like to have the mount, you are quite welcome." Of course, I was greatly delighted, but told him that I had never ridden in steeple-chase before. "But I have," growled the Major, "and am not going to waste over this tin-pot," as he irreverently called the cup, "so I can show you the ropes. Come to my quarters after breakfast to-morrow, and we will try the horse." The next day I went there, and found the Major mounted, awaiting me, and Jerry--a very fine brown horse, with black points. I soon discovered that he had one decided peculiarity--viz., at his first fence, and sometimes the second, instead of going up and taking it straight, he would whip round suddenly and refuse. On thinking what could be the cause of this trick, I came to the conclusion that his mouth must have been severely punished by the curb when he was first taught jumping; and on telling the Major my idea, he allowed me to ride him as I pleased, so instead of an ordinary double bridle, I put one with a couple of snaffles in his mouth, and very soon found that this had the desired effect. Indeed, after a few days, he took his first fence all right, unless flurried, and before the day seemed quite trustworthy. When we got back after our first day's ride, the Major told me, rather to my amusement, that I must go into training as well as the horse,--adding, what was quite true, that he had seen more amateur races lost through the rider being beat before the horse than by any other means; so when I had given Jerry his gallops in the morning, I had to start a mile run in the afternoon in flannels or sweaters. The course was entirely a natural one, about three miles and a half round, and only two ugly places in it, chiefly grass, with one piece of light plough and some seeds. The first two fences were wattles on a bank, with a small ditch, then an ordinary quickset hedge, followed by an old and stiff bullfinch. After this a post and rails, a bank with a double ditch, and merely ordinary fences till we came to a descent of about a quarter of a mile, with a stream about twelve feet wide, and a bank on the taking-off side. Next came some grass meadows, with a very nasty trappy ditch, not more than four feet wide, but with not the slightest bank or anything of the kind on either side,--just the thing for a careless or tired horse to gallop into. The last fence, which was the worst of all, was, I fancy, the boundary of some estate or parish, and consisted of a high bank, with a good ditch on each side--on the top a young, quick-set hedge, and, to prevent horses or cattle injuring it, two wattle fences, one on each side, slanting outwards. After this, there was a slight ascent of about 300 yards; then there was dead level of about a quarter of a mile up to the winning-post. On the evening before the chase, we had a grand guest night, to which, of course, all the officers of other regiments who had entered horses were invited. We youngsters were anxious to see Captain Lane, of whom we had heard so much. On his arrival, after the usual salutations, he enquired of the Major whether he was going to ride, and, on receiving a negative, asked who was; and on having the intending jockeys pointed out to him, just favoured us with a kind of contemptuous glance, never taking any further notice of us. The celebrated Captain was a slight man, about five feet eight inches, with not a particularly pleasant look about his eyes, and looking far more the jock than the soldier. The steeple-chases were fixed for the next day at 2.30 P.M., but, as a matter of fact, all the riders were on the ground long before that for the purpose of examining the ground and the fences. The Major came to see me duly weighed out, and gave me instructions as to riding--that I was not on any account to race with everyone who came alongside me, nor to make the running at first, unless the pace was very slow and muddling, of which there was little danger, for quite half the jocks, he said, would go off as if they were in for a five furlong spin, and not for a four mile steeple-chase. I was to lie behind, though handy, until we came to the descent to the stream and then make the pace down and home as hot as I could,--to find out the "dicky forelegs," he said, knowing that Jerry's were like steel. We all got down to the post pretty punctually, and, of course, in a race of this description, the starter had no difficulty in dropping his flag at the first attempt. I gave Jerry his head, and to my joy he took the first fence as straight and quietly as possible, so taking a pull at him, I was at once passed by some half dozen men (the gallant "Gardener" amongst them) going as hard as they could tear. It was lucky for them that the fences were light and old, as most of the horses rushed through them. When they got to the bullfinch, one horse refused, and another attempting to, slipped up and lay in a very awkward looking lump, jock and all close under it. The rest having been a little steadied took it fairly enough. Jerry jumped it as coolly as possible, like the regular old stager that he was, in spite of Captain Lane coming up at the time with a great rush, evidently hoping to make him refuse. When we landed on the other side a ludicrous spectacle presented itself, the gallant "Gardener" being right on his horse's neck, making frantic attempts to get back into his saddle, which were quite unsuccessful, and the horse coming to the next fence, a post and rail, quietly took it standing, then putting down his head slipped his rider off and galloped on without him. The field now began to come back to us very quickly, and soon the leading lot were Vincent of ours, a splendid rider, as I thought, and as it turned out, my most dangerous opponent, with a Carabinier in close attendance; then myself, with Captain Lane waiting on me, and watching the pair of us most attentively, so that it seemed almost impossible that I should have any chance of slipping him. However, an opportunity did present itself at length, which I took advantage of--hearing a horse coming up a tremendous "rattle" on my right. I looked round to see who and what it was. Lane, noticing what I was doing, looked round too. Seeing this I loosed Jerry's head, and giving him at the same time a slight touch with the spur, he shot out completely--slipping the Captain, passing the Carabinier, and getting head and head with Vincent. Down the hill we went as hard as we could, clearing the water side by side. At the grip in the fields beyond I gained slightly by not taking a steadier at Jerry, trusting to his eyesight and cleverness to avoid grief. As we got to the best fence, the ugly boundary one, I did take a pull, the jump looking as nasty a one as could well be picked out; however, the old horse did it safely, and Vincent and myself landed side by side in the winning field, amidst most tremendous shouting and cheering from our men, who were standing as thick as thick could be on each side of the course. The excitement was terrific as we came up, apparently tied together, but giving Jerry a couple of sharp cuts with the whip, I found my leg gradually passing Vincent's, until at length I was nearly opposite his horse's head, and thus we passed the winning post, to my great relief. I did not know how much my opponent's horse had left in him, and expected him to come up with a rush at the last, in which case I doubted whether I should be able to get anything more out of Jerry in time, as he was rather a lazy horse, though possessing enormous "bottom." I had scarcely pulled up and turned round to go to the scales, before I met the Major, who told me I was "not to make a fool of myself and dismount," before the clerk of the scales told me to, and then he pitched into me for riding at the "Grip," as I did, apprising me at the same time that he did not care how I risked my neck, but "I might have hurt the horse," adding, after a pause, and with a grunt, "but you won." The delight of our men was so great at two of their officers being first and second, that it was all that Vincent and myself could do to avoid being carried about on their shoulders after we had weighed in. The gallant captain was most awfully disgusted at being beaten by "a couple of boys," and went off immediately--resisting all invitations to stop and dine at mess. I subsequently found out that when I slipped him (at which he was particularly angry) he gave his horse a sharp cut with his whip, which seemed quite to upset it. On coming down to the water the horse jumped short--dropping his hind legs in, and at the "Grip," nearly got in, only saving itself by bucking over it, and at the big boundary absolutely came down on landing, though his rider managed to keep his seat. As for myself, I need not say how delighted I was at winning my first steeplechase, though the Major did tell me that a monkey would have ridden as well, and helped the horse as much as I did. "_But I won_" was always my reply. HOW I WON MY HANDICAP TOLD BY THE WINNER It was a foot-racing handicap, run just after Christmas at Sheffield, and how I came to win happened in this wise. At eighteen I found myself still living, say, at Stockton-on-Tees, on the borders of Yorkshire, the town of my birth. My trade was that of a wood-turner, and with but half my time served. "Old Tubby" found me an unwilling apprentice, who had not the least inclination for work. Stockton, though only a little place, is noted for sporting and games of all sorts--but particularly for cricket. I played, of course, but they didn't "reckon" much of me, except for fielding. "Sikey," who was a moulder, and I, kept ferrets and dogs, too, and on Sundays we used to go up the "Teeside" after rabbits, or rats, or anything we could get. Sometimes we stripped and had a "duck," and then we ran on the bank barefoot. I could give him half a score yards start in a field's length, and win easily; but often I didn't try to get up till close upon the hedge we had agreed should be the winning-post. My father had been coachman to a sporting gent who kept race-horses, and the old man used to talk for everlasting about the "Chifney rush." When first Sikey and I ran I tried to beat him, so he made me give a start. Then I thought of the 'cute old jockey, and I used to try and get up and win in the last yard or so. One day Locker, who had formerly kept a running ground at Staleybridge, met me, and asked if I'd go out with him next Saturday and have a spin. I told him I "didn't mind;" so we went up the turnpike till a straight level bit was found, and he stepped 100 yards, leaving me at the start, saying, "Come away as hard as thou can, whenever thou art ready." He had his hands in his topcoat pocket all the while, and when I finished, we walked on a bit, neither speaking for a quarter of a mile further, when he looked at his watch and said it was "getting dinner-time." Soon after he looked again, and then "took stock o' me from head to foot," and as we passed the ground I had run over, he asked, "Canst run another hundred?" I told him I could; but this time he pulled off his own coat, and said, "We'll go together." He was quickest off, but I could have passed him any time, just as I used to pass Sikey. When we got nearly to the finish I "put it on" and just got home first. He seemed pleased and told me not to say a word to anybody, but come down and meet him again. I didn't know what he was about at all, but I said "All right," and next Saturday went to the same place. Locker was there, and two other coves with him, as I hadn't seen before. One was a tall thin un he called "Lanky," and the other was little and wiry, and rather pock-pitted. He said, "Let's all four run for a 'bob' a-piece, and you three give me two yards start?" But they wouldn't; so he said, I should run the "long un" for a crown. That was soon settled, and just before we started, Locker whispered to me, "Beat him, lad, if thou canst; I want him licked, he is such a bragger. We'll share t' crown if thou wins." The little un set us off, and Locker was judge. Well, we got away together, and I headed him in by five yards easy. Locker fairly danced, he was so pleased; and though Lanky grumbled a bit at first to part with his "crown," he was soon all right. We went to Locker's to dinner, and talked about "sprinting," as they called it, all the afternoon. I told 'em I'd never run at all before except for fun, and they seemed "fairly staggered." They asked if I would run a match for £5 next week, and I told 'em I didn't mind. Locker said I was a "good un," and I might "win £100 if I'd nobbut stick tu him." Well, we agreed that I was to do just as he directed, and receive a sovereign for myself if I won by just a foot, and two pound if I ran a dead heat, letting the "novice" who was to be my opponent catch me at the finish. I never "split" to anybody except Sikey, and he went to see the race. Over a hundred people were there, and off we started. Everybody thought I was winning, but I "shammed tired," and he beat me about three inches, the judge said. Locker swore it was a dead heat, and as he had laid 2 to 1 on me I thought he'd lost a lot of money. As we went home, he said, "There's £2 for thee, lad; thou did it wonderful well; I shall match thee again next Saturday for £20: we might as well have it as anybody else." Well, during the week I was out with him every night, and he said, "Stick to me, and we'll mak these coves sit up. Thou'rt a thunderin' good un, and we'll gan to Sheffield together in less nor six months if thou can keep thysel to thysel." Of course I was pleased, and I bought a new pair of running-shoes with spikes in. He showed me _The Sporting Life_ next week, with a challenge in that "'Locker's lad,' not satisfied with his late defeat, will take a yard in a 100 from the 'Stockton Novice,' for £25 or £50 a-side. A deposit to the editor and articles sent to Mr Locker's running-grounds, Stockton, will meet with immediate attention." I was quite struck, and said I wondered what "Old Tubby" would think if he knew. Locker said, "Go ask him for thy indentures, and if he won't give 'em up, ask him what he'll tak for 'em." So I did, and if I hadn't been in such a hurry, he'd have thrown 'em at me, and said he was glad to get rid of an idle rascal. As it was, I told him I'd something else to do, and he demanded £3 for my release. Locker gave me the money next day, and I soon put the indentures in the fire; thanking my stars for the escape. After this I lived at Locker's altogether, and in two or three days an answer came from the "Novice," to say he'd give 2 yards start in 150. Well, that didn't seem to suit Locker, so he replied, through the paper again, that "Sooner than not run again, his lad should run the 'Novice' 100 yards level at Kenham grounds for £25 a side. To run in three weeks." Articles came and were signed on these terms. Then he said, "Thou needn't train at all, though I want thee to win this time by nearly a yard; just stay a bit longer than before, and don't let him quite catch thee. Make a good race of it, but be sure and win." We often went to the old spot on the turnpike, and once he took a tape and measured the ground. He had stepped it within a yard and a half. At last he showed me his watch that he had won in a handicap. There was a long hand which jumped four times in a second, and he could start it or stop it by pressing a spring whenever he liked. Then I held it while he ran, and found he was just 11 sec. doing his 100 yards. I tried, and was "ten and a beat," which he told me was reckoned first-rate time. While I stopped with him I found out all about "sprints" and "quarters," and how long a man ought to be running different distances. I asked, too, about the last race; why he could afford to give me £2 when I lost? He said the two "fivers" he had bet were with "pals," and he lost nothing but my stake. Then he told me about the little man and Lanky, whom I had met with him and run against. The "long 'un," he said, was a very good "trial horse," who could keep his tongue in his head, and would "stand in" if I won anything. The little un had been on business in the north, and came round to see him (Locker). It was all chance his being there, but I should see him again, farther south, where he kept a running ground. Well, the day for our race came at last, and we went to Kenham. I was wrapped in a blanket after we stripped, and a stout man, called Woldham, who stood referee, whispered something to Locker, who replied that I was fit and sure to win. They laid 5 to 4 against me at first, but presently I heard evens offered, and then £22 to £20 on me, and that was as far as Locker's friends would go. We had a lot of "fiddling," as they call it, at the mark, but presently we jumped away, I with an advantage of about a yard. I had made the gap quite four yards at half the distance, and then "died away" till near the post, where, as the _Chronicle_ next Monday said, I "struggled manfully, and took the tape first by half a yard; time, 10-2/5 sec." Hadn't we a jaw as we went back! Locker said I was a "wonderful clever lad," and that Woldham had told him I should be "heard of again." We both laughed, and I got £5 for winning. With this I bought a new rig out, and everybody at Stockton that knew me said I was "ruined for life." They all wanted to know where the togs came from, however, but I kept that to myself. It was now September, and Locker said, "I'll enter thee for a handicap." So he did, and shortly afterwards we went to Kenham again, where, by his directions, I was beat for my heat, with 5 yards start in 120. About a week later, we had a long talk, and then he said, "Dost know what I've been doing, lad?" I told him I thought he meant to get me a good start and try if I could win. "Thou'rt partly right," he said, "but I've been running thee 100 yards, and letting thee lose in t' last few strides. This makes 'em think thou can't stay. I know thou'rt as good at 150 as 100, so I shall train thee and run thee at Sheffield this Christmas. If thou can win there, we can earn £1000 between us, and if thou can only run into a place, we shall make £50 or £100 apiece; but mind, we shall let t' cat out o' t' bag: thou'll never get on a mark again after trying once." Presently, Merling and Stemmerson advertised a £40 handicap at Kenham, and I entered; then came the big Sheffielder of £80, and down went my name for that too. I lived very regular all this time, went to bed early, and practised the distance every day, till Locker said I was a "level time" man, and if I didn't win it would be a "fluke." At last the start appeared: I got in at 7 yards in the 130 at Newcastle, and my mark was 67 in 210 yards at Ryde Park. Locker was delighted: "Thou can win 'em both in a walk, lad," he said, again and again. Then the betting quotations were sent up week after week, and I was at 50 to 1 long enough at Sheffield. There wasn't much doing on the 130 yards race, so Locker said I might go there on the Saturday and lose my first heat. He didn't lay out a penny any way till we went into Alf Wilner's, the Punch Bowl, on Sunday night. Somebody presently asked my price, and, to my surprise, up got the little pock-marked man I had met, and said he was commissioned to take 60 to 1 to £5, just for a "fancy" bet. A big Sheffielder opened his book and said he might as well have the "fiver" as not, and there I was backed to win £300 already. Locker and I went away to bed about nine o'clock, and next morning in came the little 'un at six to tell us he'd ta'en five fifties more, then five forties, ten thirties, and ten twenties, and I was now in the market at 12 to 1 taken and offered. My heat was the sixth, and there were five starters marked. First came "old Scratch" of Pendleton at 59 yards, then Roundtree of Huddersfield at 62, and myself at 67; the other didn't turn up. The pistol was fired and away we went, and, as Locker had started me hundreds of times, so that I could "get off the mark" well, I don't think I lost any ground. At about half way I could hear somebody on my left, but I daren't look round. Afterwards I found "Scratch" had tried to "cut me down," but it was all no use, and I took away the tape by two yards good. Everybody cheered, for betting on the heat had been 7 to 4 on "Scratch" and 3 to 2 against me. At the close of the day there were ten runners left in for the final heat, and "my price" was 4 to 1, Roper of Staleybridge being the favourite at 6 to 4 against him. Locker said he had laid off £250 at 5 to 1 directly after the heat, so that our party stood to win £1000 exactly, of which I was to have £200 if I "landed." We were together till bedtime, and slept in a double room. At seven next morning we took a stroll, and just as we got to Alf's to breakfast somebody put a bit of paper into my hand and then shot away. I slipped it in my pocket, and said "nowt" till after breakfast, when I read on it, "£150 for thyself before the start if thou'll run fourth." I asked Locker what it meant, and he laughed, and said they wanted me to "rope." When we went out again the little fellow pulled out a roll of notes and showed 'em to me; but I meant to win if possible, so I shook my head. As the morning passed I "sort of funked" the race, but then I thought, "I were a made man if I copped." So I just said to mysel', "Bill, lad, haul in the slack," and off we went to the grounds. I never felt fitter either before or since; and after Roper got off badly and was beat a short foot, I was sure the final heat was my own. My second heat was an easy win, and "Lord, how the Sheffielders did shout" when I ran in three yards ahead without being fully extended! They laid 7 to 4 on me for the deciding race, which was the hardest of the lot. Hooper of Stanningly went from the same mark; we afterwards found out they'd played a similar game with him. They'd "pulled" him for two handicaps, and let him lose all his matches, and now he had been backed to win £600. He beat me at starting, and before we got half way they cried "Hooper wins." I was a good yard behind him, but with a hard strain I got level, and we ran shoulder and shoulder till just on the tape, where I threw myself forward, with the old "Chifney rush," and just won by a bare half-yard. Locker fairly hugged me, and, half blind though I was with the tough race, the "tykes" shoulder-heighted and carried me off to the house. In presents, and with my share, I got £230, and thought I'd put it away in the bank. But that night we all had champagne, and I went to bed quite queer and dizzy-like. Next day was the same, and on Thursday we took train to Manchester, where I was invited to stop a week or two. Locker left me and went home, telling me to take care of myself. I wish I'd gone too, for what with meeting betting-men and playing cards and buying swell clothes, to say nothing of dresses for a fresh sweetheart, I soon got awful "fast." Then we used to sit up at nights playing "seven's the main," and I wasn't lucky or summut; but, however, in six weeks I'd got through half my money. One night we started cutting through the pack, and then played "Blind Hookey," and next morning the little pock-pitted man came up and called me a "flat," and said I'd fair thrown my winnings into the fire. He didn't know much about what had gone on, and when I told him "I knocked down close on £150," he said he daren't send me back to Stockton. Well, I stopped at Manchester altogether; and during the next two or three years I won heaps of races, learned the "rope trick," and found out whose "stable" every lad trained from. I won hundreds of pounds, which, having all come over the "devil's back," went the same way. I'm twenty-three now, but I can't do "level time" any longer without six weeks' training, although even yet, at 100 yards, very few lads can "pull off their shirt" every day in the week and lick me. I like the life very well--it's free and easy; but I wish Locker had ta'en me back and made my matches. He's clever, he is, and knows when to "let a fellow's head loose" without halloaing. THE FIRST DAY OF THE SEASON, AND ITS RESULTS "When at the close of the departing year Is heard that joyful sound, the huntsman's cheer, And wily Reynard with the morning air Scents from afar the foe, and leaves his lair." I quite agree with the distinguished foreign nobleman who declared that "Nothing was too good to go foxing in;" and with the immortal Jorrocks of Handley Cross fame, I exclaim, "'Unting, my beloved readers, is the image of war with only ten per cent. of its dangers." Ever since I was an unbreeched urchin, and my only steed a rough Shetland pony, across whose bare back my infantine legs could scarcely stride, I have looked forward to a day's hunting with the keenest relish. The preliminary sport of cub-hunting--with its early-dawn meets: bad scent, consequent upon fallen leaves and decayed vegetable matter; riotous young hounds, which can scarcely be brought to hunt upon any terms; timid, nervous young foxes, who hardly dare poke their sharp noses out of covert--only serves to give a greater zest as it were to the opening day. One or two woodland runs, just sufficient to breathe the well-trained hunter or take the exuberant spirits (the accompaniments of high feeding and no work) from the young one, after a stripling Reynard, who as yet has no line of country of his own, and hardly dares to venture far from the place of his birth, ending with a kill just to blood the young hounds, only makes the longing for the first day of the season more intense. Not one of her Majesty's subjects throughout her vast dominions--so vast indeed are they that, as the song tells us, "the sun never sets on them"--not one, I say, of her Majesty's lieges looked forward more anxiously than I did to the first day of the hunting season of 18--, for why should I be too explicit about dates, or let all the world know that I am so ancient as to remember anything so long buried in the past? I had just returned to old England with a year's leave from my regiment, then in India. I was possessed of capital health and spirits, was only just six-and-twenty years of age, had five hundred pounds at my bankers, and two as good nags in my stable as ever a man laid his leg across. "Hunting for ever!" I cried, as I strolled into Seamemup and Bastemwell's, the unrivalled breechesmakers' establishment in the Strand, to order a few pair of those most necessary adjuncts to the sporting man's wardrobe previous to leaving town. "Hunting for ever!" and of all the packs in England, commend me to my old acquaintance, those friends of my boyhood, the Easyallshire Muggers. I am not sure but that, strictly speaking, the term "mugger" ought only be applied to those packs of hounds which are used for that peculiar pastime which, to again quote the immortal Jorrocks, "is only fit for cripples, and them as keeps donkeys," viz., harriers. Be that as it may, the pack I now speak of were, though called muggers, _bonâ fide_ foxhounds, and as such, only used in the "doing to death" of that wily animal. The country which had as it were given birth to this distinguished pack presented to the hunting man very much the same features as do most parts of England. There were the same number of ditches and dingles to be got over somehow, the same gates which would and would not be opened, the same fences, stiles, and heavers to be cleared, the same woodland parts to be hunted, from which it was next to impossible to get a fox away, and to which every one said he would never come again; but for all that no one ever kept his word, for there were just the very same number of sportsmen to be seen at the very next meet held in the district; thus proving that foxhunting, even under difficulties, is still a most fascinating diversion; and there were the same snug-lying gorse coverts, from which a run was sure to be obtained over a flat well-enclosed country, which gave both man and horse as much as ever their united efforts could accomplish, to be there or thereabouts at the finish. Nor were the meets of the Easyallshire Muggers, advertised in _The Field_, dissimilar in any respect to those of other packs of hounds, for there were an equal number of cross roads, turnpike gates, public houses, gibbets, woods, sign-posts, and milestones, as elsewhere. Well, to enjoy a season's sport with this so distinguished hunt was my intention; and no sooner had I completed the requisite arrangements with regard to my hunting toggery, which a residence of some half dozen years in India had rendered necessary, than I took up my abode in the little town of Surlyford, at the comfortable hotel rejoicing in the mythological sign of the Silent Woman, a fabulous personage surely, to be classed with Swans with Two Necks, Green Men, and other creatures who never had any existence. The first meet of the Easyallshire Muggers was settled, so said the county paper, to take place at the fourth milestone on the Surlyford road. Thither I repaired, fully equipped in all the splendour of a new pink, immaculate cords, brown-tinted tops, my blue birds'-eye scarf, neatly folded and fastened with a pin bearing a most appropriate device, viz., a real fox's tooth. In my impatience to be up and doing on this our opening day, I arrived at the trysting-place, from whence I was to woo my favourite pastime, some half hour or more before the master and his pack were due. I had, therefore, ample leisure to receive the greetings of my numerous old friends and acquaintances, as they came up from all parts, and in all directions, on all sorts and all sizes of nags, and at all kinds of paces, to the place of meeting. First to arrive on that useful steed yclept "Shanks's pony," slouching along, clad in rusty velveteen, baggy brown cord breeches and gaiters, billycock, as he termed his wideawake hat, on head, a stout ashen stick, cut from a neighbouring coppice, in hand, and ten to one a quantity of wires in his pockets, was handsome, dark-eyed, good-for-nothing, scampish, dishonest Gipsy Jim--the sometime gamekeeper, when he could get any to employ him, but oftener the poaching, drinking, thieving vagabond of the neighbourhood. A broad grin of recognition, and a touch of the hat on the part of the Gipsy one, and an exclamation on mine of "Bless me, Jim! not hanged yet?" placed us once again on the old familiar footing of "I will tell you all I know about foxes" (and who could afford better information than one whose habits and disposition partook more of the vermin than the man?), "providing you give me a shilling to drink your health." Gipsy Jim and I had hardly interchanged these civilities, when, trotting along on a stout, handsome, six-year-old, in capital condition, though, if anything, a little too fat (not a bad fault, however, at the beginning of the season), came farmer Thresher, of Beanstead, a florid, yellow-haired, red-whiskered, jovial, hard-riding, independent agriculturist, who, on the strength of having been at school in years gone by with some of the neighbouring squires, myself amongst the number, called us all freely by our surnames, forgetting to prefix the accustomed Mister, and thus giving great umbrage to some and causing them always to pointedly address him as "Mr Thresher." Our mutual salutations had hardly come to an end when we were joined by half a dozen more sturdy yeomen, able and willing to go, let the pace be ever so severe, and all of them contributing their five pounds yearly to the support of the Easyallshire Muggers, "spite of wheat, sir, at fourteen shillings a bag." Young Boaster next turns up, a swaggering blade from a neighbouring hunt, who is always abusing the Easyallshire hounds, and bragging of his own prowess, which consists of riding extraordinary distances to far-off meets, and doing nothing when he gets there, save telling wonderful and fabulous stories of what he had done last time he was out, and what he intended to do then. He is succeeded by Dr Bolus, "the sporting Doctor," as he is called, who must be making a very handsome fortune in his profession, if his knowledge of medicine is anything like his judgment in horseflesh, his skill in the pigskin, or his acquaintance with the line of a fox. After Bolus, on a three-legged screw, a wonder to every one how it is kept at all on its understandings, comes Aloes, the veterinary surgeon, a pleasant-spoken, florid, little old man, skilful in his business, ever agreeing, with his "That I would, sir," and one whom I would much prefer to attend me when sick than many a professor of the healing art among men. The majesty of the law is upheld next by Mr Sheepskin, the attorney, a gentlemanly man, a lightweight, and one who rides, when need be, as hard as if not harder than any one. Nor is the Church absent (for we have not a few clerical subscribers to the Easyallshire Muggers), but is well represented in the person of the Rev. Mr Flatman, a good-looking, well-built, foxy-whiskered divine, whose handling of the ribbons on the coach-box, and seat on horseback, would entitle him to a deanery at the very least, could the Broad-Church party but come into power. His small country parish, however, does not suffer by the fondness of its rector for the sports of the field; having a hard-working and most exemplary curate, he is still a painstaking and estimable parish priest, and much preferred, I doubt not, by all his parishioners to any more busy and interfering divine of either of the other two schools of divinity. I myself am by no means the sole member of the military profession present, for we are here of all ranks, from the just-joined subaltern to the gallant colonel of the county militia, a stout fine-looking veteran, none of your feather-bed soldiers, and one who, spite of his weight, is an exceedingly difficult man to beat across country. "Mammon," as it is the fashion nowadays to call that useful article, money, is seen approaching in the person of the Surlyford banker, who, wisely flinging business to the winds at least twice in the week, gets astride a good-looking, nearly thoroughbred nag, and finds accepting bullfinches, negotiating ditches, and discounting gates, stiles, &c., a much more healthy and more pleasant, if not more profitable, occupation than everlastingly grubbing after filthy lucre. The Master now makes his appearance, tall and upright, knowing thoroughly the duties of his office, and if not quite so bold and determined a rider as in years gone by, still making up for want of nerve in knowledge of the country, and for lack of dash in careful riding and judicious nicking-in. Suffice it to say, that at the finish, his absence is never observed, though how he came to be there is better known to the second-rank horsemen than to the flyers. The huntsman and whip are much the same as those worthies are everywhere; but the hounds, how to describe them I know not. The Easyallshire Muggers set all rules regarding the make, size, and symmetry of foxhounds at defiance. They show almost better sport, and kill more foxes, than any pack in the kingdom; and yet they are as uneven as a ploughed field, and as many shapes and sizes as a charity school. I can only say, "handsome is as handsome does;" and if my canine friends are not pleasant to the eye of the connoisseur--if they come not up to the standard of Beckford Somerville, and other writers who have described a perfect foxhound, still they work beautifully--which to my mind is far preferable to looking beautiful--and will run and kill foxes with any hounds in England. The huntsman and whip, though not so well mounted (economy is the order of the day with the Easyallshire Muggers) as we would wish to see them, yet manage somehow to get across the country, and to be with their hounds; though for the matter of that, such is the sagacity of the Easyallshire pack, they can very frequently do quite as well without the assistance of their ruler and guide as with it. The Easyallshire Hunt, as the name implies, is an easy-going sort of concern, in which every man, gentle and simple, has a finger in the pie; every subscriber imagining that he has a perfect right, on the strength of his subscription, to hunt, whip-in, or otherwise direct the movements of the hounds whenever opportunity occurs. But for-rard! for-rard on! or I shall be at the fourth milestone on the Surlyford road all day, instead of drawing that inviting piece of gorse covert which lies so pleasant and warm, with its southern aspect on yonder bank. A guinea to a gooseberry, a fox lies there! Joe, the huntsman, now trots along through the somewhat bare and brown pasture fields towards the covert; the pack, eager and keen for the fray, clustering round the heels of his horse. A few moments only elapse, and the sea of gorse is alive with hounds poking here, there, and everywhere, seeking the lair of sly Reynard. Old experience having taught me that Gipsy Jim's knowledge of the fox and his habits (for being half-brother to the varmint in his nature, how can it fail to be otherwise?) would serve me in good stead, I station myself near to him in order to have a good view of "Mr Reynolds," as Jim calls the cunning animal, when he breaks covert. Nor am I wrong in my conjecture; for after a few pleasant notes from old Bellman, who hits upon the place where Master Fox crossed a ride early this morning, and a "hark to Bellman" from Joe the huntsman, out jumps, almost into Jim's arms, as fine a fox as ever wore a brush. Master Reynard looks somewhat astonished at being brought so suddenly face to face with a two-legged monster, and seems half inclined to turn back again to his hiding-place; but, perhaps judging from Jim's varmint look that no danger might be apprehended from that quarter, and being warned by the deep notes of old Bellman that his late quarters were untenable, he throws back his head as if to sniff the pleasant morning breeze, and giving his brush a gentle wave of defiance, boldly takes to the open, and starts across the field which surrounds the covert at a good rattling pace. Gipsy Jim grins from ear to ear with delight, showing his white regular teeth, at the same time holding up his hand as a warning to me to keep silence for a few seconds, so as not to spoil sport by getting the fox headed back. The moment, however, Master Reynard is safely through the neighbouring hedge, Jim's tremendous view-halloa makes the whole country ring again. This is the signal for every bumpkin and footman to shout and halloa with might and main, thus making the necessary confusion of the find worse confounded still. "Hold your noisy tongues," shout the Master, huntsman, whip, and all the horsemen; but "Hold your noisy tongues" they cry in vain. "Tallyho! tallyho! tallyho!" yell the footmen, totally regardless of all expostulation. But crafty Jim, knowing the idiosyncrasy of the yokels, has made all safe by his silence, until the red-coated rascal is well away. "Hark! halloa!" "Hark! halloa!" roar the field. "Tootle, tootle!" goes Joe's horn, reëchoed by an asthmatical effort in the same direction, on the part of the worthy master, who blows as if his horn was full of dirt. The hounds, however, are accustomed to the sound, feeble as it is, and all rush to the spot where Master, huntsman, and Gipsy Jim are all cheering them exactly at the place where foxy broke away. What a burst of music now strikes upon the ear, far superior to the delights of any concert it has ever been my lot to be present at, as the hounds acknowledge with joy the rapture they feel at the strong scent left behind by him they had so unceremoniously disturbed from his comfortable lodgings! But the scent is too good for us to dwell here for description, and away they go at a killing pace, which, if it lasts long enough, will get to the bottom of many a gallant steed there present. And now comes the rush of horsemen amidst the cries of "Hold hard! don't spoil your sport!" of the master, and the "'Old 'ard!" of the huntsman, who has an eye to tips, and therefore restrains his wrath in some measure. But the Easyallshireans are not to be kept back by any such remonstrances and expostulations as these, and those who mean to be with the hounds throughout the run, hustle along to get a forward place; whilst the knowing and cunning ones, with the Master at their head, turn short round, and make for a line of gates which lie invitingly open, right in the direction which the fox has taken. I get a good start, and being well mounted, sail away, and am soon alongside of Joe the huntsman, whose horse, though a screw, and not very high in condition, is obliged to go, being compelled thereto by its rider. A stiff-looking fence, which I charge at the same moment as Joe, who takes away at least a perch of fencing, and thus lets many a muff through, lands us into the next field, and affords a fair view of the hounds streaming away a little distance before us. But why should I describe the run? The _Field_, weekly, gives much more graphic descriptions of such things than I am able to write; let me, therefore, confine my narrative to what befell my individual self. A rattling burst of twenty minutes rendered the field, as may be well imagined, very select, and it would in all probability have become still more so, had not a fortunate check given horses and men a few moments' breathing time, thus enabling the cunning riders to get up to the hounds. "Away we go again, and I will be there at the finish," I exclaimed, as pressing my cap firmly on my head, and shutting my eyes, I ride at a tremendous bullfinch, the thick boughs and sharp thorns of which scratch my face all over and nearly decapitate me as I burst through it. But, as in the case of the renowned John Gilpin, it is-- "Ah, luckless speech and bootless boast, For which I paid full dear." Another ten minutes' best pace and the fox is evidently sinking before us; but, alas! it was not to be my lot to see the gallant animal run into and pulled down in the open, after as fine a run as was ever seen. Trim-kept hedges, well-hung, stout, and newly-painted white gates, had shown me that for the last few moments, he had entered the domain of some proprietor, whose estate certainly presented the very pink of neatness. Little indeed did I dream that there would exist in the very heart of Easyallshire one so benighted as to object to the inroads made upon him by that renowned pack, the Muggers. But I reckoned without my host, or rather, as the sequel will show, with my host; for as, in my endeavours to save my now somewhat exhausted horse, I rode at what appeared an easy place in a very high fence, bounded on the off-side with a stiff post and rail, an irate elderly gentleman, gesticulating, shouting, and waving an umbrella in his hand, suddenly rose up as it were from the very bowels of the earth, just as my steed was preparing to make his spring, thus causing the spirited animal to rear up, and, overbalancing himself, to fall heavily to the ground with me under him. When I next recovered consciousness and opened my eyes, I was being borne along on a hurdle, by the author of my misfortunes--a gray-haired, piebald-whiskered, stout, little, red-faced old gentleman--and two of his satellites, whom I rightly conjectured to be the coachman and gardener; but the pain of my broken leg made me relapse into unconsciousness, nor did the few wits I by nature possess return to me again until I was laid on a bed, and a medical practitioner of the neighbourhood was busy at work setting my fractured limb. To make a long story short, I remained under the roof of Major Pipeclay--for that was the name of the irascible little gentleman whose hatred of hunting, hounds, and horses had caused my suffering--until my wounded limb was well again, the worthy old major doing all in his power to make amends for the catastrophe his absurd violence had brought about. At the expiration of six weeks I was able to move about on crutches; at the termination of twice that period, I was well again, and had, moreover, fallen irretrievably in love with the bright eyes and pretty face of Belinda Pipeclay, one of the major's handsome daughters. Thinking, in my ignorance of the fair sex, that the child of so irascible a papa--having been in her juvenile days well tutored under the Solomonian code of "sparing the rod, and spoiling the child"--must therefore, of necessity, make a submissive and obedient wife, I proposed, was accepted, obtained the major's consent, and became a Benedict. Dear reader, I am really ashamed to confess the truth: I have been severely henpecked ever since. Whether Belinda possesses the same antipathy to hounds, horses, and hunting men as her progenitor, I cannot possibly tell; for returning to India soon after my marriage, I had no opportunity of there testing her feelings in that respect. Now the increasing number of mouths in our nursery compels a decreasing ratio of animals in my stable, and I am reduced to one old broken-winded cripple, which I call "the Machiner." He takes Mrs Sabretache and myself to the market town on a Saturday, and mamma, papa, and the little Sabretaches to church on the following day. A DAY WITH THE DRAG BY THE EDITOR To my mind there are few more pleasant ways of spending an afternoon, than in having a good rousing gallop with the Drag. Of course there be Drag-hunts and Drag-hunts, and unless the sport is conducted smartly and well, 'twere better far that it should not be done at all. The hounds need not be bred from the Beaufort Justice, but on the other hand, they need not be a set of skulking, skirting brutes, that one "wouldn't be seen dead with." Of course the members of such hunts ride in mufti--more familiarly called, in these degenerate days, "ratcatcher"--but I always think that Huntsman and Whips should be excepted from this rule, and anyone who is privileged to share the fun of the Royal Artillery Draghounds will find that the high officials of the hunt are arrayed, not _certes_, as was Solomon in all his glory, but in the very neatest and smartest of "livery," and nothing could look more sportsmanlike than the dark-blue coat, red collar and cuffs, surmounted by the orthodox black velvet hunting-cap, which are _de rigeur_ at Woolwich now. When I first joined in their cheery gallops, there was no hunt uniform, and the appearance of the "turn out" suffered accordingly. Now, nothing is left to be desired in this direction. Good fellowship in the field we have always had, and does not this go far indeed to make up the sum of one's enjoyment? When every man out, almost without exception, knows the rest of the field personally; when a kindly hand is always ready to be stretched forth to aid a brother in distress--when you know every man well enough to say "mind you don't jump on me, old chap, if this 'hairy' comes base over apex at the next fence!" or, "Let me have that place first; I can't hold this beggar!" things all seem so much pleasanter than they are in a country where you know few people, and don't know them very well: yes, sociability, depend upon it, goes very far indeed to make up the charm of any sport, and in none more so than in that of crossing a country. Let us imagine ourselves arrived at Woolwich and "done well" at luncheon in the R.A. mess. And here I would observe, _par parenthese_, that it would require a big effort of imagination to picture to yourself any occasion upon which you were _not_ "done well" within those hospitable portals. About 2.30 when we are half way through that cigar in the ante-room, which alone "saves one's life" after such a luncheon, a crack of the whip, and a "gently there, Waterloo!" brings us quickly to the window overlooking the parade ground, where hounds have just arrived in charge of the Master and two Whips. We hurry out, after a farewell to such of our kindly hosts as are not intending to accompany us, and find that that big-boned black horse with a hog mane, is intended to carry "Cæsar and his fortunes" this afternoon. A right good one he is, too, with a perfect snaffle mouth. He is "not so young as he was," but "sweet are the uses of adversity," and this fact has its advantages, as he will not fret and worry, and pull one's arms off before starting: he has "joined the band," which is also an excellent thing in its way, because the man just ahead of you can hear him coming, and will, you hope, get out of the way at the next fence! After a short period of moving up and down the parade ground, and exchanging greetings with a few whom you have not had a chance of speaking to before, the word is given, and at that indescribable and, to me, most direful pace, a "hound's jog," off we go along the road over the Common. How the bricks and mortar fiend has been working his wicked will with the place since last we saw it! The trots out to the several meets get longer and longer as season after season rolls by. What was once almost our best line, and where for two or three years the annual point-to-point race was held, is now an unwieldy mass of buildings, prominent amongst which stands that gigantic fraud on the long-suffering ratepayers, the Fever Hospital, with its staff of 350 to wait on a maximum of 450 patients! At last we emerge from the region of building and railway "enterprise" (save the mark!) and see glimpses of the country ahead of us. A winding lane traversed, and we find a gate propped open on our left: here a halt is called. The Master rides into the field, whilst the Whips remain where they are in charge of the pack. Two minutes later our worthy chief returns and addresses the assembled company, not in the studied beauty of language employed by Cicero, nor in the perfervid oratory of Demosthenes, but in a manner very much more to the point than most of the harangues of those somewhat long-winded classics. "Let 'em get over the first fence: then you can ride like blazes!" he says. The Whips move forward gently: hounds are all bristling with excitement, for they seem to know as well as we that the moment for action has arrived. "Gently there, Safety! have a care, then!" Yow, yow, yow! from the hounds. Toot, toot, from the Master's horn, and away they go. "Do wait, you dev---- fellows! You'll be bang into the middle of 'em! There, now, you can go and be blessed to you!" Amid a confused rush of horses, clatter of hoofs, and babel of tongues, we are away, and thundering down to the first fence, a big quickset. With a crash the first Whip is over or through; it doesn't matter which so long as he finds himself "all standing" on the right side. Half-a-dozen men make for the same place and great is the thrusting thereunto. The first and second get over: the third man falls: the next alights almost on top of him: now comes a gallant "just joined" one, who does not jump when his horse does, and then that first fence becomes of no further interest to us, for are we not over it, and speeding along at our best sprinting pace towards a line of post and rails, where, the Powers be praised! there is plenty of room for the whole field to have it abreast, if they wished. Two refuse at this: it is a pretty big one, and worse still the timber is new: but the next comer smashes the top rail and lets everyone through: then for three or four fields all is plain sailing--brush fences that our steeds almost gallop through, form the only obstacles. We jump into a park, and "Ware hole!" is the cry: we pull off to the right of where hounds are running in order to avoid the home of the ubiquitous bunny, but not soon enough, unluckily, to save one youngster from a tumble: the horse puts his foot in a rabbit hole and rolls over as if he is shot. "Not hurt a bit! Go on," calls out the rider, pluckily. Yes, no doubt about it, this is the game for the making of young soldiers. On we go, now descending a gentle slope to where an ominous little crowd of yokels and loafers are lining a narrow strip of green on each side: a second glance, as we rise in our stirrups for inspection purposes, shows us that this is evidently looked upon as the sensation "lep" of the run: a good sized brook, in front of which have been placed some stout, well furze-bushed hurdles. The scent has been thoughtfully laid a little on one side of this, so there is no fear of stray hounds getting in one's way. One look shows us that it will take a bit of doing, and hats are crammed on, and horses "taken by the head" in earnest, as the three leading men come along at it. A quick glance round and a lightning calculation as to where you'll go to, should your neighbour whip round or fall just in front of you, and then a vigorous hoist over the hurdles carries you just clear--and no more than just clear--of the frowning and muddy stream just beyond. The man on your left gets over also, but with one hind leg dropped in: three come slashing over, all right: then little Miffkins, in an agony of incertitude, takes a pull at his horse when within three lengths of where he should take off. Fatal mistake! for he merely succeeds in putting the break on: the horse jumps short, and just clearing the hurdles drops helplessly into the turbid stream amid the ribald jeers and laughter of the crowd assembled. Baulked by this _contretemps_ the next horse refuses, and though ridden at the obstacle again and again, resolutely persists in remaining on the wrong side of the water. But "forrard on, forrard on!" Miffkins will get dry again--he is not hurt, in the least--and his horse will be taught an invaluable lesson in swimming. The pack is still racing away half a field ahead, but they are beginning to "string" a good deal now, from the severity of the pace. And by the same token, most of our good nags are obviously feeling that this sort of fun can't go on for ever. My own musical steed is, in especial, making the most appalling observations on the subject as we breast the next sharp slope. I feel, somehow, that he is using the equinese for "Hang it all, you know, I'm not a steam roundabout, my dear chap!" and my heart smites me. Before, however, I can make up my wavering mind as to whether conscience imperatively demands of me "a pull," or not, to my great joy, hounds suddenly throw up their heads where the drag has evidently been lifted, and we find ourselves at the ever welcome check. Most of us slip off our smoking steeds, whose shaking tails and sweat-lathered coats attest the rate at which these three miles have been covered. By twos and threes, the stragglers, and those whose luck is "out," arrive. One man has broken the cantle of his saddle, another has managed to pull his horse's bridle off in the floundering of a fall: here is a rider whose spur has been dragged off his boot: there one who has broken his girths: two men are hatless and another has lost his cigarette case, presumably whilst standing on his head after trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a stile without jumping it. However, these are but common incidents of the chase, and "all in the day's work." The troubles are taken good humouredly, and in the true spirit of philosophy. The men who have second horses out, have now mounted them, whilst the rest of us who intend riding the concluding half of the line, resume acquaintance with our splashed saddles and mud-stained steeds. Trotting off across a road, we again lay on, and have a gallop of quite five hundred yards before coming to anything in the way of an obstacle. Over a piece of timber, to the tune of a most unholy cracking of top rails, we go, and soon find ourselves approaching the far boundary which offers us the choice of a blind, hairy place, with a big ditch on the far side, a gate securely nailed up, and a greasy-looking foot-bridge adorned with several dangerous-looking holes. This last we all--as I think, wisely--eschew. Some make for the gate: the rest of us try the first-named place. One of the whips goes at it "hell for leather," and gets over. I, following him, I blush to say, rather--just a very little--too closely, utter a silent prayer that my leader may not fall, and somewhat to my astonishment feel "the musician" apparently disappearing into the bowels of the earth beneath me whilst I shoot over his head and sprawl, spread-eagled, on my hands and face into the ploughed field beyond. He has jumped short and paid the penalty by dropping into the ditch. I shout back "No" to a kindly enquiry as to whether I am hurt, and the questioner gallops on, leaving me to wrestle with the problem of how I am to extract the hog-maned one from his present retreat. As I take him by the rein and wonder how deeply his hind legs are imbedded in the sticky clay, he makes a wild flounder, plunges up the bank, rams his big, bony head into my chest and causes me to take up a most undignified position, for nothing can look much more aimless than to see the ardent sportsman attired in boots and breeches, seated involuntarily in the wet furrow of a ploughed field, his horse standing over him in an apparently menacing attitude. However, although I felt damped--and was--the animal was out of what might have been "a tight place," and I climbed into the saddle again with muddy breeches, but a cheerful heart. To catch hounds after this was, of course, out of the question, but I jogged slowly across the field I was in, and felt, I humbly confess, a thrill of unholy joy, as from the farther side of the thick hedge there, I heard a plaintive voice saying: "Come through the gap and give us a hand, old fellow; I've come down, busted both girths and a stirrup leather, lost my curb chain and split my br--waistcoat!" I was happy again. I had a companion in misfortune, and, better still, one in sorrier plight than my own. By the time we had (as far as a piece of string, two torn handkerchiefs and a necktie, the thongs of both hunting crops, and a pair of braces would allow) repaired damages, lighted and smoked a couple of cigars, and talked the day's doings over as we rode back to the cheery lights shining from the barrack windows, I for one felt just as happy as if I had managed to live through the whole, instead of only part, of that invigorating gallop with the Woolwich Drag. STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR We sons of Devon are, I doubt not, too prone to dwell and enlarge upon the fact that we are not quite as other men, that when all things were made none was made better than this, our land of sunny skies and mystic moors, of lane and hedgerow, of sea and river, where the balmy fragrance of Torbay invites the winter, and the chill grandeur of Exmoor repels the summer's heat; with goodness overflowing from Porlock to Penzance; the home of traditions and folkspeech that mark us out a people meet to enjoy the wholesomest clime under the canopy of heaven. I say we are too apt to allow these matters to weigh with us, and breed a smiling contentment and ease of living perhaps not good for those who shall come after us--for those who may be forced to quit their native soil and sojourn among aliens of sharper wits and noisier mode of life. Soft as a Dartmoor bog the South Devon man has been found by those of northern blood, who in mean ways despoil him. Yet if history doth not lie, there have been sundry occasions when, for stoutness of heart and a kind of obstinacy of courage, the men of the west of England had no need to suffer by comparison with any. To many of us now, alas, the home of our fathers, the haunts of our boyhood, are no longer daily present; but the exile's memory is strong and vivid, and, aided as is natural by not infrequent visits to them, yields abundant pleasure in the contemplation of spots hallowed to us by fond associations, the tombs of our sires, the scenes of early passion, and perhaps above all, to him of man's estate, the otter bank and Exmoor. Stronger than death, more lasting than love of woman, is the passion for the chase, and of all those who ride to hounds, the hunter of the wild deer of Devon must surely bear the palm for all the qualities that go to make up the sportsman; and as I have been challenged to show that this at least is no empty boast, nor figment of the brain, I proceed to tell, for all but those who know it better than I, how the men of Devon hunt the wild red deer. It was ordained that I should be the first of my race born out of Devon, and there was perhaps allotted to me lacking that birthright a keener relish for all that Devon yields, so that a certain home-sickness will often befall me, which that sweet air and homely speech and hospitable fare only may cure. It is then I go west, go where merrie England is merrie England still, remote from stir and traffic of modern life, forgotten of civilization and the so-called march of mind. Cathay within three hundred miles of Paddington Station! Not many years ago there came over me the old longing. As summer merged into autumn it got into my blood and there being no help for it, ere September waned I packed my bag and set out for Exmoor. There, descendants of the tall deer whom the Conqueror "loved as if he were their father," were to be found in plenty, hunted with horn and hound, captured and slain. As much in the spirit of the pilgrim as of the sportsman, I made my way to where the river Exe and its big brother Barle have union. To Dulverton I fared, even as John Ridd had fared two hundred years before, and as I crossed the threshold of the Red Lion, recalled John Fry's striding into the hostel, "with the air and grace of a short-legged man, and shouting as loud as if he were calling sheep upon Exmoor." "Hot mootton pasty for twoo trarv'lers, at number vaive, in vaive minnits! Dish un up in the tin with the grahvy, zame as I hardered last Tuesday." In these days Dulverton may be said to exist for one purpose only, that of hunting the stag--with perhaps a little fishing thrown in. The oldest inhabitant will meet you upon the bridge, and with true Devonshire garrulity discourse of stag. Sauntering alongside you the length of its single street, he will point out the abode of the tailor (who makes hunting garments), of the cobbler (who makes riding boots). A saddler's shop is almost an appanage of the inn under whose portico, on the day of my arrival, a fuming sportsman and a well "done" horse were eloquent of stag. In the town there was suppressed excitement, and what passes in those parts for bustle and stir. The traffic had a way of suddenly disappearing down an alley which led to the banks of the Barle, and so to Exford. Needless to say, the attraction at Exford was Mr Bisset's kennels, nor would any peace or comfort reign in Dulverton until such time as news should arrive of the find and the kill. That evening we sat in the stone-floored parlour of the inn and drank cider out of blue pint mugs--no true son of Devon drinks from a tumbler--and by my side was the warped old man who had weathered eighty Exmoor winters, and who told of the season of bitter frost when the red deer would come by the score of a morning to the farmers' ricks of corn and hay and clover, and some of them so tame that they would present themselves at the back door for a drink of water. On the following day, things had quieted down. The staghounds were in kennel; and although the Exmoor foxhounds met in the neighbourhood for cub-hunting, heedless people went their way and took no notice of a pursuit only distantly connected with stag. At last the eventful or stag-hunting day is ushered in, and as usual one's preparations are discovered at the last moment to be incomplete. A refractory boot causes delay and consequent anguish to a small party who have to travel with me on wheels from Dulverton to the meet at Venniford Cross; for eighteen Devonshire miles are before us, and it is conceivable that the day would have ended before our journey, had our coachman been other than a native Jehu. A man must live in the west of England to get used to driving horses at a hand-gallop up and down hills of which the gradient is sometimes less than 1 in 4 and sometimes more. And so we go on, our driver singing-- "When the wind whistles cold on the moors of a night, All along, down along, out along lee, Tom Pearce's ould mare doth appear gashly white, Wi' Bill Brewer, Jan Slewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke; Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and a--a--ll." At noon we reach Venniford Cross and find our horses who were sent on yesterday, little short-legged animals with perfect shoulders and forelegs of iron; as well they may have, to climb almost perpendicular hills and gallop over the rugged Devonian slate country, which attains its greatest elevation on Exmoor. The stream of traffic was enormous, or so it seemed in those unfrequented parts. The countryside was agog, and for twenty miles round few Devonians able to sit a horse can have been absent from the meet. Here leaked out a change of venue: it had been determined to draw the gorse and the combes which seam the side of Dunkery, and so for some miles we jogged on by road, sometimes at a walk, often at a fast trot, but always ascending higher and higher. We seemed to be climbing heights of stupendous proportions. Cloutsham is at length reached, and on the plateau assembled the sort of "field" that Devon and Somerset turn out when the staghounds are afoot. There are the sporting farmer, a doctor or two, boys on ponies, parsons on cobs, strangers from London, neighbours from South Devon, the master of Pixton and other "county" people, and of course every hunting lady of the district, not all of whom use the side saddle! Among this goodly company hardly one is there whose thoughts and anxieties are not centred on the chase--the chase stripped of polish and luxury, the chase divorced from good cheer and even from opportunities for vain display. The instinct and passion of the hunter possesses them all. We have all come long journeys and have perhaps many hours to remain in the saddle; and now is the time to ease our horses. The field dismounts, and booted ladies are seen seated by the roadside, or seeking refreshment of milk and bread and clotted cream at an adjacent farmhouse. While the "tufters" are drawing, we look round again and inly rejoice that Exmoor is still a vast wild tract hardly civilised. Around it Brendon common lies unenclosed, and the miles from Alderman's Barrow to the east of Dunkery are unbroken by a fence. We are told of rare birds and beasts to be seen there along with the red deer which have had a home in Exmoor from time immemorial; polecats are found, though now somewhat rarely; the Montagu's harrier is occasionally seen; a snowy owl was shot some few years back, and only two years ago a pelican was found walking about on the North Forest if the story of a Somersetshire farmer may be believed. The stag-hunting country is a matter of six and thirty miles, which often the tireless hounds will cross from end to end after their quarry. Surely the most important, interesting, and difficult part of the chase of the wild deer is the "harbouring," as it is called. How fine an exercise of woodcraft! The harbourer's best guide is the slot, or footprint of the deer, which, to the experienced eye, tells whether the deer afoot be stag or hind, and whether of proper age to hunt and kill. Four or five hours are often spent by the most skilful harbourer in tracking a warrantable stag to his lair. The deer duly harboured, the next thing is to rouse him, and force him to break cover and run for dear life. Selected hounds called "tufters" are laid on the drag, and master, huntsman, whip and harbourer, post themselves where they will be able to stop the hounds after this purpose is served. Looking across the declivity in front of us, we see the wooded slopes where a stag has been harboured. The scarlet jackets of huntsman and whips move about in the distance, directing the tufters by horn and voice. "There he goes, sir," at length cries a schoolboy on his pony, whose sharp eyes have detected the graceful bound of a deer; but it is a hind, and the schoolboy is told that, although hinds are hunted later on, the present is a close time for them, and that our jolly company of sportsmen and ladies will not ride to hounds this day unless a warrantable stag be found. Our "harboured" stag had evidently wandered on. Let us leave the field to indulge in that gossip for which Devonians are famous, and follow at a respectful distance the tufters now moving across Cloutsham Ball to Ten Acre Cleeve. We of course find it necessary almost immediately to negotiate a combe, that is, to descend the sides of one of those deep ravines with which Exmoor abounds. We yield the reins and see our horse's head disappear between our knees, his croup rises to our neck, and so we slip, shuffle, and slide down the precipitous pathway. In the bottom of the combe, we meet the tufters returning; they have roused their stag, and now rejoin the pack. Jogging forward, we see a noble beast of chase, large as an eastern donkey, the antlered monarch of Exmoor, trotting in a leisurely way, and evidently making for Holm Wood. Jumping the fence into the fields by Bucket Hole, our stag has met a woman and two children, who flourished a pink apron at him, so he has turned back, showing how easily sometimes a stag may be headed if he has formed no definite plan as to where he will go; within five minutes we were to see how hopeless a task it is to head a stag when he is determined to make his point. Crossing the combe towards us, the stag came up to the edge of the bushes and coasted along the side, while we rode along the heather on the ridge, in the vain hope that we could keep him out of the Porlock Coverts. Just by Whitestones he turned up, and, undismayed by the shouting and smacking of whips, trotted up to our horses. Riding at him was no good; a sudden stop with lowered antlers--all his rights and three on top both sides--a bound to one side or another, and he is behind you, and perfectly ready to encounter the next one; horses, too, will not go near a stag if they can help it. Although we did all we knew to turn him, I do not think we forced him fifty yards from the course he would have taken had he been left to himself. Andrew Miles always declared that there was only one way to turn a stag, and it would have required an exceedingly well-drilled field, proof against the temptation to look at the stag, to carry out his plan. "Get right in front of the stag," Miles would say, "and ride as hard as you can go for the point to which he is making; he will dodge round you if you ride at him, but he will not deliberately follow you." But now our stag, with an air of insulted majesty, turns his back upon us and sets out for his long last journey. He must rouse himself, for the soul-stirring notes of the hounds float towards us. The pack is at length laid on, the sweet scent fills the big hounds with delirious joy, and in long drawn file they race forward, and the chase begins. We had a nice gallop over Skilgate Common and down a steep, root-grown slope, through the Bittscombe plantations. The stag turned down the valley to Raddington. Despite the blazing sun and intense heat, hounds ran fast, but Devonia's wilds are not everywhere to be invaded, and here the sobbing horses must pound along the road, while the hounds turn up over a grass field as steep as the side of a house; some riders indeed climbed up, some cast forward, others like myself cast back towards Skilgate, on the chance of the stag swinging round towards Haddon again; but we were wrong, as he went straight over the top, past Hove and Quarterly, into the Exe valley by Morebath, running through several little coverts. From this point I was beaten out of my country and hardly know how to tell of our wanderings. The stag worked the line of a brook past Shillingford as far as Hockley bridge where he soiled, but the eager hounds gave little respite, and our new-found stag went away up a little valley to the left. Hounds ran on fast, keeping about a hundred yards from the lane, which helped us to get along, for Devonshire banks with the leaves on cannot be ridden over in September. The heat and dust were something to be remembered, but hounds pushed on, hovering a minute where bullocks had been over the line, and again where a mare and foal charged them in a most determined manner doing, luckily, no harm. Huntsham seemed to be the point, a good old-fashioned line often travelled by deer fifty years ago, but most unusual now. Leaving Huntsham on the right, we went on by Cudmore to Hole Lake, hounds running on grass, horses again pounding along the road. Now we turn into the fields and gallop alongside the pack, which kept on in most determined manner, and with more music than is usually given on so hot a day. We soon got into a maze of small combes running down to the brook which passes under Huntsham Wood. From gate to gate, and gap to gap we hie, keeping as near hounds as may be, and passed a farm which I was told is Redwood. A patch of ferny gorse-covered ground is Bere Down, across which hounds ran fast, much disturbing a pony at grass, who jumped the fence down the biggest drop I ever saw anything except a deer come over in safety. The stag went down the line of the brook till its junction with the bigger Loman Water near Chief Loman. Here a long check refreshed us, the stag having worked first the road and then the water for a long distance. The pack puzzled it out slowly, both Anthony and Col. Hornby dismounting to keep close to them through the impassable places. Then we heard a holloa ahead, and hounds were lifted about a quarter of a mile to Land's Mill, when they hit off the line, just owning it down the road, and so recall us to the chase. The field seemed hardly to diminish, though it kept changing; many of those from the Minehead and Dunster side stopped and went home, but every hamlet, every farm we passed, brought out recruits eager to see the hounds, for they do not often come this way. The whole country was in a wild state of commotion and excitement. A capital gallop over a ridge of hills, where the chase went through a field of roots, which some gentlemen were just beginning to shoot over (and much I fear we spoiled their sport), brought us to the Western Canal, where the stag swam over, while we crossed by a bridge, and went on again to the Halberton lane. In the field beyond, sheep had foiled the ground, but hounds cast forward, and were soon running again down to the canal, which here "ran a ring." Hounds feathered down the towing-path and over the railway, where we had to make a _détour_. We had just rejoined them when there was a burst of music, and the stag was seen swimming in the canal. He scrambled out, ran down the road a few hundred yards with the pack at his heels, and then jumped over the fence into ploughed ground, where he fell, and was rolled over a moment afterwards, when he was found to have a broken leg. The fatal stab to the heart was dealt as soon as our stag was taken, and now the hounds must be given their portion. "Look at that!" exclaims a sporting farmer as the body is turned over and the legs are seen standing stark and stiff in the air. "Ay, properly runned up, poor thing," answers the huntsman, who is busy anatomising. "Brisher, bother your old head, you'm always after the venison." And Brusher, who has stolen forward and began licking the haunch, beats a hasty retreat, not without a taste of whipcord. Then the hounds' portion is made over to them, the huntsman reserves his perquisites, and the head being claimed by the Master, all the farmers of the district account for the venison share and share alike. The run lasted exactly seven hours from the lay on; the last hour and a-half we hunted in the dark. Eight only of us saw the finish. And now looking over my record of this memorable run how bare an itinerary it seems, lacking the mental eye to fill up the scene with luscious autumn tints, and lacking too the stir and movement of the chase. Then the blood boils in veins of horse and man, then a fierce energy urges on the pursuers. What can compare with it, but the wild charge of cavalry? The occasion past, however, our pulse resumes its normal beat, and presently in slumber the scene and all its glories fade away. But not the memory fades! Year by year while trouble, sickness, hopes and longings get blotted from our recollection, the printed page or glance at whip and spur, shall revive with more than pristine splendour, the memory of the chase. And what of the stag? Well, the stag's life is not, I fear, a happy one; for him no sooner is one trouble past than another is upon him. During the summer his horns are growing and keep him in constant irritation and anxiety. The velvet is hardly lost when the fever of the rutting season consumes him. Then there is the hard winter to live through, and with the return of spring returns also the period for the shedding of old horns, and sprouting of new ones. Indeed, it is only for a few weeks in every year that the stag is his perfect self, and those weeks, with a small margin before and after, constitute what is called the stag-hunting season, a season of relief to the farmer whose turnip crops have been ruined by the herd's depredations, a season of anxiety to the master of the Devon and Somerset staghounds, a season of delight to him who loves the chase. Pleasure unalloyed, indeed, for so long as fortune favours him, but assuredly the day will sooner or later arrive when a grip or cart rut on Exmoor will turn horse and rider over, when the red grass or white bog flower that should warn the horseman to "take a pull" is overlooked or disregarded, with alarming results. The least of the ills that flesh is heir to, when stag-hunting on Exmoor, is to lose one's way twenty miles from home, and be found a solitary horseman wandering on the moor, soaked to the skin, out of hail of any living creature but forest ponies, and uneasily musing on the old nurse-tales of pixies. If, in such case, you are fortunate enough to stumble upon a moorland farm, do not fail to accept the shelter which will surely be offered; and so shall the congratulations of your friends sound sweet in your ears when you return safe and sound on the morrow. Your landlord also, if you are staying at an inn and hunting on a hired mount, will welcome you with such evident sincerity that you feel sure it is not unconnected with the recovery of his horse. SPORT AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS BY "SARCELLE" It is a gloriously bright, glowing autumn morning, a light breeze ruffles the clear, blue surface of the Atlantic, or rather of a little bay thereof, which lies in a pretty setting of hills and mountains just in front of the window whereat I am writing, beyond the hydrangeas and fuchsias of the garden and an intervening stretch of marshland, home of many a snipe and duck. As the day is bright, and the water in the river low, there is but little chance of hooking either salmon or trout before evening; therefore, instead of "dropping a line" to those finny aristocrats, I will endeavour to "improve the shining hour" by writing a few lines about them, and their "followers." Truly a fitting room is this in which to write of matters piscatorial--ay, of sport in general. In a corner, just two feet to the left of me, are my two beloved rods, a trout fly-rod and a trolling-rod; by the opposite end of the fire-place repose a handsome salmon-rod, and a landing-net of portentous dimensions, so huge that it looks more suitable for Og, king of Bashan, or Goliath of Gath, than for any modern mortal: but it is not upon record that those large gentlemen ever studied the quaint pages of "The Contemplative Man's Recreation." Two chairs off me lies my old creel, which had eleven good sea-trout in it yesterday, but now contains only my precious fly-book, its cover shiny with hundreds of glittering scales of the beautiful fish, which I shall be at no pains to remove; for when I am far away from these charming scenes those scales shall remind me of the river and the lough, of the mountains and the heather, of the grouse and the snipe, and of the genial companions it has been my good luck to meet in old Ireland. A little beyond my fishing-basket is a sideboard which is littered with central-fire cartridges, tins of powder, and bags of shot. It is also adorned by one or two short clay pipes, and by a "billy-cock" hat, which, like almost every other hat in this inn, is covered with the most approved "casts" of salmon and trout-flies. In the corner, by the sideboard, two more rods and another landing-net; on the floor, sundry and divers pairs of sturdy-looking shooting boots. Next we come to a big salmon-creel, three central-fire guns, and a muzzle-loader; more hats, adorned with bunches of heather and casts of flies; a big shrimp-net (by the way, I and a fellow-sportsman took about five quarts of beautiful prawns with that latter one afternoon); more pipes, more fishing-rods. In one corner of the room is a stuffed badger, which was pulled out of a deep and narrow hole, after a struggle of nearly two hours, by a white bull-terrier with a brown patch over one eye, who is now lying at my feet. On the chimney-piece are a grouse and a peregrine falcon, the latter incurring grave penalties by "the wearing of the green," for some friendly hand has adorned it with a little Dolly Varden hat of that colour. Now to complete his notion of my immediate surroundings, the reader must picture another window at the other end of this room, looking out not upon the sea, but upon a high heathery mountain, the home of the grouse and the hare; and he must imagine frequent interruptions from the incursions of friendly dogs, pointers, setters, retrievers, greyhounds, and terriers. Yes, the whole atmosphere of this house is evidently of the sport, sporting; the "commercial" would be at a discount here; all are lovers of the rod or gun, many of both; and those of the fair sex who honour us with their presence--thank goodness we are not without their refining and humanising influence--take a keen interest in our sport, and are proud of the doings of their respective husbands, brothers, or sons--for there are several family-parties staying here. Some of my readers with sporting proclivities are already beginning to ask, "Where is this 'happy hunting ground?'" Alas, I fear me that I must not proclaim it in the pages of so popular a periodical as this, for there were nine rods on the little river yesterday, and our worthy hostess has her house nearly full of people, and her hands quite full of work; and if it were only generally known in London how delightful a place is the White Trout Inn (that is the most appropriate _sobriquet_ I can think of for the moment), we should be flooded with eager sportsmen, the rivers would be over-fished, the moors over-shot, and the place spoiled. Before I dilate further on the delights of the White Trout Inn and its surroundings, I must lay down my pen for a brief space, and devote myself to the consumption of a hearty breakfast, at which some of the fish, from which the inn takes its name, invariably figure, accompanied generally by eggs and bacon, grilled mutton, and other solid viands. It is done, the inner man is refreshed; and though a stronger breeze has sprung up, bringing clouds with it, and rods are off to the river, and guns to the mountain, and a knowing old professional angler in long-tailed frieze coat, indescribable hat, knee breeches, and black stockings, opines that there is a good chance for both trout and salmon, I must forego the sport for the present, and finish my appointed task. The White Trout Inn is not situated in a town, nor even in a village, though there are a few scattered houses here and there, but the place has the inestimable advantage to the sportsman of being twenty miles distant from a railway. Within a comfortable hour's walk of mine inn is a lovely lake five miles in length, surrounded by mountains as grand as artist could desire. White villas nestle here and there on the wooded slopes that lead down to the clear blue water, dotted with sundry fishing-boats, from which anglers are throwing the fly for salmon or trout, both of which swarm in the lake. From the lake down to the sea a beautiful river runs a picturesque course of about four miles, in a valley with mountains on the one side and well-cultivated hills and slopes on the other; and in every part of the river are to be found the noble salmon, the brilliant white or sea-trout, and their humble relative, the brown trout--in England a prize coveted by most anglers, and esteemed by most _gourmands_, but here looked upon with contempt alike by fishermen and epicures, being far exceeded both in strength and gamesomeness, and in delicacy of flavour, by its migratory brother from the sea. The fishing in both river and lake is free to visitors at this inn, who have, moreover, the privilege of shooting over some of the neighbouring mountains, where may be found grouse, hares, woodcock, and snipe. There is grand duck-shooting here in the season, and the lovely bay affords an immense abundance and variety of sea fish to those who like a good breeze and a bit of heavy hand-pulling, as an occasional change after many days' fly-fishing. We have a glorious sandy beach, where sea-bathing may be enjoyed untrammelled by conventionalities of machines or costumes. We have always some of "the best of all good company" here; in fact, one gentleman, as true a sportsman as ever crossed country, drew trigger, or threw salmon-fly, has taken up his abode here _en permanence_, and finds sport of some kind for nearly every day in the year. I must not omit to mention that, for those who like to take rifle or shot-gun out to sea with them, we have seals pretty frequently, and a great abundance of large wild-fowl. Our larder, I need hardly say, is kept constantly supplied with the best of fish and game, and the "cellar's as good as the cook," the whisky especially being undeniable and insinuating, and "divil a headache in a hogshead of it." But I am to say something about salmon-fishing. Faith, it's difficult to say anything new about it, inspiring and exciting theme though it be. The _rationale_ of it I utterly renounce. We know pretty well why a trout takes an artificial fly. It is a tolerably correct imitation of a natural insect, which is the natural food of our spotted friend; and the different flies which are used on different waters, and during the various months, are constantly changed to correspond with the proper insects frequenting each locality at each period. Of course, this is reasonable enough. A trout is lying on the look-out for flies, and something comes floating down the stream towards him, which so closely resembles his natural food, that he sees no earthly (or watery) reason to suppose it to be unwholesome, and he takes it, and--it disagrees with him. But why on earth a salmon should ever make such a fool of himself as to jump at a huge, gaudy arrangement of feathers, fur, silk, &c., which is not an imitation of anything "in the heavens above or the earth below, or the waters under the earth," the nearest approach to a faithful simile for which would seem to be an imaginary cross between a humming-bird and a butterfly, altogether passes my comprehension. Still more astonishing is it that these extraordinary objects must be varied in size, colours, and sundry other particulars, according to locality and time of year. But let not the reader, who is yet unlearned in the craft, imagine that _every_ salmon is such a fool as to leap at the gaudy lure. From my little experience of the number of these princely fish which run up certain rivers, and the small proportion of them which fall victims to the rod, I would rather be inclined to come to the conclusion that these unhappy individuals must either be lunatics or morbid misanthropical (misopiscical?) specimens of the genus, that a fish who takes the fly is either entirely bereft of his senses, or has firmly made up his mind, wearied with subaqueous trials, to hang himself--upon a hook--and that his vigorous struggles after he is hooked are to be accounted for by that instinct of self-preservation which is the first law of nature, and which often leads a would-be suicide, after he has jumped into the water, to exert himself might and main to get out of it again. Not the least charm of salmon-fishing is the wild grandeur of the scenery in which the best of it is found, heather-clad mountains, ravines, and gorges, rapid, rushing streams, splashing waterfalls, deep smooth pools, and huge rocks here and there in the river, adding picturesqueness to the scene and increased danger to the line. Who has not read vivid descriptions of the killing of a salmon? First comes the "rise," no little circling splash like that of a trout, but a rushing boil in the water, hailed with a joyous shout by the angler and his attendant; then there is a momentary check; then the merry music of the clicking reel as the fish rushes off, perchance quite slowly at first, not apparently quite alive to the danger of his position; but when the fact dawns upon him that the little sting in the tail of the fly he snapped at is attached to something that is seriously menacing his liberty, his struggles become exciting in the extreme. Now comes a swift rush, taking out some fifty yards of line without a check. Now he is seen for a moment--of extreme danger to the tackle--throwing himself high out of water, a huge bar of brightest silver, falling back into it again with a splash. Instantaneous guesses are made at his weight; then comes a long run, fatiguing for both fish and fisherman, up and down stream; then the salmon, getting rather fagged, half turns on his side near the opposite bank, but he is of no use over there. A little later on he comes over to our side, and Sandy or Patsy, as the case may be, "makes an offer" at him with the gaff, but it is too soon; the fish, roused to fresh life by the sight of the horrid biped, exerts all his remaining strength--we have two or three last frantic rushes, moments of intense excitement, during which we have not one single thought for anything in the wide world but that salmon and that gaff. At last the gallant fellow is near the bank, thoroughly tired this time--the gaff is in his quivering flesh; Patsy struggles up the bank with our glittering prize; the fish is knocked on the head, the fly carefully cut out, the hackles blown and cleared of blood or dirt--for some salmon-flies are worth from fifteen shillings to two pounds each--and then we and Patsy, or Sandy, can sit down on the bank and enjoy our well-earned rest. First we must have a "tot" of whisky to "wet that fish"; then Patsy says, "Sure now, yer honour'll be afther giving the blessed pool a bit of rest, an' we'll thry another directly." So we sit and enjoy the beauty of the mountain and river scenery, with a pipe of good tobacco and a frequent furtive glance at the salmon, till a freshening breeze, or the sight of a rising fish, inspires us with fresh courage, to result, if we are lucky, in a fresh capture. Pleasant, too, is the fishing from a boat on the rippling surface of our fair gem of a lake in the grand setting of those majestic mountains; ay, and pleasant too when the salmon are sulky, is the fishing for the beautiful white trout in the various streams between the lake and the tideway; and exciting indeed is the struggle when a white trout with glittering scales, only a few hours from the sea, is hooked on a small trout-fly and fine drawn gut--for your sea-trout is the most active of fish, and will give the angler a braver fight than a brown trout of more than double his size, flinging himself constantly high into the air, a silvery flash of light, game to the very last, making rush after rush, and spring after spring, when you think he should be quite safe for the landing-net. Ay, and when the shades of evening are falling over mountain and valley, river, lake, and bay, when the smoke from the chimney of our inn, rising from amongst the trees which surround it, suggests busy doings at the huge peat-fire in the kitchen, pleasant is the walk or drive back to that snug hostelry, and jovial the dinner--with salmon and trout fresh from lake and river, grouse not _quite_ so fresh from the mountain, and snipe from the marsh. Genial and jolly, too, is the evening talk over our glasses of punch, the recital of incidents of sport during the day, the comparison of flies, the arrangement of plans for the morrow. "Early to bed and early to rise," is a very good motto generally for the sportsman; but there _are_ seasons when the morning fishing is of but little account, and, mindful of this, we prolong our _symposia_ and our yarns far into the small hours till our stock of anecdotes and tobacco are alike exhausted. Many a rich man has paid down his hundreds for the rental of part of a salmon river, and perhaps his fish have cost him twenty to a hundred guineas each. But then again the poor professional anglers often make a good living by it, partly by the salmon they catch, and partly by acting as guides and instructors to tourists and amateurs. And here let me tell the reader to take the anecdotes of his tourist friends anent the salmon they have killed in Ireland or Scotland _cum grano salis_. I believe that about nineteen out of twenty fish "taken" by non-resident amateurs are risen and hooked by Patsy or Sandy aforesaid. The most delicate part of the negotiation having thus been effected, the rod is carefully handed to the amateur, and he is instructed how to humour and play the fish, which is gaffed at last, and he may certainly be _said_ to have _killed_ it, though he was not exactly the man who caught it. But to do Patsy or Sandy justice he is--though sometimes, _sub rosâ_, a bit of a poacher--a keen lover of real sport, and infinitely prefers accompanying anyone who can throw a fly and kill a fish himself to one of the amateurs aforesaid, in spite of the heavier fee he may expect from the latter. A friend called one day on a professional fisherman near here, and found him lugging a big table about his cabin by the aid of a hook and a bit of a line. "What the divil are ye doin' at all at all?" asked his friend Corny. "Sure, thin, I'd betther be brakin' the hook in the table than brakin' it in a salmon," was the reply. And this little yarn bears a very good practical moral. See that your tackle is sound and perfect in every respect before you go after salmon. Ludicrous incidents sometimes happen in salmon-fishing. A bungling amateur on the Bandon river, near Cork, hooked something which seemed to him to be an immense and very sulky salmon. The stream was swift, but the fish never travelled very far, moving sluggishly about and resisting all his efforts to bring it to the surface. At last, after a long but very uneventful play of about two hours, the thing came into a more rapid part of the stream, lifted to the top of the water, and behold, a big ox-hide, which had been sunk in that part of the river! The disgust of that angler, and the profane language he gave way to, may be imagined. A friend of mine had a long play with what seemed to be a very heavy spring fish, but at last it came to the top, when the attendant Patsy exclaimed, "Bedad, it's a judy, sir!" And a "judy" it was, that is, a spent fish or kelt, but it was hooked by the tail, which accounts for the vigorous play it gave. There is a rather strong religious sentiment among some of our Irish professional salmon-fishers. One of them has been known at the commencement of a season to sprinkle his patron's rod, line, and flies with holy water, as a potent charm. Another worthy was out the other day with a friend of mine fishing for white trout. My friend hooked a nice strong fish over two pounds, which got away after a brief play. In the first excitement of this loss his attendant exclaimed, "Oh, the divil carry him then!" but, suddenly bethinking himself, added, "an' may God forgive me for cursin' the blessed fish--that didn't take a good hould!" But the day has become so beautifully breezy and cloudy that I can't possibly sit here any longer, knowing that all my brethren of the craft are on the river or the lake, so I will e'en pick up rod, shoulder basket, and be off after them. Kind reader, I crave your indulgence, and--_Au revoir_. A BIRMINGHAM DOG SHOW[1] BY "OLD CALABAR" Fourteen years have passed away and somewhat mildewed my hair since the first show of dogs took place at Birmingham. [1] It should be mentioned that this paper was written several years ago.--Ed. _S.S._ How many glorious fellows connected with that and subsequent exhibitions have "gone from our gaze," never again to be seen by those who were "hail-fellow well met" with them! Poor Frederick Burdett, Paul Hakett, George Jones, George Moore, that inimitable judge of a pointer; Joseph Lang, and lately, Major Irving, with a host of others, have passed away. Ruthless Death, with his attendant, "Old Father Time," has mowed them down in quick succession without favour or distinction. It makes one sad to think of it; and also to know that some who are in the land of the living have, to use a sporting expression, "cut it." For years I have not seen "the Prior," "Idstone," the Revs. O'Grady and Mellor, John Walker of Halifax, and Croppen of Horncastle. Yet I know that some of them are still to the fore in dog matters, and are running their race against "all time." Poor Walker, by-the-by, I saw last year. He was unfortunately shot by accident some two or three seasons back by a friend; he has never, if I may so term it, "come with a rush" again. William Lort, one of our oldest judges, is hard at work here, there, and everywhere, with one or two more of the old circuit. What has become of Viscount Curzon, who so well filled the chair at the Annual Dinner? Death has been busy again, for Viscount Curzon is, by the demise of his father, now Earl Howe. The last time I saw his Lordship was at the "Hen and Chickens" at Birmingham, in 1869. Poor Lord Garvagh was on his right hand; he too has gone "the way of all flesh." On that occasion I remember that prince of good fellows, R. L. Hunt, who has been connected with the show from its commencement, singing a song that made our hair curl, and drove one or two white-tied gentlemen from the room. The Earl Howe has been chairman of the Committee ever since the show was started, and Mr George Beech, the secretary, nearly as long; and right well has he done his work. I do not exactly know with whom the idea of dog shows originated. My old friend, the late Major Irving, told me it was with Frederick Burdett; others have informed me it was Mr Brailsford, the father of the present men, and formerly keeper to the Earl of Derby, the present Earl's father. Whoever it originated with, it was a happy idea, and has given endless amusement to thousands. As I have often stated, I do not think shows have improved the breed of dogs, but they have brought many strains forward which were known nothing about before, except to a few. Dog shows have opened the door to a good deal of roguery; unscrupulous breeders have bred dogs for size, head, coat, and colour. To effect this they have mixed up strains; the consequence is that, although it cannot be detected by the judges, the animals are, in reality, nothing more or less than mongrels; this has been done more particularly in the sporting classes, and with fox-terriers especially. But dog shows are wonderfully popular all over the kingdom. It has not rested with us alone, for the French have for years had exhibitions, and this year there was one at Vienna. It has often surprised me there is so much wrangling, and so many letters from disappointed exhibitors, after a dog show. The same thing does not occur in cattle and horse shows; why then with dog shows? The Birmingham Dog Show is a favourite of mine. Everything is so well conducted and carried out. The comfort of the animals is strictly attended to, and the building is spacious and airy. You see so many old friends you would not otherwise meet, which makes it very enjoyable. One of the most celebrated breeders of bloodhounds is Major John A. Cowen, of Blaydon Burn, Blaydon-on-Tyne; and he has also a famous breed of setters, but he never has a bad one of any sort. All coursing men breed good greyhounds, so I cannot pitch on anyone in particular for these--and foxhounds, deerhounds, otterhounds, harriers or beagles, are bred by so many that I cannot pick out anyone in particular. The most celebrated breeders of fox-terriers are Messrs Murchison and Gibson, Brokenhurst, Lymington, Hants; Mr Cropper, of Horncastle, and Mr T. Wootton, Mapperley, near Nottingham. Of pointers, small and medium-sized, perhaps Mr Whitehouse, Ipsley Court, Redditch, Warwickshire, is the best known; of the large size, Mr Thomas Smith, The Grange, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton; Richard Garth, Esq., Q.C.; Lord Downe, Danby Lodge, Yarm, Yorkshire; Mr Francis R. Hemming, Bentley Manor, Bromsgrove, and others. Of setters, R. Ll. Purcell-Llewellin, Esq., Willesley Hall, Ashby-de-la-Zouche, Leicestershire; Edward Laverack, Esq., Broughall Cottage, near Whitchurch, Shropshire; Geo. Jones, Esq., Ivy Cottage, Ascott; Thomas Pilkington, Esq., Lyme Grove, Prescot, Lancashire; Major John A. Cowen, Blaydon Burn, Blaydon-on-Tyne; Captain Thomas Allaway, Highbury House, near Lydney; Captain Richard Cooper, Thornly Hall, Welford, Rugby; Capt. Hutchison; The Prior, and many others. Of retrievers, I shall only name one, Mr J. D. Gorse, Old Manor House, Radcliffe-on-Trent, Notts. His curly black-coated dogs are the handsomest I ever saw. There are so many different breeds of spaniels that I will not attempt to name any breeders--their name is legion--neither do I intend to touch on the non-sporting classes; but should anyone wish to know where any particular sort of dog is to be had, and will write to me, I shall have great pleasure in giving him every information. Gentlemen who are anxious to become members of a canine society, cannot, I imagine, do better than belong to the National, which is composed of many of the first noblemen and sportsmen in the United Kingdom. The society held their show the latter part of last year at Nottingham, and a very capital show it was, too, and bids fair to be second to none. To exhibitors, disappointed or otherwise, I would say, never mind the reports you read in papers as to the merits or demerits of your dogs; remember that such reports are only the production of _one_, and that one may know just as much of a dog as he does of the man in the moon. It is amusing to read the accounts of a show in the different papers. I have very frequently seen every one of them disagree; one calling a dog a splendid animal; another, that the said splendid animal was nothing but a cur: so I say, never be disheartened at what the papers may write, and remember the fable of the old man and his ass. Curzon Hall has been much enlarged of late years, and it is now not nearly big enough for the number of dogs that are sent. It is a fine building, and eminently adapted for the purpose. Walking along the galleries, which are very spacious, you can look over and see all the dogs below and the people as well. The entries this year are exactly thirty-three in advance of 1872. Take it altogether, it is the best entry, as to numbers and quality, they have ever had. The total entries in the sporting classes were 557; viz.:--10 bloodhounds, 23 deerhounds, 19 greyhounds, 4 otterhounds, 11 harriers, 8 beagles, 127 fox-terriers, 85 pointers, 87 setters, 78 retrievers, 82 spaniels, 15 Dachshunds, and 5 in the extra class for any foreign breed of sporting dogs. For dogs not used in field-sports there were 387 entries; viz.:--46 mastiffs, 24 St Bernards, 19 Newfoundlands, 26 sheep-dogs, 6 Dalmatians, 23 bull-dogs, 27 bull-terriers, 15 smooth-haired terriers, 25 black-and-tan terriers, 16 Skye terriers, 15 Dandie Dinmonts, 6 broken-haired terriers, 17 Bedlington terriers, 12 wire-haired terriers, 14 Pomeranians, 19 pugs, 6 Maltese, 7 Italian greyhounds, 8 Blenheim spaniels, 7 King Charles spaniels, 28 toy terriers, and 21 foreign dogs. I have before remarked that many, very many, find fault with the decisions of judges when there is no occasion to do so, and some when there is just reason; but they should remember it is not etiquette to question the judges' fiat. They enter their dogs subject to those who are chosen to adjudicate on their merits; and after the awards are made, right or wrong, there should be an end to the matter. I have always thought, and always shall think, that the public would be much more satisfied if they knew who the judges would be at the time a show was advertised. Those intending to exhibit could then do as they liked, enter or not. But, on the other hand, if this were done, the entries would not be nearly so numerous, and the receipts smaller in proportion; but in such a show as Birmingham, where the Committee have a good balance in hand, it would not much matter. At any rate, it is worth the trial. The Birmingham Committee is composed of men who are thoroughly well up on the subject, and have, doubtless, good reasons for continuing as they do. An attempt was made, some years ago, of judging by points--a thoroughly absurd notion, and one worthy of those from whom it emanated. Fancy men who really knew what a dog was, going about with a tape, like a tailor! Would you see judges of horses or cattle doing this? Perhaps to take the girth of a bullock it might be, and is done; but that is all, except weighing them. When the entries are numerous, of course it takes time to judge them. In such a class as the fox-terriers, which is extremely large at Birmingham--this year it being no less than 127, and many of the animals being very evenly balanced--it is anything but an easy task; but with all this, judges generally manage to spot the right animals. It does not follow that sporting dogs who gain a prize at a show are any good for the field. Many first-prize dogs are utterly useless for it, never having been broken: and, if they had, might perhaps have turned out worthless. Dogs of the first breed are often gun-shy, want nose, face, method of range, will not back or stand, and are otherwise utterly unmanageable. It is not every dog that breaks well; not one in ten makes what is called a first-class animal. All judges can do, when the dogs are led from their benches, is to give prizes to those who come up to the standard in head, shape, strength, colour, and general goodness of formation. At some shows judging in public is the fashion; but this is a very great mistake, and has been proved to be so time after time. Judges should be quite to themselves when they are giving their awards; and not have a crowd around them making their remarks, which are sometimes anything but flattering. A dog, to win at such a show as Birmingham, must not only be handsome, but he must go up in good coat and in the pink of condition. Having now given a general outline of the Birmingham Dog Show from its commencement, I will turn to the show itself for this year. Take it altogether, it has been the most successful one that has yet taken place; and when in Class 3, bloodhounds (dogs), the following prices are attached to them, perhaps all readers may form some idea how the owners value their animals:--Rival, £500; Brutus, £1000; Baron, £1050; Draco, £10,000,000,000. Of course these prices are only put against them to show they are not for sale. Another, by the same owner as Draco, was merely £10,000. So highly are stock dogs and breeding bitches valued, that it is simply impossible to get them; and it is very rarely the best pups are sold, and if they are, at an enormous price. Altogether, there were 103 classes, so it will be impossible for me to notice all; in fact, I must leave the non-sporting classes, and confine myself to pointers, setters, spaniels, and retrievers. I will take three gentlemen who sent heavy entries:--Mr Price of Rhiwlas, Bala, North Wales, had fourteen entries, comprising 1 fox-terrier, 6 pointers, 1 setter, 2 retrievers, 1 spaniel, 1 sheep-dog, 1 Dalmatian and 1 bull-dog. He only got with these, two first prizes, one commended, and five highly commended. Notwithstanding all the puff and long pedigrees given by this gentleman in the catalogues, it will be seen he did not do very much. Two of the highly commended ones, Ginx's Baby, and a dog with an unwriteable name, were bred by Mr Purcell Llewellin, who has three more of the same litter in his kennel far superior to these. His pointer bitch, Belle, was absent, but in her place was a large photograph--another species of puff. The bitch is not A 1, being a soft, tiring animal. In the catalogue she appears with £10,000,000,000 as her price. Take away the figure 1, and we should then get at her right value. As regards his old setter, Regent, who took a first in Class 34, it is an incomprehensible bit of judgment; for Mr Llewellin's eleven months old, Flame, was the best in the class, far away. I am forced to admit that the Rhiwlas kennel is but a second-rate one. Mr Purcell Llewellin had eight entries, one absent (Nellie). None of his dogs were in feather, yet so good are they that out of the seven who represented him six were to the fore--two first prizes, one second prize, and three highly commended. This is something like form. Prince took the first in the Champion Class. He is, without doubt, the handsomest headed setter in England, and the Champion Countess not only very beautiful, but _the best in the field_. Prince won at the Crystal Palace this year, taking champion prize and extra cup--the same at Birmingham in 1872 and 1873; first prize and extra cup at the Crystal Palace in 1872; at Birmingham in 1871 and 1872, first prize and extra cup. He has never been shown anywhere else, and has never been beaten. Countess, the nonpareil, though out of feather, was in good muscle and condition, and beat Mr Dickens's celebrated Belle. Countess has only been exhibited four times--at the Crystal Palace and Birmingham--has won each time and never been beaten. Take her altogether she is _the_ setter of England. Mr Whitehouse of Ipsley Court, Warwickshire, had an entry of twelve--11 pointers and 1 retriever. Out of these there were three first prizes, one second, one highly commended, and one commended. It will thus be seen that, as breeders, both Mr Whitehouse, for pointers, and Mr Purcell Llewellin, for setters, are far before Mr Price--and will be, for his animals are not up to the mark. Mr Thomas Smith of the Grange, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, had a grand entry of ten; and he spotted three first prizes and one commended. Take the setters all through, they were very good. The black-and-tan setters in Class 37 (dogs) were good; but in Class 38 (bitches) were still better. Class 39, setters (Irish dogs), was good. Curiously enough, there was exactly the same entry this year as last, viz., 14. Mr Stone, with Dash, spotted the first prize; Mr Purcell Llewellin, the second with Kite, V.H.C. with Kimo, and three others got V.H.C. In 1872 the entry for Class 40, setters (Irish bitches), was 10; this year it was only 8; but they were the best lot that have ever been shown at the Hall, and so highly were they thought of by the judges that every one in the class was highly commended. Here three gentlemen, probably the best breeders of the Irish setter we have, contended, viz.:--Captains Cooper and Allaway and Mr Purcell Llewellin. Captain Cooper exhibited three, Captain Allaway one, Mr Llewellin one; but the first prize fell to neither of these gentlemen, Mr Jephson beating them on the post with Lilly II., and Captain Cooper running a good second with Eilie; though neither were bred by the same gentleman, yet each was two years and four months old. There were 78 entries for retrievers. For the best in all classes (curly-coated), Mr Morris took it with True; he also secured the Champion Class Bitches (curly-coated) with X L; second prize in Class 43 with Marquis; highly commended in same class with Monarch; first prize in Class 44 with Moretta. So with an entry of six he secured three first prizes, one second, and one highly commended--good form indeed. My old friend Mr Gorse, one of our very best breeders, took the champion prize in smooth or wavy-coated dogs with Sailor, four years old; and a fine animal he is. The spaniels were 82 entries, and some very good ones, too, there were among them. Classes 55 and 56 were capital. Better have never been seen at Curzon Hall. The greyhounds were a poor lot. It is not the time of year for hounds or greyhounds, as they are all at work. The non-sporting and toy classes were well represented. And it was amusing to see the excitement and hear the exclamations of some of the ladies on looking at the cages which held these beautiful little animals. I have often thought how much better it would be if ladies, or others who want dogs, instead of sending to a London dealer, who is almost sure to "do" them, were to attend such shows as Birmingham, the Crystal Palace, or Nottingham. There you can pick out what you want--always remembering you must give a good price for a good article. But, then, if you intend to exhibit, and you have a good animal, it will soon pay itself; and if you breed, the pups will see your money back. Good as the other exhibitions have been at Birmingham, this must be considered the best; and with an entry of 944 against 911 of last year. At the time of writing this--the 3rd December--I have seen no letters from disappointed exhibitors or others. But then, "Bell's Life," "Land and Water," and THE Authority (_query_) have not yet appeared. The "Times," however, for the 2nd December, says it was a most capital show. Both Mr Murchison and the Rev. Mr Tennison Mosse were conspicuous by their absence, but I hope to see them to the fore again at the Crystal Palace Show, with their unapproachable fox and Dandie Dinmont terriers. Talking of fox-terriers, I have overlooked them. Not only was the entry a grand one (127), but the quality was good too. I love the terrier, for he is a sporting little dog, no matter what breed; but the fox-terrier is the favourite, if one may judge from the entries. But why other terriers, such as smooth-haired, black-and-tan, Skye, drop-eared, and others, Dandie Dinmont, broken-haired, wire-haired, and Bedlington should not be included in the sporting classes, I have ever been at a loss to imagine. There is no better terrier exists to drive heavy gorse for rabbits than the Dandie Dinmont. He is the gamest of the game, and no cover, however thick, will stop him. Mr Wootton of Mapperley, near Nottingham, has a magnificent breed of wire-haired terriers, the best in England. For this class (92), there were twelve entries; but Mr Wootton skinned the lamb, taking first and second prizes with Venture and Tip, and the highly commended Spot being bred by him. Whatever sort of terrier Mr Wootton has, you may be sure of one thing--that it is the right sort. I confess to a _penchant_ for the wire-haired terrier, rather than the fox-terrier, for the latter are now bred very soft and delicate--there is too much Italian greyhound in them for me. Of course I am speaking generally. Give me, if I must have fox-terriers, hard ones, such as Old Jock was--something that will stand wet and cold, the cut-and-come-again sort. One thing I sincerely hope will be done away with next year at Birmingham, viz.:--the photographic dodge of advertisement, as was the case with Mr Price's Belle. It is quite wearying enough to inflict his long-winded pedigrees on the public, without the picture puff; and I trust the committee will see the necessity of putting a stop to this, or in a few years Curzon Hall will be turned into a photographic gallery instead of a dog show, which I hardly think would be pleasing to the visitors. The next dog show of any importance will be at the Crystal Palace, held from June 9th to the 12th. It is to be hoped that the judges this year will be properly selected; but as it is to be held under the auspices of the Kennel Club, I suppose none but their own clique will officiate. But let me hope they will see the folly of such a course, and that they will select judges that do not belong to their association--then the public will have confidence, which they will not if _members of the club exhibit_, and _members of the club adjudicate_. HUNTINGCROP HALL. "Reputation! Reputation! oh, I have lost my reputation!" It was, I believe, one Michael Cassio, a Florentine, who originally made the remark; and I can only say I sincerely wish I were in Michael Cassio's position, and could lose mine. It may be a "bubble," this same reputation; indeed, we have high authority for so terming it: but "bubble" rhymes with "trouble," and that is the condition to which such a reputation as mine is apt to bring you; for it supposes me to be a regular Nimrod, whereas I know about as much of the science of the chase as my supposititious prototype probably knew of ballooning: it sets me down as being "at home in the saddle;" whereas it is there that I am, if I may be allowed the expression, utterly at sea. When, last November, I was seated before a blazing fire in Major Huntingcrop's town house, and his too charming daughter, Laura, expressed her enthusiastic admiration for hunting, and everything connected with it--mildly at the same time hinting her contempt for those who were unskilled in the accomplishment--could I possibly admit that I was amongst the despised class? Was it not rather a favourable opportunity for showing our community of sentiment by vowing that the sport was the delight of my life, and firing off a few sentences laden with such sporting phraseology as I had happened to pick up in the course of desultory reading? Laura listened with evident admiration. I waxed eloquent. My arm-chair would not take the bit between its teeth and run away; no hounds were in the neighbourhood to test my prowess; and I am grieved to admit that for a fearful ten minutes "the father of ---- stories" (what a family he must have!) had it all his own way with me. "_Atra cura sedet post equitem_ indeed!" I concluded. "You may depend upon it, Miss Huntingcrop, that man was mounted on a screw! Black Care would never dare to intrude his unwelcome presence on a galloper. Besides, why didn't the fellow put his horse at a hurdle? Probably Black Care wouldn't have been able to sit a fence. But I quite agree with you that it is the _duty_ of a gentleman to hunt; and I only wish that the performance of some of my other duties gave me half as much pleasure!" Where I should have ended it is impossible to say; but here our _tête-à-tête_ was interrupted by the advent of the Major, who heard the tag end of my panegyric with manifest delight. "Huntingcrop is the place for you, Mr Smoothley," said he, with enthusiasm, "and I shall be more than pleased to see you there. I think, too, we shall be able to show you some of your favourite sport this season. We meet four days a week, and you may reckon on at least one day with the Grassmere. It is always a sincere pleasure to me to find a young fellow whose heart is in it." As regards my heart, it was in my boots at the prospect; and, despite the great temptation of Laura's presence, I paused, carefully to consider the _pros_ and _cons_ before accepting. How pleasant to see her fresh face every morning at the breakfast-table--how unpleasant to see a horse--most likely painfully fresh also--waiting to bear me on a fearsome journey as soon as the meal was concluded! How delightful to feel the soft pressure of her fingers as she gave me morning greeting: how awful to feel my own fingers numbed and stiff with tugging at the bridle of a wild, tearing, unmanageable steed! How enjoyable to-- "Are you engaged for Christmas, Mr Smoothley?" Laura inquired, and that query settled me. It might freeze--I could sprain my ankle, or knock up an excuse of some sort. Yes, I would go; and might good luck go with me. For the next few days I unceasingly studied the works of Major Whyte-Melville, and others who have most to say on what they term sport, and endeavoured to get up a little enthusiasm. I did get up a little--_very_ little; but when the desired quality had made its appearance, attracted by my authors' wizard-like power, it was of an extremely spurious character, and entirely evaporated when I arrived at the little railway station nearest to the Hall. A particularly neat groom, whom I recognised as having been in town with the Huntingcrops, was awaiting me in a dogcart, and the conveyance was just starting when we met a string of horses, hooded and sheeted, passing along the road: in training, if I might be permitted to judge from their actions, for the wildest scenes in "Mazeppa," "Dick Turpin," or some other exciting equestrian drama. I did not want the man to tell me that they were his master's: I knew it at once; and the answers he made to my questions as to their usual demeanour in the field plunged me into an abyss of despair. [Illustration: "I unceasingly studied the works of Major Whyte-Melville, and endeavoured to get up a little enthusiasm."--_Page 271._] The hearty welcome of the Major, the more subdued but equally inspiriting greeting of his daughter, and the contagious cheerfulness of a house full of pleasant people, in some measure restored me; but it was not until the soothing influence of dinner had taken possession of my bosom, and a whisper had run through the establishment that it was beginning to freeze, that I thoroughly recovered my equanimity, and was able to retire to rest with some small hope that my bed next night would not be one of pain and suffering. Alas for my anticipations! I was awakened from slumber by a knock at the door, and the man entered my room with a can of hot water in one hand and a pair of tops in the other; while over his arm were slung my--in point of fact, my breeches; a costume which I had never worn except on the day it came home, when I spent the greater portion of the evening sportingly arrayed astride of a chair, to see how it all felt. "Breakfast at nine, sir. Hounds meet at Blackbrook at half-past ten; and it's a good way to ride," said the servant. "The frost's all gone, I fea---- I hope?" I said, inquiringly. "Yes, sir. Lovely morning!" he answered, drawing up the blinds. In his opinion a lovely morning was characterised by slightly damp, muggy weather; in mine it would have been a daybreak of ultra-Siberian intensity. I ruefully dressed, lamenting that my will was not a little stronger (nor were thoughts of my other will--and testament--entirely absent), that I might have fled from the trial, or done something to rescue myself from the exposure which I felt must shortly overwhelm me. The levity of the men in the breakfast-room was a source of suffering to me, and even Laura's voice jarred on my ears as she petitioned her father to let her follow "just a little way"--she was going to ride and see the hounds "throw off," a ceremony which I devoutly hoped would be confined to those animals--"because it was _too_ hard to turn back when the real enjoyment commenced; and she would be good in the pony-carriage for the rest of the week." "No, no, my dear," replied the Major; "women are out of place in the hunting field. Don't you think so, Mr Smoothley?" "I do, indeed, Major," I answered, giving Laura's little dog under the table a fearful kick as I threw out my foot violently to straighten a crease which was severely galling the inside of my left knee. "You had far better go for a quiet ride, Miss Huntingcrop, and"--how sincerely I added--"I shall be delighted to accompany you; there will be plenty of days for me to hunt when you drive to the meet." "No, no, Smoothley. It's very kind of you to propose it, but I won't have you sacrificing your day's pleasure," the Major made answer, dashing the crumbs of hope from my hungering lips. "You may go a little way, Laura, if you'll promise to stay with Sir William, and do all that he tells you. You won't mind looking after her, Heathertopper?" Old Sir William's build would have forbidden the supposition that he was in any way given to activity, even if the stolidity of his countenance had not assured you that caution was in the habit of marking his guarded way; and he made suitable response. I was just debating internally as to the least circuitous mode by which I could send myself a telegram, requiring my immediate presence in town, when a sound of hoofs informed us that the horses were approaching; and gazing anxiously from the window before me, which overlooked the drive in front of the house, I noted their arrival. Now the horse is an animal which I have always been taught to admire. A "noble animal" he is termed by zoologists, and I am perfectly willing to admit his nobility when he conducts himself with reticence and moderation; but when he gyrates like a teetotum on his hind legs, and wildly spars at the groom he ought to respect, I cease to recognise any qualities in him but the lowest and most degrading. Laura hastened to the window, and I rose from the table and followed her. "You pretty darlings!" she rapturously exclaimed. "Oh! are you going to ride The Sultan, Mr Smoothley? How nice! I do so want to, but papa won't let me." [Illustration: "Gazing anxiously from the window before me, I noted the arrival of the horses. Laura hastened to the window. 'You pretty darlings!' she rapturously exclaimed."--_Pages 274-5._] "No, my dear; he's not the sort of horse for little girls to ride;--but he'll suit you, Smoothley; he'll suit you, I know." Without expressing a like confidence, I asked, "Is that the Sultan?" pointing to a large chestnut animal at that moment in the attitude which, in a dog, is termed "begging." "Yes; a picture, isn't he? Look at his legs. Clean as a foal's! Good quarters--well ribbed up--not like one of the waspy greyhounds they call thoroughbred horses now-a-days. Look at his condition, too; I've kept that up pretty well, though he's been out of training for some time," cried the Major. "He's not a racehorse, is he?" I nervously asked. "He's done a good deal of steeplechasing, and ran once or twice in the early part of this season. It makes a horse rush his fences rather, perhaps; but you young fellows like that, I know." "His----eye appears slightly blood-shot, doesn't it?" I hazarded; for he was exhibiting a large amount of what I imagine should have been white, in an unsuccessful attempt to look at his tail without turning his head round. "Is he quiet with hounds?" "Playful--a little playful," was his not assuring reply. "But we must be off, gentlemen. It's three miles to Blackbrook, and it won't do to be late!" And he led the way to the Hall, where I selected my virgin whip from the rack, and swallowing a nip of orange-brandy, which a servant providentially handed to me at that moment, went forth to meet my fate. Laura, declining offers of assistance from the crowd of pink-coated young gentlemen who were sucking cigars in the porch, was put into the saddle by her own groom. I think she looked to me for aid, but I was constrained to stare studiously in the opposite direction, having a very vague idea of the method by which young ladies are placed in their saddles. Then I commenced, and ultimately effected, the ascent of The Sultan: a process which appeared to me precisely identical with climbing to the deck of a man-of-war. "Stirrups all right, sir?" asked the groom. "This one's rather too long.--No, it's the _other_ one, I think." One of them didn't seem right, but it was impossible to say which in the agony of the moment. He surveyed me critically from the front, and then took up one stirrup to a degree that brought my knee into close proximity with my waistcoat: The Sultan meanwhile exhibiting an uncertainty of temperament which caused me very considerable anxiety. Luckily I had presence of mind to say that he had shortened the leather too much, and there was not much difference between the two, when, with Laura and some seven companions, I started down the avenue in front of the house. The fundamental principles of horsemanship are three: keep your heels down; stick in your knees; and try to look as if you liked it. So I am informed, and I am at a loss to say which of the three is the most difficult of execution. The fact that The Sultan started jerkily, some little time before I was ready to begin, thereby considerably deranging such plans as I was forming for guidance, is to be deplored; for my hat was not on very firmly, and it was extremely awkward to find a hand to restore it to its place when it displayed a tendency to come over my eyes. Conversation, under these circumstances, is peculiarly difficult; and I fear that Laura found my remarks somewhat curt and strangely punctuated. The Sultan's behaviour, however, had become meritorious to a high degree; and I was just beginning to think that hunting was not so many degrees worse than the treadmill, when we approached the scene of action. Before us, as we rounded a turning in the road, a group of some thirty horsemen--to which fresh accessions were constantly being made--chatted together and watched a hilly descent to the right down which the pack of hounds, escorted by several officials, was approaching. The Major and his party were cordially greeted, and no doubt like civilities would have been extended to me had I been in a position to receive them; but, unfortunately, I was not; for, on seeing the hounds, the "playfulness" of The Sultan vigorously manifested itself, and he commenced a series of gymnastic exercises to which his previous performances had been a mere farce. I lost my head, but mysteriously kept what was more important--my seat, until the tempest of his playfulness had in some measure abated; and then he stood still, shaking with excitement. I sat still, shaking--from other causes. "Keep your horse's head to the hounds, will you, sir?" was the salutation which the master bestowed on me, cantering up as the pack defiled through a gate; and indeed The Sultan seemed anxious to kill a hound or two to begin with. "Infernal Cockney!" was, I fancy, the term of endearment he used as he rode on; but I don't think Laura caught any of this short but forcible utterance, for just at this moment a cry was raised in the wood to the left, and the men charged through the gate and along the narrow cart-track with a wild rush. Again The Sultan urged on his wild career--half-breaking my leg against the gate-post, as I was very courteously endeavouring to get out of the way of an irascible gentleman behind me, who appeared to be in a hurry, and then plunging me into the midst of a struggling pushing throng of men and horses. If the other noble sportsmen were not enjoying themselves more than I, it was certainly a pity that they had not stayed at home. Where was this going to end? and--but what was the matter in front? They paused, and then suddenly all turned round and charged back along the narrow path. I was taken by surprise, and got out of the way as best I could, pulling my horse back amongst the trees, and the whole cavalcade rushed past me. Out of the wood; across the road; over the opposite hedge, most of them--some turn off towards a gate to the right--and away up the rise beyond; passing over which they were soon out of sight. That The Sultan's efforts to follow them had been vigorous I need not say; but I felt that it was a moment for action, and pulled and tugged and sawed at his mouth to make him keep his head turned away from temptation. He struggled about amongst the trees, and I felt that, under the circumstances, I should be justified in hitting him on the head. I did so; and shortly afterwards--it was not exactly that I was _thrown_, but circumstances induced me to _get of rather suddenly_. My foot was on my native heath. I was alone, appreciating the charms of solitude in a degree I had never before experienced; but after a few minutes of thankfulness, the necessity of action forced itself on my mind. Clearly, I must not be seen standing at my horse's head gazing smilingly at the prospect--that would never do, for the whole hunt might reappear as quickly as they had gone; so, smoothing out the most troublesome creases in my nether garments, I proceeded to mount. I say "proceeded," for it was a difficult and very gradual operation, but was eventually managed through the instrumentality of a little boy, who held The Sultan's head, and addressed him in a series of forcible epithets that I should never have dared to use: language, however, which, though reprehensible from a moral point of view, seemed to appeal to the animal's feelings, and to be successful. [Illustration: "I proceeded to mount. I say proceeded, for it was a difficult and very gradual operation, but was eventually managed through the instrumentality of a little boy, who held The Sultan's head, and addressed him in a series of forcible epithets that I should never have dared to use."--_Page 280._] He danced a good deal when I was once more on his back, and seemed to like going in a series of small bounds, which were peculiarly irritating to sit. But I did not so much mind now, for no critical eye was near to watch my hand wandering to the convenient pommel, or to note my taking such other little precautions as the exigencies of the situation, and the necessity for carrying out the first law of nature, seemed to suggest. Hunting, in this way, wasn't really so very bad. There did not appear to be so very much danger, the morning air was refreshing and pleasant, and the country looked bright. There always seemed to be a gate to each field, which, though troublesome to open at first, ultimately yielded to patience and perseverance and the handle of my whip. I might get home safely after all; and as for my desertion, where everyone was looking after himself, it was scarcely likely they could have observed my defection. No; this was not altogether bad fun. I could say with truth for the rest of my life that I "had hunted." It would add a zest to the perusal of sporting literature, and, above all, extend the range of my charity by making me sincerely appreciate men who really rode. But alas! though clear of the trees practically, I was, metaphorically, very far from being out of the wood. When just endeavouring to make up my mind to come out again some day, I heard a noise, and, looking behind me, saw the whole fearful concourse rapidly approaching the hedge which led into the ploughed field next to me on the right. Helter-skelter, on they came! Hounds popping through, and scrambling over. Then a man in pink topping the fence, and on again over the plough; then one in black over with a rush; two, three, four more in different places. Another by himself who came up rapidly, and, parting company with his horse, shot over like a rocket! All this I noted in a second. There was no time to watch, for The Sultan had seen the opportunity of making up for his lost day, and started off with the rush of an express train. We flew over the field; neared the fence. I was shot into the air like a shuttlecock from a battledore--a moment of dread--then, a fearful shock which landed me lopsidedly, somewhere on the animal's neck. He gives a spring which shakes me into the saddle again, and is tearing over the grass field beyond. I am conscious that I am in the same field as the Major, and some three or four other men. We fly on at frightful speed--there is a line of willows in front of us which we are rapidly nearing. It means water, I know. We get--or rather _it comes_ nearer--nearer--nearer--ah-h-h! An agony of semi-unconsciousness--a splash, a fearful splash--a struggle.... I am on his back, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the saddle: without stirrups, but grimly clutching a confused mass of reins as The Sultan gently canters up the ascent to where the hounds are howling and barking round a man in pink, who waves something brown in the air before throwing it to them. I have no sooner reached the group than the master arrives, followed by some four or five men, conspicuous among whom is the Major. [Illustration: "An agony of semi-unconsciousness--a splash, a fearful splash--a struggle.... I am on his back, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the saddle; without stirrups, but grimly clutching a confused mass of reins as The Sultan gently canters up the ascent to where the hounds are howling."--_Page 283._] He hastens to me. To denounce me as an impostor? Have I done anything wrong, or injured the horse? "I congratulate you, Smoothley,--I congratulate you! I promised you a run, and you've had one, and, by Jove! taken the shine out of some of us. My Lord"--to the master--"let me present my friend, Mr Smoothley, to you. Did you see him take the water? You and I made for the Narrows, but he didn't turn away, and went at it as if Sousemere were a puddle. Eighteen feet of water if it's an inch, and with such a take-off and such a landing, there's not a man in the hunt who'd attempt it! Well, Heathertopper! Laura, my dear,"--for she and the bulky Baronet at this moment arrived at the head of a straggling detachment of followers--"you missed a treat in not seeing Smoothley charge the brook: 'Down in the hollow there, sluggish and idle, Runs the dark stream where the willow trees grow, Harden your heart, and catch hold of your bridle-- Steady him--rouse him--and over we go!' "Isn't that it? It was beautiful!" It might have been in his opinion; in mine it was simply an act of unconscious insanity, which I had rather die than intentionally repeat. "I didn't see you all the time, Mr Smoothley; where were you?" Laura asked. "Where was he?" cried the Major. "Not following you, my dear. He took his own line, and, by Jove! it was a right one!" It was not in these terms that I had expected to hear the Major addressing me, and it was rather bewildering. Still I trust that I was not puffed up with an unseemly vanity as Laura rode back by my side. She looked lovely with the flush of exercise on her cheek, and the sparkle of excitement in her eyes; and as we passed homewards through the quiet country lanes I forgot the painful creases that were afflicting me, and with as much eloquence as was compatible with the motion of my steed--I ventured! The blushes deepen on her cheek. She consents on one condition: I must give up hunting. "You are so rash and daring," she says, softly--_very_ softly, "that I should never be happy when you were out." [Illustration: "I trust I was not puffed up with an unseemly vanity, as Laura rode back by my side.... 'You are so rash and daring,' she says softly, 'that I should never be happy when you were out.'"--_Pages 284-5._] Can I refuse her anything--even _this_? Impossible! I promise: vowing fervently to myself to keep my word; and on no account do anything to increase the reputation I made at Huntingcrop Hall. A DOG HUNT ON THE BERWYNS Thanks to the columns of the sporting papers, every Englishman, whatever his occupation, is sufficiently familiar with the details of fox-hunting, and all other kinds of hunting usually practised in merry England; but few, I fancy, have either seen or heard of a dog-hunt. It has fallen to my lot to participate in such a hunt; one, too, which was quite as exciting as a wolf-hunt must have been in the olden time, or as that most glorious of sports, otter-hunting, is now. Imagine to yourself a three days' chase after a fierce and savage dog, a confirmed sheep worrier, and that in the midst of the picturesque ruggedness and grandeur of the Welsh hills. Some three or four miles east from Bala, the Berwyn Mountains raise their heathery summits in the midst of a solitude broken only by the plaintive bleat of a lost sheep or the shouts of men in search of it. For miles the purple moorland rolls on without a moving creature to break the stillness. Deep ravines run down on either hand through green, ferny sheep-walks, dotted with innumerable sheep. These ravines in winter time, when the snow lies deep on the hills, are, when not frost-bound, roaring torrents. In the summer, huge blocks of stone are scattered about in strange confusion, and a tiny stream can scarcely find its way between them. Lower down still can be seen, here and there, a farm-house, in some sheltered glen, kept green all the year round by the trickling moisture. Further off still, in the valleys, are villages and hamlets tenanted by hardy Welsh sheep-farmers and dealers. In the least-exposed corners of the sheep-walks are folds built of loose, unmortared stones, in which the sheep huddle to find shelter from the fury of the frequent storms which sweep over the mountains. As the wealth of the hill farmers consists chiefly of sheep, if a dog once takes to worrying them, he is either kept in durance vile, or killed. The habit once acquired is never got rid of; and after a sheep-dog has once tasted blood, it becomes practically useless to the farmer. The quantity of sheep that can be killed by such a dog in a short time is almost incredible. It may be imagined, therefore, with what feelings the Berwyn farmers heard of sheep after sheep being killed on their own and neighbouring farms, by a dog which nobody owned, and which ran loose on the mountains catering for itself. Descending from the lonelier parts of the hills, it would visit the sheep-walks and kill, as it appeared, for the pure love of killing; in most cases leaving the mangled bodies on the spot. Month after month ran by, and it still eluded the vengeance of the indignant hillmen. The most exaggerated accounts were current respecting its size and ferocity. No two versions agreed as to its colour, though all gave it enormous size. As it afterwards turned out, it was a black and white foxhound bitch. Everybody carried a gun, but on the few occasions that the dog came within shot, it appeared to be shot proof. The loss of numerous sheep was becoming serious; in some instances the farmers suffered heavily. It was the staple topic of conversation. From time to time, paragraphs, such as the following, appeared in the papers published in the neighbouring towns:-- "THE RAPACIOUS DOG.--The noted sheep destroyer on the Berwyn hills still continues to commit his depredations, in spite of all efforts to kill him. "The last that was seen of him was on Sunday morning, by Mr Jones on the Syria sheep-walk, when the dog was in the act of killing a lamb. Mr Jones was armed with a gun at the time, and tried to get within gunshot range; but it seems that the animal can scent a man approaching him from a long distance, so he made off immediately. After it became known to the farmers and inhabitants of Llandrillo that he had been seen, a large party went up to the mountain at once, and were on the hills all day, but nothing more was heard of him till late in the evening, when he was again seen on Hendwr sheep-walk, and again entirely lost. On Monday a number of foxhounds were expected from Tanybwlch, and if a sight of him can be obtained, no doubt he will be hunted down and captured, and receive what he is fully entitled to--capital punishment." On a bright May morning, five months after the first appearance of the sheep-destroyer, a pack, consisting of a dozen couple of fox-dogs, with their huntsman, started up the lane from Llandderfel to the hills, followed by a motley crowd of farmers and labourers, armed with guns and sticks, and numbering many horsemen. Up the lane till the hedges gave place to loose stone walls, higher still till the stone walls disappeared, and the lane became a track, and then a lad came leaping down the hill, almost breathless, with the news that the dog had been seen on a hill some six miles away. Up the mountain, down the other side, up hill after hill, following the sheep-tracks, the cavalcade proceeded, until we reached the spot where our quarry had been last seen. A line of beaters was formed across the bottom of a glen, and proceeded up the hill. Up above was Dolydd Ceriog, the source of the Ceriog, which came through a rent in the moorland above. A wilder scene could not be imagined. On either side the hills rose up, until their peaks were sharply defined against the blue. The steep sides were covered with gorse and fern, with fantastic forms of rock peering through. At the bottom the infant Ceriog eddied and rushed over and among rocks of every shape and size, forming the most picturesque waterfalls. In front up the ravine the numerous cascades leaped and glittered, growing smaller and smaller, until the purple belt of moorland was reached. The hounds quartered to and fro, and the men shouted in Welsh and English. The hardy Welsh horses picked their way unerringly over the _débris_. "Yonder he is," was the cry, as up sprang the chase a hundred yards ahead. From stone to stone, from crag to crag, through the water, through the furze and fern fled the dog, and the foxhounds catching sight and scent, followed fast. At first they gained, but when the pursued dog found it was terrible earnest for her, she laid herself well to her work--mute. Startled by the unusual noise, the paired grouse flew whirring away. The sheep were scattered in confusion, and a raven flew slowly away from a carcase. Upward still we went, the footmen having the best of it on the uneven ground-- "Upward still to wilder, lonelier regions, Where the patient river fills its urn From the oozy moorlands, 'mid the boulders; Cushioned deep in moss, and fringed with fern." Now the hounds are over the crest, and soon we followed them. We now had the bogs to contend with, worse enemies than the rocks. "Diawl! John Jones, I am fast," we heard and saw an unfortunate pony up to its belly in the bog. Another stumbles in a crevice and sends its rider headlong. We footmen have still the best of it, although it is no easy matter to run through the heather. We had now reached the other side of the mountain, and were fast descending into the valley of the Dee. There seemed a probability of our catching the quarry here; but no, she left the heather--much to my relief, it must be confessed--and made for the valley, past a farm; now well in advance of her pursuers; over the meadows; then, for a short distance, along the Bala and Corwen line. Then past Cynwyd village, where the crowd of people, and the various missiles sent after her, failed to stop her. Then through the churchyard, and along the road for some distance. Here a man breaking stones hurled his hammer at the bitch, but missed her. Turning again, she made for the hills, running with unabated speed, although she had been hunted for nearly ten miles. The original pursuers had melted away, but we were reinforced by numbers of others. Here I obtained a pony and set off again. By this time the hounds were in full cry up the hillside. Mile after mile, over the hills we followed, now only by scent, as the dog had made good use of her time, while the hounds were hampered by people crossing the scent at the village. "The shades of night were falling fast," when we came to a brook flowing from the moorland. Here the scent was lost, and the wild dog was nowhere to be seen. We held a council of war as to what was to be done. I was the only horseman present at first, but by-and-by the huntsman and others came up, bog-besmeared, and in a vicious frame of mind. We looked a queer group, as we sat in the light of some dead fern that somebody had kindled. Some were sitting on stones; others kneeling down, drinking from the brook; some whipping the tired dogs in, and others gesticulating wildly. One thing was evident--nothing more could be done that evening; and the hounds were taken to their temporary home, to rest all the morrow, and resume the hunt on the day after. On the morrow, from earliest dawn, messengers were coursing the glens in all directions, with invitations to people far and near to come and assist in the hunt. For myself, I was glad to rest my tired limbs. Although pretty well used to mountain work, I was quite done up; still, I resolved to see the end of the fun, and hired another pony. The day after, the men kept pouring in to the place of rendezvous, till I was sure the majestic hills had never before witnessed such an assemblage. From far and near they came. Many, like myself, were mounted upon Welsh ponies. We commenced beating; and the Berwyns rang with the unearthly yells of the crowd. We reached Cader Fronwen, one of the highest of the Berwyns, without meeting with a trace. Here I was put _hors de combat_ by my pony sticking fast in a bog; and as every one was too busy to help me, there I had to stay, and the hunt swept on. Soon the noise of the beaters died away, and I was left alone, sitting on a stone which peered out of the bog, holding the bridle of my unfortunate steed, and every now and then cutting heather and pushing it under its belly, to prevent the poor creature sinking any deeper into the mire. Here's a pretty fix, I thought. Soon the mist which enveloped the summit of Cader Fronwen came sweeping down the gorge in a torrent of rain; and, even if my pony had been free, it would have been madness to stray from where I was, as I could not see two yards before me, and I did not know the paths. By-and-by I heard them coming back, and then saw them looming gigantic in the mist. After having extricated my pony, as I was chilled and wet through, I made the best of my way to Llangynog, while the rest of the party--or multitude, rather--made for the Llanrhaiadr hills, but as I afterwards learnt, without success. Tired with a hard and long day's work, the men separated, and made off for their respective homes. No traces of the dog had been found, although every likely hill had been well scoured. Some of the people averred that the devil must be in the dog. The major part of the farmers believed that the savage animal had been frightened away, and most probably would not be met with again for some time. Acting under this conviction, the hounds were sent back by train the next morning. The morrow was beautifully fine; and, little expecting that I should see the death of the sheep-worrier, I had gone for a ramble over the hills, armed with my geological hammer. I was sitting on a slab in an isolated quarry, watching the varying tints of the hillside, as shadow and sunshine coursed each other over the tender spring green of the grass, the darker green of the new fern, and the warm yellow-brown of last year's fronds, and admiring the contrast of the grey rocks angrily jutting out amidst the loveliness, and the whole crowned with the purple heather, rising above a narrow belt of mist, when a man, gun in hand, came clinking down the sloping rubbish, digging his heels in at each step, and excitedly told us--the two or three quarrymen and myself--that he had seen the dog lying on a rock about a mile away. A boy was despatched to summon the neighbouring farmers. In a very short space of time about fifty were on the spot, armed with guns of every conceivable make and age. Stealthily creeping up the hill, we were sent in different directions, so as to surround the sheep-walk where she lay. In half an hour's time a gradually lessening circle was formed, all proceeding as silently as possible, and taking advantage of every tuft of fern or stunted thorn, so as to get as near as possible before arousing the sleeping dog. There was a distance of about eighty yards between each man, when the brute rose up, and stretched herself, showing her white and glistening fangs. Uttering a low growl as she became aware of her position, she set off in a long swinging gallop towards the heather. Just in that direction there appeared to be a man missing from the cordon, and a wide gap was left through which it seemed probable she would escape, and a storm of shouts arose. Just, however, as escape seemed certain, a sheet of flame poured out from behind a clump of thorn bushes and fern, and a loud report went reverberating over the glens. The dog's neck turned red, and she rolled over and over, uttering yelp after yelp in her agony. There was a miscellaneous charge from all sides. Crash came the butt-end of the gun which had shot her on her body, with such force that the stock was splintered. Bang! bang! everybody tried to get a hit at her, even after she was dead. When life was quite extinct we all gathered together, and a whoop of triumph awoke the echoes, startling the lapwings on the moorland. As we marched down to the village we fired a volley in token of our success, and cheer after cheer told of the gladness with which it was welcomed by the villagers. The man who fired the lucky shot was carried through the streets of the village on the shoulders of two stout quarrymen, and the whole population gave themselves a holiday and made merry. A large subscription was started, and contributed to handsomely, in order to pay for the hounds and other expenses. Upon examination the bitch was found to be branded on the left side with the letter "P;" so if any of my readers have lost such a dog, they will know what has become of it. I do not suppose that a more exciting chase was ever witnessed since the old wolf-hunting days. It may seem strange to many, as it did to me, that foxhounds should chase one of their own breed, but the fact remains that they did so. ON SOME ODD WAYS OF FISHING BY THE AUTHOR OF "MOUNTAIN, MEADOW, AND MERE" The maxim that one half the world does not know how the other half lives may, with slight variation, be applied to the world of sportsmen. The "sportsman" is not of any particular class. The highest in the land and the lowest may rub against each other in the broad field of sport. This is peculiarly true as regards the gentle art. Wandering by the side of an unpreserved stream you may see my lord casting a fly over this shallow; and, twenty yards further down, Tinker Ben seated by the side of a chub hole watching his float circling round in the eddy, and as the noble passes the boor an honest angler's greeting may be interchanged, and a light for the latter's pipe asked for and given. It may be taken as a general rule that between anglers who pursue their sport by fair means there is a levelling freemasonry of the craft which is as pleasant as it is right. Between the fair fisherman and the poacher, there is, however, a broad line of demarcation--a line which bars the interchange of even the commonest civilities on the mutual ground of pursuing the same object. The fair fisherman hates the man who captures the finny tribe by unfair or illegal means as strongly as a foxhunter hates a foxkiller, or a strict sabbatarian hates a sinner who enjoys a Sunday afternoon's walk and the glimpses of nature it may afford him. There is also a line drawn between the man who fishes for amusement alone and he who fishes for profit. The division in the latter instance may not be so broad as it is in the former, but, nevertheless, it is wide enough to distinctly separate the two classes. Now I think the fair and amateur angler is in a great many instances unaware of the shifts and dodges adopted by the poacher and the pothunter to fill their pockets, and of the consequent hindrance to his own sport. Therefore by way of warning, of information, and possible amusement, I have noted down a few of the more singular instances which have come under my own observation. Let anyone take a boat and row down the sluggish Yare from the dirty old city of Norwich as the shades of evening are darkening the river, and he will see several uncouth, rough-looking boats being slowly impelled down stream by rougher looking men. He will notice that they have short, stout rods and poles in the boats, and if he watches them, he will presently see them take up their stations by the margin. Driving poles in the mud at the stems and sterns of their boats, the men make them fast; and, taking their seats, proceed to "bob" for eels. A quantity of earthworms are strung on worsted, and, after being weighted, are suspended by a stout line from a short thick rod. The solitary fisherman holds one of these rods in each hand on each side of the boat, just feeling the bottom with the bait, and now and then pulling it up and shaking the eels, whose teeth get entangled in the worsted, into the boat. There he sits silent and uncommunicative, the greater part of the night and in all weathers, for the sake, perhaps, of, on the average, a shilling's worth of eels each night. Altogether his berth must be a lonely one. His companions take their positions too far off to hold conversation with him, and the splash of a water-rat or the flaps of the canvas of a belated wherry and the cheery good-night of its steersman are the only sounds to beguile the tedium of his midnight watching. Another mode of capturing eels is by "eel picking" in the lower waters of the Yare near Cantley. The man, armed with his eel spear, takes his stand in the bows of his craft, and, stealing along by the edge of the reeds, plunges his spear at random in the mud. He uses his spear also as the means of propelling his tiny boat. I have seen four or five boats following each other along the side of the river in a queer-looking procession. Those centres of interest to the angler--the Norfolk broads--are, alas! the strongholds of poaching. Norfolk anglers plead their great expanse of water as an excuse for "liggering" or trimmering to an enormous extent. Taking Norfolk anglers as a class, if they _can_ "ligger" they will. The amount of destruction is something wonderful. The only time I ever yielded to the temptation of going with a friend "liggering," I am thankful to say, we caught nothing, and I am not in a hurry to repeat the experiment. Yarrell gives an account of four days' sport (?) at Heigham Sounds and Horsea, where in 1834, in the month of _March_, his informants caught in that space of time 256 pike weighing altogether 1135 lbs. What wonder that it is now difficult to get really good sport at these places with rod and line! My favourite fish, the tench, has a bad habit of basking on the surface of some of these broads on hot summer's days in weedy bays, where he deems himself perfectly secure. But the amphibious Broadsman paddles quietly up to him, and actually scoops him out with his hand. You may touch his body with your hand and he shall not move, but if you touch his tail he darts away. I have seen a somewhat similar thing in shallow pools in Shropshire. When the big carp come to the side to spawn, their bodies are half out of the water, and they may be approached and shovelled out with a spade. In the reeds adjoining a carp pool I once found a murderous instrument which was used by a gang of sawyers at work in the adjacent wood, for destroying the basking carp. It consisted of a large flat piece of wood, in which were set long nails like the teeth of a garden rake. This was attached to a long pole, and woe betide the unfortunate carp on whose back it descended. Groping for trout in the shallow streams is a well-known amusement of country boys; but the dastardly and cruel practice of _liming_ a brook is not now so often resorted to as it used to be. I have seen it done in a mountain brook, when, on account of my extreme youth, I have been powerless to prevent it, and the schoolboy notion of honour prevented my "peaching." A shovelful of quicklime is taken up the brook to some shallow ford, and then thrown into the water and triturated so that the stream carries it in a milk-white stream downwards. In a short time the poachers follow it, and pick up the trout, which are floating dead on the surface, or swimming in circles on the top of the water, with scorched and blinded eyeballs. The lime penetrates into every crevice of the stream bed, and if it does not kill every trout within its range, it cruelly tortures all. I well remember the sickening sense of shame that crept over me as, an unwilling participator in the outrage, I crept over the mossy ground, when the noise made by every water-ouzel that took wing and every sheep that leaped down the hill side seemed to herald the approach of a keeper, with awful penalties of the law in his train. Diverting the course of a brook, and emptying the pools of their water, and afterwards of their fish, is a long operation, and therefore not so frequently resorted to; but that poaching instrument called the twopole net I have known to clear many a nice little pool in a stream of its spotted denizens. Do my readers know what a cleeching net is? It is in effect a magnified landing-net at the end of a long pole, and its use is to grab fish from under clumps of weed and overhanging banks. I once had one made for the purpose of catching bait, and a ludicrous incident occurred to a friend of mine who used it. He plunged it in too far from the side where the water was deeper than he imagined, and the consequence was that he fell forward, his feet still on the bank, but his hands resting on the top of the pole within a foot of the water, into which he gradually subsided, in spite of our efforts to pull him back by the slack of his trousers. I have seen the cleeching net used in a very effective manner by bargees on canals. As their vessel is towed along, they put the net into the water alongside the bows, and walk back to the stern as the boat moves, so as to keep the net in the same position. The rush of the water, displaced by the passage of the barge, drives a good many fish into the net, and I have even known fair-sized pike to be captured in this way. Once I was cruising down the Severn, and had moored the canoe under some bushes in a very secluded part of the river to take my midday rest. Presently I saw two men in coracles coming down the river. They stopped just opposite me, and commenced to net the river with a small meshed net. They paid the net out in a semi-circle, and then, beating the water with their paddles, they closed and completed the circle; and with their coracles side by side hauled their net in. It was a caution to see the fish they caught. Great chub of five, and one of nine pounds' weight, roach, pike, and dace. In half an hour they had caught a great number. They looked rather frightened when I shot out from my hiding-place and examined their sport and the net. I have not space to chat about setting night lines, in which art the Norfolk yachtsmen are no mean proficients; of smelting in the Yare; of netting the weedy pools in Cheshire with a flue net; of setting hoop nets for tench baited with a bunch of flowers or a brass candlestick, which attract the too curious fish; of eel bays and weirs, and the large eel nets set in the Bure from below Acle to Yarmouth; of leistering salmon and snaring pike; of casting nets used for unlawful purposes; of snatch-hooks and salmon roe, and other like deadly means of compassing the destruction of the finny tribe; but I fancy I have said enough to call to the angler's remembrance that his rod and line have formidable rivals, and that it behoves him to do all in his power to suppress and punish illegal and unfair sport. SHOOTING The 1st of September is a day more looked forward to by the general sporting public than any other. August 12th and October 1st may be eagerly anticipated by the wealthy sportsman, but September 1st is the day most generally looked forward to. Nor is the reason difficult to discover. Partridge-shooting is comparatively the cheapest of sports. So long as vermin is kept down by trapping, and the fields properly bushed in the season, to prevent the birds being netted, a fair number are sure to be found. There are few better or more exciting sports than partridge-driving. People who have never tried and those who have tried and failed, affect to despise it; but, in spite of all, it is an excellent sport, if only for the reason that all can join in it. The old and young, the weak and strong, and even ladies, honour the stands with their presence; though this cannot be said to add to the accuracy of the shooting, for partridge-driving arrangements are usually made so as to arrive at the first set of stands somewhere about eleven. Here the head-keeper is met, who, after giving directions about watching particular lines, and begging that gentlemen will not put up their heads too soon, but keep down and "give the birds a chance," as he calls it, on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle, I suppose, mounts his old horse and trots off after the drivers, receiving, first of all, you may be sure, some chaff from the youngsters about his horse and his seat, to which he good-humouredly rejoins that "he hopes they will shoot better than he can ride." The party now disperse to their several stands, each one accompanied by his loader, and, as you stroll down with your old loader, he greatly amuses you by his observations on the party and shrewd forecast of their respective powers. In a short time the distant sound of a horn is heard, which makes your old man break off his stories and reflections altogether, as he knows it is the signal for the line of drivers to start; you yourself peer eagerly through the screen, though really knowing that there is no chance of a shot for a long time yet. Presently a series of unearthly yells are heard, as some obstinate covey rises and breaks back over the drivers' heads. And here let me remark that the arrangement of a successful drive requires a great deal of forethought and knowledge; the wind and sun must be studied, and also the habits of the birds. Partridges are thorough Tories, and like to take the same line that their fathers before them did, so it is useless to try to drive them far out of it. Presently, as you are looking through the screen, a dark object comes into view that appears rather like a bumble bee; in another second you perceive it is an old cock French partridge, when, just as you are in the act of firing, down drops the bird, and commences running like a racehorse. Naturally you bring your gun down, but the old loader whispers, "Shoot un, sir, shoot un; he be the blarmed old cock, and mayhap, if you kills un, t'others will be obliged to fly;" so you pot him, and the cloud of feathers that comes out is wonderful. A novice would think that it was blown to bits; but the fact is, nothing of the kind has happened, the cloud being caused by the great thickness of plumage. It is very curious to shoot one in snow: the stream of feathers lying on it looks as if a small pillow had been ripped open. Soon a distant cry of "Mark over!" showing that a covey has risen and is coming right for the stands, puts every one on the _qui vive_. Here they come straight for the man on the right, and you feel almost inclined to envy his chance, when suddenly the covey mount straight up like so many sky-rockets; your friend, fresh to the sport, has put up his head just a minute or so too soon, and the birds saw him. Firing a hasty right and left as they pass over, he is greatly surprised at a bird falling nearly on the top of him, the fact being that the two he shot at were clean missed, but one of the hindmost of the covey flew into the shot. And now the scene begins to be very interesting; the birds are beginning to run out of the roots on to the large stubble in front, not by ones and twos, but by twenties at a time, the French birds of course being first. It is most curious to notice their dodges--how they run about looking for places to hide in, and when they discover the least shelter drop down into it at once; but you cannot spare much attention to them, as the coveys begin to rise thick and fast, and cries of "Mark over!" are incessant. The work now begins to be very exciting, and the fusillade kept up reminds one of the commencement of a general action, so sustained is it. Some of the younger hands, thoroughly overcome by the excitement of their first drive, are firing wildly, as if they thought they should not have a second chance. By way of contrast, look at the man stationed three or four stands from you, and see the machine-like regularity with which he knocks the birds over; no flurry of any sort, the gun brought up easily, the two sharp reports, and a brace of birds tumbling; the empty piece handed to the loader, and the other gun taken and discharged in the same cool way with the like unfailing result. Both master and man are perfect specimens of their kind, the former as a shot and the latter as a loader. And now, as the drivers get further through the roots, the hares begin to bolt out, running wildly in every direction, utterly bewildered at the shouts and yells that greet them. Not many are shot at except by those who have utterly muffed the birds, and are anxious to show that they can hit something. Next, as the drivers come out on to the stubble, the French birds begin to get up by ones and twos. Many of these get off, for they rise from such queer places, often close to the stands. The first drive being over, the head-keeper comes up to see the game collected, pausing by the stands of those who have been unlucky, and gravely telling their loaders that they "need not trouble to pick up their master's birds," as he always sees to that; whereupon very frequently the occupier tries to explain how the birds twisted or the sun was in his eyes, or makes one of the thousand excuses that men give for missing. The game being now collected, the party stroll off to the next set of stands, and the same thing goes on again, with the exception that some of the excited sportsmen cool down a little, and, in consequence, improve in their shooting. Driving is the least fatiguing of any sport to the shooters, the drivers having to go such long rounds to their different starting-points that there is not the least need to hurry from stand to stand, but you can pick your way and go by the easiest route. The actual shooting, however, is difficult; it requires skill and coolness to get the exact knack of the thing. I well remember, after one drive, a man, who really was a remarkably good shot over dogs or walking up birds, coming to me with an expression of the greatest disgust on his face, and saying, "I have actually missed eight shots running!" However, he soon got into the way of it; but at first you do not discover the pace the birds go at, and are rather bothered by their coming right at you. After a morning's driving very good sport can be got in the afternoon by going out with a couple of steady spaniels after the French partridges. You will find these birds have hidden themselves in the most wonderful places, under clods and small lumps of hedge-cuttings, in tufts of grass, holes by gate-posts; in fact, there is no telling where they may have got to. A rabbit-hole is a very favourite place; so if one of your dogs seems inclined to stop and scratch at one, do not tell your keeper to "call the tiresome beast off," as he is always after rabbits, for it is ten to one that a Frenchman has taken refuge there. You will often find that the birds have got down almost to the end of the hole. However, they give capital sport, as they rise out of such unexpected places that you must always be ready for a shot. Besides the sport, it is an excellent way of keeping these "pests" down; for they really are "pests," driving about the English birds in the breeding season, and bothering your dogs awfully in the beginning of the shooting season by their habits of running; indeed, until driving commences, you hardly ever kill a Frenchman; but this is not much of a loss, as when they are shot they are not worth eating. One thing, you can send them away as presents to people who do not know their merits, and are very much pleased with them on account of their size and the beauty of their plumage, doubtless putting down their hardness and want of flavour to their cook! But partridge-shooting _par excellence_ is over dogs. It is a treat indeed to see a brace of well-broken pointers or setters at work: the speed with which they quarter their ground, and yet their perfect steadiness; to see the dog that finds the game stop dead in his gallop, limbs all rigid, as if he was turned into stone, ears pricked and eyes almost starting out of his head with excitement; then his companion backing steadily, the attitude the same, but no eagerness shown; the rapid shots, and the dogs both down in an instant,--all this is delightful to witness, but is very seldom seen now-a-days. After the first week dogs are very little use, the birds will not lie to them; high farming, with its machine-cut stubbles, clean ploughs, and widely-drilled root-crops, has almost abolished shooting over dogs. The birds will not wait on the bare stubbles, and if you get them into roots, the rattle of the leaves when the dogs are at work is a signal for their flight. The only chance is where seeds have been sown in barley; then the reaping-machine cannot be set very low or it clogs, and in this there is fair lying; but as for the fine stubbles knee-high that our fathers enjoyed, and the broadcast turnips--why, they have gone, and pointers and setters have, alas, nearly disappeared with them. When the birds have become so wild that they will not lie to the dogs at all, the best and most sportsmanlike way is to walk them up; but to do this with any success requires a man to be in excellent training. Walking over fallows deeply ploughed by steam-power is no joke, and the birds invariably select these. Your plan is to have about four guns and five keepers or beaters, and take the fields in line, of course driving in the direction of any pieces of cole-seed, mustard, or roots that you may have on your ground; for when once the birds get into these, particularly into cole-seed, they will remain the rest of the day. It is surprising how many are bagged when walking: sometimes the coveys seem bothered by the line of men, and will rise within an easy shot; but they often seem to know by some sort of intuition the bad shot of the party, and will allow him to get fairly into the middle of them, when they rise with a rush, and fly off none the worse for his too hurried shots. In this sport there is not half the firing to be heard which there is in "driving;" but the deadly single shot or the steady double is heard pretty regularly, and the bag at the end of the day is usually heavier. You commonly find that a very fair bag is made before entering the cole-seed or roots where the coveys have principally gone; but when this cover is entered, unless very unlucky, you may fairly reckon on the bag being doubled, for the birds cannot run much, and are forced to rise fairly, so that even a moderate shot ought to be pretty sure of his birds. One great advantage of this kind of shooting is that so few birds get away wounded; as a rule they are either dropped at once or get off scot-free, whereas in "driving" an immense number go away wounded; and if there are any crows in the district, it is most curious to see them on the day after a "drive" hunting the fields regularly and systematically after the cripples. There is still another method of partridge-shooting, but this mode is only adopted by wealthy cits, and brand-new peers. The keepers, with a strong force of beaters, are sent out to drive the birds into cover, and, when there, men are left as stops to keep the birds from straying out; then about twelve the party drive up in wagonettes, well wrapped up, and with plenty of foot-warmers, &c., to the nearest piece of cover, get out, take their guns, and walk right through it, blazing at everything that shows itself; when they have done one field, they get into their carriages and drive to the next, where the same amusement is carried on; then comes hot lunch at the nearest keeper's house, which lasts for an hour or more, and the afternoon sport is a repetition of the morning's. There is no stopping to pick up the game,--keepers are left behind for that, and are told to take their guns, so as to stop any cripples, the "writing between the lines" being in this case that they are to kill all they can, so as to make the bag sound better at the end of the day. As partridge-shooting is one of the cheapest amusements, pheasant-shooting, on the other hand, is one of the dearest. What with feeding the young birds and doctoring them, and the constant watching they require when they are turned into the cover; and lastly, the large staff of beaters, the calculation of ten shillings per head for every one killed is not far beyond the mark. Pheasant-shooting can really only be managed by one method, and that is by having a body of well-trained beaters; so cunning are these birds that there is no chance of giving your friends the desired sport, if you do not have them. It is true a very pleasant day may often be had on the outskirts of your grounds by going round with some well-broken spaniels; but for real pheasant-shooting beaters are indispensable. A well-arranged and successful beat requires almost as much generalship as an Ashanti campaign. The covers must be watched from the earliest season, but the watchers must show themselves as little as possible; if the pheasants come out, they should put them back by rattling a stick or shaking some branches, for by showing themselves the chances are that the pheasants would fly off at once, but the rattle of a stick merely makes them run back into cover. Then the corners where they are to rise must be netted most carefully, perfect silence being kept, and as little noise of any kind made as possible. When the beat has actually commenced not a point must be left unguarded, the smallest ditch or grip with grass in it must have a "stop" at it, and any hare or rabbit runs that there may be must be stopped also. The boys who act as "stops" have to be well drilled in their parts, just to keep a subdued kind of rattle with their two short sticks, and by no means to strike the bushes in cover--merely to use their sticks as a kind of castanet. In fact, pheasants are at once the keeper's greatest pride and greatest plague, from the time when he has to guard the wild birds' nests against egg-stealers, and to watch those brought up under hens--ever on the look-out for gapes or croup when they are quite young, and then when older, and turned into the covers, on the watch for poachers or vermin, until the grand shooting-day; and even until that is over his anxiety is unceasing. It is very difficult to prevent them straying, particularly in a district where there are many oaks, as they will, however well fed, roam after acorns. And then to insure there being a proper quantity of pheasants in the required places is no easy work. With all the pains possible, it is extraordinary how they will stray away. Two instances of this straying propensity came under my individual notice. I was staying with a large party at a friend's house for pheasant-shooting, and as the covers had not been beaten before, my friend was sanguine of some first-rate sport, knowing the large number of pheasants that had been reared, and the trouble that had been taken with them. We went out, and everything seemed to promise an excellent day's shooting; the pheasants were all reported safe the night before, and "stops" had been sent out early to prevent them straying, nets put down, and all complete. Well, the first cover that was beaten yielded only about thirty or forty pheasants, instead of three or four times that number, and the second and third the same. The host looked much annoyed, and his keeper almost heart-broken; and this kind of sport continued until the afternoon, when my friend called up the keeper, and in desperation ordered him to beat a small covert standing by itself about three-quarters of a mile off. The man said he did not think it was any use, as no pheasants were ever there; however, as his master wished it, it should be done, and he sent off some men to put down the nets very carefully. When we came up the under-keeper said there certainly were some pheasants there, though he had never known them to be in that place before; so we began, and very soon found that they had nearly all migrated from their usual quarters to this place, above four hundred being killed in this small cover. How they got there no one could guess; there were not any connecting hedgerows or ploughed fields, and they had roosted in their usual places. The second case occurred to myself. I wished to beat a small cover of my own of about four acres, as we knew there were some pheasants there, and being an outlying one it was not altogether safe; so I gave orders that the place should be netted, and "stops," &c., sent out, and then went and beat it, but to my great surprise found scarcely anything. The keeper was utterly puzzled too; we tried all the likely spots round with no result, and I came to the conclusion that some poachers must have beaten the wood very early that day. However, as we were going off, the quick eye of my keeper detected a pheasant running in an old grassy lane near, and we resolved to try this; and well it was we did; every bush and tuft of grass seemed to hold a pheasant, and we made a capital bag, killing all but one, to my keeper's great satisfaction. Several more were got than the number he had mentally put down for the cover to yield; however, in this case we at length detected the way they had got out. The end of the wood had been netted, and a "stop" put on one side where there was an old ditch; but on the other a little grip with long grass in it, leading from the cover across a field to the old lane, had been left unguarded, as the net was thought to have been fastened down so closely that nothing could get out; but the pheasants found the weak place, and undoubtedly strayed by it. To insure a good day's pheasant-shooting, thoroughly trained beaters are absolutely necessary; and it is equally needful that the guns should remain where they are posted, or if they are to move, only do so exactly as the head-keeper directs. Nothing is more annoying, both to master and keeper, than having a good day spoiled because two or three of the guns will get together to hear or tell the last new story, and consequently let the pheasants escape by not being at their proper posts. If you have the good fortune to be placed by the net at the end of the beat, you will find that, besides having the best place for sport, great amusement can be derived by noticing the behaviour of the various kinds of game as they come up to it. Soon after you have taken your position, the rattle of sticks is heard, showing that the beat has begun, and shortly a suppressed shout indicates that a rabbit is up; for the best-trained beaters in England cannot resist giving a shout at the sight of one, and if they are a scratch lot, the yells that greet its appearance could not be exceeded if half a dozen foxes had been unkennelled at once. They will allow a pheasant or woodcock or, in fact, any other kind of game, to get away silently; but a rabbit is too much for them--why, I do not know; but such is the fact. In a short time something may be heard coming very rapidly towards the net, and in a minute a splendid old cock-pheasant appears, who runs right up to it; then, suddenly catching sight of you, back he goes like a racehorse, and you hear the whirr as he rises on meeting the line of beaters, and the cry of "Mark back," succeeded as a rule by two rapid shots, sometimes only by a single one, followed by a crash as he comes down through the trees. Next a lot of hen-pheasants come pattering along, crouching as they run with outstretched neck. These come up very quietly, and begin to examine the net closely, walking along it, trying whether they can find a place to pass underneath, and, if they do, they infallibly lead all the rest away; but, failing this, they squat down and become at once almost invisible; so exactly does their plumage assimilate itself to the dead leaves that, unless you happen to catch their eye, you would never detect them. Then come a lot of young cocks in a terrible flurry, running here, there, and everywhere, occasionally twisting round like teetotums; these, too, at length squat, picking out tufts of brake or grass, where their dark heads are covered, and their back and long tail-feathers just match the stuff they are lying in. Presently some hares come along, and these are all listening so intently to the beaters, and looking back as well, that they blunder against the net, greatly to their astonishment; for they sit up and stare at it, and then trot away to see if they can make off by one of their visual runs; failing in this, they lie down in some of the thickest cover, hoping to escape by this plan. Numerous rabbits come hopping along, and, meeting the net, turn and hide themselves in stumps or any other place they can find. And really, as the beaters come nearer and nearer, you would never imagine the quantity of game there is; a novice would at once declare there was none, so absolutely motionless does it remain until it is forced up; and then, although you have been at the post all the time, the quantity seems quite astonishing. Pheasants begin to whirr up, at first by twos and threes, and then almost by scores at a time, and the firing is incessant; it seems now that every tuft of grass or piece of fern has a pheasant under it; but in spite of the beaters, several old cocks run back between them, being far too clever to rise and be shot at, knowing that a beater may almost as well strike at a flash of lighting as at an old cock running. I may here remark that some of these old cocks will often escape being killed season after season by some dodge or other. In a cover of my own there was an old cock-pheasant who lived between six and seven years, always escaping the guns. We used to drive this cover regularly to the same point, and just before the beaters had finished, this old fellow would get up close to the outside hedge, rising above the underwood as if he would give an excellent shot; but, just as you thought he was as good as bagged, closing his wings, he would drop into the field close to the hedge, turn round, and run back like a racer, hopping over the fence again into the cover just behind the beaters. He practised this dodge successfully for several years; but at length the keeper complained so much that he disturbed the cover, and would not let any other bird come near, that I had to devise means to kill him, which was effected by driving the cover the opposite way to which he was accustomed. The old fellow was so bewildered that he rose, gave a fair shot, and was killed. A more splendid bird than he was could scarcely have been seen--in full plumage, a broad and perfect white ring round his neck, and spurs an inch long, and as sharp and hard as if they had been made of iron. Very amusing it is, too, to watch the shooters. There stands one man, picking his birds, and dreading a miss for the sake of his reputation; here is a greedy shot, firing at everything, blowing much of his game to pieces, for fear anyone else should get a shot; and again, there is the keeper's horror and detestation--a man who sends off his birds wounded, as a rule hitting them, but very seldom killing one clean, with the exception of those that he utterly annihilates. Lookers-on are apt to laugh at sportsmen for missing pheasants, so large do they look, and such apparently easy shots do they give; and until a person tries himself, he has no idea how fast they really do fly, or how easy it is to miss them. Rabbit-shooting is capital sport; indeed, none can be better for affording sport to a large Christmas-party in the country. Everybody enjoys it, and brightens up at the idea, from the schoolboy home for the holidays--who has been in and out of the house scores of times already to see how the weather looked, whether the beagles would be ready, or on some other wonderful pretext--to the old sportsman, who did not know whether he should come, but cannot resist the temptation, merely trying at first to save his dignity by saying he should just come and see if any woodcocks were sprung, and ending in being as enthusiastic about it as the youngest. The "form" displayed by the shooters is diverse. There is the elderly gentleman who gets away by himself to a quiet corner, and is found at lunch-time with three or four mangled rabbits, none of them having been more than a couple of yards from his gun when they were shot. Then there is the man who will always fire both barrels; if he misses with the first, of course he tries with his second; but if he does hit the first time, discharges the second barrel as a sort of salute in honour of his successful first. And here is an amateur--this one usually a schoolboy or 'Varsity man--who fires at whatever he gets the slightest glimpse of; a robin flitting about amongst the brambles is safe to have a shot fired at it; and indeed the dogs, keepers, and shooters have all, in their turns, very narrow escapes from this gentleman: the position he has held is well and distinctly marked by the cut-down underwood and well-peppered trunks of trees. Then there is the sportsman, generally a great swell, who fires at everything he sees in the distance, and claims all game killed within a radius of a quarter of a mile. He cannot be induced to shoot at a rabbit or any game within a reasonable distance, his excuse always being, "Choke-bore, my dear fellow--blow it to bits;" the fact being that he never hits anything except by accident, and fancies by this plan that he is not detected. I once saw a capital trick played on a person of this kind by a couple of mischievous schoolboys. They procured a dead rabbit, and fixed it firmly in a lifelike position by means of sticks, &c.; then tying a long piece of string to each foreleg, they went and ensconced themselves behind two large trees in the cover, one on each side of the road, about seventy yards from the gentleman's stand. Putting down the rabbit, one of them drew it slowly across the road, the other giving a shout, which made their friend look round and immediately shoot at it, when the string was jerked and the rabbit fell on its side. Whilst he was reloading and fiddling with his gun, the rabbit was drawn away, and in a short time the game was played again; in the end about twenty shots were fired at it by the victim, not one of which touched it, and the string was only cut once. When lunch-time came, and the keeper went round to collect the rabbits, he was saluted by the gentleman with: "Well, Smith, got my eye in to-day. Never saw such a gun; killed at least thirty rabbits straight off crossing the road up there. Must have been one of their regular runs." Off went the keeper to pick them up, and of course detected the trick at once. His good manners would not allow him to laugh there; so he had to make a bolt for it, and, to my great surprise, I saw this staid and serious head-keeper burst through the cover into the ride I was in, and begin to shout with laughter in the most uproarious manner. For a moment I thought he had gone mad, and on walking up to him could get nothing out of him, except between his fits of laughter, "Beg pardon, sir, but them 'limbs,' them two 'limbs!'" At last he got sufficiently calm to tell me what had occurred, and I need hardly say that I laughed almost as heartily. The indignation of the victim was great when he discovered the trick, and he stalked off to the house at once; and perhaps it was well that he did, for the two young scamps' account of the whole thing was enough to send anyone into fits. It is needless to say that they ever after occupied the foremost place in the keeper's affections. It is, indeed, a very pretty sight to see a pack of beagles working in cover. How they try every tuft of grass or rushes! Soon you notice that they are working more eagerly, and some begin to lash their tails, and suddenly out bolts "bunny" from his seat, sure to be saluted by a hasty shot from some one, not the least to its detriment, but a very narrow escape for the leading dogs. Away go the pack, making the woods ring with their tongues. Excited individuals race after them, often with their guns on full cock, and their fingers on the trigger. What their ideas may be in this performance is difficult to say, but I suppose it is the effect of that temporary insanity that seizes many people at the sight of a rabbit. As a rabbit invariably runs a ring, and returns to its starting-place, there is not the least use, except for the sake of the exercise, in trying to follow it; and the first one put up is safe to run his ring, as the good shots will not fire at him, that the youngsters may have a chance, and the indifferent shots are sure to miss the first through excitement. You hear plenty of shots whilst the dogs are running, as other rabbits, frightened by their noise and passage, bolt from their seats and scuttle about everywhere. Besides these, a few old cock-pheasants, who have strayed from the preserves, are sure to be found and shot. You shortly hear a shot from the cover the rabbit was found in, followed by "Who-whoop!" showing that the hunted one has been killed. The keeper then begins to draw afresh, and you may notice that certain of the older sportsmen are very attentive to the hounds whilst drawing, the reason being, as is soon evident, that they hope a woodcock may be flushed, and their hopes are usually realised. If you mark one beagle poking about by himself, sniffing along, evidently on scent, yet not opening, you may be pretty sure he is on a woodcock. But very soon another rabbit is found, and away goes the pack, this time not quite so steadily, as the number of rabbits up tempt the younger hounds after them. However, this adds (except in the opinion of the staid elders) to the sport; and soon, by the noise of the beagles' tongues and the rapid shooting, it appears as if every hound had a rabbit to himself. There certainly must be some "sweet little cherub" sitting "up aloft," who protects rabbit-shooters and beagles, so reckless does the shooting always appear. Here you see an excited youth fire at a rabbit not a yard in front of the dog. How he manages to miss both seems incomprehensible, but he does. There another rushes round a corner, and blazes both barrels at one, just in a line with another gun, and only a few yards from him; but he escapes too. In a word, rabbit-shooting with beagles is one of the most amusing, but at the same time one of the most dangerous, sports going. The advance of civilisation and cultivation has almost entirely spoiled snipe and wild-fowl shooting. In the districts where, thirty years ago, ducks might be found by dozens and snipe in swarms, the former are extinct; and as for the latter, if there happens to be one, it flies off before you are within half a mile of it, as if it was ashamed of being seen in such a place. I well remember the capital shooting I used to get in Berkshire. There was a large swampy common of several hundred acres, all rough sedgy grass and rushes; on one side was a wide ditch full of twists and turns, with high reedy banks, and at the further end a narrow tributary of the Thames, with beds of water-rushes on both sides; and on the other side were acres of small meadows of from six to ten acres, divided by high hawthorn hedges and deep wide ditches. It was a real "happy hunting-ground" for anyone fond of the sport, and many have been the long days that I and my retriever passed on it. The common itself was invariably full of snipe, and they behaved themselves properly in those days, not rising and going off in whisps directly you appeared, but trying to be shot at decently, like respectable birds. Then the ditch and river were sure to hold ducks; and after you had hunted the common, it was very exciting work, creeping up the various well-known curves and turns in the ditch, where the ducks usually remained, my dog creeping after me, quite as much interested as I was myself, and showing most wonderful intelligence in avoiding stepping on any little pieces of thin ice or anything that would make a noise; then the careful look over the bank, and if the stalk had been successful, the rapid double shot at the ducks, as they rose with a rush, followed by the drop of killed or wounded, if the shot had been lucky, and the subsequent hunt after the cripples, if unfortunately there were any, for nothing on earth is so difficult to get as a wounded duck. The way they will dive, and the time they can keep under water, only rising and putting the tip of their beak up to get air, and the extraordinary places they get into, will puzzle the best retriever, and weary out his master's patience, unless he has a very large stock of that, or obstinacy, in his composition. But very often, when I peered cautiously over the bank, the ducks could just be seen swimming away down a further reach of the ditch, making for the larger stream below, and then it was a race as to which should get there first, as the cunning birds knew as well as I did that if they once got there, and into the reed-beds, they were comparatively safe. It was no joke, running as hard as you could go, in a stooping position, for several hundred yards; and often they would escape me, an unfortunate step on a piece of thin ice, or a stick, making them rise, and I then had the pleasure of seeing them fly off and drop into a reed-bed half a mile off, which I could not get at. I had often been warned that the ditch was dangerous, and proved it on one occasion, very nearly to my cost. Some ducks dropped into a rushy pool in a field on the opposite side of it, and as I should have had a walk of a mile to get round to them, I determined to try and cross, fortunately for myself selecting a place where there was a stout young willow; so putting down my gun, and catching firm hold of the tree, I put one leg into the ditch, and soon found, though it passed down through the mud above my knee, that no bottom was to be found, and on trying to withdraw it, discovered that my leg was fixed as if in a vice. Fortunately the willow was strong, and having one leg on the bank, after pulling until I thought the other must be dislocated, I succeeded in extricating myself. But the meadows on the further side were where the best sport used to be got. These, as I have said, were divided by large hawthorn hedges fully twelve feet high, and intersected by deep ditches full of reeds, with an open pool here and there. The meadows, too, had narrow gutters cut in them to act as drains, I believe, and these abounded with snipe; and after you had flushed the common ones, if you hunted carefully a good many jacks could be found. The ditches were very good for ducks. By help of the hedges you could get up to them unperceived, and many a fine mallard I got here. Hares were also fond of the rough grass, and partridges might usually be found in the middle of the day. I remember bagging one December day six and a half couple of ducks, eleven couple of snipe, besides some jacks, three hares, and three and a half brace of birds. This does not sound much, but to me it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. No keeper following at one's heels, full of advice, but just going where and how I pleased; then the successful stalk after ducks, and the unexpected luck with partridges and hares, in addition to the snipe, have indelibly impressed this day on my memory. Being in this neighbourhood a short time ago, I went down to look at my favourite ground, and found that the large marshy common, with a few donkeys and some wretched cows trying to get a living off it, had been drained, and subdivided by neat post and rail fences, and sheep were grazing where snipe used to abound. The only thing unchanged was the old ditch. I suppose it is all right, but I prefer the ducks and snipe. Many years ago very fair duck-shooting, and some snipe as well, might be got on the Thames between Marlow and Windsor, and this was a very luxurious kind of wild-fowl shooting; for all you had to do was to hire a punt and a good puntsman who knew the river well, and, wrapping yourself up comfortably in a warm coat, drop down the river, going into the quiet back waters and round the eyot-beds. In favourable weather a good many ducks might be found, and it was curious to notice how they would hide themselves under the banks where they were undermined by the stream, and the roots of the osiers hung down. An old mallard would constantly stay until fairly poked out; and often when you thought you had tried them thoroughly, after you left an old fellow would rise and go quacking off. The eyot-beds were favourite places for snipe; but you could not do much with these unless with a steady old dog, who would poke slowly all over the place, the stumps and stalks of the osiers entirely preventing any walking. But now, I believe, this style of shooting is at an end. My last attempt at duck-shooting was very exciting, in fact rather too much so. A friend, who knew my weakness for it, wrote and asked me to come to his house, as I could get capital flight-shooting close to his place. Of course I went, and in the evening we started for the river, which was much flooded, and embarking in a boat, I was soon landed on a small mound in the middle of the floods, about twelve feet square, and was told it was a first-rate place, as the ducks, in their flight from some large ponds about five miles off, always passed over it. I was also told I might be sure to know when they were coming by the flashes of the guns of other wild fowlers on the banks some miles away. A whistle was given me to signal for the boat when I wanted it, and I was left alone in my glory. It was very cold, and my island was too small for exercise. Soon a flash caught my eye, and then the report of a gun fired some miles off came to my ears, soon followed by a succession of flashes and reports from gunners posted along each side of the river. The effect was very pretty, and I admired it greatly, until an idea struck me that there might be guns posted on the bank behind. Just then some ducks came along, and I fired rapidly at them; almost simultaneously came two reports from the bank, and some heavy charges of shot cut up the water all round; in addition something weighty struck the ground just in my rear, covering me with mud. Instantly blowing my whistle, the boat soon came, and on landing I saw two men, one of whom coming up asked me where I had been. I told him "on the mound"; to which he rejoined, "Was you, really? Lor, now, if I didn't think it was the miller's old donkey! and, thinks I, if the aggravating old beast gets there, a shot or two won't hurt un, and teach him not to get there again; so I lets 'goo' when the ducks comes along. There, and so 'twas you, sir; lor, now, to think of that!" and the old fellow went off into a series of chuckles. His gun was an extraordinary one--a single barrel, something like four feet long, about eight bore. I asked what charge he put in, and he showed me a measure that held at least four drachms of powder, and another that would contain about three ounces of number two shot. This was how he loaded, and in addition, he said, he always put in a couple of pistol-shots--"they did bring anything down so sweet that they hit." So these were the pleasant things I heard strike the ground just behind me. I went home at once, thankful that I had not been bagged. 
40302	----	BOOKS FOR SPORTSMEN PUBLISHED BY BELLAIRS & CO., 9 HART STREET, BLOOMSBURY. IN SCARLET AND SILK. Recollections of Hunting and Steeplechase riding. By FOX RUSSELL. With two drawings in colour by FINCH MASON. 5s. net. NEW SPORTING STORIES. By G. G. 3s. 6d. net. _The Times_ says:--"New Sporting Stories are written by a man who evidently knows what he is writing about.... The sketches are short, racy and to the point." TRAVEL AND BIG GAME. By PERCY SELOUS and H. A. BRYDEN. With Illustrations by CHARLES WHYMPER. 10s. 6d. net. THE CHASE: a Poem. By WILLIAM SOMERVILLE. Illustrated by HUGH THOMSON. 5s. net. In this fine old poem now ably illustrated by Mr Hugh Thomson are the original lines, quoted by the immortal Jorrocks-- "My hoarse-sounding horn Invites thee to the chace, the sport of kings, Image of war, without its guilt." GREAT SCOT THE CHASER, and other Sporting Stories. By G. G. With Portrait of the Author. 4s. 6d. net. _The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"G. 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SPORTING SOCIETY [Illustration: IN FULL CRY. By R. CALDECOTT.] SPORTING SOCIETY OR _SPORTING CHAT AND SPORTING MEMORIES_ STORIES HUMOROUS AND CURIOUS; WRINKLES OF THE FIELD AND THE RACE-COURSE; ANECDOTES OF THE STABLE AND THE KENNEL; WITH NUMEROUS PRACTICAL NOTES ON SHOOTING AND FISHING FROM THE PEN OF VARIOUS SPORTING CELEBRITIES AND WELL-KNOWN WRITERS ON THE TURF AND THE CHASE EDITED BY FOX RUSSELL Illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. _IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. II._ LONDON BELLAIRS & CO. 1897 CONTENTS PAGE SPORTING OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT DAY 1 By "OLD CALABAR" DOWN THE BECK 23 By G. CHRISTOPHER DAVIES AN APOLOGY FOR FISHING 45 DOGS I HAVE KNOWN 58 By Captain R. BIRD THOMPSON NOVEMBER SHOOTING 85 By "OLD CALABAR" SPORTING ADVENTURES OF CHARLES CARRINGTON, ESQ. 94 By "OLD CALABAR" MY FIRST DAY'S FOX-HUNTING 121 By the Owner of "Iron Duke" MY FIRST AND LAST STEEPLE-CHASE 139 A Story of a "Dark" Horse SALMON-SPEARING 165 CARPE DIEM 182 By the Author of "Mountain, Meadow and Mere" NEWMARKET 192 By Captain R. BIRD THOMPSON KATE'S DAY WITH THE OLD HORSE 207 By CLIVE PHILLIPS WOLLEY SOME CURIOUS HORSES 235 By Captain R. BIRD THOMPSON SPORTING FOR MEN OF MODERATE MEANS 259 By "OLD CALABAR" PARTRIDGE MANORS AND ROUGH SHOOTING 285 By "OLD CALABAR" WHO IS TO RIDE HIM? 302 By "OLD CALABAR" A CUB-HUNTING INVITATION 331 By the EDITOR TOLD AFTER MESS 336 By the EDITOR SPORTING OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT DAY "O tempora! O mores!" how our grandsires would stare if they could only see how differently sporting in all its branches is carried on now-a-days; it would make their pigtails stand on end, and the brass buttons fly off their blue coats in very fright. There are few of the Squire Western school now left; but occasionally you may still come across some jovial old sportsman of eighty years or more, who, though his form is shrunken, and his snow-white head proclaims that many winters have passed over it, yet carries a pair of eyes as bright and keen as of yore, eyes that glisten again when he launches forth on his favourite hobby. I know several gentlemen nearer eighty than seventy who still shoot, and keep a fine kennel of dogs. One of these gentlemen only last year took a moor in Scotland for five years. May he live to enjoy it and renew his lease. I could name many close on, ay, over fourscore, who ride well yet to hounds; and though they may not be such bruisers as they once were across country, yet are difficult to choke off. It is just forty-one years [this was written twenty years ago] since I had my first mount to hounds. There is no _non mi ricordo_ with me. I can recollect the day as well as yesterday, the pinks, the beaver-hats of curious shape, the short-tailed horses, are too vividly impressed on my memory ever to be effaced. Men went out in those days for hunting, and not merely for a gallop. Time changes all things, and I suppose we must change with the times; but are these changes for the better? Well, I will not give an opinion, but leave others to decide. The hounds of those days were not nearly so fast as those of the present; and I am inclined to think that our hounds are now bred too fine and speedy--for some countries they certainly are--and often flash over and lose a scent which ought not to be lost. Hunting, in the days I speak of, could be enjoyed by men of very moderate means, for it was not necessary to have two or three horses out. In some countries, especially woodland ones, one horse may still do; but, as a rule, hounds are now so fast, and horses so lightly bred to what they were, that no hunter, however good he may be, can live with them from find to finish. If you wish to see a run out, you must have your first and second horsemen riding to points. These men must not only be light-weights, but steady, know the country, save their animals, and be there when wanted. You seldom, at least where I hunted, saw men driving up to the meet in their well-appointed broughams, mail-phaetons, or what-not. A long distance was done, in my early days, on a cover hack; and one hunter did where three are now required. In the present day you see men stepping from their close carriages with the morning papers in their hands, beautifully got up--a choice regalia between their lips, with holland overalls to keep their spotless buckskins from speck of dirt or cigar ashes. Very different from the hardy men you encountered years gone by, alas! never to return again--cantering along on a corky tit, with _leather_ overalls. Now you have all sorts of devices--waterproof aprons _before_ and _behind_--in my idea it only wants some enterprising man to bring out a hunting-crop with an umbrella, something similar to the ladies' driving-whips, whip and parasol in one, to complete the picture. Fancy men hunting with _waterproof aprons_--they should go out for _nurses_! Perhaps, as years creep on, one is wont to look back on his youthful days and fondly imagine nothing is done so well now as then. Understand, I do not say hunting and shooting are not as good as they were. I do both still, and enjoy them as much as ever; but there is not so much _sport_ in them, to my mind, as formerly--men are not the _hardy_, genuine sportsmen they were. Horses are much dearer now than twenty, thirty, forty years back--provender also. Where £1 would go thirty years ago, you require now nearly £1, 10s.; this alone prevents many men from following their favourite pursuits. The time is not far distant when hunting will be given up in England; railways, the price of land, and the high market prices which must necessarily come with an increase of population, are doing their work slowly but surely. The present generation are not likely to witness it: so much the better, for it would break the hearts of some to see the noble pastime of hunting on its "last legs." Waste land, too, is being rapidly enclosed, and what are now wilds, fifty or sixty years hence may be flourishing districts. How many country villages are now huge towns! I remember, years ago, when I used to meet the Queen's hounds, before the South-Western line was made, there was only one old wayside inn at Woking, which was much resorted to by "the fancy," for it was a noted spot for pugilists. Many and many a prize-fight have I seen there. Now Woking is a little town--I mean the new town, not the old town some four miles distant; and the spots where I used to knock over the snipe and plover are now built on and enclosed. And so it will go on to the end of all time; bricks and mortar, iron and compo, will rise up, large and small buildings, all over the face of the country, and those whose hearts are still bent on sport will have to go farther afield for it. But this is already done. France, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria, and other countries, have their English sportsmen. Railways have made nearly all places within reach of those with means. Scotch moors that you could rent thirty years ago for £50 a year, are now £500; the rivers the same; and grouse that are killed one day in Scotland are eaten the next in all parts of the United Kingdom. Some men meet the hounds now thirty and forty miles away from home. They breakfast comfortably at home, then step into the train, and are whirled away with their horses and grooms; have a gallop, come home, or perhaps go out to a grand luncheon; lounge down to their club, or do a few calls, then dine, and go to one of the theatres to see the last new thing; finish up with a supper or a ball, or perhaps both. Old Squire Broadfurrow has ridden his stout, easy-going hack to cover, has had a clinking day, and a fox run into, as the crow flies, about eight-and-twenty miles from his home. The old man, nothing daunted, jogs quietly along and pulls up at the first country inn, orders a chop for himself and a bucket of gruel for his horse, gets home in good time to entertain three or four choice souls at dinner, ride the run over again, and talk of some shooting they are going to have on the morrow. Reader, which is the pleasanter style of the two? which the most healthy? Railways and hunting I cannot reconcile with my ideas of sport; there is a sort of cockneyism about it that I do not like; it seems to me poor "form." Men change, too, in their ideas as well as their dress. I was talking some time ago to an old friend of mine who had been an inveterate fox-hunter, did his six days a week, and spent the seventh in the kennel; if you asked him what Sunday it was, you always got the same answer, "Infliction Sunday." I asked him how he was getting on in the hunting line. "Hunting, my dear fellow; why, I have given it up years ago--all humbug! What on earth is the use of a man making a guy of himself, putting on a pink coat, top-boots, and uncomfortable leather breeches, and for what?--to gallop after a lot of yelping dogs, and to catch a fox which is of no earthly use to any one when he is brought to hand; endangering your neck, breaking fences, and destroying land and the crops. Hunting is an idiotic fashion; half the men only hunt for the sake of dress, and for mounting the pink. If they must hunt, why not dress like reasonable beings, in comfortable cords, gaiters, and a shooting-jacket? Ah! then you would not see half the men out you do now. I am quite ashamed to think I ever hunted. Just come and look at my shorthorns, will you?" In sporting parlance, I was "knocked clean out of time;" this was the inveterate six-days-a-week man. "But you shoot?" I asked, seeing it was necessary to say something. "Oh yes! I shoot, and fish occasionally, when the May-fly is up--anything but hunting. There, what do you think of that bull?" Shooting, too, is wonderfully changed. Where are the high stubbles we so eagerly sought on the first of September?--gone, gone for ever. The reaping-machine cuts it off now as close as the cloth on a billiard table. It has often been said the birds are wilder at present than they were: admitting this to be the case, the cause probably is the high state of cultivation, and nothing more. There is not the cover there was formerly to hold them, and therefore they are more difficult to get at. Turnips are now sown in drills, and not broadcast, as grain usually was. If you work down the drills, the birds see you, and are off the other end: the only way is to take them across. Yet there are thousands of places where the cover is good and plentiful; and where this is the case the birds lie as well as ever. Game is scarcer than it was, except on manors that are highly preserved: it must be remembered that where there was one shooter formerly, there are twenty now. It is a difficult matter at present to rent a shooting, for directly there is anything good in the market it is snatched up at once. The general style of shooting of the present day is odious--large bags are "the go." In some countries it has done away with the noble pointer and setter altogether; nothing but retrievers are used. The guns, beaters, and keepers are all in a line: a gun, then a keeper with a retriever, a beater, another gun, and so on. The word is given, and away they go, taking a field in a beat. As you fire--possibly there are two or three guns popping at the same bird--a keeper falls out, and finds it with his retriever, whilst you are going on. Can this be called sport? It is nothing more than pot-hunting, wholesale butchery. Give me my brace of pointers and setters, and let me shoot my game to points; there is some pleasure in that. What can be a more beautiful sight to the shooting man than to see a brace of well-bred dogs, ranging and quartering their ground like clockwork, backing and standing like rocks, steady before and behind, and dropping to fur and wing, as if they were shot? Working to hand, and obeying your slightest word--beautiful, intelligent creatures--there is some pleasure in shooting over such animals as these. Then driving is another pot-hunting system, and does no end of harm; and so those who practise it will find out before many years are over. More game is wounded and left to pine away and die than many have an idea of--a more cruel and unsportsmanlike system has never been thought of, and I much regret it has its votaries. A heavy hot luncheon from a Norwegian kitchener is now the correct thing--heavy eating and drinking must form a prominent feature in the day's programme, otherwise it is not sport. A few men are still content with their sherry-flask and sandwich, and I would back these to beat the others into fits in a day's sport. One does not go out to eat, but to shoot, and a man that has laid in a heavy luncheon can neither walk well up to his dogs nor shoot straight after it. Great improvements have been made in guns. The old flint that took half an hour to load was a bore; the flint had every now and then to be chipped and renewed, the pans fresh steeled, the touch-hole pricked, powder put in the pan, and even then there were constant misfires and disappointments. The flint in time gave way to the percussion, a great improvement; but there are many inconveniences with this; unless the nipples are kept clean, and the gun washed each time after using, constant misfires are the consequence. Then, in cold weather it is no end of trouble to get the caps on. With half-frozen fingers it is a difficult job; but this has been remedied by a cap-holder, which sends the caps up with a spring as you want them. With both flint and percussion there were great inconveniences in loading; the spring of your powder or shot flask might break, and then you had to judge your charge till they were repaired. All this trouble was put an end to by the introduction of the breech-loader, which has not half the danger, is ten times quicker, and much more convenient in every way; the ammunition more easily carried, and there are very few misfires. The gun wants no washing, merely a rag passed through, and it is clean. But I am not going into the subject of guns and all their improvements; I have merely mentioned these to show the great stride that has been made in the last fifty years in shot guns. Steeplechasing and racing I must touch on, and the little I have to say will not be in its favour. The hateful passion of betting is slowly but surely ruining the turf; for there are not the same class of men on it that there were thirty years ago. Where do you see fine old sportsmen like the late Sir Gilbert Heathcote? He raced for the pleasure of racing, and so did many others who never betted a shilling; but it is all altered now, and not for the better. Young men--ay, and old ones too--ruin themselves by betting; Government and other clerks squander their salaries away, which might maintain them, and perhaps a mother or a sister who is totally dependent upon them; the butlers and footmen pawn the family plate _to meet their engagements_; and the shop-boy is often detected _in flagrante delicto_, with his hands in the till, purloining a half-crown or two to enable him to go with Mary Hann to 'Ampton. You are pestered with letters from tipsters--scoundrels who know just as much of a horse or racing as they do of the man in the moon. The man from whom you can get nothing else, is always ready with his advice on the momentous subject of "what to back" for this race or that, quite ignoring the question of whether he really does or does not "know anything," to use turf parlance. Betting will never be put down entirely, but much might be done. Were I to commence racing again, I would hit the ring and the betting fraternity as hard as I could to scare them from backing my horses for the future. This cannot always be done, but after one or two such lessons people would be shy of burning their fingers over my stable. I daresay I should be called an "old curmudgeon," "selfish brute," and "no sportsman;" but after all said and done, you race to please yourself, not the public. You have to pay the hay and corn bill, trainer's expenses, and, above all, entry fees, far the heaviest item in the whole list; and surely, if any money is to be had over a race, the owner should be allowed "first run" at it. We see no Alice Hawthorns or Beeswings now-a-days; racing men cannot afford to let their colts or fillies come to maturity: most are broken down before they are three years old. Government ought to interfere and put a veto on two-year-old races; this done, and the One and Two Thousand, the Derby, Oaks, and Leger made for four-year-olds, then we might hope to see our racehorses and hunters coming back to their former stout form. But this we shall never see. John Bull, with his proverbial stubbornness, will stick to his old line. I was one and twenty years riding and racing in France, and was highly amused when the French first began sending over horses to us; we generously allowed them seven pounds--half a stone. How I laughed and chuckled in my sleeve when I heard this! After a little time Mr Bull found this would not do, so he came to even weights; but he received such a lesson with Fille de l'Air and Gladiateur, that it made the old gentleman stare considerably, and pull rather a long face. Racing men, I will tell you what you probably already know, but will not admit--the French could better give us seven pounds than we them: their three-year-olds are nearly as forward as our four-year-olds. The climate of France is warmer than ours, horses do better and furnish quicker there, and the time is not far distant when they will beat us as easily as we used to beat them. It is no use disguising it; it is a fact, and a fact, too, that is being accomplished; for no one will deny that the French already take a pretty good share of our best stakes. They have a climate better suited for horses, they buy our best sires and mares, have English trainers and riders, therefore what is to prevent them from beating us? They have done it already, and will continue doing so. We have found out that when we take horses over there we are generally beaten, and this alone ought to convince us that the French horses are more forward than ours. Racing now-a-days is nothing more than a very precarious speculation, and the practice of some on the turf to gain their own ends is anything but (not to use a stronger word) creditable. Within the last few years, gentleman after gentleman has left the turf disgusted and disheartened; and well they might be, for if a man is not very careful, there is no finer school than a racecourse to pick up swindling, dishonesty, and blackguardism. Your fashionable light-weight jocks of the present day have their country houses, their valets, their broughams, hunters, and what-not. The old riding fee of £3 for a losing race and £5 for a winning one is seldom heard of except at little country meetings. Trainers and jockeys are at present much bigger men than their masters; and why? because they allow them to be so; they may owe them a long bill, or be foolishly good-natured in putting their servants on the same footing as themselves by undue familiarity--'Hail fellow well met' with them. Racing will never be what it was again, for the reasons I have mentioned. Speculation is too rife to allow it a healthy tone. Shortly but few gentlemen will be left as racing men, and the turf will be represented by the lower five, and men to whom the meaning of the words honour, honesty, principle, and conscience, are unknown. Coursing too, a healthy and fine amusement, even this cannot be enjoyed without the presence of the betting fraternity, bawling and shouting. A clean sweep should be made of them. Pigeon-shooting as well. Although I am not an admirer of this pastime (sport I will not call it), yet one cannot stroll down to Hurlingham or the Bush, to look on, but what one must be pestered with odds offered on the gun or bird. Your shady and doubtful betting men are nuisances. Who on earth wants to lose a lot of money to moneyless scoundrels? But there are fools who do so, and they deserve to be fleeced. Many of our old sports have died out. The Ring is a thing of the past, and so is the Cock-pit. I am savage enough to say I liked a prize-fight and a cock-fight. When it was on the square, a prize-fight was a most exciting scene. Yet both have very wisely been put down, and athletic sports take their place. I seldom see the fine old game of bowls played now. Le gras, too, has gone out. Polo, which I think nothing of, is the rage amongst gentlemen now. I see nothing in it whatever; it is a wretched game for the _lookers-on_; but then it is the fashion. The fine old game of cricket is totally altered. I shall have the cricketing world down on me, but I care not. I think the present style of bowling has entirely ruined the game as a game of science. There are not many Graces in the present day, nor were there many Wards of the olden time. Cricketers of the present day look like so many hogs in armour; and where one man bowls tolerably over-handed, fifty who attempt it cannot bowl at all--they are never on the spot. Consequently the balls break anywhere. I would ten times rather stand before the fastest man in England who is true than I would to a middling fast one who is not. I remember, many, many years ago, at the Royal Clarence Cricket Club--alas! defunct (I have the button still)--which had its ground on Moulsey Hurst, taking old Ward's wicket the third ball with a round-hander. It was a bit of practice we were having: I was a lad at the time, and the old gentleman had stuck half-a-crown on the centre stump for me to bowl at: he had no doubt played carelessly, wishing to give me a chance. He looked surprised at seeing his wicket fall. He coolly put them up again, and on the centre stump was a sovereign. "There, young fellow," he said, "bowl at _that_." I did bowl at _that_, till I was almost ready to drop, but _that_ never came into my pocket. Yes it did, though, but not by taking his wicket. I shall never forget the fine old gentleman, with his bat nearly black with oil and age. Cricket still holds, and always will deservedly hold, a high place in our English sports. Boats and rowing have made immense strides for the better; the only thing I am disposed to cavil at with regard to it is the training. I am inclined to think the severe preparation they have to go through to get fit, tells on the constitution of young men who are not full grown and set. But training now is so carefully looked to, that after all there may not be the danger one imagines. One thing is certain, that it is much less dangerous to row or run a severe race _well prepared_: it is inward fat that chokes men, causes apoplexy and what-not. Men in training, if they are careful and do not catch cold, and are not too severely taxed, have little to apprehend; and this is why an experienced trainer is necessary. Bicycling, too, is a fine healthy amusement, develops the muscles and keeps a man in wind and health: he may get all over the country and at one-tenth the former expense of railway travelling. But bicycling, like all other sports and exercises, has its abuses as well as its uses, and when one sees men flying along a road (to the manifest danger of the public) bent double over the handles of their machines, it gives one pause, as to whether crooked backs, contracted chests, and knee trouble are not in store for a future generation. There are many lakes, large and small, in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, that cannot be either fished or shot for want of a boat. It is costly to get a boat up the mountains, and very often, especially in Ireland, there are no roads, or horses cannot traverse them. Therefore something light but safe is necessary. The Rev. E. L. Berthon, of Romsey, Hants, has invented a boat which is admirably suited for the purpose: it is a folding canvas boat of two skins, _cannot be overset_, and is quite buoyant if filled with water. The one I have is a fishing boat; it carries four, but two can go with comfort; it is only 70 pounds in weight, 9 feet long, and 4 feet broad. They are made any size, as will be seen from the extract I give from the _Times_. "Berthon's Collapsible Barge.--Among other scientific devices with which the 'Faraday' is supplied, with the view of facilitating the laying of the Direct United States cable, is a 'collapsible barge,' the principle of which, the invention of the Reverend E. L. Berthon--a name already well known in nautical circles in connection with his perpetual log--was originally applied by Mr Berthon to life-boats, a number of which, it is stated, are in course of construction. The barge was built by Mr E. R. Berthon, the son of the inventor, and is to be used in laying the shore ends of the cable, of which it will carry from 20 to 30 tons with a very light draught of water. The proportions of length in the barge are very unusual, being nearly 2 to 1, the dimensions being, length 31 feet, width 16 feet, and depth 4 feet; such, however, is its collapsibility, that, stowed away on the deck of the _Faraday_, it only measures 2 feet at its greatest width. The barge is cellular in construction, and when a small confining rope is cast off it extends automatically, inhaling into its ten cells about 500 cubic feet of air. During the process of expansion, the jointed bottom boards, which are 14 feet wide, fall into their places, and, lever staunchions being placed under the gunwales, the barge is ready for lowering in a minute or two. When in the water a very substantial platform is lowered into the barge, composed of beams 7-1/2 inches thick and 1 inch planks; upon this deck the cable will be coiled, and paid over a large iron sheave at the stern-post. The barge weighs about 23 cwt., and having great powers of flotation, with light draught, is expected to be very serviceable in laying the shore ends of the new cable; the principle, moreover, appears to be one which it might be found desirable to introduce into the life-boat service." Mine is the smallest size made, and when collapsed is only 7 inches wide. To open and launch it takes less than one minute. It also sails very well, and on lakes, with a small spritsail with brails, it is exactly the thing. A prettier and more useful little boat I never had. I have mentioned this boat because I have often been asked about such a thing. If by any chance the outer skin should be injured--which is not likely, for the canvas is immensely strong--it makes but little difference to the boat, and the injury is easily repaired. I can strongly recommend it to any one wanting such a thing. But to "our mutton"--sporting of the past and the present day. Returning to olden times, our fathers and forefathers were not ashamed to run horses, greyhounds, etc., in their _own_ names; now men do so more and more under _assumed_ ones. This is unfortunate, and opens the door for many abuses; and the sooner it is put an end to the better. I do not believe in the early hours at which our ancestors used to take to the field. Game is not moving very early; therefore, in partridge shooting, dogs have not such a chance of finding game as they have an hour or two later. Nine o'clock is quite early enough for the partridge or grouse shooter; about four in the afternoon is the most deadly time, because scent then begins to ascend, and the dogs catch it much quicker, and birds are then on the feed. The stubble, at this time, is the place to find partridges. It is a great mistake to walk too fast, shooting, because much game is missed in this way; even very fast dogs require sufficient time to make their ground good; in thick turnips you can hardly walk too slowly. But I must hold, these notes are growing too long under my "grey goose quill." (I am old-fashioned enough to prefer a quill pen to a steel one.) Old fellow-sportsmen, and young ones, adieu. May you have a good season, and good health and spirits to enjoy it! DOWN THE BECK AN ANGLING REVERIE Like the dormouse, the approach of spring draws forth also the angler. So early as February trout-fishing begins in the West of England, and good sport may be had during March and April. May, however, is the month of months for the trout fisher, certainly in the Midland Counties, and wherever the May fly is found, and probably in the West as well. With the first sunny gleams of February that herald the full burst of spring, Halieus and Poietes may be seen rod in hand down their streams, rejoicing that the many cold days, during which they have been longingly fingering flies and tackle at home, are at length ended. So many eulogies have been heaped upon fishing, which culminate in the enthusiasm of gentle Isaak, the father of the craft, that the world must indeed be tolerant if it can read any more. But between his zeal on the one hand, and the venerable dictum of Dr Johnson on the other, lies a truer appreciation of the art of angling with a fly as being the busy man's most suitable recreation, in the strictest sense of the word, in these feverish days of intellectual and social bustle. Besides the love of sport for its own sake, fly-fishing provides numerous secondary delights and occupations for thoughtful, observant natures. Whatever be a man's hobby, he can ride it as hard as he chooses down the banks of a trout stream. The rigour of the game is all very well for whist; but fishing, with no other object than killing fish, is altogether mean and ignoble. In this pursuit the fisherman may be conchologist, ornithologist, or botanist as well--nay, he may be all at once, and probably is so if he be a devoted student of nature. The poet can throw off a sonnet while he flings his fly; the clergyman will be taught by angling, as truly as by Shakespeare, how to find sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks. Did not St Anthony convert heretics by preaching to the fishes? Like Narcissus of old, the lover may see his other self mirrored in the quiet waters. Whatever be his profession, while the angler meditatively saunters on with a blade of grass between his lips, his thoughts will sooner or later be certain to find their own peculiar bent. Even the philosopher ought to be attracted from his study to the brook. Plutarch tells how the Pythagoreans abstained from eating fish, deeming them, on account of their dumbness, creatures most kindred to the philosophic mind. Theology itself has not scrupled to embalm the highest mysteries under the symbol of a fish; and grave bishops at present do not disdain exploits with the salmon-rod that are duly chronicled in the columns of the _Field_. Thus, the true angler may well join Sir H. Wotton in deeming the hours spent on his favourite sport "his idle time not idly spent," even if he cannot echo his sentiment that "he would rather live five May months than forty Decembers."[1] We have always regretted that good Bishop Andrewes, the model of a saint, a scholar, and a divine, did not angle. What additional zest would it not have lent to those rambles of which his biographer speaks in such simple language! "His ordinary exercise and recreation was walking, either alone by himself, or with some other selected companion, with whom he might confer and argue and recount their studies; and he would often profess that to observe the grass, herbs, corn, trees, cattle, earth, waters, heavens, any of the creatures, and to contemplate their natures, orders, qualities, virtues, uses, &c., was ever to him the greatest mirth, content, and recreation that could be; and this he held to his dying day."[2] [1] Walton's Life of Sir Hy. Wotton. [2] Life of Bishop Andrewes by H. Isaacson, his amanuensis. Andrewes' works, Anglo-Catholic Library. "Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude; Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, She plumes her feathers." There is little doubt that had the writer of these well-known lines been able to tear himself from his books for any diversion, it would have been in order to angle. A great authority recommends a man weighed down with overwhelming mental trouble to learn a new language by way of diverting his thoughts from self; it would be far more efficacious for him to sally out fishing, not, certainly, to stand for hours beside a sullen pool angling with float and worm--this would be to invite suicide--but to ramble down the bank of some winding stream, burdened with nothing heavier than a clear conscience and a light fly-rod. Then may St Nicholas speedily befriend his votary! Now put on your flies--a green drake, by all means, if it be May--if not, nothing can be better than the "red spinner," the "coachman," and, above all, "the professor," from its taking qualities--fit namesake of Christopher North. We have reached the Beck, and this warm south wind "will blow the hook to the fishes' mouth." Without the abundance of trout, which, according to Audubon, characterised the river Sehigh in North America, where he "was made weary with pulling up the sparkling fish allured by the struggles of the common grasshopper," the Beck possesses--what is more grateful to the true angler--a fair amount of fish, which it requires considerable skill to hook. The local name, "beck," shows that it runs through a country which was overrun by the Northmen, and its character is not dissimilar to theirs. It has none of the abrupt headlong manner of a pure Keltic brook, overcoming all obstacles by sheer persistent force, as seen in Wales, in the Highlands, and in North Devon. Nor does it wind along in slow, deep volume, like a Teutonic brook, or the offshoot of a Dutch canal, bereft indeed of all the lighter graces which adorn a beautiful stream, but irresistible withal, and beneficent. It rather unites the two characters, meandering with crystal eddies and murmurous flow, "Kissing the gentle sedges as it glides," now circumventing a hillock that could not well be sapped, and now, as befits the length of its course, flowing silently, with full streams, through a croft knee-deep in daisies and meadowsweet; lovingly cutting its sinuous S's through the sward, as Izaak Walton carved his initials on Casaubon's tablet in Westminster Abbey; and yet again, like the Laureate's brook, "Chattering over stony ways, With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel,"-- happy combination of elements from the diverse nationalities that make up the English nation. It distinguishes the names of the parishes through which it passes in some places by the Norman addition to them of "le beck," while they themselves frequently terminate, after the Scandinavian fashion, in "by" (_i.e._, dwelling). However, as there are in Lincolnshire alone two hundred and twelve places which have this termination, the exact locality of this particular beck can only be dimly guessed; and, sooth to say, if the angler has a failing, it consists in a natural dislike to reveal the exact situation of his favourite "stickles" to another. Few objects in nature are so beautiful as running water; it soothes the mind as well as the eye, and disposes to reflection, sobering the jar of contending passions in the soul as it gleams along, always different in its chequered eddies, and yet always the same. The vegetation that springs on the brink of a stream very much heightens its charms to the true angler, who is always more or less of an artist and poet. Round this beck there are, indeed, no ferns tufting each projecting shelf, and seizing upon every bare stone and decayed tree. East Anglian scenery is wofully deficient in this element of the picturesque; but wild flowers gem its banks, "Thick set with agate and the azure sheen Of turkis blue and emerald green That in the channel strays." At every turn the marsh marigold blazes in brilliant golden clumps, while the water violet and bladderwort, most curious of our water-weeds, find place round many of the deeper pools. Overhead, too, hoary willows lend a great charm to the scenery, and patriarchal thorn bushes, that glitter with snow-flowers every May, and wonder at returning winter as they view their whiteness reflected below, while abundance of forget-me-nots, "for happy lovers," seek the most retired spots. Too often in the south of the county, as, for instance, round Croyland Abbey, lines of melancholy poplars disfigure the prospect, as they do (alas! _did_) round Metz, Avignon, and other French towns. It is curious, by the way, that so vivacious a people as the French should be fond of this, the most _triste_ of trees. Here, however, willows are in exact keeping with the landscape; and as they turn the glaucous under-surface of their leaves to the light in the shivering breezes, instead of sadness, they speak of joy to the angler, for it is just when these capfuls of wind blow that the lazy trout in the holes under their shade rise eagerly at the fly. Once every year, in the city church of St James, in accordance with a benefactor's will, a sermon on flowers is preached from some floral text, to a congregation mainly composed of young people, each of them careful to carry a nosegay with them to the service. A walk down the beck, to one who knows anything of botany, or, better still, who really loves our wild flowers, is in itself a perpetual sermon. And how much are its exhortations strengthened if the angler be somewhat of an ornithologist! What a joyous melody proceeds from the ivy-covered fir, as Will Wimble[3] makes his way to the beck! [3] "He makes a May-fly to a miracle, and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods."--_Spectator_, No. 108. "That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never can recapture The first fine careless rapture." On this sunny bank, in the first gleam of spring sunshine, may be noticed a sprightly little bird hopping along, glad to have completed his migration to our shore--the wheatear, which Tennyson aptly terms (if we read him aright) "the sea-blue bird of March." And later on, the cuckoo is first heard down this glade, gleefully "telling her name to all the hills," till June renders her hoarse, and the clear note becomes "Cuck-cuckoo! Cuck-cuck-cuckoo!" and endless is the harsh iteration if another of her family answer the challenge. Peering carefully round a thicket, too, may be seen the waterhen, proudly tempting her black brood to cross the stream for the first time; or haply a wild duck, that has sat on her eggs till the angler's foot almost touches her, flaps suddenly her wings, and skims under the overhanging alders. If the fisherman be an observant lover of nature, these and the like country sights and sounds will bring him great contentment even though he take no fish. And so speaks Dame Juliana Berners, in her "Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle"--one of the quaintest productions of early English literature:--"Atte the best he hath his holsom walk and merry at his ease, a swete ayre of the swete savoure of the meede flowres: that makyth hym hungry. He hereth the melodyous armony of fowles. He seeth the yonge swannes, heerons, duckes, cotes, and many other foules wyth theyr brodes. And yf the angler take fysshe, surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte." Down this beck an artistic eye will find many a feast of colour. The keeper's cottage stands on a high bank; and a more charming domestic subject was never painted, even by Millais, than one which may be noticed there any day in August. His little girl, bare-headed and rosy-cheeked with the merriest of light-blue eyes, stands under a forest of sun-flowers, which spread their huge yellow discs above, while sunbeams break through and leave their gold on the little maiden's hair, and play round her, earnest, we will hope, of her future, as she drops a courtesy to the passing angler. A little farther on, the briony, with its brilliant berries, will festoon the grey trunk of its cherishing oak with a glory, in autumn, that cannot but charm the eye. The wild hyacinths of April are like a fold of blue sky that has descended upon the wooded hollows. In the thatch of the labourer's cottage is one deeply-set window, with a few tiles under it, on which lichens and moss have established a footing. It has just rained, and the contrast between their vivid greens and the brilliant red tiles is delicious. It is thus that much of the monotony inseparable from a dull country may be relieved, by judiciously educating the vision to find beauties where ordinary eyes see nothing unusual. The pensiveness of an angler's "sad pleasure" will be found agreeable leisure for this purpose. The various animals again to be found down the Beck, and the intimate acquaintance which can be made with them in their native haunts, form by no means the least of its charms. It is wonderful how tame all wild creatures become, and how their characters expand to men, who, like Waterton and Thoreau, the American naturalist, take pains to gain their confidence. The water rats, timid enough when any other foot approaches, look with fearless friendship on the gentle angler. At his ease he may watch them perched on a raft of drifted sticks and weeds nibbling the arrowhead with the utmost composure, or swimming about like a miniature colony of beavers. It is cheering to reflect, when they are seen under such circumstances, that although the miller may owe them a grudge for undermining the banks of his dam, they are of all animals the most harmless to the farmer. He is too often, however, apt to confound them with the destructive pests of the granary, and (though they are really voles and not rats) to lump all together as vermin, and issue an edict of universal extermination accordingly. What a blessed day will it be for the lower animals when farmers imbibe a taste for natural history! At dusk may often be discerned down the Beck another innocent creature, the hedgehog, long remorselessly hunted down because vile calumnies had attached themselves to him of eating partridges' eggs and being addicted to sucking milk from cows. The latter accusation is simply an impossibility, while as to the former, we are afraid it is too true that he has a sneaking liking for eggs; but the damage he does is infinitesimally small, when not computed by gamekeepers' arithmetic. A pair of hedgehogs making love in their curiously awkward fashion, puffing and blowing like grampuses, is a strange sight; while the piglings, before their spines have grown, form the most amusing of pets. About the saddest spectacle that we ever witnessed was an old hedgehog that had been cut asunder by a train, at a railway crossing, while her brood of six or eight were still round her, unharmed and wondering what had happened. We transported the poor orphans to the nearest damp ditch and left them to the rough care of Mother Nature. Not very far from the Beck is a colony of badgers, an animal much persecuted where any linger in other parts of the country, but in this East Anglian shire acquiring a decided commercial value. Anything that will encourage foxes is here greatly in request, consequently badgers are deemed useful creatures in a cover, as they make earths which afterwards tempt Reynard to take possession. An angler is a subject of perpetual wonder to cows; but too often as he turns round from the water's edge in some rich meadow, he finds himself the centre towards which the curved fronts of two or three oxen converge uncomfortably close, literally placing him on the horns of a dilemma. The sleek heifers, however, approach him without any signs of attack or trepidation, and often run the risk of being caught as he rapidly draws his flies back for a cast. Tame ducks and water rats are frequently thus caught; but the most singular coincidence of this kind happened to a friend who, on going down the Otter to fish, had to cross a bridge. Whirling his flies over this as he passed, a swallow, darting underneath, took one and was captured. On his return in the evening he again whisked his flies over the bridge, and a bat, snapping at one under the arches, was taken in the same ignominious manner. All this time, as is not uncommon with lovers of nature, we have lost sight of our main purpose in coming down the brook--fishing, to wit. The art boasts a long descent, according to Walton, the highest authority to whom a fisherman can bow. "Some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's flood; others that Belus, who was the first inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling," with much more to the same purport. It is a curious commentary on the aristocratic principles of the fifteenth century to find Dame Berners, in the aforementioned "Treatyse," confining the sport to the well-born. She could not imagine it a recreation of the multitude, or even of "ydle persones." With her it is emphatically "one of the dysportes that gentylmen use." Her enthusiasm for the sport knows no bounds, and must have made many generations of Englishmen anglers. The treatise evidently supplied the idea of "Walton's Angler," the book which next to "White's Selborne," has gone through more editions than any other secular work in the language. "It shall be to you a very pleasure to se the fayr bryght shynynge scalyd fysshes dysceyved by your crafty meanes, and drawen upon lande," she says; but, either fishermen have become less skilful since her days, or trout more timorous, if we may judge from her wonderful frontispiece of a man angling (and that successfully) with a rod like a flail, and tackle resembling the trace of a carriage. Neither the salmon, monarch of the salmonidæ, nor the lovely grayling, which is only found in midland and Welsh waters, is to be expected in the Beck. Still the common river trout is no mean antagonist for an angler's mettle. Of all fish trout are most vigilant and suspicious; the least unwary movement, adventuring even a hand out of shelter or into bright sunshine, incautiously thrusting his head over the bank, or interfering in any way with the skyline, will certainly betray the angler. He may gain a slight advantage over their craft, however, by remembering that their habit is to feed with their heads to the stream. A beginner may rest assured that the golden secret of success in trout-fishing is to keep well out of the fishes' sight by availing himself of every natural cover, a tree-trunk, bush, &c., or by approaching the stream, if he is very much exposed, in a stooping position. He must, for the most part, learn, by observation, the many singular habits and characteristics of his quarry, and here it is that the old fisherman excels the tyro. The remarkable manner in which the fish's colours change with the nature of the stream in which it lives, is one of these curiosities of the trout. There is all the difference in the world between a fish taken from the chalky streams of Wilts and one that inhabits the dark peaty burns of Devon or South Wales, while both are inferior in beauty to the red-spotted lusty fish of a Nottinghamshire river. Internally they are of two types, one with red flaky flesh, like salmon, the other white; these variations, however, frequently run into each other. The practical fisherman only can appreciate the great diversity of activity which exists in fish of different sizes and streams, and probably in the same fish in the prime and end of the season. In one bickering rivulet the trout will all be vigorous and bold, leaping out of the water when hooked and dying hard, "game to the back-bone," in sporting phrase. In a sluggish brook the fish seem often to participate in its idiosyncracy, the larger ones tamely surrendering after a few monotonous struggles, the little trout diving to the bottom, and, like tench, hiding their heads in the mud. We have had to stir such fish up with the landing net before it was possible to do anything with them. Another curious fact is, that if a fish be taken out of a favourite hole, another will almost always be found to have replaced it the next day. Perhaps the most remarkable theory which has been advanced concerning the intelligence of trout is that of Sir H. Davy in "Salmonia," which he terms their "local memory." A brief outline may furnish one more subject of observation to the philosophic angler. Sir H. Davy asserts that if a trout be pricked with a fly (say a blue upright), and then escape, he will never rise again in the same pool to that particular fly while the surrounding circumstances are the same. Drive him, however, down to another hole, or wait till a flood has changed the aspect of his familiar haunt, and he will take it as greedily as a fish that has never experienced the deceit of an artificial fly. The associations of bank, stones, tree-trunks, &c., in his hole, act like visible mentors, and remind him, as the fly passes overhead, that it was when surrounded by their associations he was simple enough to rise to its fascinations. Solving such questions as these is one of the numerous secondary delights of fly-fishing. Another speculation which may be pointed out to anglers of an inquiring turn of mind, is to demonstrate why sluggish, muddy streams invariably produce better fish than the sparkling Devon or Welsh brooks. Thus in the Beck, down which our ideal fisherman is wandering, the largest fish which has been taken of late years weighed three pounds and a half, while trout of a pound and a half in weight are by no means uncommon. Three-quarters of a pound is a fair size for the fish of mountainous streams, while the majority of their trout do not exceed half a pound. Doubtless, the greater abundance of worms and ground bait in a muddy brook contributes to the larger size of its fish, but it certainly is not the sole cause of their superiority. The flies which the modern angler imitates in fur and feathers, belong mostly to the families which entomology knows under the names of _phrygancæ_ and _ephemeræ_. All anglers should know something of these curious tribes; and nowhere is a better account of them to be found than in that fascinating book, "Salmonia." The _phrygancæ_ (the "stone-flies" of the angler) have long antennæ, with veined wings which fold over each other when closed. The eggs of the adult flies are laid on the leaves of willows or other trees which overhang the water. When they are hatched, the larvæ fall into the stream, collect a panoply of gravel, bits of stick, shell-fish, &c., to surround them, and after feeding for a time on aquatic plants, rise to the surface, burst their skins, and appear as perfect flies. The _ephemeræ_ (or "May-flies") were noticed so long ago as Aristotle's time, in connection with the brevity of their life. They may be known by carrying their wings perpendicularly on their backs, and by several filaments or long bristles protruding from their tails. Their aqueous existence, like the stone-flies', sometimes lasts for two or three years; but as flies their life is thought never to exceed a few days in length, often but a few hours. In fact their life is, to all intents and purposes, over when their eggs are laid, and this function takes place directly they emerge into the winged state. Besides these, however, there are multitudes of nondescript flies used by those anglers who commit themselves to the persuasive powers of the fishing-tackle maker, and fill their fly-books with his gorgeously-coloured creations; but with the stone-flies, May-flies, and other simple flies previously enumerated, most real anglers are contented. The greatest nuisance to the fisherman on the banks of the Beck are the hovering swarms of flies and gnats. Nature's profusion is almost inexhaustible in this division of her kingdom. In hot, sunny weather, they persecute the angler till he well-nigh gives up his sport, and betakes himself to moralize how his situation, lonely though it be, is no inapt type of a man's spiritual loneliness in the midst of that crowd of his fellows called Society, "Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies." Yes, here is the whole winged legion avenging, as it were, the slight the angler puts upon them by his grotesque imitations, in number and description more fell than Walton ever imagined in the marvellous flies he directs his disciples to dub--"the Prime Dun, Huzzard, Death Drake, Yellow Miller, Light Blue, Blue Herl," and all the rest! It would require a piscatorial entomologist to identify them; and when they buzz around their victims, how well can these enter into Dante's grim fancy of the wicked in hell being exposed naked to the stings of wasps and flies! It is useful, however, to be thus reminded that even so innocent a sport as angling has its drawbacks. Perhaps such small annoyances should be received as part of the discipline of fishing; winged blessings they then become, modes of teaching unpleasant, perchance, at the time, but none the less fraught with profit to the true angler, who is always more or less of a moralist. It is time, though, to turn homewards. Our endeavour has been to depict some of the charms connected with angling, and to recommend it as a recreation specially adapted for the feverish agitation of modern social life. Over and above its immediate end, it is a school for moral virtues and the observing faculties which cannot be too highly honoured. The fisherman, like the poet, must be born; but he owes his success, even more than the poet, to perseverance and observation. However long the sport may be intermitted, when a man has once tasted its joys, and imbibed a thorough love of angling, he resumes it with eagerness on the first favourable opportunity. Nay, the taste is one which deserts not its votary in death. Few angling reminiscences are more touching than the scene which his daughter has described so pathetically, when poor Christopher North lay on his death-bed. In the intervals of his malady, he had his fly-books brought to him, and derived a melancholy pleasure from taking out his old favourites one by one, and lovingly caressing their bright plumage and carefully tied wings, as they were spread out on the sheets. It must be confessed that angling is justly open to the charge of being a solitary, taciturn, meditative sport, which shuts a man out from his kind. We are cynical enough to fancy that if he be shut up with Nature instead, he will suffer no great harm. Indeed, to admit the impeachment is only tantamount to owning that fishing, after all, is but of this world, and necessarily an imperfect energy. Herein lies its chief excellence in the eyes of hard workers; so there is no need elaborately to refute the objection. Let a man try it, and _solvitur ambulando_. So good is it that the aforesaid Dame Juliana indulges in no exaggeration when she says--pardon once more an angler's loquacity--"Ye shall not use this forsayde crafty dysporte for no covetysenes to th'encreasynge and sparynge of your money oonly, but pryncypally for your solace, and to cause the helthe of your body and especyally of your soule." Though it be to our own loss, we would nevertheless invite every reflective mind to the Beck, to derive inspiration and satisfaction from communion with the simple joys of nature. May skill and perseverance there bring the angler the usual happy results, and--blessing of blessings where fishing is concerned--may his shadow never be less! M. G. W. AN APOLOGY FOR FISHING Ever since the time when the famous definition of angling as a combination of "a stick and a string with a worm at one end and a fool at the other" was first given to the world, it has been the custom of a large section of society to disparage the particular sport, which has for its object the catching of fish, very much more than any of the other developments which the killing propensity takes among sportsmen. When a man mentions that he is going off on a fishing expedition, the announcement is not met with the respect which is accorded to him who proclaims the fact that he has it in contemplation to spend a day in beating the turnips for partridges, or riding across country in pursuit of a fox. People have a provoking way of smiling when fishing is spoken of; and when they meet you, armed with the necessary paraphernalia which makes up an angler's equipment, their countenances directly assume either an amused expression, indicating a state of feeling not very remote from absolute pity, or a look of delicate forbearance which is almost the more difficult to bear of the two. There surely never was any pastime regarded with so little respect as this of fishing. But one good quality (that of patience) is ever identified with it; and even that, when connected with this particular sport, is sometimes spoken of in a disparaging tone; so that it is by no means an uncommon thing to hear a man brag of his deficiency in this respect, saying, "I've not got patience enough for that sort of thing"; as if the fact redounded enormously to his credit. "Going fishing?" says your hearty friend as he meets you in the hall, equipped for the sport, "You must be hard up for some amusement--for of all the deadly-lively proceedings----" "Going fishing?" says another. "Well, it's certainly too early in the season for anything else in the way of sport; but still----" The very partisans of fishing, too, help, in a certain way, to bring it into discredit. What a literature it has! The literature of all sport is apt to be trying; but this of fishing is surely especially disastrous. The facetious element always figures here in such grievous force. Nor only that. Dreadful conventional forms of expression, phrases in inverted commas, involved ways of expressing a simple thing, abound--so that one meets continually with such expressions as the "gentle craft" and the "finny tribe." The sportsman who devotes himself to fishing is called a "member of the piscatorial fraternity," or a "brother of the angle," or a "disciple of 'old Izaak,'" or by some other roundabout and exasperating designation. Why it is that people who write on this particular subject cannot express their ideas in plain English and avoid such forms of speech as the above it is difficult to say; but so it is. These stereotyped phrases are to be ranked among the conventionalities of "piscatorial" literature. Another of these is a perpetual insistence upon the contemplativeness of character which this particular sport tends to develop in those who engage in it. The fisherman is supposed to be left by his pursuit at leisure to ponder and reflect on all sorts of abstract questions wholly unconnected with what he is about. Fishing is called the contemplative man's recreation, and seems, indeed, to be looked upon by a very large section of society as a sort of excuse for mooning. For my poor part I confess that it seems to me that the fact is far otherwise. If there is one thing more than another necessary to fishing, it is that the man who engages in it should have all his wits about him, and be thoroughly absorbed in what he is doing. A fisherman who took to being contemplative would, I fancy, stand but a poor chance of catching anything, and would certainly find himself involved in many difficulties connected with the management of his rod and line. While he was contemplating, his fly would speedily get itself fastened to some neighbouring tree, or fixed, may be, into some unattainable part of the contemplative one's own costume; while, if the line were suffered to remain in the water, the flies would certainly be carried by the current into a bed of weeds, or get twisted round a stone at the bottom of the river. The study of the beauties of nature, again, is an occupation which angling is supposed to lend itself to. Yet even this, as it seems to me, is hardly likely to be carried very far by the really keen sportsman. When walking briskly across the hill or on the moorland on his way to the river he may, indeed, take note of the picturesque outlines of a distant mountain or the rich colouring of a patch of heather and fern, just as he is conscious of the freshness of the air or the warmth of the sun; but he will hardly, when there is any fishing to do, be likely to dwell on any of these delights, however much he may revel in them at other times. When once he gets really to work he is entirely absorbed in the sport, and will think of little or nothing else till the time comes for putting up his traps and going home. And it is just this which gives such value to every form of sport, and makes them so essential an element in the troublous life of the nineteenth century. They absorb the thoughts and confine the attention, for the time being, to what--in a comparative sense--may fairly be called trifles. You cannot occupy yourself with any deep abstract speculation when it is a question of catching a trout or bringing down a partridge. The fact is that a prodigious amount of ignorance prevails in connection with the sport of angling. People class all forms and modes of fishing together, and include them every one under the definition given at the commencement of this paper. The prevalent idea in the minds of most people is that fishing consists of sitting in an arm-chair in a punt watching a float bobbing up and down in the water, and partaking at intervals of very flat beer served out of a stone jar by the attendant boatman. Now this--the very lowest form of fishing that exists, and, unhappily, the form under which it is the oftenest and most conspicuously presented to view--so little really represents this particular sport, that I think I am hardly speaking too strongly in saying that no real fisherman would consent to hear such a proceeding classed under the head of fishing at all. When a sportsman speaks of fishing, he is thinking either of fly-fishing or spinning, and most generally of the former. For fly-fishing, rightly engaged in, it is not too much to claim a very high position indeed among the sports of the field; many of the qualities on which it makes demands being the same which are required for the other forms of sport, while it also implies some which are not called for in those others, except, perhaps, in that of deer-stalking. To be a perfectly good fisherman a man requires strength, agility, spirit, quickness and accuracy of eye, a neat hand, a nimble foot, considerable ability as a tactician, presence of mind, and coolness, coupled with the power of keeping his wits always about him. Nor is this all; a fisherman must have, besides, certain moral qualifications of an exalted nature. He must be possessed of patience, perseverance, and good temper; and, in addition to all this, he must thoroughly well understand his business in all its more intricate technicalities. Let us proceed to consider some of the points here insisted on a little in detail. In fishing for trout with an artificial fly--a branch of sport to which, with the reader's permission, we will in this 'Apology' entirely confine ourselves--it is necessary, as it is in a great many other things, that a man should thoroughly understand what it is that he is doing--how, in short, the case stands. It stands thus. He sees before him a sheet of water, containing, as he has reason to suppose, a certain number of fish, some comparatively stationary, some darting hither and thither, all very much alive, very watchful, constantly on the look-out both for what may bring them advantage in the shape of food of divers kinds, or for what may give them cause for apprehension, in the shape of fish larger than themselves and of a predatory nature, herons, otters and, above all, men. To these creatures, vigilant, timorous, suspicious, it is the angler's business to present an object which they are to suppose is an insect which has dropped into the water and is floating down with the stream more or less near to the surface. If the fisherman succeeds in conveying this impression; if his counterfeit insect is a successful piece of imitation; if the fly which it imitates is one for which the fish has a liking, and if the fish itself happens at the particular moment to be "on the feed"--if all these conditions are fulfilled, then it will happen that the trout will rise swiftly through the water, will seize the bait, and the fisherman's object will be gained. This desirable consummation is, however, harder of attainment than might be supposed. Very much is implied in the bringing that transaction which has just been described to a successful issue. If the particular portion of the stream into which you throw your fly is not the spot where a trout lies, if your fly is not well imitated from nature, or does not represent the kind of insect which the fish affects, if the hook is too little concealed, or the line too coarse, above all, if you yourself are conspicuous, standing on the bank, your chance of inducing a trout to rise is slender in the extreme. The fact is that the fisherman ought to look at this transaction from the trout's point of view and not from his own. Of the fishing-rod and line, and of the person who manipulates them, the trout must be kept wholly unconscious. This sounds a simple statement enough; but it does, in fact, imply a great deal. In the first place it implies that both the water and the atmosphere shall be in a condition favourable to the mystifying and confusing of the fish which we are bent on capturing. The atmosphere should not be bright and clear to an excess, nor, by rights, the water either. The water, again, should be, to a certain extent, troubled and agitated. This is effected in a running stream by the current; but in lakes and calm, deep rivers, especially in the former, it can only be brought about by a certain amount of wind, and for lake-fishing it may therefore be confidently asserted that a slight breeze is absolutely indispensable. A line falling on perfectly smooth water, however fine and delicate such line may be, or however skilfully cast, will make a certain amount of splash, which would awaken the misgivings of any fish which happened to be near. One of the greatest of all the difficulties connected with the catching of fish is that experienced by the sportsman in keeping himself out of sight. At the first glimpse of a man moving by the side of the river, every fish at once darts away as fast as his fins can carry him. To this assertion there are few people who would venture to demur; and yet how common it is to see a fisherman placed on a high bank, with his whole figure in strong relief against the sky, and moving down the water, with all the fish in the river facing him as they lie with their heads up-stream. It can only be by some strange accident that he will take a fish under such circumstances. Almost the first thing which the fisherman should think of in setting about his business is to conceal himself as much as possible. There are several ways in which this may be effected. In the first place, if the wind will at all allow of it, he should always fish up-stream, as he will then have the backs of the fish turned towards him instead of their faces. Fishing up-stream is more difficult and more laborious than fishing down, the current bringing the line back almost as fast as it is thrown in, so that the labour of casting it is almost incessant. Still, for the reason given above, it is better. It is good again for the angler to get behind some big rock or bush large enough to hide the greater part of his figure, remaining there, with as little motion as possible, till he has thoroughly fished every speck of water within his reach. Or if there are no bushes or rocks to be had for purposes of ambush, it behoves him to crawl along on the lowest part of the bank on his knees, aiding himself with the hand which is not engaged with the fishing-rod, and sometimes even to wriggle himself along after the manner of a snake--anything to diminish his conspicuousness. Now all this is not by any means easy of accomplishment. To creep along in the manner just described, encountering some obstacle at almost every step--huge stones which, unless he is very careful, he tumbles over, small tributary streams which he plunges into--to get over and through all these difficulties, in a doubled-up position, which renders feats of agility very difficult indeed to accomplish, is not an easy task, especially as all the time he has to wave his line round and round in the air, to be ready for a long cast when he at last sees his way to that consummation. This is arduous work, depend on it, and yet, short of this, I don't know how, under some circumstances, his object is to be obtained. For fly-fishing, to be attended with success, is not a simple operation, but, on the contrary, a very complicated one, as any proceeding involving so exceedingly intricate a _ruse_ as this one does, inevitably must be. That it _is_ a _ruse_ there can be no sort of doubt. Unless you succeed in taking this creature in, you will never succeed in capturing him. This is no open onslaught, as is the case in shooting and hunting. Strategy is your only chance, and the more deeply laid your plot, the greater is your chance of succeeding. There is one element in the construction of this deeply-laid scheme which requires to be considered with an especial carefulness. The structure of the fly which is to be set before the trout on whose capture we are bent is an ingredient in the transaction the importance of which must by no means be overlooked. It should of all things--and this is a point not enough considered by the makers of these little works of art--be one which looks well in the water. There are many flies sold which appear perfectly right and natural while they remain out of the water, but which, when once they are thoroughly wetted, assume an entirely different and most inferior appearance. The loose wool and feather strands, which form the body of the fly, get matted together and the whole mass of them much reduced in size; the wings cease to stand out away from the body and from each other, and the hook, owing to the reduction of the size of the fly generally, which is effected by the tightening influence of the water, is left much too bare and prominent. The best way to obviate these difficulties is to make the body of the fly somewhat fuller and more fluffy than it is intended to be, and to dress it as far down towards the bend of the hook as is compatible with symmetry of structure. The hook is sure to be conspicuous enough at best, but every pains should be taken to make it as little so as possible. We are particular about all sorts of minute considerations of colour and form; we refuse to allow of the deviation of the sixteenth of an inch from the right standard in the length of a tail, or of the faintest false shade in the colouring of a wing--in all these matters we are exact and scrupulous, and rightly so; but is it quite consistent with such close attention to detail that we should be indifferent to so remarkable a deviation from the right model as is found in the immense and conspicuous hook which protrudes beyond the body of our counterfeit insect, and which seems quite as much calculated to attract attention as any other part of the fly? Of course, to some extent, this cannot be helped, the hook being a necessity of the fisher's case, but surely it might in many instances be much more carefully concealed than it is. The fly might, for instance, be dressed not actually on the shank of the hook, but on a piece of gut or bristle attached to it and hanging loose on the hook so as almost to hide it. In putting on a worm as a bait--the worm having the advantage of being the real thing--we take the utmost pains to conceal the hook; in putting on the fly--which has the disadvantage of being not the real thing but a counterfeit--why should we not do precisely the same thing? It cannot be insisted on too strongly and too frequently that the whole of this transaction, which we call fly-fishing, is, from beginning to end, a most elaborately carried out piece of deception. But troublesome and difficult and inseparably connected with all sorts of disappointments as it is, yet is the game unquestionably well worth the candle, fishing, when really successful, being beyond all question one of the most delightful of occupations, while even when only moderately successful, it is full of charm and interest to any one who takes it up in earnest. DOGS I HAVE KNOWN I was always very fond of dogs, but it was a long time before I was allowed to have one of my own, my parents apparently considering that dogs were composed of two equal portions of hydrophobia and fleas. My first dog was a large brown and white spaniel with a very curious temper. Sometimes he would lie on things in his kennel nearly all day, for no apparent reason. If you tried to pet or coax him it did no good, but if no attention were paid to him he would get out of the sulks and be all right in a short time. He could never be induced to go into the water to swim. I often attempted it by keeping him tied up without food and then loosing him and throwing bits of biscuit into the moat near the house. He would then pick out and eat all the bits that were within his reach by wading, but would not make the least attempt to go for a piece which was out of his depth. I once thought that I had devised a plan by which he must swim, but it failed. It was this. There was a high paling along one side of the moat with a strip of grass about a foot wide between it and the water, and here I put the dog, thinking he would be compelled to swim out, but no! after spending half the day whining and crouching down as if he meant to jump in, he set to work and scratched at the turf and tore at the palings with his teeth until he made a hole big enough to get through. After this I gave up trying to get him to swim. His temper was decidedly peculiar. When I called him to go for a walk, if he approved of the direction taken he would go--if not he would stand and look at me and then go straight home. Once, however, he shewed a very remarkable and amiable trait. I left home and went abroad for a considerable time, and in my absence my father died. The dog at this time had not shewn any sign of attachment to my mother, but immediately after my father's funeral, whenever he was loose, he used to run straight to the drawing-room windows, and, if my mother was there, would remain standing for hours looking in at her; or, if the front door happened to be open, he would go in and walk quietly into the drawing-room. If his mistress were there he would lie down by her chair; up to this time he had never tried to get into the house, and directly I returned he never attempted it again, nor even appeared to notice my mother more than any other friend of his. Poor old Jehou, with all his eccentricities of temper I was very fond of him, and sorry when he disappeared. He went out with the carriage one day, and nothing more was ever heard of him, though rewards were offered everywhere. We were making a call and left him outside, and when we came out he was gone. However, we thought nothing of this, believing he would come home, but from that day forward the old Jehou was never seen by us. My second dog was magnificent fellow--I never knew or heard of one with such wonderful sagacity and apparent power of reasoning. It was a huge black and white Newfoundlander, of the colour they now call the "Landseer Newfoundland." I got him from an old keeper, to whom he had been left by his late master. The man did not want him, and knowing that I was very fond of dogs, he sold him to me, saying at the time "He was _a'most_ a Christian"; and so he really was. Our introduction was curious. I went off to see him, taking some food in my pocket to make friends with him; but the man told me that was no good--that if the dog liked the look of me he would be friends at once. When we reached the cottage, going round to the back, I saw a most noble-looking dog, who when we approached sat up and looked very gravely at us. The keeper said, "I've brought a gentleman to see you, old man," and I then spoke to him. The dog turned and looked at me steadily for some seconds, then rising and walking slowly to me, reared up on his hind legs, and, putting one huge paw on each shoulder, began to lick my face. That was the introduction, and from that day until "Wallace's" death we were the firmest of friends. The man told me he had been broken for a keeper's night-dog, and was a first-rate guard--would never touch a child or bite a woman, but that he would bite any man or beast he was set at; and looking at his size and power I did not disbelieve him. He also warned me that no one must go near him when he was feeding. After having a full account of the dog, I went home, Wallace following me as if we had known each other for years. Soon after I had him, I went on a visit to a cousin who lived in a town in the north of England, and Wallace, who went with me, distinguished himself greatly whilst there. One evening I was to meet my cousin at his counting-house, and at the time fixed went there, my dog, of course, accompanying me. On reaching the office, finding that my cousin had gone out, I sat down and waited, and as he did not make his appearance so soon as was expected, the office-keeper came and asked me if I would mind waiting by myself, as everything was locked up and my cousin could fasten the outer door himself (as in fact he often did). I had no objection, so all the gas but one small jet was turned out. Very shortly after the office-keeper left, the door was opened very softly, and soon a man put in his head, and not discovering me in the gloom, as I purposely made no noise, came in; and a very ill-looking customer he was. Discovering me, he started, and said something about an appointment, advancing as he spoke. Directly the man got near, with one bound Wallace was on him and had him down on his back on the floor. He tried to draw something out of his sleeve, but Wallace instantly seized his throat--gently, it is true, but enough to give him a foretaste of what he could do. I shouted to the man to lie still or the dog would kill him, and rising up and going to him found he had an iron jemmy in his hand, which I took--warning him that if he moved the dog would throttle him. I went and called the police; they came and secured the fellow, who turned out to be the head of one of the most daring set of burglars in the north. Besides the jemmy he had a brace of loaded pistols in his pocket, and would most undoubtedly have murdered me, if it had not been for Wallace. The man had been "wanted" by the police for a long time, but they had never been able to get him, and there were great rejoicings at his capture. Whenever I went out by day Wallace always followed me, but at night, or in the dusk, kept close to my side, with his head almost touching my leg. If he saw anyone coming towards me that he thought suspicious he would go on in front, and turning with them as they came up follow them by me, and in the same manner if anyone was overtaking me, he dropped back, and then followed them until they had quite passed. He did one other very clever thing whilst he was with me in the north. One morning I had been to the club to look at the papers, etc., and on my return home found that I had lost one of my gloves. More for the sake of experiment than really thinking the dog would ever find the missing glove, I took off the other, and holding it to him, made a motion like throwing it away, saying, at the same time, "lost, Wallace, go seek." The dog at once started off, and was away for some time--in fact, so long, that becoming uneasy, I started off towards the club. I had gone but a very little way when I saw Wallace coming along, and to my great surprise, with the missing glove in his mouth. A policeman was following him at a respectful distance, so I went up to him and asked if he could tell me where the dog found the glove. He told me he saw Wallace running along evidently looking for something, as he occasionally stopped, and seemed to make sure of his direction; following him, he saw him enter the club, and remain there a short time. He then came out, began sniffing about on the steps, and suddenly started off briskly. The man followed, and the dog, after going along one of the main streets for some way, turned down a side street, and soon overtaking an old beggar woman, made a snatch at something in her hand, and returned at full speed. The old woman had picked up the glove on the steps of the club, and had gone off with it, and if it had not been for Wallace's extraordinary intelligence I should have lost my glove. One day, after my return home, Wallace gave me a specimen of the education he had received from the keeper. There was a very pretty wood in part of our grounds with walks laid out in it. I was walking there with Wallace, as I thought, when suddenly I heard someone roaring out, most lustily, that the dog was killing him. I called out to know where the man that was being killed, and he told me in the field outside, so I went out and found him on the ground and Wallace over him--not biting or molesting him in any way, but merely looking down at the man, evidently very much puzzled as to why he made such a noise. Calling Wallace off, I asked how it happened, and the man told me that he was walking in the wood, and just stepped over the fence into the field when the dog jumped at him, and knocked him over. The fact was, that Wallace had been trained to go outside any cover when the keeper went through it, and to seize any poacher that might come out. He had been taught, too, to jump at the man and knock him down by his weight, but not to bite or injure him in any way if he made no resistance; and I expect few would have been so foolish as to do so when they saw his size and appearance. Wallace was a most inveterate cat killer. This had been clearly part of his early education; he killed almost every cat that he could get at. Many were the unfortunate tabbies that he suddenly snapped up as they were comfortably dozing on the steps of a cottage. He would go quietly along, apparently taking very little notice of anything, when--snap--and tabby was no more, but there was one most remarkable exception, and this was our stable cat. I discovered it in this way:--One day I went into the stable yard and saw the cat walking across to where Wallace was lying by his kennel half asleep, fully expecting to see her killed in a moment. I waited, and, to my great astonishment, saw her walk up to him, put up her tail, and rub all round him in the most affectionate manner, and as she passed his head, Wallace just looked up and gave her a lick with his tongue. Seeing me, the old dog jumped up, and, in so doing, trod on pussy's foot, who immediately turned round and bit and scratched. Wallace took no sort of notice of it, clearly thinking that such an exhibition of temper on her part was beneath his attention. We lived about twenty-five miles from town, in a very fashionable and wealthy part of the country, which made it quite a "happy hunting-ground" for the London burglars, regular gangs of whom used to come down and "work" the district, in fact, ours was almost the only house that was not broken into, and this was entirely owing to Wallace,--his sonorous bark effectually rousing everyone, and he never used it without occasion. We caught three men with a most beautiful set of burglars' tools. They had intended to try the house; Wallace roused us by barking, and as he seemed nearly frantic, we felt sure that the men were near, so, turning out the men-servants, we loosed the dog in the garden. He soon picked up the scent of the men, and quickly ran into them in an outhouse about two miles off. Numberless were the attempts made to poison him, but he would never touch the stuff, however cunningly prepared. We constantly found poisoned liver, and things of that kind, but it was of no use--Wallace would sniff at the stuff, give it a scratch with his paw, and pass on. There was one very amusing trait in his character, and that was his determination that no one should bathe if he could help it. This came, I think, from his having, on one occasion, brought a child out of a pond into which it had fallen. By the way, he did not do it at all in the graceful way dogs are represented in goody-books, but by a firm nip in a very unromantic part of the child's body, making it roar out lustily, thereby preventing the bystanders from being at all uneasy on its account. An amusing instance of this occurred one day. A young cousin of mine was staying with us and said he should go down to the river and bathe--asking at the same time to take Wallace with him. I consented, quite forgetting his habit. The two were away some time, but at length I saw them returning, the lad evidently in a very bad temper about something. When he came up he said "that abominable old fool Wallace won't let me bathe;" I asked about it and heard that Wallace sat down and watched him undress, in a very grave sort of way, but when he wanted to get into the river would not let him; walking in front of him whenever he got near the edge and completely preventing him from getting in. The boy tried all sorts of dodges to make the dog allow him, but it was of no use. He tried to run and jump in several times, but on each attempt Wallace coolly sat down in front of him just as he thought all was clear, so that he was obliged either to stop short or tumble over the dog. When he gave it up and began to dress again, Wallace lay down and watched him, and finally trotted back with him, with an expression on his countenance that showed he clearly thought he had done his duty. I had been warned by the man I bought Wallace from, as previously noted, that I must never go near him when he was feeding, for he would not allow anyone to approach him then, and this I found to be true; but this habit of his caused me great alarm once. A little girl was staying in our house, and, of course, wanted to see my big dog, so I took her out to the stable yard to show him to her. Wallace was feeding when we got there, and I told her we must not go near him then, and took her into the stables to see the horses. Whilst I was talking to the coachman, she slipped out, and on going to look for her, to my horror I saw her just going up to the dog who was still feeding. I called out to her to come back, but the coachman said, "He won't hurt her, sir; he will let a child do anything almost to him." True enough--the child went up and patted him, and the dog first looked up, gave a wag with his tail and went on feeding. When he was loosed afterwards, he came to where the child and myself were sitting, licked her hands, and then came and put his great head on my knee and looked up at me, as much as to say, "Could not you trust me with a child." I then remembered I had been told he would never touch a child, but there was one very curious point connected with this, which was that he would _never_ touch food of any sort, however fond he was of it, from the hands of a child. This he had doubtless been taught, so that poisoned or prepared food might not be given him by their means. I hardly ever saw a dog who had such very expressive eyes. Once when out with me he was attacked and bitten in the leg by a mastiff; an ill-conditioned brute that was always flying at him. Now Wallace was most good-tempered and hardly ever fought, so I spoke to him and told him to come along, thinking the mastiff would leave him. Instead of this it seized him by the ear, and Wallace's ears were always very tender and painful in the summer; but he never retaliated--only looked at me in a sort of reproachful way, as much as to say "see what pain you have caused me." I could not stand it, and said, "Kill him, Wallace." Shaking the dog off as if he was nothing, he gave him a grip between the forelegs and the dog was dead in an instant. Wallace left him at once and came on after me as if nothing had happened. He certainly was one of the most intelligent dogs I ever met with; I kept him until he was very old, and when he was almost entirely blind, it used to be very curious to see the old fellow hunting me. When loosed, he would put down his nose and work till he got on my trail, and then, however I might have gone about and turned, he was sure to hunt up to me, and the pleased look which came into his old face when he found me and moved round my legs was very touching. However, poor old fellow, he got quite deaf as well as blind, and then to my grief I had to sign his death-warrant. Long after this, I possessed a wonderfully intelligent dog, a pure-bred Skye terrier, one of the real sort, with soft coat of wavy mustard-coloured hair tipped with black; sharp, prick ears, just turned over at the top; such taper paws; tail carried over the back and parting like an ostrich plume; she had dark eyes. I had her directly she could be taken from her mother, and in my bachelor days she hardly ever left me, often going in my pocket when I was riding--her head and forepaws outside. I once left her for six months with some friends whilst I went abroad, and on my return a most curious thing occurred. I drove from the station, distant about six miles from my friends' house, arriving there past nine in the evening. Fanny (that was her name) was shut up in the harness-room, but about four o'clock the next morning I was awakened by scratching and whining at my door, and on getting up and opening it, there was Fanny, who was exceptionally delighted to see me, and jumped on my bed and went to sleep. On getting up I noticed her paws were very sore and bleeding, and on going down, asked where she had been and how she had found me. It turned out thus: she had been locked up in the harness-room as usual, and this was quite 200 yards from the house; but had set to work, and scratched her way out, tearing a hole through the weather boarding close to the doorpost; she then came round to a court at the back of the house, where there was a drain-pipe in one corner through the wall, to carry off the water when it was wasted; this she had torn at until she made the hole big enough to force her little body through, and getting into the house by an unfastened side door, made her way up to my room. But how on earth could she possibly have known that I was there? She had not seen me for six months, and I had not been near the stable, so she could not have heard my voice, and there was not any coat or wrap of mine left in the carriage. That she had got into the house by the way I have stated was quite clear from the state of her paws, and the marks on the stable and outer court. Fanny amused me very much on another occasion. She had been taught to beg, and I went to the kennel, a paled-in one with benches round it, and opening the door, began to talk and play with the dogs, occasionally throwing them some pieces of biscuit. I threw a bit which one of the spaniels picked up, and jumping on to the bench, began to eat it. I suppose Fanny fancied the piece very much, for she ran after the dog, jumped up on the bench in front of him and sat up and begged for it, just as she would have done had I had it. However, the spaniel did not pay any attention, but quietly munched up the biscuit. Her jealousy of my wife, when we were first married, was most amusing. She could not bear to see us sitting together, and if I sat by my wife on a sofa, would get upon it, scramble on to my shoulders, walk round the back of my neck, and try to squeeze herself down between us. She was, too, a capital sporting dog, though for a long time I was afraid to take her out, as she was so like a rabbit or hare when moving through long grass or corn that I feared I might perhaps shoot her accidentally. However, she was always so very anxious to come with me that at length I took her, and she was quite invaluable. Birds that would rise and be off at once, if you had a pointer or setter with you, appeared either not to notice her or be fascinated by her. I knew directly I entered a field with her whether there were birds or not, and she would take me straight to them. She also retrieved beautifully. The first time I found out her powers in this way I had shot two partridges, right and left, and to my great disgust both were runners and got into some standing corn. Fanny seemed very anxious to go after them, so I let her go after one that I had marked down, and off she scampered, and to my great delight and surprise soon came back with it. On my taking it from her, she darted off again and in a little while returned with the other. After this, of course, I always used her for retrieving, and scarcely ever lost a wounded head of game. She could bring partridges and pheasants in open ground, but if they fell in thick cover, or if I sent her after a wounded hare, she could not bring them back, but used to make a short, sharp bark to let me know she had found them. Poor little thing, she met, I fear, the fate of too many pets. We went from home leaving strict injunctions that every care should be taken of her; but, unfortunately, she sickened and died, I fear, of neglect. And now I must tell a most wonderful piece of kindness and compassion on the part of another dog. At the time Fanny and her brothers and sisters were born, I had a fine black and white pointer dog. When Fanny and the rest were a few weeks old, their mother died, and they had to be brought up by hand, and though every care was taken of them, and they had warm sheepskin rugs on their bench, they seemed very miserable and were always crying. Whenever I went round their kennel I usually found this pointer dog sitting there looking at them through the palings, and I said one day to the keeper, "I suppose Don would like to kill them all for making such a noise." "Oh no, sir," said the man; "he pities them quite Christian-like." "Well," I replied, "if he does, just open the kennel door and see what he will do." It was opened and the dog ran in and began licking the puppies, who crowded round him. He then jumped up on the bench, followed by them, and lay down; the puppies crawled all over him, biting his ears and tail, evidently greatly delighted to have him, and finally settled to sleep in all positions on him, the dog never moving, and seemed almost afraid to breathe for fear of disturbing them--in fact, he took them entirely under his protection, and the contorted attitudes the dog would lie in rather than disturb the puppies were wonderful. I used to think he must hurt himself; but he would never leave them, and if I got him out for a little while, thinking he must want rest, he would always run back to them, never seeming happy until he had got in with them again. This continued until they were all grown big enough to take care of themselves. It has always struck me as being the most wonderful piece of pure benevolence I ever knew of. I once knew a very eccentric dog. He was a real old English spaniel, one of that kind you so rarely see, with long body, short legs, with great bone, grand head, jaws and teeth like a wolf's almost, and long ears that would meet round his nose. Poor fellow, his temper was certainly unamiable, but I think this was caused by the state of his health. When he was a puppy he was troubled with insects, and a stupid groom, to show, I suppose, that he had some brains, declared he could cure him with some nostrum of his own; the effect of it being that the poor puppy's hair nearly all came off. His skin was burned in several places, and he was made so ill that for several weeks a veterinary surgeon did not think he could recover. He did though, at length, but his constitution had received such a shock that he was always subject to skin disease, and yet he could not stand the least medicine. He was a very curious animal, never showing much attachment to anyone; he would bite his best friends on the least provocation. Nothing, though, offended him so much as being laughed at,--that was an insult he never forgave. If you began to laugh at him, he would growl in a very ominous manner, and, if you persisted in it, would snap at you and give you such a bite, that you would not care to try again. If you wished to please him, you had to get a lot of old birds' nests, and give them to him one by one; he would carry them about for some time, and then he would sit down and tear them to pieces. He was not particularly fond of going for a walk with anyone; but if you got some nests and gave him one occasionally, he would trot along with you as happily as possible. Another curious habit of his was, that he would never get out of the way for anyone. When he was trotting along he never moved from his line if he saw anyone coming; but if he saw they did not intend to move, would begin to growl and look so savage that people usually made haste out of his way. When he happened to be running down a hill, he did not growl, but merely ran against people if they did not clear out--his great weight usually upsetting them, of which he took not the slightest notice. A great friendship arose between this dog and a fine cat we had, and it was very amusing to see them together. He would walk up to the cat and begin to lick her all over, and then she would rub all round him, purring, and seeming to be very fond of him--when all of a sudden she would stop, look up in his face and spit at him, at the same time giving him two or three sharp scratches, the only notice of which that he took was to close his eyes, so that they might not be hurt. Poor dog, as I said before, he suffered from skin disease, and the medicine that you could give another dog with impunity would nearly kill him, and it was the same with any outward application. At length when, on one occasion, he was suffering very much, I took him to the huntsman of a pack of foxhounds, and asked if he could recommend anything, and he told me of some stuff he dressed the puppies with, that never hurt them, and gave me some. I had it applied to some other dogs, and it did not do them the least harm, so I ordered this dog to be dressed with it. It did not seem to affect him at first, but on the next morning he was found dead in his kennel. In spite of his unamiable character, which I put down to his bad health, I was very sorry to lose him, for he had more regard for me, I think, than almost anyone, and was a first-class dog for cover shooting, with me at least, for he would not pay any attention out shooting to anyone else. I have met with two cases of decided idiocy in dogs--one occurred fully thirty years ago. It was just about the time that Pomeranian dogs were first brought into England. An old lady saw several of them abroad, and, admiring them very much, brought several home and gave them away as presents to her friends. She gave one to an uncle of mine; it was a white one, with a splendid coat, and altogether looked a model of the breed, and everyone who saw it remarked on its beauty; it had, however, very curious-looking blue eyes, and its habits were very strange. It would lie curled up on the hearth-rug in the dining-room the whole day, taking no notice of anyone or anything, except twice a day, when regularly, about half-past eleven in the morning and at four in the afternoon, it would get up, and, if the French windows were open, would go out on to the lawn. If they were closed, it waited till the door was opened, and then going out, went each day to the same exact spot, and commenced running round and round in a circle from right to left. Having done this for some minutes, he would stop, rear up on his hind legs, and giving his head a most peculiar twist, much like the way parrots and owls twist their necks, he would then drop down again, and run the circle from left to right. Having done this, he came indoors, and lay down on the rug. He never showed the least affection for anyone, or appeared to know them. If you called out to him, he would sometimes look up in a vague sort of way, as if he wondered what the noise was; and the foot-man had to lead him out to meals each day, as the dog never made the least attempt to stir in search of food. The man used to say he had more trouble to make this dog feed than to keep any others from devouring whatever they could get at. Altogether, the dog did not seem to have the least sense in the world, and was, I think, an undoubted idiot. The second case of the sort I met with was in a large sort of retriever that a friend of mine had. He asked me to come and see a dog that had been given him, as it was a "very odd sort of beast," and so it was. It had the most curious coat I ever saw on a dog--very long and iron-grey, with black markings, a huge bushy tail, so big and so long that it gave one the idea that the dog's hind legs were in the wrong place, and, instead of being at the extremity of its body, were put on somewhere about the middle of its stomach. To add to everything, the dog squinted, a thing I never heard of or saw in any other dog before or since. It was not that one of the eyes was blind and did not move properly, but the eyes actually crossed one another; his head, too, was the shape of a solid parallelogram, and very narrow between the ears. The dog was fastened to a kennel, and was walking backwards and forwards in front of it, very much in the way a caged hyena does. On being loosed, it bundled off in a clumsy gallop, and soon ran right into a barrow that had been left on one of the paths. On being brought up by this obstacle, instead of jumping over it, as any other dog would have done, he moved round it, and when he found his head clear, galloped off again on the same straight line, which this time landed him in a laurel bush, through which he scrambled, and again went on in the same direction, and this I heard was his regular habit. He had another very awkward trick, and that was, if he was walking behind you, he would come up and lay hold of your leg, not apparently with any vicious design, for if you stopped and looked down at him, there he was with his eyes half shut, holding on to your leg with his teeth, as if it was necessary to support himself by such means. After a time he would drop his jaws off your leg and go maundering along as he had done before; but it was not altogether a pleasant trick. My last interview with the brute was not an agreeable one. We were to go out duck shooting on the river, and my friend proposed taking the dog with us in the punt to retrieve the ducks. This I decidedly objected to, as a wet dog in a boat is an unpleasant companion, so he was left on the bank to follow as best he might. The dog trotted along quietly for some way, until at length we fired at some ducks, when he jumped into the river to get them, as we thought; instead of which he swam up to the punt and seizing the pole in his mouth began to bite and tear at it in the most furious way. He then tried to scramble into the boat, and getting his fore-paws on the gunwale, began to tear at the sides in the most determined manner, snapping furiously at anyone who went near him. The only thing we could do was to try and duck him by means of the punt pole, but directly he came up again he attacked the boat afresh, so that my friend thought the best thing to do was to shoot him, which accordingly was done. I shall never forget the expression of ferocity in the dog's face or the mad way in which he tore at the sides of the boat and the punt pole. The dog I am now about to mention was, I consider, an instance of the action of over-instruction working on naturally weak powers. When out shooting at the Cape, in the Swehamsdam district, something in the bush attracted my notice, and on riding up I found it was a pointer in the last stage of starvation. Pitying the poor deserted animal, I told one of my attendants to take it up and bring it to the waggon, which he did, and after forcing some broth down its throat, the dog seemed to revive, and with care it ultimately recovered, and turned out a very handsome animal. When it had got up its strength again, I took it out to try it. The dog ranged fairly and soon got on the scent of game, as I imagined. Seeing him drawing on very fast, I though he had got a Korhoram in front of him, and as these birds run tremendously, I made a circle to head the supposed game; but on looking back at the dog, saw he was standing dead at a small bush. I went back to him and tried all round it in every direction, but in vain. I then looked on the ground to see if there was one of the small land tortoises, which abound there, and which dogs will always point, but found there was not; so dismounting, I went up to the bush and then found he was standing at a small striped mouse, so I scolded him and made him come off. His next exploit was to make a splendid point at a pair of cast-off Hottentot "crackers" which were lying in the bush, bringing up in his gallop in really magnificent style. On rating him for this, he fixed all his attention on me, and though he ranged well, kept his eye whenever possible on me, and if I stopped pointed at once, or even if I held out my arm. His last grand feat was a dead point at something that I thought was a piece of dead stick lying on the ground, and I was just on the point of taking it up to give him a cut with it for being such a fool when I discovered that it was a puff adder; so calling the dog off, I blew it to pieces with a shot, but my escape was a narrow one. After this, I gave the dog away to a lady who took a fancy to him, as he was so handsome, and it was most ludicrous to see him in her drawing-room pointing steadily at footstools or work-boxes, or anything that was shewn him. The dog had evidently been well broken, but its brain could not take the impression that he was only to point at game. He had a confused idea that he ought to point at anything with a scent to it, or anything he imagined his master wished him to. NOVEMBER SHOOTING Nearly three months have already passed away since the shooting season began. I won't say the three best months, because snipe and woodcock are coming in, and the cream of the pheasant shooting is yet to come. For myself, much as I like knocking over grouse and partridges, give me snipe shooting before all. It is the _fox-hunting of shooting_. I know of nothing more exciting than getting on to a good snipe bog, when they lay well and there are plenty of them. When they rise in _whisps_, that is, several at a time, you may make up your mind they are wild and difficult to approach. In snipe shooting always have the _wind on your back_. The snipe ever flies against the wind; therefore you have a much better shot than you would have if he were to dart away down wind. If you take a dog, let it be a cautious, knowing old pointer or setter; the latter is the animal for this sport, because he stands the cold and water better than the thin-skinned pointer; but I rarely take any dog but my retriever. As regards your dress, you are almost sure to get wet; therefore I never think of putting on long waterproof boots; they are heavy and tiring to walk in; and if you do get in over them, you are obliged to turn yourself up to let the water out; but your misery does not end here, the wet generally brings your worsted stockings down at heel, and your heavy saturated boots rub the skin of your heels, or ankle bones, which cripples you for days. Put on a pair of thick worsted stockings, and a pair of your oldest and easiest lace-up boots; if there is a hole or two in them so much the better, they will let the water out all the quicker. I never use gaiters, they only get wet and make you cold and uncomfortable. I wear a pair of old trousers; but generally shoot in nothing but knickerbockers and stockings. If you have a long way to drive home, a change of stockings and trousers is advisable, and instead of shoes or slippers, I put on a pair of sabots and chaussettes: these can be procured at any French depôt. They are most comfortable and warm, and no trouble to put on. If you are shooting on heath, brown should be the colour of your dress; this, indeed, is the best colour for all work. Many places that were famous for snipe when I was a lad, are now drained or built on. And a few years hence the snipe and woodcock will be rare birds with us. There is still a land within easy reach where they are to be found--Ireland--and there I go every year for a couple of months, to a very wild part of the country, certainly, and where you must rough it; but still I enjoy it intensely: and when I am sitting by my turf fire, with my glass of potheen beside me, my old black clay between my lips, and my tired setters stretched at their ease by my feet, I feel thoroughly happy. There is one thing I always take with me on these Irish excursions, and that is a comfortable arm-chair. I have had it carried eleven miles over the mountains for me, to the cabin or farm, or wherever I may be. This is the only luxury I allow myself. If you go farther afield than Ireland, and are in for nothing but snipe shooting, then be off to America; South Carolina is your mark, and where you may blaze away to your heart's content. The woodcock flies exactly the same as the snipe; but it is not necessary to be particular about the wind in his case. In beating large covers or forests, never go far in, but try the edges. These birds are also getting much scarcer, for they now take the eggs in Norway and Sweden, and eat them as we do plovers' eggs. In looking for woodcock in cold, wet weather, if you do not find them in their usual haunts, try the _sunny_ side of the wood or hill, where it is sheltered from the wind; they are remarkably fond of being where there are holly bushes. In shooting forests or large covers use spaniels; but these dogs must be _perfectly_ broken and never go out of gun range. It is a very common practice in France to have bells round their dogs' necks, so that you may know where they are; but I do not like it, it frightens the birds; and there is danger attached to it. The dogs are sometimes hung up by the collars. I once remember a very good dog, belonging to a friend of mine, being killed in this way--he was hung up in some thick underwood, and when we found him, he was dead. No hunting dog should ever wear a collar when out, under any circumstances. November shooting is good shooting, and coverts should not, as a rule, be beaten before then, as the leaves are not off enough; a quantity of game is wounded and never found, and is left to linger and die. In November, too, the walking is much better; it is cooler and the scent lies stronger; birds may be wilder but they are in finer condition, and remain so till the frosts come; but even then, unless it is very hard, they keep their condition. It is snow that destroys all birds' condition. A few days' snow, and birds not only fall miserably away, but they get much tamer, and immense numbers are killed by poachers, as well as rabbits and hares, which are easily tracked; and as they are not able to go at any pace, a dog with a very moderate turn of speed will run into them. The best bit of shooting I ever had was a forest in France which I hired; it was five thousand acres, famous bottom covert in it, and noted for woodcock; there was a capital shooting lodge, furnished, four large bed-rooms, two sitting-rooms, kitchen, back-kitchen, wood-houses, &c.; cow-house, piggery, stable for fourteen or fifteen horses, orchard of three acres, kitchen-garden, and small field, a gamekeeper's house, and dog-kennel; in fact, as a shooting-box it was complete; for all this I paid four hundred francs a year (£16). The house stood in the centre of the forest; there was a good road to it, and there was a village a mile off at which you could get anything. I had it for some years, and I never enjoyed covert shooting so much; there was fine partridge ground all round the forest, which I had leave to go over; part of it was mine. There were a few roebuck in the forest, foxes, and plenty of badgers; with these last we occasionally had great fun. There was some very fair trout fishing, as well as duck shooting, any quantity of rabbits; and I never went out without bringing home a hare or two; there were quail in the season, and snipe too, and the woodcock shooting was capital. For a few days in November, thousands and thousands of wood pigeons made their appearance, and were very tame from a long flight; these were killed in great numbers. When they first arrived they were miserably poor, but after a few days they picked up, and were difficult to get at. I never enjoyed anything more than this bit of rough shooting; everything was so convenient and comfortable; by the bright wood fire of an evening we used to smoke, tell our stories, and spin our yarns. The game I killed, even at the small price it fetched, paid the rent and my English keeper. I do not mean to say I sold it, but I exchanged it away for other things wanted in the house. November, although one of the dreariest months of the year, is one of the best shooting months--certainly for general rough shooting. I have had capital sport in Ireland in this month, especially with the woodcock on the mountains, as well as with duck and snipe. I always carried there a ten-bore gun, because I never knew what would get up, as most of my shooting lay on the borders of Lough Corrib; sometimes a duck or a goose would give me a shot, so I found a large gun better. The golden plover are capital fun in November. I once killed twenty-one at one shot. I was coming down Lough Corrib in my yacht, and discovered an immense number of plover on one of the small stony flat islands. I got the dingy out, and was sculled quietly down by one of the men. I got within forty yards of them, when they rose, and I gave them both barrels of No. 6 shot. I picked up one-and-twenty, but I think there were one or two more I could not find. I have had very good duck-shooting on the lake, in November, which is twenty-eight miles long, and in one place ten miles wide. My shooting yacht was one of the most comfortable ones I ever saw, only ten tons; but there was every convenience in it and plenty of room. I used to go away for a week, and the quantities of snipe, cock, and wild fowl I brought back astonished the natives. I would run up some little creek or river of an evening and anchor occasionally; we cooked on shore when the weather was fine; we set the night lines, and had always plenty of pike, trout, and eels, and in summer any quantity of perch, from three-quarters to three pounds weight each. I am very fond of wild pheasant shooting in November; the birds are then strong, in good plumage, and worth killing. Rabbiting, either shooting or ferreting, is capital sport; by November the fern and under cover are generally dead, and you can see the little grey rascals scudding along. For some years I, in cover shooting,--in fact, all my shooting, have used nothing but Schultze's wood powder; perhaps it may not be quite so strong as the ordinary powder, but I am by no means assured of that; it is quite strong enough for any purpose, and has these advantages over the ordinary powder: There is not nearly so much recoil, and in a heavy day's shooting you do not give up with your head spinning and your shoulder tender. The report is not so loud either. The company say, "It shoots with greater force and precision;" this may or may not be; but I am satisfied of this that it shoots _well_, and certainly does not soil the gun nearly so much as other powders. But there is one thing that alone recommends it to me; that is, the smoke never hangs, and you can always use your second barrel. How often in covert shooting, or in the open, on a mild or foggy day, when there has been no breeze, has the smoke hung, and prevented you putting in your second barrel? Hundreds of times to me! But with Schultze's powder there is only a thin white smoke, which is no detriment or blind to the shooter. And there is also another great advantage it possesses, if it gets damp it can be dried without losing any of its strength. It suits all guns and climates. SPORTING ADVENTURES OF CHARLES CARRINGTON, ESQ. RECORDED BY "OLD CALABAR" Reader, must I confess it? I am a Cockney, born and bred in the "little village." Though I passed some eight or ten years in a Government office, yet my heart was not in the work. I had frequent illnesses, which kept me away; those days--must I own it?--were generally spent in a punt at Weybridge with one of the Keens. At Walton or Halliford I was great in a Thames punt; and I then imagined few could hold a candle to me in a gudgeon or roach swim; that I was _the_ fisherman of England, _par excellence_. I am wiser now. At last my absences from office were so frequent that I had quiet intimation to go; but, having friends who were pretty high in office, I got an annuity in the shape of ninety pounds a year. A fresh berth was procured for me at four hundred per annum, where I had a good deal of running about. This suited me much better, as it enabled me to indulge in my proclivities. I now took to shooting, and rather gave fishing the go-by. I believe I tormented every gunmaker in the West End to death. I was continually chopping and changing, inventing fresh heel-plates to the "stocks." I would have a thick one of horn for a thin coat, and a thin one of metal for a thick coat. Then I had them made with springs to diminish the recoil. I was laughed at by every one who knew anything about the matter; but I was so eaten up by self-conceit that I imagined no one was _au fait_ at guns but myself, and would take no advice. My shooting was not what a sportsman would call "good form"; but this I did not believe. "Dash it, Muster Carrington," said an old Somersetshire farmer to me one day; "always a-firing into the brown on 'em, and mizzing the lot. It can't be the gun, or because you wear gig-lamps. You're no shot, zur, and never will be;" but I laughed at the old fellow's ignorance. Rather rich that. I, with one of Grant's best guns, not a shot--rubbish! But I determined I would make myself a shot; so I went over to Ireland to an old friend of mine, who lived in a wild, remote part of Galway. He was a first-class sportsman in every way; took great pains with me, and taught me a good deal. I learnt to ride to hounds with him, not well certainly, but in my vanity I soon imagined I not only rode, but shot better than my instructor. One day, after shooting at twenty-three snipes, and only killing one, and the next missing thirteen rabbits turned out from the keeper's pockets, I was fain to admit I was not the shot I thought myself; so I betook myself back to London--a sadder, but not a wiser man. I then entered one of the pigeon clubs. Pigeon club? it was one. I won't say anything about that. If I had gone on with it I should soon have had pockets to let. I was terribly laughed at by every one, for I could neither shoot nor make anything by betting. I then determined to try hunting, and wrote to my old friend in Ireland to procure me a couple of horses. This he did, and sent me a couple of good ones. I enjoyed the hunting more than I did the shooting, because I could ride a little, and got on better. Sending my horses down to the country one fine morning, the next I followed them to ----, where I had taken a little box for the season. Many were my mishaps during the few months I was there, which was not to be wondered at. I was in the famous run I am about to relate, and one of the unfortunate victims who came to grief on that occasion. In the county of Croppershire, and not far from the little post town of Craneford, a pack of fox-hounds was kennelled: they were under the joint mastership of two gentlemen, Samuel Head, Esq., commonly called Soft Head, and Henry Over, Esq., who was usually designated Hi Over; the secretary was George Heels: he went by the name of Greasy Heels. A local wag had nicknamed it the "Head-over-heels Hunt;" but another aristocratic gentleman and a public-school man said that a much more _distingué_ and appropriate title would be the classical one of the _Sternum-super-caput_ Hunt. This it was ever afterwards called; and certainly no hunt deserved the name better, for hardly a man amongst the whole lot could ride; they were ever being _grassed_, or "coming to grief." Men from the next county used to say to each other, "Old fellow, I am in for a lark to-morrow. I'm going to see the 'Sternum' dogs;" or, "I am going to drive the ladies over next week, when the Sternum hounds meet at the cross-roads; they want a laugh, and to see a few falls." The huntsman to these hounds was John Slowman. He was not a brilliant huntsman, but he could ride; he had no voice; could not blow the horn well, which was, perhaps, a lucky thing. Somehow or other the Sternum hounds generally killed, and had a great many more noses nailed to their kennel-door than most of the neighbouring packs. The great secret of their success was that the hounds were _let alone_; they never looked for halloas or lifting, and if they did they very seldom got it. They were great lumbering, throaty, slack-loined, flat-sided animals; but they could hunt if let alone, and often carried a good head, and went along at a pretty good bat too; and as they had but few men who rode up to them, they were not as a rule pressed or over-ridden. The Sternum gentlemen were great at roads, though now and then they would take it into their heads to ride like mad, especially when there was anyone from a neighbouring hunt to watch their proceedings. Then there were riderless horses in all directions, for the country was a stiff one, and took a deal of doing. "Ah, gentlemen," Slowman would exclaim, as the field came thundering up ten minutes after a fox had been broken up, "you should have been here a little sooner; you should indeed. Mag--nificent from find to finish. Don't talk to me of the Dook's, or the Belvoir, or the Pytchley either, nor none of them hunts as have three packs to keep 'em agoing. Give me two days a week, and such a lot of dogs as these. I dessay the Markis will make a huntsman in time. Frank Gillard ain't a bad man, and Captain Anstruther is pretty tidy; but there's too much hollerin', too much horn, too much lifting and flashing over the line. They mobs their foxes to death; I kills mine." Slowman was magnificent at these times, and felt more than gratified when compliments were showered on him on all sides. "Right you are, Slowman." "You know how to do the trick, old fellow." "Best huntsman in Europe." "There's half-a-sovereign to drink my health." Then Slowman would collect his hounds, nod to the whips, and return home a proud and happy man. The Sternum hounds hunted a week later than their neighbours, and at the two meets that took place during that period they generally had large fields, and always on the last day of the season, because Messrs. Head and Over gave a grand breakfast. On the occasion I am about to speak of, the last day of the season, a breakfast was to be given of more than usual magnificence. The hounds had had a good season, and the masters determined that they would be even more lavish than usual. Great were the preparations made when it was known that the neighbouring hunts were coming in force to see them, and have one more gallop before they put their beloved pinks away in lavender. Slowman, the huntsman, the evening before the eventful day, had gone through the kennels, made his draft for the following morning, looked to the stables, and given orders about the horses and other little matters pertaining to his craft. He was seated by his cosy fire, and in a cosy arm-chair, puffing meditatively at a churchwarden, and now and then taking a sip from a glass of hot gin-and-water that stood at his elbow. "Bell's Life" was at his feet, and before the fire lay a couple of varmint-looking fox-terriers. Slowman was thoroughly enjoying himself, and wondering if the six-acred oak spinny which they were to draw first the next morning would hold a good stout fox. "John," said his wife, bustling into the room, "Captain Martaingail wishes to know if he can see you an instant: he is on his horse at the door." "Lord bless me, Mary! surely," sticking his feet into his slippers and rushing to the front door. The Captain was a favourite of his. The gin he was drinking was a present to him from the Captain; the "Bell's Life" was the Captain's. The Captain always came of a Sunday for a chat and look through the kennels; and the Captain was one of the very few of the hunt who could ride. He always gave Slowman a fiver at the end of the season, and many good tips besides; so he was a prime favourite with the huntsman. "Good evening, good evening, Captain," said Slowman, going to the door. "Come in, sir. Here, Thumas--Bill--Jim--some of you come here and take the Captain's horse. Throw a couple of rugs over him and put him in the four-stall stable, take his bridle off, and give him a feed of corn." "Now, sir, come in," as the Captain descended from his hack and gave it to one of the lads. "I was just having a smoke, sir, and a glass of gin-and-water--your gin, sir; and good it is, too." "That's right, Slowman. And I don't care if I take one with you. It's devilish cold, but no frost. I want to have a talk with you about to-morrow." Taking the arm-chair, he mixed himself a glass of liquor, and lit a cigar. "Slowman," he commenced, "there's the devil's own lot of people coming to-morrow. There's Jack Spraggon, from Lord Scamperdale's hunt. He's sent on Daddy Longlegs, his Lordship's best horse, and another; so _he_ means going. Jealous devil he is, too. Soapy Sponge will be here with Hercules and Multum in Parvo; old Jawleyford, and a host of others of that lot. Then there's Lord Wildrace, Sir Harry Clearall, and God knows who besides. There's more than forty horses in Craneford now--every stall and stable engaged; and there will be twice as many in the morning. "Ah! sir, it's the breakfast as brings 'em--at least, a great many of 'em." "Well, I daresay that has something to do with it," replied the Captain; "but a great many come to have a laugh at us. The fact is, most of our men can't ride a d----. Then look at Head and Over, they are always coming to grief and falling off. No wonder they get laughed at. And most of the others, too. There will be no end of ladies out, too, and all to have a grin at us. Oh! by-the-way, Slowman, here is your tip. I may just as well give it to you to-night as later. I've made it ten instead of five this year, because you've shewn us such prime sport." "Very much obliged to you, Captain, indeed," thrusting the note into his pocket; "and for your kind opinion too. I try to show what sport I can, and always will. So they're coming to have a laugh at us, are they! I wish we may find a good stout fox, and choke all the jealous beggars off. I'd give this ten-pound note to do it," slapping his pocket. "It may be done, Slowman," replied the Captain cautiously; "in fact, I may say I have done it. But you must back me up; and, mind, never a word." "I'm mum, sir. Mum as a gravestone." "Well, you see, Slowman, having found out what they are coming for, I've a pill for them. You draw the six-acre oak spinny first. Well, there will be a _drag_ from that over the stiffest country to Bolton Mill. That's eight miles as the crow flies. There, under the lee of a hedge, will be old Towler with a fresh-caught fox from their own country. As he hears the hounds coming up he will let him loose. He's not one of your three-legged ones, but a fresh one, caught only this afternoon. I've seen him--such a trimmer! He'll lead them straight away for their own country. And if the strangers, and old Spraggon, and Jawleyford, and all the rest of them can see it through, they are better men than I take them to be. I shall have my second horse ready for me at the mill. And so had you better. I'll take the conceit out of the beggars." "By the living Harry!" exclaimed the huntsman, "a grand idea. I must draft Conqueror, Madcap, and Rasselas. They are dead on drags. But, Captain, if the governors twig it?" "Not a bit, Slowman. They, as you know, won't go four miles." "Yes, sir, yes. I know all that. But if they should twig? They have the coin, you know." The huntsman had his eye to the main chance. "But they will not, Slowman. Now, I will tell you a secret; but, mind, it's between ourselves. Honour, you know." "Honour bright, Captain," replied the huntsman, laying his hand on his heart. "Well, then, to-morrow at breakfast, Head and Over will announce their intention of resigning." "No, sir; you don't mean it?" said the huntsman hastily. "I do," replied the Captain, "And I am going to take them on, and you too. I am to be your M.F.H. It's all cut and dried. So you see you should run no risk. But not a word of this." The huntsman sat with his mouth open, and at last uttered, "Dash my boots and tops, Captain, but you are a trimmer! But," he continued, "if we find a fox before we come on the drag?" "But you will not, Slowman. The cover is mine, and has been well hunted through to-day, and will be to-morrow morning again. No fox will be found there." The two sat for an hour and more talking and arranging matters, so that there might be no failure on the morrow. And all having been satisfactorily arranged, the Captain mounted his horse and rode home. The following morning--the last of the season--was all that could be desired. A grey day with a southerly breeze. It was mild for the time of year. Great were the preparations at Mr Head's house. He gave the breakfast one year, Over the next. It was turn and turn about. As it was the last breakfast he was to give as an M.F.H., Head determined it should be a good one. Mrs Head was great before her massive silver tea set; and she had her daughter on her right to assist her. At the time appointed Lord Wildrace, who had driven over in his mail phaeton, put in an appearance in his No. 1 pink, closely followed by Spraggon, who determined to have ample time for his breakfast. Then old Jawleyford entered, and rushing up to the lady, declared it was too bad of her not to have come over and seen them. At any rate, they would come and spend a week with them soon at Jawleyford Court, would they not? Then Soapy Sponge turned up, looking as smart and spruce as ever. We cannot go through the breakfast--or the speech of Mr Head, and the other by Mr Over, or the regrets of the company on their resigning the joint mastership, or the cheers on the announcement that Captain Martaingail had consented to keep them on. "Devilish good feed," growled Jack Spraggon to Sponge, who was drawing on his buckskin gloves. Jack was a little elevated; for he had not spared the cherry-brandy or the milk punch. "It was that," replied his friend. "Feel as if you could ride this morning, don't you?" "Yes, I can--always do; but no chance of it with such dogs as these." "Don't know about that," returned Sponge. "They generally find, and kill too." Such a field had been rarely seen with the Sternum hounds--horsemen, carriages, mounted ladies, all eager. "Let the whips be with you, or rather at the outside of the cover, to keep the people back," whispered Captain Martaingail to the huntsman. "I will go to the top of the cover when I give the view halloa. You know what to do." "Certain of a fox, I suppose, Martaingail?" asked Lord Wildrace, as they were smoking their cigars close to the hounds, who were drawn up on a bit of greensward, giving the ten minutes' law for the late comers. "It has never yet been drawn blank," returned the Captain. "Ah! there goes Slowman with the hounds. Time's up." Cigar ends were now thrown away, girths tightened, stirrup-leathers shortened or let down. The Captain stole into cover, and then galloped away to the far end. Presently a ringing tally-ho was heard. "Found quickly," growled Jack Spraggon, as he bustled along on Daddy Longlegs to get a good place. "That's your sort, old cock!" ejaculated Sponge, as he dashed past him on Hercules, throwing a lot of mud on Jack's spectacles from his horse's hoofs. "Oh, you unrighteous snob!--you rusty-booted Cockney!" exclaimed Spraggon, rubbing at his spectacles with the back of his gloved hand, thereby daubing the mud all over the glasses, and making it worse. "Just like you, you docked-tail humbug!" Too-too went Slowman's horn. "Give 'em time, gentlemen--give 'em time!" he screamed, as he took the wattled fence from the spinny into the fallow beyond. The hounds took up the drag at once, and raced away. "Yonder he goes!" exclaimed the captain, pointing with his whip to some imaginary object, and, digging the latchfords into his horse, was away. The first fence was a flight of sheep-hurdles, stretching the whole way across a large turnip field. Here Jawleyford on his old cob came to grief, being sent flying right through his ears. "Sarve you right!" muttered Spraggon, as Daddy Longlegs took it in his stride. "You would not do a bit of paper for me last week. May you lie there for a month!" "Pick up the bits," roared Sponge to him as he galloped past, "and lay in a fresh stock of that famous port of yours." But the hounds were carrying too good a head for much chaff. The gentlemen of the Sternum hunt were riding like mad. Already horses began to sob; for the pace was a rattler, and the country heavy. The celebrated Rushpool brook was before them--that brook that so many have plumbed the depth of. It wants a deal of doing. Lord Wildrace charged it, so did Spraggon; but both were in. Sponge, on Hercules flew over. Slowman and the Captain did it a little lower down. Head, Over, and a host of others galloped for a ford half a mile away. Out of a large field only eight or ten cleared the Rushpool brook. His lordship and Spraggon were soon out and going; and their horses having a fine turn of speed enabled them to come up with the hounds again; and their checking for a few minutes, in consequence of some sheep having stained the ground, let up the rest of the field on their now nearly beaten horses. "Fastish thing, my Lord, is it not?" said Over to Lord Wildrace, who was mopping his head with a scarlet silk pocket-handkerchief. "Yes," said the nobleman, turning his horse's head to the wind, "devilish sharp. I'm cold, too. I wish I could see my second horse. I'm pumped out." "Have a nip of brandy, Wildrace," said Captain Martaingail, offering his silver flask. "Been in the water, I see--and a good many more, too," casting his eyes on half a score of dripping objects. "It's a very distressing jump to a horse, is that Rushpool brook. By gad, they have hit off again!" Slowman knew well the line to cast his hounds, and they soon hit it off, and went racing away again, heads up and sterns down. At last Bolton Mill was in sight, and here many got their second horses, the head grooms from the other hunt having followed the Captain's, and the joint masters' servants were there already. Spraggon was quickly on the back of The Dandy; but he was hardly up before a view halloa was given in a field below them, and a hat held up proclaimed their fox was ahead of them. "It's all right, Slowman," said Captain Martaingail, as the hounds feathered on the line and took it up. "He's right away across the Tornops," shouted a keeper-looking man (this was Towler, who had shaken the fox out) as the field came up, "an' a-going like blue murder." The hunting was now not quite so fast, but they got on better terms with their fox after a little, and settled well to him. A good stout fox he was too, and deserved a better fate. He led them right into his own country, but before he could reach a friendly earth, seven or eight miles from where he was shook out, the hounds ran into him in the open. Some eight or ten of the field were in at the finish, and others came up at intervals. "Here, gentlemen," exclaimed Slowman triumphantly, to the strangers from a distance, "this is one of your foxes. I guess we sent him back to you faster a precious deal than ever you sent him to us. Sorry we've killed him, though, your dogs want blood, poor things. You've seen what the Sternum hounds can do now! We're not to be laughed at, are we?" This impudent speech had not much effect generally, but several gentlemen turned away disgusted. The run was quoted in every sporting paper; and it was years and years before people forgot the great Rushpool Brook run, the last of the season. The hounds had achieved a reputation, and Captain Martaingail took care they should not lose it. He carried the horn himself after he took to them, Slowman acting as first whip; he drafted most of the hounds, and got together a fresh pack, that were not only good-looking, but could go too. But the dogs never lost the name of the "_Sternum-super-caput_" hounds. Whilst I am on the subject of hunting, I may as well tell you a funny story which happened to a friend of mine; this took place near London, and although I did not come so badly off as my friend, yet I was nowhere at the finish. It is of a thorough cockney that I am about to write; of one who made the City his home; did a little in Stocks and on 'Change: he had done so well on it that he had four hunters standing not a hundred miles from the Angel at Islington. Thither he used to go of an evening on the 'bus to his snug little chambers, to which was attached a capital stable with four loose boxes, and in these four boxes stood four decentish nags. I don't know that they were reliable fencers, but they could gallop; they were bang up to the mark--well done, well groomed, and well clothed. Frank Cropper was proud of his horses, and his stud-groom, Dick, was his right hand in all matters. Dick, though he professed to have a profound knowledge of horses, in reality knew nothing about them, and had to thank his strappers for the condition and fettle they were in. But Dick was great at getting up leathers and top boots, was extremely fond of dress, turned out well, and though he could not ride a yard, led every one to believe he was invincible in the saddle. He was grand when he used to dodge about in the lanes after the Puddleton currant-jelly dogs, riding his master's second horse. Cropper thought it the correct thing to have out a second horse with the harriers. No one ever saw Cropper or his man take a fence; they used to gallop through places or fences that had been smashed by some one before them, or creep through gaps made in hedges. Occasionally he used to honour the Queen's with his presence; there he did it in grand style, sent his horses down by rail, or drove down in his cart, with his brown-holland overalls on, covering his boots and spotless buckskins from the smallest particle of dust or dirt; the overalls he would have taken off with a grand flourish just before the hounds moved away, and mounted his horse with the grandest possible air, telling Dick to ride to points, and to be sure to be handy with his second horse; but, somehow or other, he never got his second horse; Dick always mistook the line of country. Once or twice Cropper had been known to grace the Epping Forest Hunt on an Easter Monday; but, somehow or other, Frank did not speak much of this: why, I know not. "Dick," said his master one morning as he sat at breakfast, "the day after to-morrow is the last of the season--at least, the last day of any hounds I can get to; so I mean to have a turn with the ---- staghounds." "Do you, sir? I wouldn't if I were you, sir; hate that calf-hunting. The Queen's ain't up to my ideas of huntin'; no staghounds are; but these hounds are duffers; the master's a duffer, the huntsman is a duffer, the whips are duffers, and so are the hounds. No, sir, be Cardinal Wiseman, and go with the ---- pack." "No, Dick, I have made up my mind to see these hounds; it's a certain find; open the door of the cart and out pops your stag. It's the last day of the season, and I mean to have a good gallop." "Very well, sir. You will go down by rail, I suppose?" "Yes, Dick, yes; by rail. You will go on by the eight o'clock train. I shall follow by the ten." "All right, sir." And they separated, the man to look to his stable and things, the master to do a little on 'Change. Frank Cropper went in for a good breakfast on the morning of the last of the season, took plenty of jumping powder in the shape of Kentish cherry brandy, and topped it up with some curaçoa. "I feel," says Cropper, as he got into the train, and was talking to some City friends who were bound on the same errand as myself; "I feel, my boys, that I shall take the lead to-day, and keep it, too. Ha, ha! What do you think of that? A church would not stop me. Temple Bar I should take in my stride, if my horse could jump it. I'm chockful of go this morning; I shall distinguish myself." "Or extinguish yourself," remarked one. Cigars and an occasional nip at their pocket pistols whiled away the time till the train arrived at its destination; there, Cropper and another took a fly, and drove the three miles they had to go. They were quite determined they would not dirt their boots or spotless leathers by a three miles' ride; they would appear at the meet as bright as their No. 1 pinks, Day & Martin, and Probert's paste could make them. "There they are!" exclaimed Cropper's friend, as he caught sight of the hounds drawn up on a small common. "By Jupiter, but there's a lot out! it's the last day of the season." Cropper descended from the fly in all the glories of his ulster coat and overalls; his horses were there under the charge of spicy-looking Master Dick. The overalls were slipped off, and, with the ulster, consigned to the driver to leave at the station; and our hero mounted his horse and was ready for the fray. Now, this meet not being far from town, and a large number of the London division being present, the worthy master, having a proper regard for his hounds, thought a few jumps might choke off a good many who would press upon the hounds. So he had the deer uncarted some three-quarters of a mile from where they were, the van containing him was backed not very far from a flight of sheep-hurdles, and a double line of foot people being formed, the door of the cart opened and out leapt the stag. Looking around him for an instant, he started away at a quick trot, and then, as the shouting became louder, commenced to canter, cleared the hurdles, and was away. "Lot of these London cads down here to-day," remarked young Lord Reckless to his friend Sir Henry Careful. "Don't know, 'pon my soul, what they come here for." "For about the same reason you do--to see the hounds, and get a fall or two." "Ah, that's all very fine," retorted his Lordship, "for you to say so. You never ride at anything, therefore you are pretty safe. I ride at everything." "But never by any chance get over," interrupted the baronet, "except through your horse's ears." What more they said was cut short by the hounds coming up on the line of the stag, and racing away. I got over the hurdles all right, and so did most of the field; but at the second fence I was down. And I saw Cropper unseated at the same instant, and his horse galloping wildly away at the third fence. Dick was shot through his horse's ears into the next field. I was rushing about for mine, over my ankles in mud, when I encountered Frank Cropper and his man Dick in the middle of the slough. "Where the deuce is my second horse?" roared Cropper to his servant. "I thought I told you to ride him to the points." "So I was going to, sir; but he stumbled, and unshipped me." "Good heavens! what is to be done?" exclaimed Cropper. "I shall lose the run. Here, you fellows," to a lot of countrymen about, "catch the horses--half-a-crown each for them." But the nags were not so easily caught, and it was half an hour before they were secured. Both I and Cropper were wet and cold; so, leaving Dick to go on with the horses by train to London, and get the coats at the station, Cropper and I started on foot to walk there. He was too bruised and cold to ride; so was I. You may suppose that the remarks we heard going along were not complimentary: "Two gents in scarlet as has been throwed from their 'orses, and a-stumping of it home," etc. At last I was getting nearly beat, and so was my friend, when we espied a fly coming along the road. In it was seated Warner of the Welsh Harp at Hendon. Taking pity on us, he gave us a lift, and drove us to the nearest station, and we reached London in due time. This was the last of my hunting experiences. I got disgusted with it, and sold my horses. Having read flaming accounts from Cook's tourists, some of whom had been round the world in ninety days, I packed up my guns and some clothes, and started for America. I did not remain long in New York, as I was anxious to commence shooting. So I was not long in getting to the small town of ----, and, putting up at the best hotel the place afforded, which was not a very good one, sent for the landlord. "Wall, Britisher, I'm glad to see yeu," commenced the American Boniface, coolly seating himself on the table, and commencing spitting at a bluebottle fly on the floor. "So yeu've come here to see our glorious American Constitootion. Wall, I guess yeu'll be pretty considerable surprised--tarnation surprised, doggoned if you won't. We're an almighty nation, we air. Going a-shooting, air yeu? Wall, I calkerlate we've got more game hereabouts than would fill all London, and enough ships in our little river the Mississi-pi to tow your little island across the broad Atlantic--we hev, indeed, stranger. There's lots of grouse; but nary a buffeler, bar, nor alligater about here. But I s'pose yeu means to take up yer fixins here in this feather-bed bully hotel afore yeu makes tracks?" I assured him such was my intention. "Wall, then, stranger, what will yeu like?--cocktail, mint julip, brandy smash, or cobbler? I've a few festive cusses in the bar as will tell yeu all about the shooting. Let's hev a licker-up with them." To this I assented, and walked into another room with him, where there were Yankees of all descriptions. I determined to make myself popular, and stood drinks to any amount. "Bust my gizzard, but yeu air a ripper!" exclaimed my tall friend. "He air, ain't he, bully boys?" What more they said was drowned in a terrific row which took place at the other end of the apartment. "Hillo!" shouted my tall friend. "Come on, stranger, if yeu want to see our pertikelur customs of this hemisphere. Bet my boots it's Bully Larkins and that old 'oss from Calerforney. Go it, my cockeys!" he screamed out as he mounted on a table, "go it, old coon!" alluding to one of the combatants; "go it! Billy's a-gaining on yeu, and if yeu don't look out he'll riz yer har with his bowie knife, gouge yer eye, and fetch yeu out of yer boots--he will, by----!" Such a fearful row I never heard. All were in a state of frenzied excitement--knives glittered in the hands of many. Whilst all this was going on I made my way out of the apartment, and locked and bolted myself in my own. In half an hour my landlord came to the door, and knocked for admission. "It's all over, stranger," he said as he entered. "Old Calerforney carved two of Bully Larkins' fingers off with his bowie, and Larkins bit off half t'other's nose. I guess he ain't beautiful. They're festive cusses here, and air always at it. Nary a day passes without a free fight." I need hardly say the next day I took my departure for New York, and was off to England by the first boat. I had had quite enough of my American friends and their notions. I have given up sporting, as I found I could make no hand at it. I shoot occasionally for amusement, and fish occasionally, but never lay down the law as an authority. MY FIRST DAY'S FOX-HUNTING But that was six or seven years ago, and I frankly admit that then I was a very indifferent horseman, although I was in happy ignorance of the fact--in its integrity. I was quite conscious that I did not ride very gracefully or over-comfortably, but I always discovered that the fault was my horse's and not mine. My cousins used to think otherwise, and I have spent hours at a time in trying to induce them to give up their opinions on the subject and to adopt mine. I should explain that my cousins being orphans, and my father being their guardian, they lived with us as part of our family, and that whenever they rode out they seemed to think they had a right to insist upon my accompanying them. I at length got tired of riding out with my fair cousins, and of hearing them titter as, at their suggestion, we went down steep hills at full trot (I confess I was never great at trotting down hill), and so I resolved to take to _hunting_. I had heard that some horses, though the worst of hacks, made the best of hunters; and I thought that something of that kind might apply to horsemen also, and that I myself might shine more in the field than I did on the road. It was the end of February, and the Coverbury pack were meeting three times a week at places within easy reach of the Stonington Station. That was jolly! I could buy a hunter, keep him at Philley's livery-stables, and on hunting-days send him by train to Stonington, meet him, have a day's hunting unknown to my cousins, and thus enjoy myself with perfect freedom. I at once drew a cheque for £50, with which I determined to buy the best hunter in all Blankshire! I called at Philley's and told him of my intention, and asked him how much a week he would require to "board and lodge" my steed when purchased. The man smiled--he seemed to have a habit of smiling; but seeing from the seriousness of my manner that I was in earnest, he replied that his charge for keeping the horse would be thirty shillings a week; and he added that if I wished to buy a "slapping" hunter he'd got just the horse for my money. "Of course," said he, "you don't want a pony, but a good tall horse as'll keep you out of the dirt; and," he added, scanning my figure from top to toe, "you don't want no cart-horse to carry your weight neither." I admitted that my ideas on the subject coincided with his exactly, and he at once called to a stable-boy to bring out Iron Duke. "There," said Philley, as the horse was trotted into the yard, "you might go a day's march and not come across such a hunter as that--extraordinary animal, I assure you, sir." Not understanding the points of a horse, I deemed it prudent to indorse all that Iron Duke's owner chose to say in his praise; and I was thus compelled to acknowledge that his superior height (over sixteen hands), long legs, and slender build, gave him an advantage over every other horse I had seen in my life, as regards carrying a light-weight over a high-stone-wall country. As we stood discussing the merits of the horse I happened to turn round, and there I saw the stable-boy grinning and "tipping the wink" to a companion. This aroused my suspicions that all mightn't be right; so instead of at once buying and paying for the horse, I mustered up courage to say, "Well, Mr Philley, I like the horse's appearance, but are his paces as good as his looks? Will you let me try him with the Coverbury pack to-morrow?" Mr Philley paused, thought a few moments, and then observed somewhat solemnly, "Iron Duke, you see, sir, is a very valuable horse, dirt cheap at fifty pounds; in fact, it's giving him away, it is really, and I shouldn't like anything to happen to a horse like that whilst he's mine. We don't generally let him out for hunting; he's too good for most of our customers. But I'll tell yer what we'll do; we'll let you have him to-morrow for two guineas, and then (if you have no accident with him, as of course a gentleman like you won't) you can please yourself whether you have him or not. But if you _should_ have an accident--of course accidents _will_ happen sometimes--why, then the horse will be yours and the fifty pounds mine." These terms seemed fair, and I accepted them, though not before they had banished my suspicions, and almost induced me to buy and pay for the horse there and then. In the morning I called at Philley's for my hunter, and the boy brought him out bridled and saddled. As he stood straight in front of me his tall slim-built figure looked as sharp as a knife. I ventured to express this idea, but being doubtful as to whether sharpness was a good point or a bad one, I did so in a manner which might be taken as in earnest or in jest. The dealer chose to take it in the latter sense, and after laughing heartily at my "good joke," assured me that I should find my horse "as clever as a cat." I then attempted to mount, and after some time (during which the ostler gave me a "leg up" _and over the other side_) I was successful. The stirrup-straps having been adjusted, I set out for the station; and in my journey thither I was conscious that the commanding presence of my horse and the easy graceful attitude of his rider were fully appreciated by the numerous passers-by who stopped to stare at us--doubtless in admiration. One thing, though, nettled me a bit. Just as I got opposite the club, and was waving my whip to Fitz-Jones, De Brown, and some other fellows who were standing in the portico, my horse shied at a wheelbarrow, and I had some difficulty in getting comfortable in the saddle again. I gently remonstrated with the boy who was wheeling the barrow for not getting out of my way, when the impudent little scoundrel turned round and shouted, "Oh, crikey! yer ain't very safe up there! Get inside; safer inside!" Whereupon the whole of the bystanders, including my friends of the club, burst out laughing. I, of course, could not descend from my high horse to chastise the young urchin, and as I couldn't think of anything smart to say to him, I treated him with the silent contempt he deserved, and rode on. But still, as I said before, this nettled me. With the exception of this trifling _contretemps_, I arrived safely at Stonington Wood, the place appointed for the meet. There was a good muster of ladies and gentlemen on horseback (some ten or fourteen of the gentlemen in scarlet coats), and a condescending old gentleman with grey hair, neatly trimmed whiskers, and rosy cheeks, remarked that there was a "good field," but I couldn't see it. All that I could see in the shape of a field was a small patch of turnips enclosed with a stone wall, the remainder of the surrounding country being common and wood, or, as I afterwards learned to call it, "cover." I soon began to appreciate my Iron Duke, for I found that he was the tallest horse there, and his legs seemed as light as an antelope's in comparison with the legs of the other animals, some of which seemed almost as heavy as cart-horses'. The clock of the village church struck eleven, and three or four of the men in scarlet began to whip the dogs to make them go into the wood. I thought it was the proper thing to imitate their example, and seeing one of the dogs scrambling up the wall I instantly rode up and gave him what I thought a "lift up behind" with my whip. To my astonishment the animal, instead of going over into the wood, tumbled down at my feet and yelped most piteously. Iron Duke, not liking the noise, turned round suddenly and kicked out, and the hound had an almost miraculous escape of having his skull cracked. All this happened in less than a minute, and seemed to cause a "great sensation," for two or three of the roughest of the men in scarlet were instantly attacked with a fit of cursing and swearing, of which I took no notice, believing it to be lavished on the head of the unfortunate hound. But I soon had my doubts; for one of the gentlemen in scarlet rode up to me, and with much severity informed me that he could not have his hounds "served in that way." I protested that it was an accident, and that I thought "there could be no harm in doing what the others did." With this explanation he seemed quite satisfied, for he at once left me, and even smiled as he did so. The dog must have been a young one, for as I passed two gentlemen who were doubtless discussing puppies in general, and I suppose him in particular, I overheard one of them say, "He's evidently green." The dogs having got safely into cover, the ladies and gentlemen began to ride along the outside of the wood--cover, I mean--and I did the same, taking care, though, to keep well in the rear, that I might see what the others did. I kept clear of every one I could possibly avoid, as I found that the people who hunted at Stonington indulged in a peculiar kind of slang which I could not well understand. I had not gone far before I heard a loud laughing in my rear. I seemed to be familiar with the sound. I turned "about" in the saddle, and who should I see but my cousins, not twenty yards behind me! I was inclined to go home, and I should have done so only I saw that my cousins, besides being attended by Evans in livery, were accompanied by their old schoolfellow, Miss Trafford, a young lady to whom I had been introduced at our last county ball. To enjoy her presence I determined to brave all. I turned my horse round and raised my hat as much as the tight guard would let me, and in another moment I was at the mercy of my tormentors. "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed my cousin Emily; "we saw you stealing out of the garden gate at six o'clock this morning." "Yes," chimed in Julia, "and with those splendid top-boots on! You thought to avoid us, did you?" "I say, Adolphus," continued Emily, "when you hire a horse-box again, and don't want anyone to know, don't let your name and destination be labelled on it like an advertisement! Ha! ha! ha!" I was completely sold, and I was obliged to acknowledge it; and when I heard that my cousins had actually ridden ten miles to the meet, whilst I had come by train, I felt that I must do something to retrieve my reputation in the eyes of Miss Trafford. The cover was a very large one, and whilst we had been talking all the people had disappeared. I told the ladies where the dogs were; and Emily at once came to the conclusion that, if we went round the other way, which was shorter, we should meet the "field" at "Keeper's Clump." Acting on this suggestion, we turned back and cantered round to the other side of the cover. As we did so I felt that field-riding was my _forte_; it was so much more comfortable than hard road-riding, and I at once resolved to make hunting my study and only amusement. My cousins continued to tease me as we went along; but to my delight Miss Trafford sided with me, thus giving me confirmation of the hope I had cherished at the ball, that she was not indifferent to the attentions I then paid her, slight as those attentions necessarily were. Our passage of arms was suspended by our arrival at the far end of the cover, where the field were awaiting, as I was informed, the decision of the master as to what cover to "draw" next. I wondered whether they had any artists with them, and what good could come of _drawing_ a cover with which nearly every one seemed familiar. But this is parenthetical. A stone wall, about four feet high, separated us from the rest of the field. "What have you lost?" said Emily to me, as my eyes wandered up and down the wall. "Nothing," I replied; "I am looking for the gate." "Then you are looking for something you won't find this side a mile and a half; that's the road--over the wall. Come! give us a lead." Here was a pretty state of things! I, who had never in my life been over anything higher than a mushroom or wider than a gutter, and who had in my charge three ladies, suddenly required to give them a lead over a four-feet wall, in presence of the whole field! The perspiration stood in great drops on my brow, and I would have given any amount if I could but have sunk into my boots. But I couldn't; and all eyes being on me (including _her's_) I had no time to say my prayers. I had to choose at once between disgrace and the chance of being "sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head." One glance at Miss Trafford decided me; and I put my horse's head towards the wall and then my spurs into his sides. When I was within three feet my courage failed me, and I pulled up; but it was _too late_. Iron Duke had already risen; and in doing so had nearly rolled me off, first over the cantle and then the pommel. Ten thousand years rolled over my devoted head in these few moments, and then all was still--_i.e._, as regards motion; but my ears were assailed by a deafening cheer--mixed, I must candidly admit, with some laughter. When I "came to," I discovered that I was still alive, and still in the saddle, and that my horse was, in the most matter-of-fact way possible, spanning the wall like a bridge, fore-legs on one side, hind-legs on the other. I hastily congratulated myself that things were no worse, and then began to consider what was the proper step to be taken by a man in my situation. "Pull him back!" "Job him over!" "Stick to him!" "Get off!" and similar advice came to me from every quarter. I resolved to act on the "get off" principle; and with some difficulty I _did_ get off, taking care to be on the right side. I then endeavoured to pull the horse over with the reins; but he resisted with all the obstinacy of a costermonger's donkey--which circumstance seemed to add to the amusement of the field, for their laughter increased. Growing desperate, I slashed my whip several times over the animal's neck; at which treatment he kicked and plunged until, to my great delight, he kicked the wall down! "Thank you for your easy lead, my dear cousin Adolphus!" said Emily, as she and the two other ladies came through the breach in the wall. "You're quite welcome," I was about to reply, when I was interrupted by a coarse-looking lad, whose spindle-like legs were covered with breeches and gaiters. "I say, guv'nur," said he, "you rode your horse over that there wall about as well as I'd a-rode my mother's clothes-horse over!--do it again, do!" The ladies could not refrain from laughter, in which I made a miserable attempt at joining them; and then I tried to remount. But this was a difficult task; for my legs were short, my horse's were long, and his recent adventure had made him fidgety, and I was at last reduced to the necessity of accepting an offer from the lad with the spindle legs to give me a "leg-up." With his assistance (for which I gave him sixpence, and I have no doubt he threw his bad joke into the bargain) I managed to scramble into the saddle again. As we rode to the next cover I felt exceedingly sheepish, and the unfeeling laughter of my cousins, added to the now cool manner of Miss Trafford, and the quiet grimaces of old Evans, the groom (who of course kept pretty close to us), made me desperate, and I was determined to do something to recover my lost prestige, even if the next day's _Times_ had to record a "Fatal accident in the hunting-field at Stonington." Emily asked me tauntingly whether I had "done leaping for to-day?" "Not exactly," I replied; "I intend----" "Will you take a lead from me?" she interrupted. "I'll take any lead that _you_ dare give me," I replied haughtily. "Done!" And she had no sooner said the word than the fox broke from the cover, about two hundred yards in front of us, followed in a few moments by the hounds, so close together that (as I afterwards heard one gentleman remark to another) you might have covered them with a blanket. Away they went, and away went we after them. My enthusiasm was raised to the utmost pitch, and I was determined to stop at nothing. Emily and Julia kept on my left, a few yards in advance, whilst Miss Trafford, on my right, kept about the same distance in my rear. The fox, luckily, had taken the open, and the ladies prophesied a half-hour's run with no checks. But before ten minutes of it were over, I perceived, about a hundred yards in front of us, a thick, well-laid quickset hedge, about four feet high, and as we neared it I thought I saw water glistening on the other side. There was no escape; my time had come; I was led in front, and driven in rear; and leap I must. "Now for your lead!" cried Emily, waving her whip in the air as she cleared the fence and the brook beyond it. My horse followed bravely--and so should I, if I hadn't, by some unfortunate mishap or other, rolled out of the saddle, and in the midst of my victory fallen into the brook! As I lay sprawling on my back, and before I had time to think where I was, I saw the belly of Miss Trafford's horse as he carried her over the fence, the brook, and me! "Stop my horse! stop my horse!" I roared, as I came dripping wet out of the brook. "Stop my horse!" But I earnestly hoped that no one would stop him, for this last _contretemps_ had considerably damped my ardour and cooled my courage; and I thought that if nobody _did_ "stop my horse," he would eventually find his way to the pound; and his absence would afford me a decent pretext for going home. To my horror, though, Iron Duke was brought back by the wretched lad of the spindle legs. "Be the saddle greased, sir?" said he, wiping it with his nasty dirty pocket handkerchief. I could have kicked him, and should have done so, only I thought he might have kicked back, and so I swallowed his affront, and actually gave him another sixpence. Having learned from him the road to the station, I was just stealing off when I heard in my rear the cry of "Tally-ho back!" The fox had come back--doubled, I mean--and I was forced to join the others and run after him again. But, fortunately for me, he did not run far before the dogs caught him and killed him, and then one of the men in scarlet cut off his nice long tail and gave it to Emily. She actually accepted it, although I am nearly sure she had never seen the man before in her life! I thought young ladies ought to accept presents from no gentlemen but their relatives and accepted suitors; and, besides, I don't believe that this man _was_ a gentleman, for when I whipped the hound to make him get over the wall (which, as I have before stated, he most unreasonably declined to do), this fellow was the loudest in his oaths and curses, which he showered broadcast on the hound, or my horse, or something--I have never ascertained what--and in the presence of ladies! Emily said something about making a hair-brush of the fox's tail (what an absurd idea! but she always was queer); and as the man cut off the fox's head, she gave me to understand that that would be mine if I asked for it. I _did_ ask for it; but for some unaccountable reason or other, I _didn't get it_. The remainder of the poor fox was thrown to the dogs, who soon tore him to pieces and ate him. It occurred to my philosophic mind, as I witnessed this spectacle, that the fox, like me, was a hero; but, also like me, an unsuccessful one. What a number of men, women, horses, and dogs to conquer one little fox! These and similar reflections were soon cut short, for the dogs having finished their lunch, the men and women began to think about theirs; in fact, Sir John Hausie had invited them all, including me, to lunch with him at the Manor House, about half a mile distant. As we journeyed thither I began to feel very uncomfortable, for my coat, waistcoat, and shirt, although not dirty (for the water in the brook was clean), were wet through, and, the warmth of exercise and enthusiasm having subsided, I felt very cold. When we arrived at Sir John's, I was so stiff with cold that I could scarcely dismount, which Sir John observing, he came and very kindly accosted me. He also inquired as to the cause of my fall--spill, he called it--and offered me the loan of a coat whilst mine was hastily dried at the kitchen fire. Sir John was an exceedingly pleasant man, and had a jolly, cheerful, laughing face, and we soon understood each other. I accepted his proferred loan with many thanks, and then took Miss Trafford in to lunch. As I sat by her side in the baronet's coat, and gracefully helped her to sherry, the frost of her manner gradually thawed; and when we returned to remount we were as jolly as topers--sand-boys, I mean. I of course assisted her to get into the saddle; but I was so stiff and so giddy (from the excitement of the morning) that I very nearly let her down. We were some time without finding another fox; and as my cousins had gone off with old Evans and Captain De la Grace, and as Miss Trafford seemed so amiable, I determined to improve the occasion. We were on the common just outside Sir John's park, the beauties of which I was very particular in admiring; and having thus got Miss Trafford to lag behind, I took the opportunity of unbosoming my heart to her. I got very excited, and my voice trembled with emotion (or something of that sort), as I made her a pathetic offer of my heart and hand. I paused (as well as my excitement would allow me, for it had brought on the hiccups), and she replied. I can't remember exactly what she said, but it was something about sparing me the pain of a refusal, and about not marrying a man who couldn't take a fence. I offered to jump the park wall if she would only listen to my suit. She agreed; and bracing up all my spirits, I rode full tilt at the wall; and over I went, leaving my horse on the wrong side! And as I turned an involuntary somersault I thought I heard sounds like "the receding foot-steps of a cantering horse." (_Note._--This is a quotation from some lines I afterwards wrote to Miss Trafford.) There was then a slight break in the thread of my thoughts, and after that I found myself lying in the midst of some young fir-trees, whilst Iron Duke was quietly browsing on the leafless twigs of a tree on the other side of the wall. Gentle reader! I am sure you must feel for my unfortunate position. I will not torture you further by relating the painful particulars of how I scrambled over the wall; how I got on Iron Duke, only to tumble off again; how I nearly broke my neck before I got home; how Philley declared I had broken the horse's knees; how he made me pay £50 for the animal; how I sold him the next week for £10 (less £2 for carriage); and, worst of all, how Miss Trafford jilted me, and my cousins--cruel girls--laughed at my misfortunes and made sport of my troubles. Indeed, with all these we have nothing to do, for they happened after "My First Day's Fox-hunting." MY FIRST AND LAST STEEPLE-CHASE In the year 1859, the Irish militia regiment in which I had the honour to hold a commission was disembodied; but, as a reward for our distinguished services at Portsmouth, where we mounted guard daily on the dockyards for more than twelve months, each subaltern was presented with a gratuity of six months' pay--a boon that must have been highly appreciated at the time by our much-enduring and long-suffering tailors, into whose pockets most of the money, in the end, found its way. Dick Maunsel, the senior lieutenant, and myself were cousins, and (as the old chief never lost a chance of telling us when we got into trouble) "always hunted in couples." Our fathers' allowance had been liberal. We were free from debt--that "Old Man of the Sea," which too often hangs like a millstone about the British subaltern's neck--and, finding ourselves at liberty, as a matter of course determined to go off somewhere and get rid of our pay together. Much beer and tobacco were consumed in the various "corobberys" held to talk the matter over; and at length it was decided that we should take a lodge at a small watering-place, well known to both, on the south-west coast of Ireland, and there abide until something better turned up. I don't think, under the circumstances, we could have made a much better choice. The salmon and sea-fishing were excellent; when the shooting season came round, most of the moors in the neighbourhood were free to us. The summer had been unusually hot; we were tired of town life, and longing to divest ourselves of the "war paint," "bury the hatchet," and get away to some quiet bay by the Atlantic, where we could do what seemed right in our own eyes, free from the eternal pipeclay and conventionalities with which we had been hampered. "Last, not least," at a ball given before the regiment left Ireland, we had met two girls, sisters, who usually spent the season there, and, if the truth must be told, I believe they had hit us so hard we were "crippled" from flying very far. So, after an impartial distribution of the regimental plate, and a rather severe night at mess, to finish the remains of the cellar, we bade farewell to our companions in arms, and found ourselves once more in "dear old dirty Dublin," _en route_ for the south. One evening, about six weeks after our arrival at Aunaghmore, we were lying on the cliffs, watching the trawlers as they drifted slowly up with the tide. The day had been dark and misty, with some thunder far out at sea; but it cleared up as the sun went down, and I was pointing out to Dick, who had been unusually silent, the remarkable likeness between the scene before us and one of Turner's best-known pictures, when he interrupted me suddenly, saying-- "I'll tell you a story, Frank. When a boy, I remember starting one morning with poor Ferguson (the owner of Harkaway) to ride one of his horses in a private match. We took a short cut across an old mountain road, and coming out on the brow of the hill which commanded one of the finest views in Ireland, I pulled up my horse to call Ferguson's attention to it. 'For heaven's sake, sir,' he said impatiently, 'think on something that will do you good.' And just at this moment, old man, I feel half inclined to agree with him. How much money have you left?" Without speaking, I handed him my purse, the contents of which he counted slowly over, saying, "I think we shall have enough." "Enough for what?" I asked. "For a ball," he replied coolly. "The people here have been very civil to us, and we owe them some return. There are plenty of girls in the neighbourhood to make a very good one; men are scarce; but we can ask the "Plungers" over from ---- Barracks. Besides, I promised Emily last night, and there's no getting out of it." I ventured mildly to suggest that the regiment didn't get out of the last under a couple of hundred, and that we had not half that between us. "My dear fellow," he replied, "this is quite another affair altogether. We can borrow the club archery tent for a ballroom. There are many things, game, &c., to be had for nothing here. My sisters are coming over on a visit; they will look after the details. It will be a great success, and we shall only have wine and lights to pay for." "And how far," I asked, with a slight sneer, "will the money left go in getting those, not to speak of other essentials that must be provided?" "I have arranged all that as well," answered Dick, with the air of a man who had thoroughly mastered the subject. "The races here come off the end of August. There is a £50 Plate to be run for on the flat, and a steeple-chase as well. I know all the horses likely to start. With one exception (Father B.'s) ours can give them a stone for either event. The priest can't run his horse; the new bishop has been down on him. We can send for ours: plenty of time for a rough preparation. Thanks to the hot weather, and that confounded drill, you can still ride eleven stone. There now, what more do you want? Come along to the lodge, and we will talk the matter over comfortably." I certainly had my misgivings as to the practicability of Dick's scheme, but knew him too long and well to doubt his attempting it at all events. I could, of course, refuse to join, and leave him to his own devices; but we had pulled through too many scrapes together for that. To do him justice, he generally succeeded in whatever he undertook; and whether it was owing to his eloquence, some of his father's old claret, or both combined, before we separated that night I had entered heart and soul into his plans. We lost no time in commencing our preparations. Within a week the horses had arrived; then Dick's sisters--two fine light-hearted girls, full of fun and mischief--came over. After that there was no rest for me. No unhappy adjutant of a newly-embodied militia or volunteer regiment ever had more or a greater variety of work on hand. Sunrise generally found me in the saddle, giving the horses a gallop on the sands--a performance which had to be repeated twice during the day, Dick's weight, some sixteen stone, preventing him from giving me any assistance. I was overhead in love, besides, and four hours at least had to be devoted to the object of my affections. We kept open house; game and fish had to be provided for the larder, and the girls were always wanting something or other from the neighbouring town, which they declared only I could get; so between all, my time was fully occupied, and seemed to fly. If Mr Mill's bill for giving ladies the franchise had been in force then, I think Dick and myself would have had a fair chance of representing the county. So soon as our intention to give a race ball was known, we became the most popular men in it. Offers of supplies and assistance came pouring in from all quarters. Plate, china, and glass arrived so fast, and in such quantities, the lodge could not contain them, and we were obliged to pitch the tent. As the time drew near, the preparation and bustle increased tenfold. Our life was one continual picnic. From early morning until late at night, the house was crowded with girls laughing, flirting, trying on ball-dresses, and assisting in the decorating of the tent. We never thought of sitting down to dinner, but took it where, when, and how we could. _Ay de mi!_ I have been in some hospitable houses since, where the owners kept _chefs_, and prided themselves, not unjustly, on the quality of their cellars; but I never enjoyed myself so much, and, I fear, never shall, as those scrambling dinners, though the bill of fare often consisted of cold grouse, washed down by a tankard of beer--taken, too, standing in the corner of a pantry, surrounded by a host of pretty girls, all of them engaged in teasing and administering to my wants. Early one morning, about a week before the races were to come off, I was engaged as usual, exercising Dick's hunter on the course, when, at a little distance, I saw a horse in body-clothes cantering along with that easy stride peculiar to thorough-breds. For some time the rider appeared anxious to avoid me, increasing the pace as I came near, until the animal I rode, always headstrong, broke away and soon ranged alongside. "Whose horse is that?" I inquired of the groom. "My master's, yer honour," he replied, without a smile, slackening his pace at the same time, as mine raced past. When I succeeded in pulling up again, the fellow was galloping away in another direction. I had seen enough, however: there was no mistaking those flat sinewy legs. So, setting the horse's head straight for the lodge, I went up to Dick's room. He was in bed, but awake; and though his face slightly lengthened when I told him I was certain the priest's horse had arrived, he answered coolly enough-- "You need not look so serious, Frank; at the worst, it is only a case of selling Madman, and I have had a good offer for him. It is too bad of the priest, though, to spoil our little game. They told me the bishop had sat on him; but of course he will run in another name. I should have known an old fox like that would have more than one earth. He won't be able to go in for the double event, that is certain. His horse can't jump. The steeplechase is ours; so come and have a swim. After breakfast we will see what can be done." Unfortunately there was no help for it. The priest's horse had carried off a Queen's Plate at the Curragh, and, safe and well at the post, could win as he pleased. It was too late for us to draw back, however, even if we were disposed that way. The invitations for the ball (which was to come off the night of the races) were out. So, consoling ourselves as well as it was possible under the circumstances, we continued our preparations, looking well after the horses, determined not to throw away a chance. Misfortunes seldom come alone. The day before the race, so ardently looked forward to, arrived at last. I had been engaged in unpacking the flowers that were arriving all the afternoon from the neighbouring conservatories, while Dick was amusing himself brewing cold punch in the lodge. The girls were out walking; and, when my work was over, I took a stroll along the beach to meet them. Up to this time the weather had been glorious; such a summer and autumn as few could remember: but now I saw, with some anxiety, there was every appearance of an unfavourable change. Although not a breath of wind stirred, the ground-swell broke heavily on the bar, and there was a greenish look in the sky where the sun was setting, that boded no good. The curlews were unusually noisy, their clear, shrill whistle resounding on all sides, and large flocks of sea-birds were flying in towards the land. A fishing-boat had just made fast to the pier, and the owner came forward to meet me. "What luck this evening, Barney?" I inquired. "Just middlin', yer honour. There's a dozen of lobsters, a John Dory, and a turbot. I'll send them to the lodge. The oysters went up this morning--iligant ones, they wor; raal jewels." "All right, Barney--what do you think of the weather?" "Sorra one of me likes it, at all. Them thieves of seals are rollin' about like _purposes_, and it isn't for nothin' they do that same. It'll be a Ballintogher wind, too, before long, I'm thinkin'." "A what?" I exclaimed. "The very question the captain axed my brother. It was the first time iver he went to say, and they wor lyin' somewhere off Afrikay. The captin was walkin' the quarter-deck when my brother comes up to him, and says, 'Captain Leslie, you had better shorten sail.' "'Why so?' ses the captin, very sharp. "'Bekase it's a Ballintogher wind.' "'And what the d----l wind may that be?' "'Oh murther!' ses my brother. 'There you are, wandherin' about the world all yer life, and didn't hear of a Ballintogher wind, when there isn't a gossoon in my counthry doesn't know the village it comes from, and that it niver brought anything but cowld storm and misforthin' along with it.' "Well, with that, they all tuk to laughin' like to split their sides at my brother, an' the captin, he towld him to go forrid and mind his work; but faith, they worn't laughin' two hours afther, when the ship rowled the masts out of her, and they wor wracked among the haythens. But wind or no wind, yer honour, I suppose the races will come off?" "So I hear, Barney." "I'm towld there's to be a fight between the Flahertys and the O'Donnells; but shure av the priest's there it's no use for them to try." "Why not, Barney?" "He's mighty handy with a hunting-whip, an' has got a bad curse besides. He hot Mickey Devine over the head, for trying to rise a row at the fair of Dingle, and left a hole in it you might put your fist in. It was no great things of a head at the best of times, but faith, he's quare in it at the full of the moon iver since. He cursed Paddy Keolaghan, too, last Easter, an' the luck left him. His nets wor carried away, the boat stove in, and the pig died. I don't give in to the pig myself, for they let him get at the long lines afther they wor baited; and sure enough when the craythur died, there was fifteen hooks in his inside, enough to kill any baste. Besides, his reverence is very partikler, an' wouldn't curse a Christian out of his own parish; but it's not lucky to cross him anyhow; an' if he's there to-morrow, sorra bit of fun we'll have. They say yer honours are for givin' a ball afther the races." "So we are, Barney; and that reminds me--tell the girls to come up the next night, and we'll give them a dance before the tent is taken down." "Long life to yer honour! It's proud and happy they will be to go. Here's the young ladies comin'. Good evenin', sir! We'll be on the coorse to-morrow, an' see you get fair play, anyhow." The tent-ropes flapped ominously that night as we turned in, and before morning a storm came on which increased to a hurricane, when our party assembled for breakfast, and looked out disconsolately enough at the boiling sea, dimly visible through the driving rain and spray that dashed in sheets of water against the glass. Already numbers of the peasantry, on their way to the course, were staggering along the road, vainly trying to shelter themselves from the furious blast which made the very walls of the lodge shake. Taking advantage of a slight lull, we managed to get a young fir-tree propped up against the pole of the tent, and had just returned to the house when a well-appointed four-in-hand came at a sharp trot up the avenue. "Here come the Plungers," said Dick. "Plucky fellows to drive over fourteen miles such a morning." While he was speaking, a dozen bearded men got down and stalked solemnly into the room. In a few minutes the ladies of our party made their appearance, and before long the new comers were busily engaged in some fashion or another. I have often admired the way in which Irish ladies contrive to make the "lords of the creation" useful, but never saw it more strongly exemplified than on the present occasion. Here you might see a grave colonel employed in the composition of a lobster salad; there a V.C. opening oysters as industriously as an old woman at a stall; while in a snug corner, a couple of cornets were filling custard cups and arranging flowers. To do the gallant fellows justice they accepted the situation frankly, and set to work like men, while at every fresh blast the girls' spirits seemed to rise higher; and before long a merrier party could hardly be found anywhere. Twelve o'clock had now come round, at which time, it was unanimously agreed, the day must clear up; and a slight gleam of watery sunshine appearing, we all started to carry the things over to the supper-room of the tent. As we mustered a tolerably strong party, in less than an hour this was effected, not, however, without sundry mishaps; one poor cornet being blown right over a fence, into a wet ditch, with his burden. We were all so much engaged laying out the tables, that the increasing darkness of the day was scarcely remarked until a vivid flash of lightning, followed by a loud peal of thunder which broke directly overhead, made the boldest pause for a moment in his occupation. The storm, which had gone down considerably, burst forth again worse than ever, the tent-pole swayed to and fro like a fishing-rod, and the fir-tree we had lashed alongside for additional security threatened every moment to come down by the run. Matters were beginning to look serious, when Dick, snatching a carving-knife from the table, cut an opening in the wall of the tent, through which we all bolted into the open air. Hardly had we got clear of the ropes, when the tent-pole snapped, the pegs gave way, the roof flew off down the wind, and with a crash of broken glass, heard distinctly above the howling of the wind and sea, the whole fabric came to the ground, burying all our materials and the greater part of the supper in the ruins. All was over now,--"the stars in their courses" had fought against us. There was no use in contending against fate and the elements; so, after seeing the girls safe in shelter, and leaving the dragoons to test the merits of Dick's cold punch, I filled my largest pipe with the strongest cavendish, and had walked round to the lee of the house, to blow a cloud in peace, and think over what was best to be done, when a window opened above, and looking up, I saw a bright sunny face framed against the dark scowling sky, and heard a voice call out, "Wait there one moment, Frank; I am coming down." Without giving me time to reply, the face disappeared, but immediately afterwards a small slight figure, closely muffled up, glided round the corner, and put its arm in mine, while a pair of blue eyes looked up appealingly in my face. "Don't look so down-hearted, Frank, or you will make me cry. I could hardly keep from it, when I saw the tent in ruins, and heard that dreadful crash. All Lady ----'s old china, I promised to take such care of, and the flowers, and Mrs ----'s dinner service, that has been in the family for four generations. It is a downright calamity; but we are determined, happen what will, to have the ball, and I want you to come to look at a barn we saw the other day." "But you cannot think of going out in such weather!" "Not by the road--the sea is all across it. But we can go by the fields. Come now, and take great care of me." We did reach the barn, though with great difficulty; and, at first sight, a more unlikely or unpromising place could hardly be found. In one corner stood a heap of straw and a winnowing machine, under which half a dozen rats scampered as we came in. The roof was thatched, and in several places we could see the sky through it. Long strings of floating cobwebs hung from the rafters, and the rough walls were thickly coated with dust. There were two storeys to it, however; the floor of the upper one was boarded and seemed sound. Taking out a note-book, my companion seated herself on an old garden-roller, saying-- "Go down-stairs, Frank, and finish your smoke; I want to think for five minutes; or you may stay here, if you promise not to speak until I give you leave." I gave the required pledge, and, lighting my pipe, lay down in a corner, watching the rats peering out with their sharp, black, beady eyes at the strange visitors, and rather enjoying the confusion of the spiders, who, not relishing the smoke, were making off out of reach as fast as they could. Before long my companion called me over, to give her directions, which were, to go back to the lodge, and bring all the volunteers I could get, as well as some materials, of which she gave me a list. On my way I met one of the stewards, who told me the races had been postponed until four o'clock in the afternoon, and on reaching the lodge found Dick and the officers engaged in recovering "salvage" from the tent. Getting out a wagonette, I soon had it filled with volunteers, and drove them over to the barn, where we once more set to work, and for the next few hours the rats and spiders had a bad time of it. I was hard at work converting some rough deal boards into a supper-table, when a little boy handed me a note, saying-- "They are clearin' the coorse, yer honour; you haven't a minit to lose; I brought down a 'baste' for you." The note was from Dick, telling me the first race would be run off at once. There was a dressing-room provided on the ground, so, jumping on the horse, I rode down. The storm, after doing all the harm it well could to us, had now cleared off, and the scene on the course was lively and animated enough. A dozen frieze-coated farmers, headed by an old huntsman in scarlet, were galloping wildly about to clear the ground, the usual "dog" being represented, on this occasion, by a legion of curs, barking at the heels of stray donkeys, sheep, cows, and goats, as they doubled in and out, to avoid the merciless whips of their pursuers; and when at last they were driven off, the people broke in on the line, and the whole place appeared one mass of inextricable confusion, until the priest, accompanied by the stewards, was found. The fisherman certainly had not belied his reverence. More than once I saw his whip descend with a vigour that made itself felt even through the thick greatcoats worn by the peasantry, causing the recipient to shrink back, shaking his shoulders, and never feeling himself safe until he had put the nearest fence between him and the giver. Soon his stalwart figure, mounted on a stout cob, was the signal for a general _suave qui peut_, and the mob gradually settled into something like order, leaving the course tolerably free. Six horses came to the post for the first race, which was about three miles on the flat, the priest's of course being the favourite, and with reason. It was a magnificent dark chestnut, with great power and symmetry, showing the "Ishmael" blood in every part of its beautiful frame, Dick's hunter, although thorough-bred, and with a fair turn of speed, looking like a coach-horse beside it. The only other competitor entered worth notice was a light bay, high-bred, but a great, staring, weedy-looking brute, evidently a cast-off from some racing stable. At the word "Off!" a fair start was effected. The bay, however, had hardly taken a dozen strides, when it came down, giving the rider an ugly fall. After rolling over, it sat up like a dog, and stared wildly about; then, jumping up suddenly, galloped into the sea, where it lay down, apparently with the intention of committing suicide. Before we had gone a mile, all the other horses were shaken off, and the priest's jockey and myself had it all to ourselves. He was a knowing old fellow, and evidently did not wish to distress his horse, keeping only a few lengths ahead, until within the distance-post, when he let him go, cantering in a winner by about twenty yards, and receiving a perfect ovation from the people. In half an hour the bugle sounded for the horses to fall in for _the_ race. A steeple-chase being always the great event on an Irish course, we were about to take our places, when Dick came up with rather a long face, and whispered-- "I am afraid the luck is against us still, Frank. Look at that gray. He has been kept dark until now. Before seeing him I backed you rather heavily with the priest. It was our only chance to get out." The more I looked the less I liked the appearance of either horse or man. To a casual observer the first was a plain animal, cross-built, rough in the coat, and with remarkably drooping quarters; but, on closer inspection, a hunter all over, if not a steeple-chaser, although an attempt had evidently been made to disguise his real character. The saddle was old and patched; the bridle had a rusty bit, with a piece of string hung rather ostentatiously from it; the rider might once have been a gentleman, but drink and dissipation had left their mark on what was originally a handsome face. His dress was slovenly and careless to a degree, but he sat his horse splendidly, and his hand was as light and fair as a woman's. He returned my look with a defiant stare. "That fellow looks dangerous," said Dick; "but I suspect he is more than half drunk. Make a waiting race until you see what he is made of. Above all things keep cool, and don't lose your temper." I had perfect confidence in the mare I rode. She had been broken by myself, and many a long day we had hunted together over the big pastures of Roscommon and Meath. There was a thorough understanding between us. My only anxiety was as to how she would face the crowd, who were collected in thousands about every jump, barely leaving room for the horses to pass, and yelling like a set of Bedlamites let loose. With the exception of the last fence, there were no very formidable obstacles. It was a stone wall, fully five feet high, built up loose, but strong, and rather a severe trial at the end of a race, if the pace was a stiff one throughout. There was no time for thinking now, however. The word was given, and we were away. About a dozen horses started--all fair animals, with that cat-like activity in negotiating a fence so remarkable in Irish hunting. We had hardly gone a mile, however, when the want of condition began to tell, and they fell hopelessly to the rear, leaving the race to the gray, my mare, and a game little thorough-bred, ridden and owned by one of the dragoon officers. Up to this time I had followed Dick's directions to wait on the gray, a proceeding evidently not approved of by the rider, for, turning round in his saddle as he came down to a water jump, he said, with a sneer-- "You want a lead over, I suppose." I made no reply, and he went at the river; but whether by accident or design, when within a few yards of the brink his horse bolted, dashing in among the crowd. The dragoon's swerved slightly to follow; the rider, however, would not be denied, and sent him through it; while my mare, cocking her ears, and turning her head half round, as an old pointer might do at seeing a young one break fence, flew over like a bird, and settled steadily to her work on the other side. For some distance the dragoon and myself rode neck and neck, though the pace was beginning to tell on his horse, who was slightly overweighted. Our friend on the gray now raced alongside, and galloping recklessly at an awkward ditch, which he cleared, took a lead of a dozen lengths, and kept it until within a short distance of the last fence, when he fell back, allowing us to get to the front once more. I think fear was the last thing uppermost in my mind as I rode at it. My blood was fairly roused, and passing a carriage a minute before, I got a glance from a pair of blue eyes that would have made a coward brave. Still, with all that, I could not avoid a slight feeling of anxiety as it loomed across, looking about as dangerous an obstacle as the most reckless rider could desire at the end of a race. If stone walls "grew," I could have sworn it had done so since I crossed it on Dick's hunter the evening before. The people had closed in on both sides until there was scarcely twenty feet of clear space in the middle, and evidently a row of some sort was going on. Sticks were waving wildly about, and a dozen voices shouted for me to stop, while hundreds called to go on. The gray was creeping up, however. I had faced as bad before, when there was less occasion; so pulled the mare up to a trot until within a few yards, when I let her go with a shout she well knew, and in a second we were safe on the other side. The dragoon's horse refusing, the gray, who came up at full speed, chested it heavily, and horse, rider, and wall came rolling over to the ground together, while I cantered in alone. I had hardly received the congratulations of the stewards, when Dick came up, looking flushed and excited. As he grasped my hand, he said hurriedly-- "Why didn't you stop when I shouted?" "It was too late. But what is wrong?" "That scoundrel on the gray bribed a couple of fellows to add six inches to the height of the wall during the storm this morning. They raised it nearly a foot. Some one told the priest, but not until you were in the field. He has caught one of them, the other got away. As for the fellow himself, his collar-bone is smashed, and the horse all cut to pieces. He couldn't expect better luck. It was a near thing, though. I don't know how the mare got over it. She must have known," he added, patting her neck, "what a scrape we were in." The usual hack races for saddles and bridles followed, and the day's sport came to an end without a fight, thanks to the priest, whose exertions to keep the peace would have satisfied a community of Quakers, although they might not approve of the mode by which the object was effected. We had hardly finished dinner at the lodge, when the carriages with our guests for the ball began to arrive, those from a distance looking with dismay at the wreck of the tent, that still lay strewed on the lawn. They were all directed forward to the barn, however, whither we were soon prepared to follow. Although my confidence in the ability and resources of the ladies of our party was nearly unlimited, I could hardly avoid feeling some slight misgivings on entering the barn, knowing the short time they had to work in, and how heavily the mishap of the morning must have told against them. All, however, agreed that they had seldom seen a prettier room. The walls and roof were completely covered with fishing-nets, filled in and concealed by purple and white heath. The effect was remarkably good; and if the storm had deprived the supper-table of many of the light dishes, quite enough was left to satisfy guests who were not disposed to be critical. I shall not detain the reader by giving a description of the ball, which proved a complete success, more than compensating us for the trouble and anxiety we had undergone. It was seldom the girls in the neighbourhood had a chance of enjoying themselves in that way, and they seemed resolved to make the most of it. Human endurance, however, has its limits. Towards morning the band, whose "staying powers" were sorely tried, began to show symptoms of mutiny. Threats and bribes (the latter too often administered in the shape of champagne) were tried, and they were induced to continue for another hour. The result may easily be anticipated: they broke down hopelessly, at last, in the middle of "Sir Roger." A sudden change in the music made us all stop, and to our dismay we found one half of the performers playing "God save the Queen." The others had just commenced "Partant pour la Syrie," while the "big drum" was furiously beating the "tattoo" in a corner. Turning them all out, we threw open the windows. A flood of sunshine poured into the room, and the cool fresh sea breeze swept joyously round, extinguishing the lights. This was the signal for a general departure. One by one our fair guests drove away, leaving "The banquet-hall deserted." The last man to go was the priest. As he mounted his horse I saw him hand Dick a sheaf of dingy-looking bank-notes, and they parted, hoping to meet again the following season, when the latter pledged himself to bring something out of his own stable to race against the mare. But we only appeared there once since in public, and that was at a wedding. Before the next autumn came round we had settled down into steady married men. I still hunt, but have grown stouter, and the old mare has given place to a weight-carrier. The mare draws my wife and children to church regularly, however, and though rather matronly-looking, is as full of life and spirit as when she started with her master to win his first and "last" steeple-chase. SALMON-SPEARING _Hei mihi præteritum tempus!_ That is, the past time when new Fishery Laws did not forbid, and we young sportsmen might combat the salmon in his own element, armed, like the Retiarius, with a trident, but, unlike him, without a net. Ill-omened word! is it not to thee that the interdict is owing?--blockading the mouth of every river with thy cowardly meshes, only withdrawn for the barest minimum of hours out of the twenty-four to give free passage to the home-sick fish and lusty grilse to re-seek the dear old pools of his birth. For the grace now extended, and the check put upon the rapacious suppliers of Billingsgate and Leadenhall, we shall ever be grateful to the Commissioners, even though the same powers that have removed the stake-nets have prohibited the use of the spear, whose operation, as numbered amongst the things past, we purpose to record. And first for the science of the sport. Salmon-spearing, as we used to perform it, was of two kinds. First, that by day; second, that by night. For the first, we choose that day when the more noble art of the rod and fly would be exercised in vain--a clear sunny day, with as little ripple as possible, and the water low, the field of operation being generally the upper pools, or, in preference, the larger "burn" or mountain stream whence the river took its source. The implements, a spear, or rather iron trident of three prongs, barbed like a fish-hook, the prongs being about two inches apart, with a shaft some ten feet in length; two or three long poles, whose uses will be seen presently, and either a "gaff" or a landing-net. The essentials, a hawk-like keenness of eye sharpened by long practice, a goat-like agility amongst rocks and stones, and a philosophical indifference to all such minor discomforts as a complete wetting and a frequent fall or bruise. The night-work differed in the change of locality, the favourite spot being the long shallow "reach" at the river's mouth, and in the substitution of fir-torches for the poles of the day's programme. Thus much for the nature of the sport; for a description of it let the reader lend a kindly ear while we suppose the scene by the banks of the river Arkail, in the Northern Highlands of Scotland (a name which, by the way, he will in vain try to establish in the best of educational atlases or tourists' guides). "What a baking day! No use taking out the dogs; there's not a breath of scent along the whole hill-side; and one might as well try to fish in a tub as throw a line over the looking-glass-like pools to-day. What's to be the order of the day, Frank? I think I shall take a walk up to the top of Ben Voil and 'spy' if there are any deer lying near the ground." "I don't think you can do better. We have already planned a foray with the spear in the Upper Pools; but you don't care about that sort of work; so good luck to you, and adieu for the present. I suppose you'll take Stuart with you?" Even as he spoke a cheery voice outside had summoned Frank, warning him that his set were waiting; so, with a parting remembrance from Charles Marston, the eldest of our party, and the tacitly-acknowledged head, to "mind and 'crimp' your fish directly you get him out of the water," Frank Gordon hastened to the gravelled square in front of the lodge, and found his brother amongst a group of keepers and "gillies," who, by the arms they bore, gave sufficient evidence of their intended occupation. With the exception of a "forester," Hugh Ross, who, by virtue of his position and his long Gaelic descent, persevered in the traditions of his ancestors, and robed his limbs in a kilt of home-spun tartan, the rest of the sportsmen were clad in knickerbockers, master and man alike. And now they were off, and making down the "brae" with the long dropping action which marks the practical mountaineer, being greeted as they passed the kennels by the most dismal howling from the dogs, who evidently did not comprehend that spears were not guns, and that there were occasions, such as salmon-spearing, on which their services might be dispensed with, and who further interpreted the volley of mingled Gaelic and Sassenach ejaculations hurled at them as a command to increase their note from _forte_ to _fortissimo_, a proceeding accordingly executed with the most painful exactness which the canine intellect could suggest. A short half-hour's walk, and the hollow moaning of a waterfall told of the journey's end. Brushing through a small birch-wood that clothed the high banks of the stream, our party stood on the edge of a sheer rock about thirty feet high, and, looking down on the scene of their intended operations, assigned to each his post and duty. A long, narrow, black pool, shallowing towards the tail into a rushing stream, dashing madly against the boulders scattered at random in its course; the rocks rising steep and bare on either side, but fringed on their summits with the drooping birch-trees and overhanging heather nestling round the delicate little ferns and rock-plants that peeped timidly out here and there; and away at the head of the pool, the finishing charm of the lovely spot, the tumbling waterfall, which ever filled the air with its clamorous voice, and beat the red waters below into a mad whirl of eddies and bubbles and leaping foam. Truly as sweet a picture as Nature ever limned, which, had it been a few degrees farther south, might have been an unfailing trap for excursionists to expend their savings on a "pack" in a covered carriage, and a cheap ride _uninsured_, or might have had its heath-covered banks dotted with picnic parties, and its waters sweetened with the chicken-bones so deftly thrown by the playful Miss Holiday; but being, alas, poor Monar--only one of many such scenes in the bosom of the Highland hills, _all_ inaccessible by steam or jaunting-car--it must e'en remain unknown, save to the privileged few, who now looked at it with the less noble view of how they might draw a fish from its black depths. "Ah, wunna ye look at him? Hech, doon he comes; ye maun e'en try again, my bonny mon." This address was called forth from honest Sandy Macgregor, one of the gillies of the party, by the sight of a salmon leaping at the falls, but who, having failed to clear them, hit with a heavy whack against the rock, and, with a vain wriggle and struggle, fell back into the pool beneath. "You may see more of him yet, Sandy," said Alick Gordon, the elder of the brothers, "if meanwhile you will try and get me a little gravel." A few minutes, and Sandy returned, bringing his cap full of sand and small stones, which Alick, taking, threw in handfuls down the pool, close by the edge of the rock. The result of this mysterious proceeding, being closely watched by the group, was announced by a general murmur of satisfaction as, almost straight beneath them, a string of bubbles rose to the surface of the stream and floated idly away. (For the benefit of those who have never seen this piece of fishing-craft, we may explain that, as a fish is lying at the bottom with his head up-stream, allowing the water to run into his mouth and out through his gills--his mode of breathing--some of the gravel as it sinks down enters his mouth, and as the fish ejects it, he sends up a few bubbles, which mark the spot he is lying in.) "Is that your friend, Sandy?" cried Alick, on seeing the success of his device. "You ought to know him if you saw him again, so come along down here with me." Away went the speaker to the farther end of the pool, where, by scrambling and swinging, he managed to let himself down the rock, and plunged knee deep into the rapids. Closely followed by Sandy, he made his way towards the deep water, keeping close beneath the high bank, where he knew that, at about the depth of his waist, a small ledge ran along the rock which would afford him a footing. Quietly and carefully he arrived at the spot where the bubbles had been seen to rise; and telling Sandy to hold him round the waist, as he stood beside him on their precarious footing, he took off his cap, and holding it over the water so as to throw a shade in which the smallest objects at the bottom of the stream were visible to his practised eye, he bent down, and began a long and wary search. One unaccustomed to the work might have looked till nightfall without seeing more than the changing lights and shadows playing over the deep-sunk stones; but Alick's experience soon showed him a long black object, like a shade, lying close by the rock, and in about nine feet of water. Having satisfied himself as to the exact position of his treasure-trove, he shouted a warning to the group above, and told Sandy to take a look. "Ah, the big blackguard!" whispered the gillie, as he lifted his dripping face after his subaqueous search. "Have a care, Mister Alick, and give him the point well over the shouther." "Hold up tight then, Sandy, and give a shade with your cap as I tell you. That's right; no, a little further out--now then, steady!" As he spoke, Gordon was slowly letting down the spear a little behind the salmon, till, when it was about a foot above the fish, he paused, and braced himself for the stroke, his left hand grasping the spear about halfway down, to guide the aim, and the right hand holding it near the top to give the blow, while his face was nearly buried in the water, as he kept his eye on his prey. "Further out yet with the cap, Sandy. Now, hold on!" Down shot the spear: for one instant the shaft shook violently as the struck salmon struggled beneath the weight which was pinning it to the bottom, and the next, with a loud splash and flurry, the strong fish bore to the surface, and shaking himself off the barbs, dragged Gordon, still holding on to the spear, headlong into the pool. A loud shout from the watchers on the top of the precipice greeted this "coup," and on the gillie, who had been posted near the bottom of the pool, announcing that "the fish had ne'er come his way," all those who had, up to this time, been mere passive spectators, made the best of their way down the rocks, to take their part in the coming struggle. With a few strokes Alick gained the shallows at the tail of the pool, and as the stream divided into two chief courses, himself commanded one with his spear, and deputed the other to Hugh Ross. Meanwhile, Frank was directing the gillies, who were "poking" the fall and deep water with the long poles we mentioned, a proceeding intended to drive any fish that might be lying about there down to the lower end of the pool, where they would meet the spearmen, or else to take refuge behind the big rocks and boulders, where they might be discovered afterwards. All was noise and eagerness, save with the two spearmen, who, silent as statues, were keenly watching the few yards of clear water in front of them, ready to spring into life the moment they detected the approach of a fish. And as Hugh Ross looked, a black shadow of a sudden swept down with the current before him, and as he moved a step to meet it, whisked away, and shot past him with the arrow-like speed which a salmon, better than any fish that swims, can command; but the active Highlander was a match for the occasion, and with a dexterity which must be seen to be appreciated, gave a backward spring, and struck sharp down with his spear a good two feet in front of his mark; and as he held the struggling fish down by bearing with his whole weight on his weapon, the shaking shaft told of the good quarry he had secured. With a wild shout of triumph Alick rushed to the rescue, and throwing himself down in the water, seized the salmon under the gills, and quickly bore him to land, where Marston's injunction was acted upon, and the crimping-knife brought into play. "Ye took a good shot, too, Mister Alick," said Hugh Ross, looking at the wound behind the head which Gordon had given; "but he was a clean-run fish, and as full of life as a stag in August; and I'm thinking he will not have joost right justice at fifteen pounds' weight." "I'd be sorry to carry him at that weight, Hugh," answered his master. "But all the merit belongs to you, for little should we ever have seen of him again but for that flying shot of yours. However, there he is, and a beautifully-shaped fish too; so tie him up, and let's carry him off to the house, where you'll get glory enough from both Mr Marston and the cook. Come along Frank." So saying, Alick marched away, followed by the rest of the party. On arriving at the lodge, they found that Marston had not yet returned; so it being still early in the day, they debated as to the best method of employing the time yet left them; and as the bright still weather effectually negatived all propositions of going after grouse or taking a cast with a fly in any of the Upper Pools, the suggestion of Hugh Ross who had become unusually keen after his triumph of the morning, to rest till the evening and then make a night of it with the spear at the mouth of the river Arkail, was unanimously adopted. There was a good thirteen miles' walk over the hill between the lodge and the intended scene of the night's operation, but our hardy young sportsmen regarded that only so far as to order their dinner at an earlier hour than usual, so as to start in time in the evening, and employed the intervening period in tying up bundles of fir-splinters to make torches, and in providing themselves with dry suits of clothing, after the wetting they had just received. Shortly before seven o'clock they were ready to start, and having left a note for Marston, who had not yet returned from the hill, they set out, following Hugh Ross in single file, as he led the way over the darkening moor. All were too well accustomed to the work to come to much grief over the broken ground, beyond an occasional stumble or sudden fall as the foot slipped into an unseen hole in the moss; and before long the autumn moon rose full and bright to light their way, promising an idle time of it to the torches, which some of the gillies bore patiently on. It was not yet eleven o'clock when the sportsmen stood on the banks of the Arkail, looking happily across the broad river, which flowed musically over its shallow bed, showing almost clearer in the silver radiance of the moon than in the dazzling splendour which lit it up during the day; but across on the opposite bank the trees which fringed its sides stood out black and heavy as a wall of rock. "What a glorious night!" exclaimed Alick, as the scene first burst upon him. "Look, Frank, away over there where the river runs into the Firth; that bit of it you see by the farthest corner gleams like a sheet of pure silver, and the Inch-na-coul hills look as if they were touched with hoar-frost. Isn't it pretty? and what a night for us! Come on, Hugh and Sandy there, let's be getting to work, but warm the cockles of your heart first with a drop of whisky. Here, try my flask, Hugh. That's right--the same to you, thanks, and good luck to us both," as the forester drank his young master's health; "and I think I shall stay about here with Mr Frank, if you will go a little lower down and post the boys, and tell them to keep a sharp look-out, and mind and 'holloa' in time; and I say, Donald there, don't you be giving us any stones for fish to-night, you rascal." (This was in reference to a false alarm raised on a previous occasion by the unhappy Donald, who had mistaken the ripple caused by a stone lying in the way of the stream for the wake made by a travelling salmon, and had given notice accordingly: and while here, we may explain that the _modus operandi_ in salmon-spearing by night is to post watchers down the bank at regular intervals, who on seeing the wake of a fish going steadily up stream--and remember that salmon only travel or run up a river at night--shout to the spearmen above to give notice, who, being put on the alert, wait till they also see the little wave which marks their prey, and then walk into the river to meet it.) Away went Hugh and his subordinates, leaving the brothers to choose their own positions; and as Alick walked off announcing his intention of crossing the river and taking one of the gillies with him to command the opposite side, Frank remained alone gazing at the running stream before him, and taking stock of all the ripples and eddies caused by the larger stones in the bed of the river, so that in the heat of the moment, when instantly expecting the salmon of which notice might have been given, he might not fall into Donald's error, and confound the inanimate with the living agent. The witching stillness of the night, broken only by the monotonous gurgling of the running waters and the soft whispering of the trees, before long lulled the young watcher into a state of semi-consciousness, in which he sat with open eyes staring forward into the space before him, with a dim remembrance that he was looking out for salmon, and that the white flood beneath him was a river and the appointed subject of his closest observation; but a whole shoal of salmon might have passed and dubbed him wisest of men for the blissful ignorance he would have manifested of their presence, had not a sudden shout of "Mark!" roused him from his somnolence and recalled his wits to full life and activity. With ear and eye painfully alert, he heard the shout taken up by the next gillie, and the sound of his feet over the gravel as he ran along the river's side to keep his prey in view; then the noise of some one cautiously wading out in the water, a sudden rush and splashing, and the next minute a clamour of voices, amongst which he could discern that of Hugh Ross calling for a light; and as he looked far down the stream he saw a torch coming down the bank and borne into the river, and the flare of the smoking pine-wood showed him a dark group standing in the water, and for one moment he fancied he saw the gleam of a fish being lifted out! and then, as the group retreated to the bank, he again distinguished Hugh's voice good-humouredly depreciating his own prowess, by proclaiming the unimportance of his capture, which was "joost a sma' grilse, and no worth the mentionin', an' it were not for makin' up the number." The commotion created by this incident had barely subsided, when again a sharp cry through the stillness of the night announced the approach of another fish, and again Frank heard the warning taken up by one watcher after another, when, as he stayed expecting each instant to hear Hugh anticipate him in the encounter, his eye caught a moving ripple in the water, a small advancing wave tailing into a broad wake, and with a wild feeling of excitement he dropped into the river and waded carefully in to meet it: he was yet six or seven yards above it, as he stood nervously grasping his spear, and still he stood motionless as a statue, till the wave washed up close beside him, when sharp and sudden he launched out his spear--swish!--and the iron rattled on the pebbles in the river, as the salmon dived down beneath the blow which had grazed its back, and shot away up the stream. "Alick, Alick, come here, I'm sure I struck it!" shouted the eager boy, as he rushed headlong after his prey, ever and anon tripping over a stone and falling with a loud splash into the shallow water, which for more than a mile from the mouth of the Arkail was rarely more than three feet deep; but though he every now and then fancied he saw the salmon's wake still bearing on before him, he ran to little purpose but to cover himself with wounds and bruises from head to foot, and was on the very point of giving up his fruitless chase, from sheer exhaustion, when a cry from his brother, sounding ahead of him, urged him on, and as he turned a corner round which the river swept in a sharp curve, he came upon Alick standing near the bank and pinning something down with his spear to the bottom of the water. "Go down and get him under the gills, old boy," was his brother's greeting, as Frank stumbled breathlessly up; "he's a regular monster, and will take you all you know to carry him in; but I think he's your friend, and he will count as yours, if we find your mark on him." "First spear" always counted in the Sunderbunds' (a precedent advanced by the speaker from his reminiscences of pig-sticking in Lower Bengal). "There it is then, Alick," said Frank, as he laid the fish down on the river's bank and pointed to a jagged cut a little behind the dorsal fin. "I did not allow enough in front, and should never have seen him again but for you; but isn't he a thick fellow, and I can answer for his weight already. I shouldn't care about carrying him to the lodge, I know; but I suppose we had better take him back to the others, so we may tie him up, if you have a bit of string with you. Thanks,--that will do capitally." Reader, I hope we have not failed by this time to give you an insight into the mysteries of a sport which, though now defended by stringent penalties, was no unworthy one in its time, requiring, as it did, the utmost dexterity, training, and endurance: three objects which in themselves are sufficient to elevate any pursuit which can promote them, and which many seek to acquire amongst the mountains of Switzerland or the hills of Scotland. In a lesser way, after the fatigues of the London season, the gentler sex strive to attain the same end by walking, riding, sailing, or otherwise recruiting with fresh country air. CARPE DIEM When one gets ever such a little older, one gets very much more disinclined to take much trouble, much physical trouble that is, about hobbies which once were ridden to death. A few years ago it was a pleasure to get up at two o'clock in the morning, and have six hours' fishing before it became necessary to get to work at Blackstone and Chitty, and the endless writing of "common forms"; now I prefer keeping within the sheets until breakfast-time, and leaving fishing expeditions for legitimate holidays. So that, as holidays are not very frequent, and often necessarily taken up in other ways, and as fishing stations are distant, and not easily accessible, my hand is in danger of forgetting its cunning in wielding a fishing-rod. I do not so much miss my favourite sport, until, in an unfortunate hour, I get hold of a book of angling reminiscences, of which there are plenty, and reading in its pages vivid descriptions of days by the riverside, such as I used to experience myself, my fancy sets to work, and, aided by memory, conjures up such delightful visions that at last I cannot sit still; the room, ay, and the town, seem to stifle me, and I long for a glorious ramble, rod in hand, as much as I ever did. Following close upon the perusal of such a book, and the feelings awakened by it, I was pleased beyond measure to find myself possessed of a few days of leisure, and once more in the bonny border land of Wales. I took care to make the most of my time, and seize the opportunity of renewing my acquaintance with some of those charming spots with which, as an angler and a writer, I had in times past identified myself. One day I spent in tracing the wanderings of the burn whence a lusty trout had been transferred to my pannier. Another afternoon I set out for a carp pool, not _the_ carp pool _par excellence_ of our boyish days, but one nearly as good, where I had caught some six-pounders years ago. I walked to the place--it was two miles and a half away--burdened with three rods and a huge bagful of worms, intent upon slaughter. I neared the field, I crossed the hedge. I stood still and gazed in astonishment. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. _There was no pool there._ I walked round the field and across the field, which was strewn with clumps of rushes. A peewit had laid four eggs on the very spot, as I calculated, where I had hooked my biggest carp. A small boy hove in sight. I seized him, and asked him where the pool had gone. He answered, "Whoy, mun, it ha' been drained dry these three years." I sat upon a gate and smoked four cigarettes, then walked home, my rods feeling twice as heavy as when I came that way. I was to be recompensed, however, for my disappointment by a day at the carp pool on the hill at Craigyrhiw, Coed-y-gar, or Penycoed, for it goes by all three names, the first being the most proper. By accident I met an old friend from a distance, who, when he heard where I was bound to, offered to accompany me. I was glad of his companionship for more than one reason. He had affected to disbelieve my accounts of the big fish to be caught there, and this was an opportunity of vindicating myself from the charge of exaggeration. He got his rods and we started, pausing on the way to get a couple of small Melton Mowbray pies for lunch. My friend, whom I shall call A., left the commissariat department to me, and I, having just had a good breakfast, did not contemplate the possibility of becoming very hungry during the day, so considered we should have quite sufficient to recruit ourselves with. Leaving the town, we passed under the beautiful avenue of limes in the churchyard, musical with rooks and sweet with the spring fragrance, and so on to Oswald's Well. Under a tree at this spot King Oswald fell in battle, and out of the ground afterward sprang water, said to be endowed with healing power. The well is neatly arched over with stone, and has an effigy of King Oswald at the back; but the latter offered too good a mark for the stones of the grammar-school lads to remain undefaced. Oswaldestree is now corrupted into Oswestry, or more commonly among the country people, Hogestry or Osistry. Just above the well is the present battle-ground, where affairs of honour among the schoolboys are, or used to be, settled by an appeal to fisticuffs. Crossing Llanvorda Park we enter Craigvorda woods, at once the most beautiful and picturesque of the many similar woods on the borders. The ground is mossy underfoot, the trees meet overhead, glossy green ferns pave the noble corridors, which have for pillars straight and sturdy firs and larch, and for a roof the heavy foliage of interwoven sycamore and oak. At intervals the chestnut too lifts its gigantic nosegay of pink and white and yellow flower-spikes, and near it, out of some craggy knoll, the "lady of the forest," the silver birch, bends tenderly over the masses of blue hyacinths below. "The shade is silent and dark and green, and the boughs so thickly are twined across, that little of the blue sky is seen between;" but there is no lack of blue underfoot, for the hyacinths seem to have claimed the wood as their own property, and shine like a shimmering sea of blue between the tree-stems, quite putting out of countenance with their blaze of colour the modest violet, growing by the side of the runnels leaping downward to join the noisy brook. We crossed the Morda, a purling trout stream, out of which you may easily basket a score of trout in the spring; up a lane, the banks of which were crowded so thickly with spring flowers, starwort, and other snow-white flowers, deep-blue germander speedwells, red ragged robins, and wild geraniums, monkshood, daisies, dandelions, and buttercups, that the green of the leaves and grasses was quite absorbed and lost in the brighter hues; up and up, until our legs began to ache, and at last we came to the crest of the hill, in the hollow a few feet below which lay the tarn, gloomy enough, but weirdly beautiful. The water itself looked green from the prevailing colour of the rushes and flags, and the deep belt of green alders, which grew half in and half out of it all round. "Look," I said, "there are two herons, a couple of wild-ducks, with their young brood just hatched, twenty or thirty coots and waterhens, and some black leaves sticking up out of the water, which are the things we are after." "What do you mean?" asked A. "They are the back fins of carp." A.'s rods--he had two, as I had--were put together with remarkable quickness. I took it more leisurely, and watched him searching about for a place to cast his line in, with some amusement. "I say, how are we to get at the water?" he cried. "Wade." But this he was averse to doing. He found a log of wood, and pushing it out beyond the bushes, where it was very shallow, he took his stand upon it in a very wobbley state, with a rod in either hand. I took up a position a short distance from him, and we waited patiently for half an hour without a bite. Suddenly I heard a splash, and looking round, saw that A. had slipped off his perch, and was halfway up to his knees in water, with a broken rod and a most rueful expression on his face. "I have lost such a beauty." "Serves you right. You can't pitch a big carp out like you could a trout. This is the way--see." I struck at a decided bite, and found that I was fast in a good fish, which, after a lively bit of splashing and dashing about (the water was only knee-deep, though so muddy the fish could not see us), I led into a little haven or pond, where the inmates of a cottage in the wood came to get their water, and lifted him out with my hands--a tidy fish of three pounds in weight. In about a quarter of an hour A.'s float moved slightly. He was all excitement directly. He had never caught anything larger than a half-pound trout. Some minutes elapsed before another movement took place. "He has left it," said A. "No, he has not. Don't move; you will get him presently." Then the float or quill gave a couple of dips; then in a few seconds more moved off with increasing rapidity. "Now strike." A. did so, and soon landed a carp of two pounds. From that time we had steady sport throughout the day. Every quarter of an hour one of us had a bite; and although we missed a good many through striking too soon, our respective heaps of golden-brown fish (very few of the carp there are at all white) grew rapidly in size. As we were coming back from a small larch-tree where we had found a beautifully constructed golden-crested wren's nest, suspended from the under side of a branch, A. suddenly clasped me round the middle, and gave me a very neat back throw. "Hullo! what's that for?" I exclaimed, considerably astonished as I sat on the ground. "Your foot was just poised over that beggar," he said, pointing to a big brown adder, which was gliding away like an animated ash-stick. "Ah, thanks; there are too many of those fellows here." We had eaten the two pies, and as four o'clock drew near we got mighty hungry again. "Just hand me over another pie, old fellow, Nature abhors a vacuum," said A. "I haven't got any more," I answered. "Not got any more? O dear!" After a pause, "I _am_ hungry." In a little while longer A. started off, saying, "You mind my rod while I am away. I am going foraging for food. I'll try and catch a rabbit, and eat him alive, oh! I've been meditating upon those fish, but I don't like the look of them." He was gone for about half an hour, during which time I had landed three fish. When he came back he had the countenance of a man who had dined well. He said to me, "Go as straight as you can through the wood in that direction, and you will come to a cottage where there is plenty of hot tea, a loaf of bread, and some butter awaiting you. I never dined better in all my life, and I forgive you for only bringing two pies." I obeyed his directions, and the tea certainly was refreshing, although I could not get any sugar with it. It was time to be going. We counted our fish. I had eleven (my usual number at that pool, by the way), and A. had ten, most from two to three pounds each, but one or two heavier. We selected the best, and as many as we could conveniently carry, and gave the rest to some cottagers. From the shooting-box, which is at the top of the hill, and is, by the way, in a state of dilapidation, we had a most magnificent view, one well worth the walk to see. It was a view which embraced Shropshire, Cheshire, Montgomeryshire, Denbighshire, and Merionethshire. In the vividly green valley below us the little village of Llansilin slumbered, scarcely noticeable were it not for the dark and massy yew-trees in its churchyard. From the rocks farther on we saw a pretty sight. A fox was standing on a stone, and on a sloping slab beneath her five cubs were sprawling and gambolling about like a lot of Newfoundland puppies. Presently the vixen trotted off a little way and lay down; and while we were watching her a rabbit popped out of his burrow, and came several yards towards Reynard without seeing her. With one bound fox was upon bunny, and the pair rolled over and over down the hill. The captor then slunk off with her captive, not to her young ones, but to a quiet hole in the cliff, to have a gorge all by her greedy self. In a hollow tree in the cliff we found three jackdaws' nests, each with four eggs in; and we were amused at watching a woodpecker tapping away at a tree. The noise produced was like that made by drawing a stick very rapidly over some wooden palings, and quite as loud, or even more like a watchman's rattle worked rather slowly. A curious spectacle was presented in the lane on going home. It was a warm damp night, and every dozen yards or so a glowworm exhibited its eerie light, and each successive one seemed to shine more whitely and brightly than the last. The day was done, its pleasure seized, and--no, not gone, for a pleasant memory remains wherewith to delight myself, and perchance please my friends, among whom I would fain number all angling readers. NEWMARKET BY CAPTAIN R. BIRD THOMPSON Newmarket is termed, and justly so, the metropolis of racing, but a greater contrast than Newmarket presents during the race-weeks and the rest of the year can scarcely be imagined. Any one who stood on the top of the hill on the Cambridge road, and looked down the main street, in one of the off-weeks, would think that he had hardly ever seen such a desolate forsaken-looking sort of place; the only living things to be seen being a few old women standing at the corners of the streets scratching their elbows, and two or three lads lounging about. Occasionally a tradesman will come out of his shop, and, after looking disconsolately up and down the street, will go and look into his own shop-window; his idea being, I suppose, either to see if he can dress his window more attractively, or that he would rather stare into his own shop-window than that nobody at all should; and the only way you would discover you were in a great racing district would be that you might see a string of sheeted racers passing through the street on their way from their training-grounds to their stables; or if you listened to the old women's or lads' conversation you would hear nothing but about some of the numerous trainers' "lots." The number of empty houses, too, and the bills of auction sales you see posted up everywhere with "In re" So-and-so in the corner, or "By order of the Sheriff," add to the desolateness of the scene. But during the race-weeks all this is altered, and the scene is as exciting and enlivening as it was dull before; the pavements crowded with men, two huge masses on each side, at the Rooms and White Hart, reminding one strongly of the way bees hang out of their hives previous to swarming. The inhabitants, too, erect stalls down both sides of the street, where all sorts of things are exposed for sale--fruit and vegetables of every kind, and amongst these hampers of a curious vegetable believed by the aborigines to be cucumbers, but to an uninstructed eye looking like a cross between a pumpkin and a hedgehog, so yellow and prickly are they; large baskets of mushrooms, those esculents which once cost the late Lord George Bentinck so dearly, and which he ever after cursed so heartily. There are stalls also where clothes and boots are sold, besides others where very dubious-looking confectionery is dealt in, and one I saw which had plates of yellow snail-looking things for sale. I do not know whether racegoers are supposed to eat these things, but if they do they must have uncommonly strong stomachs. Vehicles of every sort and shape are plying for hire in the street, all of that wonderful kind that seem peculiar to race-meetings, regattas, &c., and which fill a person with wonder to think where they could have been made, and what they were originally intended for. Newmarket is, indeed, worth seeing on the morning of one of the big days, like the Cambridgeshire, to form any idea of the enormous multitude of people attending. It is well worth while to get into the stand at the end of the Rowley Mile as soon as you can, and a most wonderful sight it is to see the huge and incessant mass of people pouring down the side of the course from the old stand; one unbroken stream, many yards wide, and apparently never ending, yet perfectly quiet and orderly; no rough horseplay or rowdyism; composed of men who come for racing, and nothing else. An almost equally large string of vehicles pours down the road, the full ones getting along as fast as they can manage, and those that have discharged their loads galloping back in hopes of fresh fares. The natural idea of anyone attending for the first time is that there will be an awful crush; but such is the excellence of Newmarket as a racecourse that there is none whatever, and every one, either on foot or in the stand, can see every race from start to finish, with the exception of those run on the Cesarewitch course, and then no one can see the horses until they come into the straight, with the exception of a bare sight of the start, and a glimpse of them as they pass the Gap, which may be caught by keen-eyed people in the stand. It is really extraordinary to see how the immense crowd that you behold coming seems to dissipate, so that there does not appear to be any very great multitude of people until the races are over, and you turn home; then you see how enormous the numbers have been, there being a complete block of people from the course right through the town, and even up to the station. The stand is, as usual, divided into three portions--one for members of the Jockey Club, the second Tattersall's, and the third for the general public; the two last named are generally full, as all the principal bookmakers assemble here. There is comparative quiet until the numbers for the first race are put up--the only noise to be remarked is the voice of some bookmaker offering to bet on some big race to come; but suddenly a peculiar creaking is heard, and a frame rises above the building next to the trainers' stand, with the numbers of the horses starting, and the names of jockeys. There is then a dead silence for a minute or so, whilst people are marking their cards, and next a perfect storm of "four to one, bar one!" or whatever the odds may be, rises from the ring, deafening and utterly bewildering the novice. This storm lasts, if it is not a heavy betting race, not only until the horses are at the post, but even as they are running, and some insane individuals actually offer to bet as to what horse has won after they have passed the post. But if there has been heavy betting a dead silence is maintained in the ring from the time the horses get to the starter until they have passed the post; this was most remarkably illustrated on the last Cambridgeshire day. From the time the horses got to the starting-post until the race was finished, though there was a delay of three-quarters of an hour, owing to some of the horses repeatedly breaking away, not a sound was heard in the ring; the silence was almost oppressive. Sometimes when a complete outsider wins, whose name has never been written down by the book-makers, the more excitable of them throw up their hats and cheer loudly; but as a body they are a most impassive set of men, and you could never tell by their faces whether they had lost or won. Very curious are they in another way: they never seem to, and I suppose really do not, care a bit about the horses themselves; many of them not even looking at them when they are running, merely glancing at the winning numbers when put up. They do not appear to be guided in their bets by any regard to the condition of the horses, state or length of the course, or their previous performances, but on what they imagine to be the intentions of the stable to which they belong; and sometimes they seem to suppose that certain horses take it in turns to win, and back them accordingly, quite independently of the condition of the horse itself. A remarkable instance of this occurred at one Houghton Meeting, in the All-aged Stakes: only two horses were left in for them, Ecossais and Trappist, the former with three pounds the best of the weights. It is true they had run in and out in a very curious way, and this time the bookmakers declared "it was Trappist's turn," and backed him accordingly, giving odds against the other. When they passed the stand on their way to the starting-post, Trappist was going along with his head in the air, fighting with his bit, and with the stiltiest stiffest action possible; Ecossais cantering by his side as pleasantly as a lady's hack. But in spite of this, though it must have been evident to anyone that Trappist did not intend to try, and was thoroughly sulky, yet the bookmakers gave him all their support because "it was his day." As was to be expected, Ecossais came right away from him, winning easily; and great was their wrath. The principal bookmakers have their regular stations in the ring, where they can be readily found by their customers; and as they stand there with a pleasant smile on their faces, the old nursery rhyme, "Ducky, ducky, ducky, come and be killed," always comes forcibly into my mind. A very clever-looking set of men they are, and some of them have really intellectual faces. Most wonderful calculators they are too; the power they have to tell at a glance how much they have got in their books, and the way in which they can subdivide the odds at a moment's notice, is most extraordinary. A marked contrast to these great bookmakers are the small would-be bookmakers, who rush all about the ring, bothering anyone they see who has been betting or they think likely to bet, offering the most absurd odds as an inducement. The first day of any race-meeting these gentry abound; but by the end of the week most of them have disappeared, having retired, I suspect, into the outer ring, and here rascality does flourish. Strangely enough, in passing through it, you seem to be familiar with most of the betting men's faces, but you cannot at first remember where you have seen them previously; when suddenly it flashes across you that you saw most of these faces, or their own brothers', in the dock at the last criminal assizes; or if you have been over Portland or Dartmoor prisons, or any of those sort of places, that you have seen them there. How so many of them exist seems hard to discover; but I suspect whenever they have drawn their victims sufficiently, as they consider, they bolt before the race comes off. Another kind of swindling has arisen lately. You are perhaps standing somewhere in the ring, when you discover a person is talking to you, and saying that "Of course you have been backing our stable." You look at him with some surprise, as he is a complete stranger to you; whereupon the man, who is usually tolerably well dressed, and tries to look like a gentleman, apologises for his mistake, "thought you were So-and-so." But, however, he keeps on talking, and you cannot shake him off. At length he declares he knows a _certainty_ for the next race, which you must back, and bothers you so that, to get rid of him for the time, you give him some money to invest, which he does; and the tip turning out correct, as it very often does, you get your money--for the man has no intention of bolting, it would not answer his purpose. But you shortly find out what has occurred, and how you have been done. After the race you compare notes with your friends, feeling rather proud of winning. They ask the price you got, and you say, "O, 4 to 1." "4 to 1?" say they; "why, his price was 7 to 1." And then the murder comes out; the scamp got 7 to 1 safe enough, so that he comfortably pocketed the three extra points, and in this way, until detected, doubtless makes a very nice thing of it. But he does not often succeed in drawing the same man twice; and if you take his "tip," and then insist on getting the odds yourself, his blank face of disgust is very amusing; but he takes care not to let you do this a second time. At the Spring and Houghton Meetings great amusement is derived from the strong "'Varsity" contingent; these youths appearing in great force, got up in the correctest of sporting costumes; some even going so far as breeches and boots, though they do not as a rule trust themselves astride a horse at the races, and certainly they get all the excitement they can require in the short drive from the turn-pike, just off the Cambridge road, down to the stand. Up to this point, as the road has been wide and the vehicles not numerous, their erratic mode of driving has not been of much importance; but here, when they get into the stream of cabs, &c., going down to the stand, nothing but a 'Varsity hack in a 'Varsity dog-cart could save them from total and irremediable grief. But it _is_ a sight to see the knowing old hack seize the bit between his teeth, and getting his head well down, so as to neutralise any well-meaning but ill-directed attempt at guidance, tear down full speed, close in rear of some galloping cab, and land his passengers, in spite of their exertions, all safe, but rather scared, at the stand. Then the reckless way these youths bet! To hear them talk, you would think they were more up in racing matters than the oldest member of the Jockey Club, instead of being utterly ignorant of the respective horses, owners, jockeys, or performances; their actual knowledge never extending to more than the horses' names, and very often not so far as that even. The amount of "tips" they have is something wonderful, supplied by their "gyps," I should imagine; and the best thing one can hope for is, that these gentry may be paid by a percentage on their master's winnings, for in this case I think the perennial fountain of tips would soon dry up. It is very curious to look down from the stand on to the outer ring just previously to the starting of the race. You see nothing but a dense mass of closely-packed hats, and little puffs of smoke rising all over the mass, making it look just as if it was smouldering, and might be expected to break out into flames at any moment. One thing that makes Newmarket so enjoyable is that there is no need of dressing to within an inch of your life, as you have to do at Ascot and Goodwood. You see men in comfortable morning and shooting-coats, Norfolk shirts, or any other kind of loose and easy attire; any one almost who appeared in a frock-coat and topper would be looked on with the greatest suspicion. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Many ladies do not appear here--about a dozen or so in the Jockey Club stand, and a very few in carriages, are all who attend; but those who are present seem to enjoy the racing thoroughly, as they too are dressed reasonably, and are not in continual misery through fear of a shower, or that the splendour of their costume may be eclipsed by the superior elegance of a rival, as is too often the case on other racecourses. It is, indeed, a curious thing to notice how very few ladies or women at all attend; even the wives and daughters of the neighbouring farmers are not present, though there are a very sporting lot of them in the district. In the morning, before racing commences, you do not see any women at all about in the streets, with the exception of the few who keep the fruit and vegetable stalls in the main street. I have mentioned previously the wonderful edibles offered for sale in the town; but those brought on to the Heath are stranger still, the chief of them consisting of acid-drops and butter-scotch. You meet vendors of these everywhere; and, stranger still, actually see grown men buying them. Whether they think they will bring them "luck"--and there is scarcely anything a regular "turfite" would not do if he thought it would bring him luck--or whether they imagine the taste of juvenile luxuries will restore the innocence of their youth, I do not know; but that they buy them and actually eat them is an undoubted fact. Apples, too, are sold; and once I saw a man selling prawns in the stand itself. Now fresh prawns for breakfast are very nice, and so is prawn-curry; but wind- and sun-dried prawns offered for consumption by themselves in the middle of the day are not very inviting, and I did not see anyone buy them. At the railway station also, when you are returning, you find a lot of women hawking ducks and chickens about, but I never saw anybody buy them. Indeed, it would be rather puzzling to know what to do with one if you did purchase it. You could not open your trunk and put it in; and if you did, I do not think it would travel well with your shirts, &c.; and to sit with a dead duck in your lap the whole way back to down would be trying. Most interesting it is to go in the early morning to the training-grounds, and look at the racers at exercise. Here you see them in every stage, from the yearling just being led about quietly with a lunging rein on to the adult racer taking his final spin, previously to competing for some stake, and a finer spectacle than this last cannot be seen: the magnificent animal in perfect condition, his satin coat, showing the play of the muscles underneath, striding along at his top speed, untouched by whip or spur, is a perfect picture of beauty. You see many people out watching the horses, some merely through fondness for horseflesh, but many of the genus "tout." How people can be found weak enough to believe in their "tips" it is hard to conceive; for if a "trial" is properly managed, and the stable secrets well kept, not even the lads themselves know the weights the horses are run at, or even the exact distance, so the "tips" of these gentry must be the veriest guesses possible. They adopt wonderful disguises, under the fallacious idea that they shall not be detected. There is one constantly to be seen got up as a clergyman of the Church; and really, if you judged him by a passing glance, you would think he was some indefatigable pastor going to visit some sick member of his flock; but if you looked closely at him, you would see that if he had a flock it would be uncommonly closely shorn. He might more correctly be termed "a Baptist," so often has he received the rite by total immersion in a horse-pond, stable-lads being the officiating ministers, and the frogs at the bottom his sponsors. But there is "a thorn in every rose," and there is a very large one at Newmarket in the shape of a church, with a squat square tower containing a peal of the most abominable bells in England, I should think; they are all about a semitone out of tune, and the effect is aggravating past description--far worse than the ding-dong-spat of the three bells you so often hear in old-fashioned village churches, where two of the bells have no relation in tone to one another, and the third is cracked. These wretched things jangle and clash for, I should think, half an hour every day about eleven; and I find the idea among the aborigines is that they are playing a tune, but the effect of the performance on a musical ear is excruciating. But, apart from this, few pleasanter places can be found at which to pass some days than Newmarket during a fine autumn meeting. One word in conclusion. If anyone intends to bet at Newmarket, never take a Newmarket "tip" unless it is very strongly corroborated elsewhere; for the true Newmarket man firmly believes, in spite of all facts to the contrary, that no horse can win unless it has been trained there, and would rather back the veriest rip in existence hailing from headquarters than the best possible racer trained elsewhere. KATE'S DAY WITH THE OLD HORSE "Yes, Kate, we are as nearly as possible 'stone broke,' as your brother would say. The time seems to have come, my girl, when 'honour may be deemed dishonour, loyalty be called a crime,' at any rate in Ireland; and as we can't make our tenants pay rent, we must go." The speaker was a massive-looking old gentleman with clean-cut, weather-beaten features, and a heavy white moustache. He had drawn his chair away from the breakfast table, and was still knitting his brows over his morning letters. Poor old Lowry, like his fathers before him, had lived out of doors amongst his own tenantry all his life, with a joke and a half-crown for anyone who wanted them. Almost all the harm he had ever done was to win a heart or two which he did not want, or drink a glass or two more than was good for him. For forty years he had paid rates and taxes, acted conscientiously as a magistrate, and filled several other onerous but unpaid offices for his Queen and such as are put in authority under her; he had drunk her health loyally every night since he first learnt to drink strong drink, and would have "knocked sparks out of" anyone who had spoken disrespectfully of her before him; and now the property which his fathers had honestly earned was left at the mercy of a league of avowed rebels, and he himself was branded as an enemy of the people. Had he and such as he been left to defend themselves, they would long ago have put an end to these enemies of honest men and of the State, but their hands were tied. They were bidden to wait for help, but no help came. Lowry was still too loyal to murmur openly against the Government which had ruined him, but he had just realized that their name and their loyalty were almost the only things left to him and Kate, his daughter, who sat playing nervously with an empty envelope and gazing out blankly and sadly upon the old park she loved until her deep blue eyes filled unconsciously with tears. But Kate was not the girl to indulge in tears when a difficulty had to be met, and in ten minutes she had mastered her emotion and was walking with her father to the stables, gravely discussing affairs with the stalwart old man, more like one man with another than like a young girl with her father. "So the horses are to go up next week, Dad, are they? It is a bit of a wrench to say good-bye to you, Val," said the girl, as she laid her hand lovingly on the neck of a great up-standing chestnut, "but you are good enough to find yourself a situation, my boy. Father, though, what about Joe? We could not let him go into a cab, and he is too old for anything better." "True, Kate, and I can't bear to shoot the old fellow, and yet what are _we_ to do with a pensioner now?" "Shoot him! No, father, we'll keep the bullets for other billets. A loyal servant and friend like Joe has as much claim on you as your daughter has; and whilst we have bread and cheese we can find Joe in fodder. Poor old fellow, I believe he would rather eat his litter with us than old oats in a strange stable." It was a pretty picture, let latter day æsthetes deny it if they will--the tall, strong girl, natural and unaffected, not a bit angelic, but very womanly, caressing the old horse, who lowered his head to meet her caresses, and shoved his honest old nose against her cheek. And Kate was right. It _is_ a hard thing that a horse who has risked his neck a thousand times for his master, who has never known fear or spared himself in that master's service, should be thought only fit for a bullet when his limbs and wind begin to fail. We pension the half-hearted human servants, we destroy the whole-hearted beasts who have worn out their youth and strength prematurely in our employ. "How are you going to keep Joe, if I let you try, Kate?" "Well, father, I ought to be able to make a pound a month by needlework, Christmas cards, and so forth; there is a bit of land at the cottage, so that turned out on that in summer and not much worked in winter, Joe need not cost much to keep, and I'll groom him myself." "And what would the London aunts say to that, Kate?" laughed the squire. Kate put a hand trustingly on the old man's shoulder as she answered smiling, "The London aunts say a good many things, Dad, which I don't agree with, and you only pretend to, you know. Aunt Dorothy prefers her carpets to sunshine, at least she keeps her rooms dark all day for fear the sun should spoil their colours." "I thought it was her colour which the sun spoilt, Kate?" Kate laughed, and with a squeeze of her father's arm and a saucy nod, flitted off to see to some member of her animal kingdom. Luckily for the Irish, they take trouble well, and though skinning is an unpleasant process, they soon get used to it. * * * * * Three months after the events recorded in the preceding paragraphs, Kate and her father were living at what had been their agent's cottage, a tiny house with stabling for one horse. The Lowry's agent was now Colonel Lowry himself, and his daughter (the best and straightest lady rider in Gonaway) had laid aside her habit as a souvenir of happier days. At the Hall a rich Londoner had replaced the old squire (as his tenant), and a London young lady inflicted agony on the mouths of such horses as she rode, and never disgraced her sex by an after-breakfast visit to the stables. Instead of the laughter of that tom-boy Kate, highly finished performances on the piano frightened the blackbirds off the lawn, and instead of jokes and half-crowns from a poor but warm-hearted native, the peasantry now received pamphlets on market gardening and threepenny pieces from an alien millionaire. * * * * * "Molly says they have just shot 'the Laurels' for the seventh time this year, and there's not a hen pheasant left on the estate." "Never mind, father, it won't matter to us. Mr Preece will have some more down from Leadenhall Market or some such place next year; and, after all, they pay our rent for us, and we couldn't live without them." "Pay the rent," grumbled the squire; "I could have done that myself, if I'd sold all the game, and never given a head to man or woman on the place." "Then why didn't you, Dad?" "Why didn't I, girl? Well then, it's just because I suppose I've always belonged to 'the stupid party,' thank God for it." Poor old Lowry was a red-hot Tory, without any Liberal instincts whatever, a fact which sufficiently accounted for the mess he had made of his life. And yet, somehow, the men who dared still to touch their hats to this reprehensible old robber of the public lands, did so with a smile in their eyes more hearty than the smirk they gave to his successor, Mr Preece. Since the first day we met her, a change has come over Kate. The grey-blue eyes are just as beautiful, but there is less sparkle in them; the lips are just as sweet, sweeter it may be, but the dimple has gone. In the last few months she has seen more of the seamy and shabby side of life than she had even guessed at in the twenty sunny years which went before. I don't think the squire has any suspicion of it, and Kate has neither mother nor sister to tell it to, but her poor little heart has had its stoutness tried a good deal of late. When Kate was queen at the Hall, gallant George Vernon, somewhile captain of Hussars, and at present master of the hounds and Kate's very distant cousin, had remembered the tie of kinship to the bright young beauty quite as often as duty required. Now his visits were like angel's visits in number and, to the proud Kate, far less welcome. George Vernon was no snob, but then Kate, the hostess at the Hall, the reigning queen in the hunting-field, and Kate without a horse to her name, in a cottage and out of the world altogether, were very different persons, and George unconsciously showed that he felt the change. Though man is fickle, perhaps George would not have allowed his admiration for his cousin to cool so suddenly had there not been attractions elsewhere. Miss Preece (the daughter of the new tenant at the Hall) would have passed as a pretty woman anywhere. If lemon-coloured locks, an abundant fringe, bright colour, and the full, tempting figure of a young Juno, make beauty, then Polly Preece was a belle. If reckless riding and a smart habit make a horsewoman, Polly Preece was a very Amazon. True she had never had a fall; true her horses cost three hundred guineas apiece, and were clever enough to jump through hoops at a circus, even though they had ten stone of fair humanity hung on to their tortured mouths; and true, too, that though Polly laughed often (and showed in doing so as dazzling a set of teeth as ever disappointed a dentist), few people owed even a smile to any wit of hers. But the Bruisers (as the men of the Gonaway hounds were called) voted her a right good sort, if only she would give them a little more time at their fences and not always pick the tenderest part of a man to jump upon. George Vernon did the civil at first as Master. In a week's time he was her pilot, and in a month half a dozen of the Bruisers were sadly afraid that he would ere long be her husband, thereby robbing them of the greatest prize in the local market of matrimony and of the merriest bachelor in the hunt. As for George himself, he thought honestly enough that the Preece girl was "very good fun," but if he could have had her dollars without her he would have been a happy man. Unfortunately, circumstances, especially the bills connected with the maintenance of a crack pack of fox-hounds, were beginning to impress upon him more and more the necessity for converting Miss Preece into a connecting link between himself and her papa's money bags. This was, roughly, the state of affairs on Monday, November 2nd, 1885, the first regular meet of the Bruisers for the season. It was a time-honoured custom that the first meet should be held at the Hall, and though the master of the house who had entertained them so often was there no longer, still the house stood and the custom remained. * * * * * "I suppose you would hardly care to go to the meet to-day, Dad?" queried Kate at breakfast. "Not go to the meet, girl, after keeping the old tryst so many years, why not?" "Oh, I don't know, only I thought you might not." "What, because another fellow provides the sherry and is master at the Hall? Of course I don't like it, but providing he does not give the men Hamburg stuff, I'll go and be thankful to him for doing what I can no longer afford to do. Put on a leather petticoat, little woman, and we'll run with them since we can't ride." I think the old man struck the match to light his pipe a shade more viciously than was necessary, but he never winced, though he was perhaps remembering another 2nd of November when the little woman was yet unborn, and he himself on the best horse in the country was as good a man "as ever holloaed to a hound," and in one fair woman's eyes the best. Suddenly he put down his pipe and called, "Kate." "Yes, father." "Come down again for a minute." "All right, in half a second;" and almost as soon as she had promised Kate was in the room again. "What is your will, sir?" said she with a little mocking courtesy. "Why, child, I was thinking that you at any rate might ride to the meet. Your habit is packed away somewhere; Joe looked yesterday as fit as paint, and, as Tim expressed it, 'is brimful of consate.' I declare he has waxed fat and kicks, to the serious detriment of his old tumble-down box." "No, father, if you don't ride, I shan't. If you run, so shall I." "Do as you are bid, Kate, or rather, since you never do that, ride if it is only half-a-dozen fences, just to please your old father, and to show that young woman at the Hall the difference between riding and being carried, between hands and paws." Those who loved Kate best would always have been the first to admit that she had just "the laste bit of the divvle in her, God bless her," and hence it was perhaps that her father's diplomatic suggestion as to the eclipse of her rival brought the colour to her cheek and the light to her eyes. "Do you really want me to, father?" "Really, really, Kate, and now let us go and have a look at Joe." * * * * * I am ashamed to say how old Joe was. Like ladies, horses don't care to have their ages published on every house-top, and though they cannot lie for themselves on this important point, they have no difficulty in finding many to lie for them. Joe was said to have been eight when the Lowrys bought him, and they had ridden the gallant brown for seven years. But eight is a queer age in a horse, as expansive and uncertain as the adjective "young" when applied to spinsters. At the lowest computation Joe was not less than fifteen, and a "vet." who wanted to buy him once pledged his professional credit that he was twenty-six at least. Be this as it may, when an hour later he walked out of his loose box, he looked the very type and _beau idéal_ of a twelve-stone hunter. From the carriage of his lean game head and trimly-docked tail, from the cheery snort with which he welcomed the fresh air, from the muscle on his square and massive quarters, from his hard, clean legs and full, bold eye, you might have fancied he was a six-year-old. A veteran strapper who had followed the squire from the Hall to the cottage, had spent an hour in dressing the old horse, and the squire's own hands had put the finishing touches to his toilette. Proud and gay the old rascal looked before his mistress mounted, but when she was in the saddle he gave one wild kick from mere exuberance of spirits and then trotted out of the yard, as old Tim expressed it, "for all the world as if he was tridding on eggs." * * * * * "Ye gods! she is a dazzler! Quite takes my breath away," said a shiny-hatted, faultlessly-breeched stranger from Dublin to a young local Nimrod; "why, there are not half-a-dozen girls, even with the Meath, who have ventured out yet in Busvine's scarlet array, and here is a young lady in the wilds of Gonaway with a seat like a sack of potatoes and raiment more magnificent than Solomon in all his glory." "Fits her well for all that, and suits her style, milk and roses and that sort of thing, you know," replied the local, himself rather a captive to the fair equestrienne. "Milk and roses! Milk and fiddlestick! Lemon and white I should describe her if she was in the setter class; but tell me, who is she, and has she any money?" Needless, perhaps, to explain that poor Polly Preece was the subject of this irreverent banter, which in a measure perhaps she had deserved, for though a pretty woman in "the lady's pink" is a fair picture in a showy frame, she must not be hurt if she is a little stared at on her first appearance. And, indeed, Polly was not hurt. On the contrary she was flattered and in high spirits. Her new jacket fitted her to perfection; her horse was well-mannered and easy to ride; she had drawn the attention of every one to her sweet self, and she felt for the moment that "blues" or fear had for her neither existence nor meaning. A large group of late comers was still standing in the doorway and on the broad steps of the hall, chaffing each other or pledging their host in a last stirrup cup. "What is that madcap daughter of mine about now?" exclaimed old Preece, as Polly broke from the throng and sent her horse along over the turf at a rattling gallop, followed by two or three of her admirers. From the steps to the line of elms no fence was visible to the spectators, and yet before reaching the avenue, three of the horses rose at something, and the fourth and his rider seemed to be swallowed up. "Good heavens! young Voyle is down in the Park fence," cried Preece; and sure enough the exquisite from Dublin shortly after emerged from the abyss, his hat crushed, his breeches smirched, and his temper somewhat soured by the loss of a good horse. "Really, Mr Preece, you must curb that young lady's pluck; she will break her neck some day if you don't take care," suggested an elderly friend. "Break her neck," growled old Preece; "it isn't pluck, it is folly; wait until she has had a fall; you'll see she will learn better." Kate had been sitting a quiet spectator of this little episode, though the old horse had backed and fidgetted with impatient desire to join in the fun. As Polly rode back from the fence she caught sight of Kate, and with that sweetness which women show to rivals they detest, wreathed her face in smiles and laid a caressing hand on Joe's mane. "Oh, Kate, how glad I am to see you out! I wish, dear, you had let me know that you meant to come. You might have ridden Dennis or my bay. I am afraid your dear old horse is almost past work now!" "Doesn't look like it, does he, Miss Preece?" retorted Kate, as Joe champed his bit and pawed the velvet turf. Polly hated to be called Miss Preece by Kate, and would fain have passed for her bosom friend; but Kate unfortunately chose her own friends for herself, and Polly was not of them. "Cousin Kate is a rare believer in the old horse," remarked George Vernon as he joined the two girls. "Yes," assented Polly, "your cousin is a very antiquary; she likes everything that is old, and only what is old. She has even spoken slightingly of this miracle of Mr Busvine's. From politics to petticoats, Miss Lowry is a Tory, like her father!" "I admit all you say, Miss Preece, and glory in it. I do prefer old habits, sartorial and otherwise, to any others." There was a deepening in the blue of Kate's eyes as this word-play went on, which looked as if she was more than half in earnest. "Well, I don't agree with you, and for the sake of example I will back my young chestnut against your veteran in the field to-day," quoth Polly. "Oh, come, Miss Preece, that's hardly fair," broke in George; six against twenty-six, isn't it, Kate?" "It may be, Cousin George, but the old horse can quite take care of himself, thank you. Yes, I'll match my old one against your chestnut, owners up; who is to be judge?" "Would you mind, Captain Vernon?" pleaded Polly. "No, certainly. What are the stakes?" "Oh, say a pair of gloves; I am too much of a pauper to make the bet in dozens," replied Kate, and so the bet was made. * * * * * The morning was a bright one, with a touch of hoar frost on the grass, which none but the early risers saw. At 11.15 the rime had all gone, and the air was as "balmy as May," the sun shone brightly, and men's spirits were as brilliant as the weather. But the first draw was a long one, and a blank. The second was like it, and again no noisy note replied to what Captain Pennell Elmhirst calls "the huntsman's tuneful pleading." Faces began to lengthen. A blank at Tod Hall had never been heard of in the memory of man. The gentlemen in velveteen who had taken a somewhat prominent part in the morning's proceedings had disappeared by noon, and men spoke disparagingly of the race which some sportsmen aver is a compound of policeman and poacher. It was easy by two o'clock to tell the men who rode horses from those who only "talked horse." The "customers" were all looking grim and silent; the men of the road were brightly conversational, and sat in groups discussing their cigars and whisky flasks at every point from which they could not possibly see, should the hounds slip quietly and suddenly away. The little group near the corner of the covert had grown weary of waiting. The glow which follows a sharp trot to covert on your favourite hack, and the consumption of "just one glass" of orange brandy, had worn off, and the damp chill of a November afternoon had begun to pierce through the stoutest of pinks and to chill the gayest of hearts. The horses had fretted themselves into a white lather with impatience, or stood with drooping heads and staring coats, mute witnesses to the chill which had come with afternoon and hope deferred. Everything suggested that fox-hunting was an overrated amusement. Little by little the hounds had drawn away from the Hall and its overstocked coverts, until now, at 2 P.M., they were thrown into a small outlying wood, where pheasants were never reared and rarely shot. At last there was a doubtful whimper; then a hard-looking man in mufti (a local horse dealer) stood up in his stirrups and held his hat high above his head. A dozen keen pair of eyes saw the signal, and though no foolish halloa imperilled their chance of a run, the light and colour came back into the men's faces, and they forgot in a moment the miseries of the morning as they marked the lithe red form of reynard steal out of covert, and with a whisk of his grey-tagged brush, make off leisurely, with his head set straight for the stiffest line in the county. By this time the first doubtful whimper had been caught up and repeated in fuller and more certain tones, and there was little need of the horn to call loiterers from covert. One after another the beauties tumbled out in hot haste, hackles up. For one moment each seemed to dwell as he cleared the brakes, and then with a rush they gathered to where old Monitor had the line under the lee of a grey stone wall, along which the whole pack glanced, swift and close packed as wild fowl on the wing, while the keen November air thrilled with the maddest, merriest music that ever made a sportsman's blood tingle in his veins. The wild freshness of the morning, with its bright sunshine, had given place to frost, and men settled grimly down to their work with the conviction that with such a burning scent and an afternoon fox few would live with hounds to the finish. The field was never a large one from the start. None but those who got away at once had a chance of seeing the run, for the first mile was ridden at racing pace over a lovely grass country, with nothing to stop hounds or men save low stone walls, over which they slipped without a rattle like the phantoms of a dream. Amongst those still with hounds at the end of the first mile were the two ladies and the master. Polly's red jacket had followed George Vernon as the needle follows the magnet--a little too closely, perhaps, for the comfort of the magnet. Kate had been in trouble on the right, her old horse, fresh and mad with excitement and out of temper with the long restraint of the morning, had got his ears laid flat back and the bit in his teeth. For the moment the temperate habits of past years were forgotten, and poor Kate, with arms aching and powerless, felt herself flashing over stout stone walls at a pace which would have been dangerous over sheep hurdles. Polly's chestnut, on the contrary, was behaving in a manner which would have done credit to the best horse in Galway or with the Heythrop, steadying himself at every wall and popping over with the least possible exertion to himself or risk to his rider. And now five of the "pursuers" were in one field, grass beneath their feet and a fair stone wall without a gap in it in front. All except Polly probably noticed the rushes which grew in tiny bunches beneath the wall, and guessed from them and from the sudden dip of the land that the take-off would be a boggy one. In vain Kate tried to get a pull at her horse. On the left Vernon and Polly had got over with a scramble. One man was down, and a second felt that the roan was worth another fifty at least for the way he kicked himself clear of the dirt. With a rush which would have landed him well on the other side of twenty feet of water, the brown went at the highest place he could find in the wall. Kate knew what must come, but hardened her heart and faced it. As the old horse tried to rise, he stuck in the heavy bog. There was a crash; for a moment everything spun round, and Kate was down with a stunning fall. Had anyone seen her, of course even the run of the season would have been given up to render her assistance, but her only companions in this particular field had the lead of her, and the side walls hid her from other people's view, besides which Kate Lowry was one who had long since established her right to look after herself in the hunting-field. For a minute or two the slim girl's figure lay prone and motionless on the damp turf, while her horse stood by, hanging his wise old head regretfully over the ruin he had made. Then the girl raised herself on her elbow, pushed the fair hair out of her eyes, and sitting up, looked into the old horse's wistful face with a half smile. "You old fool, Joe!" she said; "you ought to have known better at your time of life." Rising to her feet, she leaned her head for a moment on her saddle, pressing her hand to her side as if in pain, and then backing her horse so that he stood close alongside the wall, she climbed slowly and with difficulty back into the saddle. "I wonder how long we lay under that wall, Joe?" soliloquized Kate, as she walked him through a gap in the next wall; "and I wonder, too, where the hounds are, and if I must give it up and let that Preece girl beat me?" Listening intently, she sat for a moment by the roadside, the old horse's ears pricked keenly forward. At last she thought she heard hounds running, it seemed, to her right. Without a moment's hesitation she turned Joe round, and, sobered by his fall, that mud-besmeared veteran popped over the wall as cleverly as a cat, only to be reined up short as he lit, for there, streaming over another wall, were the whole pack, going as keenly and as fiercely now as in the first three fields. With them were only two horsemen, the master and the man in mufti. As the three joined forces, George noticed for the first time his cousin's white face and muddy garments. "Why, Kate, where have you been? Not hurt, I hope?" and though the words were curt and simple, the expression in his face was less careless than it might have been. "No, thanks; more mud than bruises, I think. Where is Miss Preece?" "Rolled off in the only piece of plough in the county, and seems to have taken root there," laughed the ungallant M.F.H. "No damage done, I hope?" said Kate. "Hurt? No. Her clever chestnut put his feet into a furrow and stumbled, _la belle_ Polly rolled off, and though we put her up again, she seemed to have had enough, especially as she believed that you had given up the chase some time since." "Oh, indeed," laughed Kate, a little grimly. "You see hers was her _first_ fall; it makes a difference." And now the conversation dropped. Each of those three riders had his or her hands full for the time. The fox in front of them was, indeed, a straight-necked one. Save for the one turn which had given Kate a second chance, he had gone straight as the crow flies since the find. Save for a check of a short five minutes, the hounds had run almost as if they were coursing him, and it was already a full half-hour since the find, and the spire of Kempford church was now visible on the right. At the back of Kempford village was a well-known drain, in which more than one stout fox had found safety. For this reynard seemed to be making, and to judge of the frequency with which each of the three horses rattled their walls as they skimmed over them, his pursuers were hardly likely to get there even if he was. But between the Kempford drain and him there ran the deep and broad stream of the Cheln, unfordable, and rarely, if ever, crossed (save by a bridge) in the annals of fox-hunting. As the three neared the river, they were (thanks to a lucky turn) in the same field with the hounds. "By Jove, there he is," cried the "dealer," breaking silence for the first time, and there, sure enough, dragging his gallant but draggled person up the bank opposite was poor "pug," in full view of the pack. No otter hounds ever took water more savagely than did old Monitor and his comrades, almost whining with impatience to close with their gallant foe. "Kate, for God's sake, don't try it," cried Vernon. It was too late; the old horse had already been driven in, and the first woman who ever swam a horse across the Cheln was already battling with the stream, her lips hard set, her grey-blue eyes full of fire, and her whole face recalling vividly for the moment, in spite of its natural softness, the stern outlines of those ancestors whose war-worn profiles adorned the long galleries of the Hall. It was a difficult swim, but old Joe's limbs were borne up bravely by the brave heart within, and it was not till long after the dripping habit had been dried that it occurred to Kate that, like Lord Cardigan, she had forgotten that she could not swim. The M.F.H. and his cousin were now the only two left with the hounds, and in front of them rose, perhaps, the worst fence in the Gonaway country, a stiff stone wall, the stones all firmly morticed, and on the top a row of rough-edged slabs set on end like the teeth of a saw. Under the take-off side ran a deep, little stream, nowhere less than six feet wide, and even at that the banks were undermined and unsafe. The cousins were alongside in the field which this mantrap bounded. Every atom of colour had left her cheeks now, and her lips were white with pain. Had George's whole heart and mind not been in the chase, he must have seen, and insisted on her returning home. As it was, he only said, "They've killed him, Kate; I must have it and save a bit of the best fox I ever hunted." And if hounds' tongues could be believed, they had indeed at last pulled the gallant old fox down, though the rugged piece of masonry before alluded to hid the pack from view. "Is there no other way, George?" "No, don't you follow me; go back by the lane and I'll bring you the brush if I can save it." So saying, the master turned his horse and set himself at the place where the wall looked lowest. Kate had been bred in a hunting country, but truth to tell, her heart hung on that leap. "One thrust to his hat and two to the sides of his brown," and then he shot to the front, seat steady and hands well down. Right bravely the horse rose at the leap, but the bank broke as he rose, his knees caught the coping stone with a jarring thud, and man and horse lay stunned on the other side. To the wild cry of "George, George!" no answer came back, and then it was for the first time that poor Kate knew how irretrievably her heart had been lost to her dashing cousin. To gallop to the gate was useless, though she essayed it. The gate was six barred and locked, moreover, the wall and its guarding stream still ran on beyond the gate. Kate had lost her head and her heart, but not her pluck. "Just one more try, Joe," she whispered, and with a rush that seemed born of the last energies of a gallant heart the brave old horse faced and cleared the coping stone. Many fresh horses might have cleared that wall; but they talk of that leap still in Gonaway. Nearly five feet of hard stone and a biggish brook in front was no small feat, they say, for a tired horse, even with bonny Kate Lowry on his back. Under the wall lay the grey, stone dead, and under him George Vernon, his white face looking up at the sky now darkly bright with the frost of a November evening. How Kate got her cousin from under his horse and watched the colour creep back to his bronzed cheek, no one knows, for she kept these things in her own sweet heart, but it was late in the evening that a party sent out to search met an old woman leading along a donkey cart, on which lay poor Vernon, his leg and collar bone broken, while beside him sat a lady, her face white with pain, which her colour alone betrayed, and after them came a yokel leading old Joe, and followed by the best pack in Ireland. The day had one more event in store for the villagers of Kempford. Arrived at the inn, Kate Lowry did what no Lowry had ever been known to do before--she fainted. On recovering, she shame-facedly exclaimed, "I think I must have broken something when I fell at the beginning of the run, and it has hurt me rather ever since." She had broken something. No more nor less than three ribs; but if she had refused a humble prayer made to her three weeks later she would have broken something more important--"the heart" of the M.F.H. for Gonaway, who to this day may be heard to declare "that there is no pluck like a woman's, and I ought to know, for I married the pluckiest girl in old Ireland." SOME CURIOUS HORSES BY CAPTAIN R. BIRD THOMPSON I fancy that I must have possessed as curious a lot of horses as has fallen to the lot of most men--occasioned partly by the fact that friends who, whenever they had a particularly queer-tempered or vicious brute, were in the habit of either presenting it to me as a gift, or offering it for a mere song; partly through my having bought several with peculiar reputations; and, lastly, I think that it must have been predestined that I was to be the owner of these sort of animals. My first pony, which my father bought for me when I was six years old, was purchased from a gentleman who parted with it because it always ran away with his children and kicked them off. The pony, however, never did this with me, although playing the same trick with almost everyone else. One thing, I petted it very much, and it really was fond of me. It was a wonderful pony. What its age was I do not know, but it was in my possession for twenty-two years, and was said to be an old one when my father bought it. Its death at last was brought on by eating a quantity of half-ripe apples. Having been turned out into an orchard, a sudden gale in the night knocked down a great many of them, and the old fellow ate such a lot that they brought on an attack in his stomach, which killed him in a few hours. I had one very queer-tempered horse given to me. A friend, a great hunting man, wrote and asked me to come up and lunch with him and talk over some intended "meets." I accepted the invitation, and went up to his house. After lunch he proposed a stroll over his stables. As we were going over them we came to a horse in a stall quite away from the rest of the stud. My friend asked me if I did not know it. I, however, did not recognise the horse, as it had a longish coat on, and he then told me that it was one that a Mr Goldsmidt had given 500 guineas for about a year previously, and, finding it too much for him, had presented it to my friend. "Now," said he, "I will give it to you, and if you will not have the animal I shall send it to the kennel to-morrow." I, as may be imagined, was greatly surprised, as the horse was considered to be one of the best hunters in England. Its legs seemed quite fresh and generally all right, so far as I could see. Thinking that I could send it to the kennel as well as he could, if it turned out useless, I accepted the gift with thanks. Just as we were leaving the stables, my friend dropped back, and I overheard him say to a groom, "Take that horse down to Captain T----'s stables _at once_." Well, thought I, there is some screw loose--and a pretty big one I fancy. On reaching home, late in the afternoon, my groom met me and said, "The new horse has come, sir; but he seems a pretty queer one." I went round to the stables at once, and there I found the horse looking very wild, his eyes almost standing out of his head, and he himself as far back out of his stall as his halter-rein would allow, though not hanging on it. I went up and began to talk to him, and at length he seemed quieter, and his eye did not look so wild; at last he let me hold his head-stall. I then patted and coaxed him as much as possible, and gradually got him up into his stall. Just as I had succeeded in this, the groom came with the evening feed. Directly the horse saw him, he began to make a roaring noise, more like a bull than anything else. Fortunately I had hold of his head-stall, or I think he would have damaged the man. On loosening his head, thinking he would feed quietly, he snapped at the corn just as a terrier does at a rat, catching up a mouthful and then dropping it. I at last managed to slide slowly out of his stall, and left him for the night. The next day I sent for some men to clip him. They did their work very well, but I subsequently heard that they declared they would never touch him again; they would as soon clip a Bengal tiger. Soon after this I had him out for a ride and discovered another of his amiable peculiarities. Whenever he met or passed a conveyance of any sort, he kicked out at it most furiously; I suppose that some time or other he had been struck when passing something. It was a most dangerous trick, and took a very long time and great patience to overcome. However, at last I cured him. Another peculiarity that he had was his great objection to my mounting him when in uniform. He did not mind it in the least when I was once in the saddle, and took not the slightest notice of my sword rattling against his ribs; but he could not bear the act of mounting. I used to have him blindfolded at first, but afterwards, by always petting him, giving him sugar, &c., he lost his dislike to being mounted. One morning, sometime after I had had him, my groom sent in word that the new horse had kicked his stall all to pieces, and, on going into the stable, I found he had done it and no mistake. There was scarcely a piece of the strong oak partitions bigger than one's hand; they were literally smashed. What made him do it I cannot imagine; he never tried it again. Strangely enough, after all this violent kicking, the only place where he had marked himself was a little bit not bigger than a florin on his near fetlock, where he had knocked off the hair. One trick he had of which I never cured him. This was when out hunting. When taking the first fence, on landing he invariably kicked up as high as he could. Often and often when he seemed particularly quiet I thought, "Well, old fellow, you surely won't kick to-day": but, as certainly as the fence came, so surely did he kick--but never except at the first fence. As a hunter he was perfection, and never, with one exception, refused a fence with me. On that occasion I felt that I was not certain about taking it. I was late at the meet, and the hounds had slipped off down-wind, so my only chance of getting the run was by a lucky nick in. I was riding to a point that I thought they would make to, and had just jumped over into a lane and was riding at the fence on the opposite side, when I caught sight of a man in pink riding down the lane. I turned my head quickly to look at him, and the horse feeling the slight motion I suppose, and thinking that I was going to join the man swerved round, but, on my turning his head to the fence again, he took it at once. This was the only time he ever swerved at or refused a fence. I lost him in a very curious way. I was out hunting one day when the going was very deep and bad, and we were galloping through a piece of plough. At the top of the field was a cut quickset hedge and a gate. I rode at the latter, thinking that the ground would be sounder there, and the jump would not take so much out of my horse. When I got to the gate, he rose at it, and then made a tremendous effort to draw his hind-legs out of the deep mud. Not meeting the resistance he expected, his hind-legs flew up so that he landed on the other side almost in a perpendicular position, his tail brushing my hat, and for a moment I really thought he would fall over on me. However he came down apparently all right and cantered a few yards into the next field, when he made a most extraordinary flounder and stopped. I jumped off at once, and found him sitting up, just as you often see a dog, with his fore-legs straight out and his hind ones at right angles to his body. In a minute or so he rolled over on his side. I tried to get him up, but he did not move. A veterinary surgeon who was out, seeing that something was wrong, came up, and, on examining him, declared that his back was broken. And so it proved to be: the violent jerk of his hind-legs had done it. Of course I had to have him shot at once. I was very sorry to lose him, as he was such a perfect hunter. Another of my horses I bought from the farmer who bred him; he was a black, nearly thoroughbred, and a very fine-looking animal. I had often seen his owner riding him to market and other places, nearly always at a hand-gallop, and the horse never appeared heated or even blown. I had also seen him in the hunting field. After purchasing him, I tried him over some fences that had been made for the purpose in one of my fields, and he jumped fairly for a young one, so I took him out with the hounds when they met in an easy country. The first thing I put him at was a small gate; but this he would not have, so I set him at a low, dry stone wall, which he cleared well. So he did also the next two or three fences; but on coming to another he did not make the slightest effort to jump--simply ran at it, and blundered through it somehow. The next fence, in spite of my shaking him up and letting him have the spurs pretty smartly, he did in the same way, then cleared one fairly; but on my putting him at a bar-way he never rose at all, but went full tilt at it and smashed it to bits. I was a good deal disgusted at these performances, but tried him another day, a friend saying I did not rouse him sufficiently. Anyhow, this next time I did so, but it had no effect. He scrambled his fences in just the same way, never, however, coming down. After this I lent him to my friend (who thought I did not ride him with sufficient resolution) for a day's hunting by way of a trial; and the horse signalised himself so that I determined to part with him. He had gone on in his usual way until we came to a brook about twelve feet wide, but deep. I jumped it all right, and looked back to see how my friend fared. The brute of a horse did not attempt to clear it, but actually galloped into it, turning a complete somersault, so that he actually scrambled out on the same bank he came from. Fortunately my friend got his feet out of the stirrups, feeling that the animal would not clear it, and was flung on the opposite bank, merely getting his legs wet. After this I sent the brute to Tattersall's, and got a very good price for him on account of his make and shape; in fact, you could not see a finer-looking hunter nor ride a greater impostor. Another curious animal I had I bought quite accidentally. It was at Newmarket during a July Meeting, and one morning I strolled up to the paddocks where the sales were going on, expecting to see there a friend I wished to meet. On walking up to the ring, a very fine horse was being led slowly round; it was evidently quite quiet, went round the ring like any old sheep; but scarcely any bids and those very low ones, were being made for it. Catching the auctioneer's eye, I gave a bid, and, not seeing my friend, walked off. Just as I had got to the gate one of the auctioneer's clerks ran after me and asked where they should take my horse to. I denied having bought one; but the man persisted, so I went back and found the horse had actually been knocked down to me, the auctioneer telling me it was really cheap for dogs'-meat at the price I had given. The horse was sent down to my trainer's, and, meeting him later on in the day on the course, he said, "Well, sir, so you bought Vulcan?" I told him how it occurred, at which he was much amused, and, on my asking him some questions, told me he was a splendid horse--wonderfully bred and looking all over like galloping, but that he never would try. He had no pride, he said, and would lob along in the ruck as happily as possible. He had been in lots of stakes, but no one could do anything with him; he would make a waiting race with a mule they said. It was a most curious case. The horse seemed to have every requisite of make, shape, and action, and yet could not be induced to try to race. It appeared to make no difference whether the rest of the things were in front of him or if they came up and passed him; he kept on about the same pace, and would not try to race. If punishment was attempted, the horse showed such evident symptoms of temper that it was not safe to continue it. At last he was used by the trainer as a hack, and, in his absence, taken out by the head lad, when out to superintend the gallops. I had almost forgotten his existence, when one day I received a letter from my trainer asking me to come down to Newmarket the next day by a mid-day train, when I should find a hack waiting for me at the station, and that he would be at the New Stand, on the race-course side, to meet me, as he wished me to see a trial. I of course went down and met my trainer at the Stand. After a little conversation, we cantered off to the place where the trial was to come off, and stationed ourselves at the spot fixed for the winning-post. He then gave a signal, and shortly I saw four horses galloping towards us and keeping pretty fairly together until perhaps about two lengths off, when one of them came away from the others, leaving them almost as if they were standing still. "Well," I said, "of course I don't know what the weights are, but that is as hollow a thing as I ever saw. What horse is that?" I asked. To my intense surprise, he said, "Vulcan." "How in the world did you get him to gallop?" said I. "That's rather a curious story," replied the man. "We found it out quite by accident. I was away last week for a day or two looking at some very promising yearlings in Dorsetshire, and Jackson (the head lad) took out the string, riding Vulcan as hack. They were exercising on the Bury side, and a boy who was going rook-tending passed by. Boy-like, when he saw the horses cantering, he blew his horn--to try to give them a start, I suppose. None of them minded it except Vulcan, and he clapped his legs under him and bolted off with Jackson as hard as he could go. When I came back next day he told me about it, but did not seem to think anything of it. However, it struck me differently, so I went and found the boy and told him to come to me the next day with his horn--which he did. I took the string out, and told the boy to blow as we passed him. He did so, and Vulcan again bolted clear away, past all the other horses. So I felt sure I had found out how to make him go, and to-day if you noticed (which I had not) a boy blew a horn as they passed him and the horse again came away, though the others did their best, and he was giving them from 2 lb. to 4 lb." "You certainly have found out how to make him gallop," I said; "but I don't see how you are always to have a trumpeter about after him." "I think it can be managed," he replied. "I want you to enter him for the Handicap Steeple Stakes at the next meeting. He will only have a feather to carry, and at the time of the race, if you could be with the boy about the T.Y.C. winning-post, and, as the horses come by, tell him to blow, it won't be noticed in the least." The horse was duly entered and I performed my part, and he won with consummate ease. The scene afterwards in the Birdcage when I went in to see him weighed was most amusing. Everybody was rushing up to me to find out how he had been treated; the most wonderful stories were set about as to the quantity of whisky and port wine that had been administered to the horse, but the facts were as I have stated. He won in the same way and with the same ease in July behind the Ditch. After this we tried him without the horn, and he went fairly, so I put him into a selling race, which he won, and I sold him for a very fair price. I did not hear much of him afterwards, but believe he got back to his old tricks. Another horse that I bought I knew to be a reprobate when I purchased him. He was a very fine racehorse, and had run well in the Derby--fourth or fifth, I think--and afterwards won several very valuable stakes; but in some of his last races he was severely punished, and this quite upset his temper. He became savage; then he was operated on and turned sulky, and at last developed a curious trick (no one seemed to know exactly how he managed it) of getting rid of his jockeys, nearly causing the death of his rider on two or three occasions. He was sent to Tattersall's to be sold, with various other "weed-outs" from his owner's stable. I bought him thinking that he might make a steeplechaser, as rogues on the flat often develop into good "'chasers." Being anxious to find out how he got rid of his riders, a day or so after I had him I ordered him to be saddled, and, mounting him myself, I took him into a thirty-acre field of light plough, thinking, if I got a fall, it would not hurt there. I wanted to find out what he could do, telling my groom to watch carefully and see what his manoeuvre was. Well, I just walked him round the field several times, and he went as quietly as possible; then I trotted him, and still everything was pleasant, and I began to think that the change of scene and course had produced its effect. Next I put him into a canter. At this pace he did not go quite so well, and evidently was looking out for something; but at last he appeared to have settled fairly into his canter. Then, catching hold of his head, I just touched with the spur to make him gallop, when, without a moment's notice, I was sent out of the saddle like a stone from a catapult. When I got up, the brute was trotting away in the opposite direction to that in which I had been riding. I very soon caught him, and going down to my groom, asked him what on earth the horse had done. I need hardly say the man had not seen him. Of course, he said he fancied he heard someone calling just then and looked round; the fact being that, seeing the horse go quietly at first, he thought it was all right, and never took the trouble to watch. As I was determined to find out the trick, I made my groom mount him. The man rather funked it, and said he had no spurs on; so I gave him mine, and he mounted and went off. However, his reign was not long. Starting in a canter, he tried to gallop the horse, and touched him with the spurs, whereupon the brute shot out a fore-leg and spun round on it just as if he had been a teetotum. Of course, the man flew off, just as I had done. However I saw clearly that he would not bear the spur, and this seemed to be the secret. I mounted him again, without spurs, and rode him round and round for a considerable time, and got him to gallop by degrees, but in a very sulky way. If I attempted to rise in my stirrups, or even move my heel towards his side, I felt he was preparing for his dodge; however, I did not give him a second chance. After this I rode him regularly every day for an hour or more in the plough, and, finding he was not touched with the spur the horse went fairly freely. Next I took him out with my groom, riding a steady old hunter, and tried him over some small plain fences on a ground I had for schooling horses. He took to the work at once, and became very clever, and, as it was quite clear that his temper would hinder him from being a 'chaser, I rode him with the hounds, and a finer hunter never existed; but I never rode him with spurs, and always had to remember not to touch him with my heels. If I moved them towards him I felt him begin to screw up; but he never required pressing--he was so very free and fast. He never, however, forgot his old tricks, and a very favourite amusement of the youngsters in the district was when they met anyone who was bumptious about his riding to offer to bet him that he would not gallop a certain horse round a paddock three times. Then they got me to lend them my old friend. It is quite needless to say that no one ever did succeed in sitting him three times round, as they were sure to rise in their stirrups and touch him with the spur, with the invariable consequences. I sold him at last to a man who had often seen me ride him, and who envied him for his great speed, having warned him that he would not bear spurs. However, he would have the horse, and took him into Leicestershire, where he went very well I believe. The best horse I ever had must have been predestined to become my property, so singularly did I meet it and ultimately purchase it. I went one day to St Pancras terminus to meet a friend who was coming up by one of the Midland trains. Getting there before the train had arrived, I was wandering about the station, to pass away the time, when I saw a string of horses being unloaded, and amongst them there was one that had been unboxed and was standing as quietly as possible by itself not the least startled by all the noise and clatter. I glanced at it, and thought it a fine-looking animal; but just then, my friend's train coming in, I joined him, and we went off together. In the afternoon I was going down by a train from London Bridge, and when I walked out on to the platform, curiously enough there was the same string of horses being boxed to go down to a large firm of dealers in the South; there too was the same horse that I had seen at St Pancras, standing as quietly as possible waiting her turn to be boxed. I went up to look at her, and admired her very much. She was a dark-brown, and seemed to have very good legs and feet, though I could not see much of her, as she was all clothed up and legs bandaged; but I had not much time to look over her, as my train was ready, so I got in, and, for the moment, never thought anything more about her. Some short time after this I had a letter from a large firm of horse-dealers, telling me that their "show day" was to come off next week, and asking me to come and look through their stables. I did not want another horse, but thought I should like to go, and, on the fixed day, went. On getting to their place, after a very good lunch, they asked me to come out and go over the stud. When they opened the door of the first stable, strangely enough there stood, just opposite the door, the identical brown mare I had so admired on her journey through town. The dealer, seeing I was struck with her, insisted on her being stripped and brought out, in spite of my telling them that I did not want a horse, and that it was no use taking the trouble to bring her out. However, out she came, and I certainly admired her very much. To my surprise, she stood 15 h. 3 in., though until you went close to her you would not have thought her more than 15 hands; had four splendid flat black legs, well ribbed up, with a very nice head and well-laid shoulders and neck; her paces and action were excellent, and the dealers said if I could find a fault in her they would give her to me. I told them I did not want her, but as they were taking her in, thought I would just ask her price. Now, horses were very dear that season, and, as she was warranted a good hunter, excellent in harness and to carry a lady, and only four years old, I expected that at least £100 would be asked. To my great surprise, they said £40. This, of course, choked me off at once, as I felt sure that at that price there must be some _very_ "loose screw." Refusing all offers of her, I drove home. In a few days after this I had a letter from the dealers begging me to have her, saying they would distinctly warrant her in every way, and that she would (of course) exactly suit me. I, however, again declined her. A week or so after this I was told that a man was at my stables and wanted to see me, and, on going out, found that these dealers had actually sent the mare over for me to try. Well, they gave me a written warranty of the strongest kind, engaging, amongst other things, either to give me another horse or return the price if she did not suit me; and the end was I bought her. Well, I had her out the next day and tried her, and found her as good as they said her to be--rather too high action for a hack, but very showy and perfect in harness; did not seem to know what shying meant; a most beautiful light hunter, and a very free goer. I thought I had found perfection, and everything went on well for more than a week, until one day, when I had come back from a drive, my groom sent in word to say that he wanted to see me at the stables. On getting there, he told me that the mare would not go into the stable, and, sure enough, whenever he tried to lead her in she placed herself flat against the wall, and refused to move. We got her to the door at last, and she stood with her head just inside; and, though I tried to tempt her with corn, green-meat, sugar, &c., she absolutely refused to go farther. At length, without any warning, she suddenly rushed in and round into her stall, with such violence that she nearly slipped up against her manger, and only recovered herself after a great struggle; and on the next day, when they tried to bring her out, she rushed out just in the same violent way. Here was the "loose screw" with a vengeance! but as I did not wish to part with her (for she was perfection with the exception of this trick), I set to work to try how to cure her of it. After some time we found that we could get her in and out of the stable by backing her, and this, though a rather awkward plan, was quite successful. I may say that after some years we got her to walk in quietly. The dealers had evidently kept an eye on her, for when they found out that I had hit on a plan by which I could get her into and out of a stable without danger they had the impudence to write and offer me £60 and _another horse_ if I would let them have her back; and, on my taking no notice of this, actually wrote again and offered me £100. Curiously enough, the mare would go into and out of a _strange_ stable quite quietly, but directly she got accustomed to it began the rushing game. This mare was perfect with that one exception, and did not know what fear was. If a gun was fired close to her, she would not take the least notice, and would allow a rifle to be fired under her nose, with the reins on her neck, and not even move her head. I always believe that shying and all that kind of trick in a horse is the fault, in nearly every case, of the rider. Of course there are differences of temperament in horses as in men, but as a rule, what I have stated is the case, and I once had what I consider a remarkable illustration of it. I was on the staff at the first autumn manoeuvres in the Aldershot district in 1871, and one day I was riding back to camp after a heavy day, when I met a friend--a cavalry officer. We stopped to talk over the day, and just as we were parting he said to me, "Oh, I have a lot of horses eating their heads off; if you would take one and ride it, it would save yours and do mine good." I of course accepted the offer with thanks, saying at the same time, "I suppose it is a charger," and received (as I thought) an answer in the affirmative. The horse was sent over to my stables that evening, and the next morning at 4 A.M., on going out of my tent, I found a very fine bright chestnut horse, evidently nearly thoroughbred, being led about by my groom. Well, I mounted him and rode off, and after duly inspecting the pickets and outposts, rode on to join the general staff. As I was going along I suddenly found myself on one of those dangerous pieces of ground that are to be often met with in the Aldershot district--all seamed with cart-ruts worn into the sand, varying from 2 to 4 feet in depth, and overgrown with heather, so that you cannot detect them until you are actually amongst them. Finally, finding where I was, I took my legs out of the stirrups, and put the reins on the horse's neck, knowing that I could not help him, and let him pick his way as best he could. He was doing this very cleverly, when suddenly a gun from a battery, concealed in a hollow close by, was fired (it was, in fact, the gun to tell the troops to be ready to move). My horse did not take the slightest notice of it, not even pricking his ears. Of course I thought that as he took no sort of notice of big guns he must be thoroughly broken, and used him as if he was--riding him with cavalry, artillery, and infantry, taking points, and doing everything that pertains to a staff officer's duties; and no horse could have done better or been more thoroughly steady. At the end of the manoeuvres I returned him to my friend with many thanks, and he very soon sold him as a broke charger for a long price. Shortly after this I was dining with my friend at the mess of his regiment, and, after dinner, in the ante-room, I happened to remark to an officer, "What a very good riding-master and staff they must have to break in so young a horse so thoroughly." He looked rather amused, and replied, "I suppose you refer to Red Rover?" (the name of the horse). I said, "Yes." "Well," he answered, "you broke him!" I was, of course, greatly surprised, but found it was actually the case. The horse had never been ridden with troops until he was lent to me, and I feel not the slightest doubt that it was the fact of his being on that dangerous piece of ground, and my having my feet and hands both loose when the gun was fired so unexpectedly, that gave him confidence. I could not have influenced him in the slightest degree. Of course, if I had been on ordinary ground, and had seen that a gun was going to be fired, I should, naturally enough, have slightly tightened the reins and felt his mouth and pressed my legs to his side, and thus have drawn his attention to the fact that something was going to take place. As I did not, he took the noise as a matter of course, and did not notice it; and so, through mutual ignorance, we had perfect confidence in one another. But there is a sequel to this. Some months later I had a letter from my friend, telling me that if I wished to buy the horse I might get him for almost nothing, as the man he sold him to gave an awful character of him as a charger. As the horse was in the same district I happened to be in, I went to see him, and certainly the groom gave him a bad character. I got leave to try him, and very soon found that his present owner must be a very irritable, nervous man. The horse had had his mouth so jagged about with the bit that he never kept his head still for a minute, and, if you told him to mark a flank, directly it approached began to switch his tail and tried to kick, having evidently had frequent digs with the spur to make him steady. Altogether the horse was quite spoiled for a charger through his rider's fidgets; and, as I did not care to take the trouble to try and break him again, I did not have anything more to do with him. But I think this was a striking proof of how a horse can be made and unmade. SPORTING FOR MEN OF MODERATE MEANS For your wealthy noblemen, or large landed proprietors, it matters little what sport of any kind costs them, whether in horses, hounds, shooting, fishing, yachting, racing, or coursing. Yet very many rich men are the greatest screws possible--carrying out the old adage of "the more you have, the more you want." Love of sport is one of the boasted and general characteristics of an Englishman; but I am inclined to think that, after all, young England is not such an ardent sportsman or such a hard man as his father and grandfathers were. As a rule, they are more of the feather-bed and hearth-rug sort; but this by no means applies to all, for I know many good and indefatigable men, and there are hundreds I do not. Our forefathers were, no doubt, earlier than we are--that is, they did not, in spite of their hard drinking at times, turn night into morning as we do. They went early to bed, and got up early; began hunting before daylight, and managed to kill their fox as twilight fell. Their soul was in sport, and we love to talk and hear about the grand, generous, though illiterate old squires of a hundred and fifty years ago. Men who always stirred their ale with a sprig of rosemary, and drank posset before going to bed; dined at one o'clock when they were at home; smoked their "yard of clay," wore topboots, buckskins, and a blue coat with brass buttons--regular Squire Westerns, but perhaps a little more refined than that worthy was. But education--and that wonderful thing, "steam," which enables us to travel from one end of the kingdom to another in the course of a few hours--soon stamped the old country gentleman out. What should we think if we now saw the queer-fashioned coach, with its four long-tailed black horses, doing about five miles an hour? Some of our London swells, who cannot stoop to pick an umbrella up, would fall down in a fit, especially if the inmates of the said coach were any friends or relations of theirs. Yes, the good old days are gone by--passed for ever. Men now smoke their cigars, hunt and shoot for a couple of hours, and look with horror on the portraits of their ancestors with a pigtail, and whisp of white cambric round their necks. Many, very many country gentlemen of a century ago never saw London; they might have heard of it, but it was the work of a week to get up, and another to get back, and a visit to London about once or twice in their lives was as much as many could boast of, and gave them food for gossip for years and years after. Shootings in those days were not of much value, and a man might have had a great deal of sport for a very little money; but now all is changed, though it is only within the last thirty or forty years that Scotch shootings have risen in value; some moors that were rented then for fifty pounds per annum are now nearer five hundred. Directly people found out they could get down to Scotland at comparatively little cost and trouble, the prices of shootings went up--and they will continue to rise. England is much wealthier than she was. Commerce is much more extended; money is easier; speculation is more rife; more gold discovered, which I cannot see makes one iota difference; yet in spite of all this, and the heavy taxes we groan under--many raised and "thrust upon us" for the purpose of maintaining a lot of hungry foreigners, who, by the way, have the pick of all the good things. Well, well! that game will be played out before very many years are gone by; there will be a most signal "check-mate," a "right-about," and the usual "Who'd have thought it?" "Knew it was coming," "Always said so," and so on. But to my mutton. Despite of the heavy price of things, heavy taxes, heavy rents, the Englishman is still a sportsman to his heart's core. If he does not make such a labour of it as his forefathers, he loves it just as well; his hounds and his horses are faster--he is faster, in many senses of the word; his guns do not take half an hour to load, and his pointers or setters can beat a twenty-acre field of turnips in something less than four hours; in fact, in many places dogs are going out of fashion, and the detestable system of "driving" coming in. I hate a battue, and call it sport I cannot, and never will. It is true I go to them occasionally, get into a hot corner, and have the "bouquet"--but still I cannot call it legitimate sport. The man with moderate means must give up all idea of Scotch shooting, unless he goes very far north and gets some of the islands that are difficult of access; then it may still be done. Wild shooting, in many parts of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall may be had at reasonable prices: thirty years ago ground--and good ground--could be got at sixpence an acre; now it is eighteenpence and two shillings. Very fair rough shooting may be rented in North or South Wales for about threepence an acre, and it is here, or in Ireland--which I shall presently touch upon--that the man of moderate means may have both shooting and fishing. In the first place, house-rent is cheap in Wales; in fashionable spots, of course, it is not; but those are the very places a sportsman must avoid: he must leave fashion, youth, and beauty behind him, and go in for sport, and sport only. Having found a house and ground, he must then get a good keeper and dog-breaker. Here he exclaims, "Ah! a keeper! here's the commencement of expenses!" Patience, my friend, and I'll tell you how your keeper shall pay himself, and put money into your pocket as well. Of course, with wild shooting or any other you will want dogs; and for this purpose I recommend setters. Of course I presume you are a sportsman, and know all about it, for it would never do if you did not. You must also, if you possibly can, get ground where there are plenty of rabbits--these are what pay; they cost nothing to keep, and are no trouble--every good rabbit is worth nearly a shilling to you to sell. Your setters must be of a fashionable and first-class strain; you must have three or four breeding bitches; and the produce of these setters will not only pay your keeper, but your rent as well. You must advertise your puppies to be sold, and keep yourself before the public by constant advertisements. Your keeper will break at least four brace of setters for you to sell each year; and these dogs, according to their goodness and beauty, will be worth from fifty to a hundred guineas a brace, and even more. So you will not only be able to pay your man, but a good part of your rent and expenses as well: but you must go systematically to work, and make it a business combined with pleasure. You must understand that good and trustworthy keepers are like angels' visits, few and far between--but still they are to be had; and when you have one, regard him as the very apple of your eye, and never let a few pounds stand in the way. If you have a large extent of ground, a man who understands his business well will break more than four brace of dogs a year--aye, double the quantity, but it is better to have fewer done--and done well; get a good name for having the correct article, and you will always be able to dispose of more dogs than you can breed or break. Destroy all the crooked and weakly pups, keeping only those that will make braces, or any others that are really handsome. You can also break a couple of brace yourself--that is, if you have temper and patience. February is the time to commence with your young dogs. You can keep them at work for six weeks or two months; by that time good fishing will be in. I care not to commence fishing too early. One of the first things you must do is to put up a good serviceable kennel, where your dogs can lie dry and warm. It must be well drained--if possible, with a stream of water running through it. You need not go to any great expense, but it must be _well paved_, and constantly hot-lime washed, to keep it sweet and wholesome, and the ticks and vermin under. I will not here give any directions how they are to be made, because that depends a great deal on the place you have--the space, convenience, and so forth--but wherever you build them, let there be a good large yard for the dogs to run about in. Let the benches they lie on fold back against the wall, so that you may wash under them; and made with a flap in front, that the dogs, when tired, cannot crawl under them, which they will very often do. Benches are generally made in bars three inches wide, with an inch space between each, to let all the dust, small bits of straw, &c., through. Your dogs must always be _well bedded_--if straw is expensive and difficult to get, good dry fern will do very well. In Wales and Ireland I always had a lot of this cut every year at the proper time, stacked and thatched. Your _kennel must be kept scrupulously clean and washed out every morning_. Feeding is a very important thing, and must be judiciously and regularly done, and always at the same hour; but as every one has his own ideas on this point, I will say no more about it. The place, of all others, for good wild shooting and fishing is Ireland. Here a man with moderate means may have all he wants--cheap house-rent; taxes few; living at much less cost than in England, and sport to his heart's content. It is, I admit, a wild life; but then it is a very pleasant, happy one. The sea-voyage is nothing: those splendid steamers which run from Holyhead to Kingstown cross in a few hours, and you hardly, unless there is heavy weather, know you are at sea. For the man whose heart is in sport, I know of no place so well adapted as Ireland. Wild ducks, snipe, grouse, and capital woodcock shooting; hares, rabbits, partridges and pheasants; all that you want is the ground properly looked after. Wherever you go, if economy is your object, you must never attempt hand-reared pheasants; the cost of feeding is very great, and, as I have often and often said before, a hand-reared pheasant, killed in December, costs little less than half a sovereign. Near a covert, if there is rough ground, it may be broken up, and barley or buck-wheat sown; this must not be cut, but left standing for the birds to go to whenever they are so inclined. This is a very inexpensive way of feeding. They are very fond of small potatoes, but these will do for your pigs. What you require in Ireland is plenty of poultry of all sorts; a couple of Kerry cows, which may be had for little money, and a good sort of pig--some of Peter Eden's breed; fellows that are fattened at comparatively little cost. You must have cows--or be able to get buttermilk somewhere--for your puppies will not do without it. There is no great sale for dogs in Ireland, but they may always be taken over to England, and sold at the proper time--in June or July. Numbers now go to America. But there are many other spots, if you choose to go farther afield. There is very decent shooting to be got in France, and there are always Government forests to let. Were I a young man, the place of all others I should go to again would be to Hungary. Sport of all kinds is to be had there; but this even has been found out, and many English reside there now for boar and stag-hunting and shooting. But in England, if you watch your chance and have agents on the look out, you may occasionally come across a good bit of shooting at a moderate figure; or you may take a good manor, and do as a great many do--that is, have so many guns to join you. If you hire on your own account, either in England or Scotland, you can charge the guns anything you like for shooting and board--that is, anything in reason, and that they are likely to pay. You may then get your own shooting at little or no cost; for there are many men who will pay a hundred for a month's good sport. They are in business, or in some profession, and cannot spare more time. A man who has time, is really fond of sport, knows something about it, and goes the right way to work, can get both his shooting and fishing at a very moderate rate. Many imagine it is necessary to have their brace of breech-loaders, and a lot of useless and expensive paraphernalia. One gun is all that is needed, except you have wild-fowl shooting. You must have a gun for that, either for punt or shoulder, according to the shooting. A large quantity of dogs that are not wanted, and are utterly useless, are often kept. For a moderate scope of ground, two brace of setters are quite sufficient, unless you are breeding dogs. Then you must, of course, have your brood bitches as well. I should have mentioned, it will be a great saving to you if you keep a first-rate stud dog. You will not only have his services, but you can advertise him as a stud dog; and he can form one of your working team likewise. I must impress on my readers that puppies can hardly be kept too well. They must have little or no meat during their puppyhood, but plenty of milk and oatmeal, the latter always to be well boiled. Feed them three times a day for the first three or four months, and twice a day till nine months old. After that one good meal a day is sufficient. A large volume might be written how to keep and feed dogs, on kennels, &c. This has often been done before; but things are now altered, and we must keep pace with the times. I have never been able to afford an expensive shooting, and being abroad from the time I was twenty-one till I was middle-aged, I never had the chance; but, coming over to England every year, as I did, and shooting in all parts, it enabled me to know the localities, and where shooting at a reasonable price was to be had. It is a large house and servants that swallow up one's income. A bachelor sportsman only requires a sitting-room and a bed-room, with his tub in some corner or outhouse close at hand. There is nothing I like more than a real sportsman's den. There he has his guns, his rods, his different sporting paraphernalia, his pipes, his cigars, his powder and ammunition, and everything handy. As I am writing this I can see all my traps around me. I am rather proud of my sanctum. I have a place for everything, and everything in its place. My books--of which I have some hundreds of volumes--are before me. On one side of the wall are all my fishing things; over the mantelpiece, on racks, are my guns, and a goodly collection of pipes; in a three-cornered cupboard all my ammunition, and some hundreds of cartridges; in another cupboard are cigars, and odds and ends; in another a lot of nets, and a sort of fixed washing-stand; two luxurious old-fashioned arm-chairs on either side of my fire-place, into which I can pop and take a smoke when I am tired of writing. And at this present moment there are three setters and a couple of Dandie Dinmonts curled up on the hearth-rug before my fire; but my dogs are always clean in their habits; if not, they would not find a place in my room. The rain is pattering against my windows, and it is a wild wet night; but still I am contented, and looking out for to-morrow, when I am going to have a day's rabbit-shooting, and beat a favourite snipe marsh. I like to have my dogs about me, although I am not a single man, and have boys as tall as myself. Yet my dumb animals are companions to me--shooting alone for so many years in vast forests and thinly-inhabited countries, and often far away from friends and civilised life, has made me somewhat lonely in habits. It sometimes makes me laugh to hear some men talk on sporting matters. I have often been trudging home late at night, wet through, or in a heavy snow-storm, with my tired dogs "at heel," when others have had a good dinner, a skinful of wine, finished their third glass of toddy, are beginning to talk rather thick, and find their cigars won't draw. I was obliged to content myself with a cup of sour cider, black rye-bread and eggs, and up and away before daylight again. Certainly I need not have done so; and sitting here, before my comfortable fire, I think how soft I was. But young men will be young men; and it was my love of sport that made me lead the wild and solitary life I did. But there is no occasion for any one to do as I did. I have gained experience with years. I do not think I should ever have given it up but for one reason. One night I left Quimper in Lower Brittany, and walked down the river (it was a tidal one) to a favourite spot for ducks. I had on my mud boots, and was well wrapped up. I got to the spot I intended, and there I lay waiting, lying down on a bit of board, with my famous black retriever Di beside me. It was bitterly cold, and I took a nip every now and then from my flask. If it had been full, which it was not, there would not have been more than a small wine-glassful in it, for it went into my waistcoat pocket; but, little as it was, that and the cold made me drowsy, and I fell asleep. I was awakened by an icy feeling under me, and my retriever tearing at my coat. I found the tide was coming up, and I was in six or eight inches of water. My poor dog was in a terrible state. I made my way to land, which was not more than fifty yards from me; but I was in such agony I could hardly get on, and, to make matters worse, it began to snow heavily. However, I managed to get to the road, and into Quimper; but I was laid up four months with ague, fever, and rheumatism, and never left my room during that time. Luckily, it was at the fag end of the season. On another occasion after this attack--the next year--I was woodcock shooting with a friend of mine--an Englishman, now dead and gone. A better sportsman did not exist. We had got into a flight of woodcocks, and we had killed nine couples and a half, and were just on the point of returning home, when I was seized with ague again. We were about eight miles from Quimper at the time. My poor friend carried me three miles on his back before we could get a cart to take me home; but I soon recovered from this attack. I once in a day killed forty-four woodcocks, and on another occasion twenty-five. I had many narrow escapes and adventures. In my book of "Over Turf and Stubble," there is a full and exhaustive account of sporting in France, and how you are to go to work, with a list of places where sport is to be had, and what you require. Woodcock and snipe shooting is not so good as it was, in consequence of the eggs of the former being taken and eaten, as our plover eggs are, and also from the ground being more drained. Still there are spots and haunts where they are to be found and killed in numbers. I once killed sixty couples of snipe in some paddy fields abroad. As regards fishing, the man of moderate means must not think of a river in Norway or Scotland. He must be contented with trout and general fishing; and the place for this is, no doubt, Ireland. There is very fair fishing in many parts of England, but for real sport go to Ireland. The white trout fishing is superlatively good there; so is the pike fishing. I know of a place now in Ireland to let--about five thousand acres of mountain, with eight or nine lakes, a beautiful river, with good pools, in which there are salmon, and white and brown trout. The fishing on the lakes is very good. In some of them the trout are small, but there are any quantity. It is in a very wild, lonely spot--four _Irish_ miles over the mountains, and nothing but a herd's hut to go to when there. The shooting, grouse, hare, snipe, and cock, and a few partridges, was very fair. All this was to be had on lease, or by the season, for £20 per annum, and is now, I believe. Had I remained in Ireland I should have taken it, and put up a little place of two rooms, or added a bit on to the herd's cabin. But I think I should have made a little crib on one of the islands of the lake; there is a beautiful site for one. Here no keeper would be required; merely a Jack-of-all-trades. No lady, unless she were a good walker, could get up to this place, for the mountain is difficult and in places boggy; but could ride it on a pony. I used to enjoy my visits there. Sitting on a three-legged stool before the bright turf-fire of a night, with my pipe and whisky and water, talking of my day's work, I was thoroughly happy. A small boat would be requisite on all the lakes, and a larger one for the big lake, by which I proposed to build a cottage. I could have done all this at very little expense, as there was plenty of stone. There is no necessity for the fisherman to be bothered with a lot of expensive and useless tackle; and as to flies, if I do not make them myself, I always buy them of local men, who know what are required. They tie them beautifully in Ireland, and know the required colours. There is capital fishing in Lough Corrib, Galway. I had a small yacht there of ten tons, and many a fishing expedition I have had in her of a bright, warm summer's day. I sometimes had great sport with the perch, which run to three pounds. I have hauled them in, when we have come across them, _sculling_, as fast as I could let out line and pull it in. There is a great deal of shooting and fishing to be had in this way. There is also great fun with the lake trout, which run very large; so do the pike and eels. I always used to set night lines for the latter. Great quantities of ducks, too, are to be got on Lough Corrib. There is capital fishing and shooting to be got at Killaloe, County Clare. I have had rare sport there. It is by going about and making inquiries that I have always been able to have good sport, and find out favoured spots for woodcock and snipe. Hundreds of men are taken in by answering advertisements, which set forth the fishing or shooting in glowing colours--how miserably have they been deceived! You may depend the only way is to go over the ground yourself with a brace of good dogs, always taking the _contrary_ direction which you are told to go. If you cannot spare the time, let some one do it for you that you can thoroughly trust. I remember once a gentleman taking a salmon river in Norway, paying, of course, in advance; when he got there the river was dry, or nearly so. On expostulating with the agent, and demanding his money back, he was told that the proprietor really could not be answerable for the water, and that he had better stop till rain came, and that, probably, the fish would come with it. A man in these days cannot be too sharp in taking either shooting or fishing; how many are "done" in hiring Scotch moors! They answer a flowing advertisement, take it haphazard, pay their money, and when they get there find there are no grouse or deer either. This happens year after year, and yet, with these facts before them, many will not take warning. Hunting I will not touch on, because that is an expensive amusement; but I can say this, my hunting never cost me a farthing. I used to buy young horses, make them, and sell them at good prices. But a man must not be only a good rider, he must be a good judge of a horse as well. I know many men who hunt, shoot, and fish, and their amusement costs them little or nothing. Now a few words as to yachting. That we all know is a very expensive amusement too; but even this is to be managed--of course not in the style of very many of our noblemen. I knew a man who bought a schooner of one hundred and twenty tons, and laid out some money on her besides; this yacht he let for three months during the season, and did so well by her, that, in two years, he had his purchase-money back and something more to boot. The remainder of the season he used her himself. Still, a vessel of this size requires a number of hands, and it is a risk. He kept a small yacht for his own amusement as well. A man with moderate means may have a great deal of pleasure out of a boat of fifteen or twenty tons, or even less; and if he chooses to make it his home, it will cost no more than if he hired lodgings and dined at home, or at his club. Supposing he does not like knocking about in winter time, which is not agreeable, he can always lay her up in some nice harbour, and still live on board. If he is fond of his gun, he can take her to many places and lay her up--where he can get shooting as well, always living on board--South Wales, Ireland, France, and many parts of England and Scotland. And besides sea-fishing, he may get other fishing in the same way. At the end of the yachting season there are hundreds of boats to be bought at a very moderate figure, sometimes almost for nothing. For the purpose I have named, you want no wedge-like racing craft, but a boat with a good floor, good beam, and light draft of water, with summer and winter sails, in fact, a nice roomy seaworthy boat. But in buying you must be cautious, and have some one with you who thoroughly understands the business, otherwise you may invest in a craft whose timbers are rotten, and the planking no stronger than brown paper; there is nothing that one who does not thoroughly understand the matter is easier taken in with than boats. Having now told you how shooting, &c., may be got on moderate means, perhaps a short account of my little yacht I had on Lough Corrib, Galway, and what I did, may not be uninteresting. After I had been a short time in Galway--that is, a couple of miles from the town--I found a very nice boat of about ten tons that was to be sold. I made enquiries, and discovered she was nearly new, and that more than a hundred pounds had been spent on her in making a cabin and fitting her out. I bought her for _eight pounds_, spent twenty more on her, and had the most complete little fishing and shooting craft I ever saw. I had a rack for my guns and rods, and lockers for all my things; there were places to put away game, provisions, and liquor, and a good stove, of modern contrivance, for cooking. This last was in my cabin, for she was too small to have a forecastle. In summer we cooked on shore, on the stones or what not. She was only partly decked--what is called a welled boat. Over this well at night there was a perfectly water-tight tarpaulin, which was fastened down by rings. In this well, which was a large one, my captain slept, and the other man nestled in the sail-room, which was right astern. I bought a brand-new dingy for thirty shillings, and was all complete; the whole affair costing me thirty pounds. As I was living on the banks of Lough Corrib, the boat was moored close to my house, and from my window I could see her. In this boat I used to go to all parts of the lake, which is forty-eight miles long, and ten wide in one place. There were several rivers I could get up, and innumerable little bays, and places where one could anchor for the night. On Lough Corrib, there are no end of islands, some of them large; it is said there is an island for every day in the year, viz., 365. There was capital shooting on some of these islands, and on many parts of the marshes, on the banks of the lake, I had leave to shoot. One marsh or bog was seventeen miles long, and three or four wide. Most of this country was undrained, and snipe were in thousands. It makes my mouth water to think of the snipe and duck shooting I sometimes had there, as well as wild geese; but I got ague and rheumatism again; lost one of my children, and the life was too lonely for my better half. We were away from home and friends, and as I was some three or four years over forty, I gave it up, reluctantly, I must say, and returned to the old land. Lough Corrib is difficult to navigate, and you must have a man with you who knows it thoroughly, otherwise you will come to grief. My captain knew it well, and was a good sportsman into the bargain. My old sailor, who had been all his life about those wild, desolate, and God-forgotten islands, "the Arran," was a rare fisherman. He always managed the night lines, and when we have been anchored at the mouth of the Clare Galway river for the night, of a morning the lines have been loaded with eels, some of four and even five pounds in weight. If we baited for them, sometimes we had large catches of pike and trout. I think cross-line fishing, or an otter, is still allowed on the lake; but I never went in for this, you require a licence for it. Of a night, at flight time in July, the young ducks--they were more than "flappers"--used to come up from the lake and marshy grounds in numbers to the cornfields, and we generally gave it to them hot, morning and evening; and in parts of the lake we used to get "flapper" shooting. It was endless amusement to me, roaming about on the different islands knocking over a few rabbits, or sometimes a duck or snipe. I always carried a ten-bore gun with me, shooting four drachms of powder and two ounces of shot. I never knew what was going to get up; occasionally I had a crack at an otter asleep on the stones. Sometimes a duck would spring when I least expected it; there was no knowing. In winter we were obliged to be very careful, for the wind comes off the mountains in gusts and is very treacherous, and accidents soon happen unless you have your weather eye open. There is some capital snipe and duck shooting on Lord Clanmorris's property, on the banks of the Clare Galway river. I do not know if it is yet let, or leave now given; but I think it is not let. The white trout fishing is first rate in Connemara, but what a wild desolate place it is! The salmon fishing is said to be very good in the Clare Galway river, but though I have seen plenty of fishermen on it, and there are no end of fish, I never saw very much done; it is a sluggish river, and wants a good _curl_ on the water to get a rise. As I have said, I have had some of the best duck and snipe shooting at Killaloe I ever enjoyed; but snipe and woodcock shooting depend a great deal on the season. Some years there are any quantity, another season comparatively few; it is the same everywhere. The golden plover shooting is very good all round Galway, and if you know the "_stands_," that is, where they roost of an evening, you can always get two or three shots. I have seen killed on one of the little islands on Lough Corrib, at one shot, twenty-one, which were picked up, and I believe there were one or two more that were not found. There is good shooting and fishing about Cork, and Limerick as well; in fact, all over Ireland it is to be had; but remember, the nearer you are to Dublin, or any large town, the dearer things are. It is to the wild, desolate spots you must go for real sport, and if a man can manage to put up with such a life, all well and good. Several Englishmen bought estates round Galway, but I suppose they got tired of it, or were afraid of the little pot shooting that an Irishman occasionally takes at one, just "_pour passer le temps_," as they are, or were, to let. I had capital sport in Lower Brittany, France; there are plenty of woodcock and snipe in parts, and the living at the time I speak of was very cheap; but, alas! there is a railway now, so, of course, like all other places, it has gone up in price. In these days, it has become a somewhat difficult matter to particularise which are the best places to go to for sport. If you do not mind distance, Hungary is the place. If you want to be near home, Ireland or France. Take my advice, as an old sportsman who has been at it all his life, and has now seen nearly half a century; if you are a man of moderate means take your time in hiring a place, and when you have found one to suit you, rent on a long lease, if you can; if you wish to give it up, it will not remain on your hands any time. Do not be inveigled into buying a lot of useless guns, rods, or sporting paraphernalia; a _real_ sportsman does not require them. I think I have now pretty well exhausted the subject, and told you how to go to work. PARTRIDGE MANORS AND ROUGH SHOOTING Bright, beautiful, glorious June! I have often been asked which of the four seasons I like the best; my answer has ever been the same: "The hunting, shooting, fishing, and racing." One season I detest (the very name of it gives me the cold shivers)--the _London one_; defend me from that; for if there is a particular time which is calculated to make "Paterfamilias" miserable and more out of humour than another, it is that abominable period of shopping, dinners, evening parties, operas, theatres, concerts, flirtations, flower-shows, and the dusty Row, with its dangerous holes. I hate the formality--the snobbism of the "little village." I begin to think Napoleon I. was right when he said we were "a nation of shop-keepers." I do not mind a good dinner, when I can get one; but there is the rub, I never do get a good dinner; the English do not know how to dine. After twenty years' residence on the Continent, I have come to the conclusion that John Bull is miserably, hopelessly behindhand with our French neighbours on all matters pertaining to eating and drinking; but then I balance the account in this way--Mossoo is not a sportsman; and although he will tell you he is a "_chasseur intrépide_," "_un cavalier de première force_," he does not shine either in the hunting or shooting field. But the French ladies? Ah, they can dress; they beat us there again into Smithereens. I am not like a bear in the hollow of a tree, who has been sucking his paws all the winter to keep him alive; I have been enjoying most of our country amusements, and I may say the winter has passed pleasantly. Of late years a deaf ear has been turned to hints thrown out "for a change of air, things wanted," &c. Busily engaged in building, draining, planting, and so on, little time could be given by me to London festivities. The last attack was made in a somewhat ingenious manner. "Frederick, poor Alice wants her teeth looking at. I think she had better go up to town for three weeks or a month, and be put under the care of a good dentist." This was as much as to say, "We are all to go;" but I was equal to the occasion. "By all means, my dear, let her go. My sister is there for the season, and will only be too delighted to have her; but as for my leaving the place at present, with all I have to do, it is an utter impossibility." This was a settler. Somehow or other I begin to feel more lively as spring comes on. As a rule, about the middle of May I require a little spring medicine and a change of air. I find that the breezes of Epsom Downs agree famously with me, although my better-half always declares I "look vilely" on my return. Absurd nonsense! But I love my own quiet country life; its wild unfettered freedom. Away from the smoke, dust, and tumult of over-crowded cities--away from late hours and the unwholesome glare of gas, and I am happy. A trip to Ascot and Goodwood with my family keeps matters all straight. A break now and then, and the quiet monotony of country life is not felt. June, bright, beautiful, glorious June, has peculiar attractions for me. I am a shooter. I have not a grouse moor, for the simple reason that I cannot afford one; as my old keeper says, "It is master's terrible long family and expenses that prevents his going into shooting as he would like." I am obliged to content myself with a partridge manor; and, after all, I believe I like partridge and snipe shooting better than any other. As I remark in my notes on "November Shooting," a friend of mine once said he considered snipe-shooting "_the fox-hunting of shooting_," and I am disposed to agree with him. But, to return to June, from the 5th to about the 20th of the month, most of the forward hatches come off, and are seen basking and bathering round their mother. But there are other hatches much later, for cheepers are often found in September quite unfit to shoot at. I can only account for this, that the old birds have had their eggs destroyed in some way or other. A partridge manor is not one quarter the expense of pheasants and coverts. The latter birds not only require constant attention, night and day, but feeding forms a very serious item. Pheasants are very costly, and only within reach of the rich man. A partridge manor, to have a good head on it, though, must be well looked after, the vermin kept down, and your keeper with a sharp eye to all poachers and suspicious characters. With a net at night they often sweep off the birds wholesale; but there is a very easy way of baffling them. Put sticks, about eighteen inches high, fifteen, twenty, or thirty yards apart, over the ground the partridges generally roost on; these, as the net is drawn along, lift it up, and the birds easily escape. It is a good plan to walk the fields of an evening with a brace of dogs, where you know they roost, and disturb them; they may probably then take to the gorse, if any, potatoes, seed clover, and other safe ground. In May and June I wage war with the crows, magpies, jays and hawks, shooting or trapping the old hen birds. Always kill the male bird first; this is easily done by waiting patiently within shot, under cover of some tree or hedge where the nest is, which is generally built in some pretty high tree; the hen will not desert if sitting hard, which you should allow her to do; her death is then easily accomplished. I never allow poison to be used, for I hold that a keeper who cannot destroy all vermin by means of his gun and traps is not worth his wages. To have any quantity of game, it is better that you and your keepers should be on good terms with your neighbours; they will do as much good as half a dozen watchers. In May and June I always keep a lot of light broody hens ready to sit, for during the mowing season many partridge nests are cut out. The eggs are brought warm to me, and are instantly set under one of the hens. The people who bring me in the eggs I invariably reward, but they are never encouraged or allowed to look for nests. Now, if these men were not paid a trifle, and a horn of ale given to them, they would not trouble themselves or lose their time. It would be very easy to put their foot on the eggs and crush them. I am not an advocate for hand-reared birds, as there is some trouble and expense feeding them, and they do not grow strong and vigorous nearly so quickly as wild ones. In one year alone, some four or five seasons back, I had six hundred eggs cut out, and over five hundred birds were reared. Chamberland's food is the best for them, as well as for pheasants. Of course the hens should be cooped. There is one thing you must be most particular about, and that is never to place the coops near an old bank, or where there are rabbit-burrows, for these spots are not only the haunts of stoats and weasels, but there is an animal quite as dangerous, who loves a young partridge--the hedgehog. Many are of opinion that the hedgehog is harmless, but this idea I have proved to be erroneous (see "Over Turf and Stubble"--"The Hedgehog a Game-eater"). My life has been spent following up the sports of the field and observing the habits of different animals. The better way is, when your birds are young, to have them on your lawn, or in a field close to the house. The coops must be closed at night, to keep vermin and cats (deadly poachers) from getting at them. It is a mistake to let them out too early of a morning. The drier the ground the better partridges do when young. As they get stronger, remove them with their coops to a potato or clover field, cutting a swath through the latter to put the coops on and feed them. Place the coops twenty or thirty yards apart, or the birds, when young, will be straying into the wrong coops, and the hens will kill them, for they well know their own family. I like a clover-field the best, because there is lots of cover, and they escape the sharp eye of hawks and other vermin. In taking a partridge manor, ascertain first, by going over it _yourself_, if there is a fair head of breeding stock on the ground. A wise "old saw" informs us that, "if you want anything done well, do it yourself;" and this I certainly advise in this case, unless you have a keeper you can really trust. Do not take a manor that has too much grass land. There ought to be plenty of cover--turnips, clover, potatoes, rape, stubble, heath, &c., to insure good sport; for, if your ground is bare, although you may have plenty of birds, it will soon be impossible to get at them, for, as you enter a field, they will be away at the other end, and not having any cover to drive them to, you may follow them for hours and never get a shot. A manor, too, should not be all low ground, or the enclosures too small. In such a country, good, fast and free-going dogs soon become cramped in their range and potterers. It is, in an enclosed country, impossible to mark the birds; and constantly getting over stiff fences not only tires you, but it unsteadies your hand, which will lose its cunning. A partridge country should be as open as possible; then you can see your dogs work, which, in my humble opinion, constitutes the greatest charm of shooting. Farms are often let at eighteenpence an acre, which is an absurd price--a shilling is quite enough; but in many counties you can get as much good ground as you like at sixpence, but not near London. I hired, some two years ago, some capital rough shooting in North Wales at less than threepence an acre, but it was too cold for my better half to reside in during the winter months. Whatever county you may fix on, avoid the red-legs; though a very handsome bird, and much larger than ours, they are not nearly so good for the table as the grey ones, being dry and tasteless; and they will spoil any dog, as they never take wing unless hardly pressed, but will run field after field. I destroy their eggs wherever I meet them. In Norfolk, Suffolk, and particularly Essex, there are large quantities of them; they not only ruin your dogs, but they drive the grey birds away. I would not have a manor where there were any quantity of red-legs at a gift. Having now told you how to go to work, I will, in the garb of narrative, which, nevertheless is true, show you how shooting, with other sport, may be had at little cost by those who love it and prefer a country life. I give it you as related to me by a very dear old friend of mine. "Lenox and myself were boys at school, and afterwards at college together. A fine handsome fellow he was too, and doatingly attached to all field sports; he was not a rich man, quite the contrary, £300 a year at his father's death was all he had left to him, yet he managed to keep up a tolerable appearance even in London, and was engaged to one of the most beautiful girls I ever saw, and with a nice little fortune of her own. "Lenox was very fond and very proud of her, as well he might be; everything was arranged, the day fixed, trousseau bought, and his pretty little cottage in Hampshire newly and tastefully furnished to receive its new mistress. But, lo! a week before their wedding the young lady eloped with a nobleman, and they were married before Lenox knew anything about it. "He said little, but felt it deeply; all were sorry for him, for he was a great favourite. "Shortly after his pretty little cottage was sold, and with his effects Lenox vanished mysteriously no one knew whither. "I went abroad, and was away many years, and, therefore, had no means of finding out where he had betaken himself to, or what he was doing. "After more than twenty years' absence I returned to the old land; I had been satiated with sport of all kinds in different parts of the globe, and did not feel inclined to give the high prices asked for shootings. "My wife was somewhat delicate, and required a mild climate, so I took 'the galloper,' ran down to Plymouth, and from thence to Cornwall, determined, if I could, to buy a place there. I roamed about the country looking at different estates, and at last hit on a beautiful spot, with a nice house on it, convenient to the rail, and not too far from a good country town or schools. "One day during my peregrinations with the agent who had the selling of the property, I came on one of the most lovely little cottages I ever saw, placed on a slope, well sheltered from the winds, myrtles and fuchsias growing luxuriously and abundantly about, with its jessamine and honeysuckle covered porch, thatched roof, well-kept grounds, gardens, and brawling stream at the end of the lawn. I thought it one of the most fairy-looking little spots I had ever seen. "'Whose cottage is that?' I asked. 'It is not on this property, is it?' "'Oh, no, sir, just off this land; it belongs to Mr Lenox.' "'Lenox,' I breathlessly asked, 'Horace Lenox'? "'That's it, sir--one of the nicest gentlemen in these parts, and a rare sportsman: it is not his own property, only hired on long lease, but he has done a deal to it; three thousand acres of good mixed shooting and capital fishing, with that cottage, is not dear at fifty pounds a year, is it, sir?' "'I should think not, indeed. Mr Lenox is one of my oldest friends. I must go and call on him,' which I did. "I was told, on asking at the door, that he was out fishing, but would be home to dinner at six o'clock. "'Give him this card,' I said to the respectable old servant who had answered the ring, 'and tell him, I shall be here at six to dine with him. Is he married?' "'Oh dear no, sir, master is a single gentleman. I don't think he cares much about the women folk,' she added, in her quaint Cornish way. "The time hung heavily on my hands that day, so impatient was I to see my dear, valued old friend, and half past five saw me walking up the well-kept walk towards his house. "As I approached, a figure issued from the porch, surrounded by four or five beautiful setters. "A fine, handsome-looking man of three or four and forty advanced towards me, but quite grey; there was no mistaking, though, his honest, beaming, well-known face. "'Frederick, old fellow,' said he, grasping me by the hand, 'this is indeed kind of you; hundreds of times have I wondered what had become of you, and if you were still in the land of the living.' "'And I the same, Lenox; by mere chance have I found you out. I inquired at all the old haunts when I returned to England, and could never learn where you were.' "'Then you are the gentleman, I suppose, that has been looking at the estate next to me, with a view to purchase?' "'Just so, Horace, _ecce homo_.' "'You could not do better, old fellow; I will put you in the way. I know every inch of the ground--rare shooting--but come in, and I will tell you all about it after dinner. Margaret, my servant, is in the devil's own way, for it is rarely I ever have any one to dine with me.' "The inside of the cottage was just as pretty as the outside; his dining-room was a study for a sportsman: guns, rods, sporting pictures, &c., here hung all round the walls in endless profusion; it was the very essence of comfort and taste. "'Now, Horace,' said I, as I threw myself into one of the comfortable arm-chairs beside the open window, and he into another, 'tell me all that has happened since we last met.' "'That is easily done,' he returned, drawing up a small table between us, with a bottle of claret on it, that sent its aroma all over the apartment as he drew the cork. "'You know how I was served in London?' and his face assumed a hard, stern expression as he asked the question. "'Well, yes,' I replied; 'but you have forgotten all that, Horace?' "'I have not forgotten it. I never can forget it; it was a dreadful blow to me; but I have forgiven it years ago, and am content with my lot. I left London in disgust, wandered about, and at last found this little spot. I have the shooting of three thousand acres of land--ten acres for my two cows--I am as happy as possible. I breed lots of those,' pointing to his setters, who were lying about; 'and they pay me well. I have poultry, pigs, shooting--the woodcock and snipe shooting is particularly good in the season--and fishing in abundance; as good a cob as any man need possess; deny myself nothing in reason, and never know what a dull hour is. But you will sleep here, for I have already found out where you were, and sent for your things.' "I never passed a happier evening than I did with my long-lost friend; we smoked our cigars and talked of old times and old things that had happened years ago, passed never to return again. "'So your eldest boy is sixteen,' he remarked, after one of the pauses. 'Well, you must buy this place, Frederick, it is as cheap as dirt, and will pay you well. I will make your lads sportsmen--but I suppose you have done that yourself. I want companions now--no female ones,' he added, laughingly, 'your wife excepted; but some one to fish and shoot with me--the partridge-shooting is capital.' "I was delighted with all I saw the next day; the place was lovely, and I was induced to spend a week with him. At the end of that time I was the purchaser of the property, and left to bring down my family and all my belongings. "I have never regretted the step; though far away from the busy hum of the world, we are as happy as may be. Horace and I fish and shoot away; there is a calm quietness which I love. I, like my friend, have had some ups and downs in life, but the memory of them, in my country retreat, is gradually 'fading away.'" It is all very well for men who have long purses and large possessions to take expensive shootings; they can afford it and why should they not? What might I not be tempted to do if I had the chance? I cannot say, and, therefore, I will not speculate. To my young readers who are not _au fait_ at all these matters, I would urge them never to be too hasty in deciding on taking any shooting. If they are not in easy circumstances, they must go very cautiously to work; but that fair partridge and general shooting is to be had at a moderate figure I can prove. It is not generally known, but there are many parts of Scotland where there is first-rate partridge-shooting, and arrangements can be made to have it after the grouse-shooters have done and returned to England. I know several men who have made this arrangement, and get their sport at a very moderate cost. But gadding about to places is not my form. I prefer to remain on the spot, and then I can always see how matters are going on. In taking a rough bit of shooting, only one keeper is necessary; one good man will do the work far better than half a dozen bad ones. It is, I admit, a difficult thing to get such a man, but they are to be had. I have written this paper solely for the guidance of those whose means are limited; the rich can do as they like; money is often no object to them; but this I have known to be a fact, that the man who has only spent two or three hundreds, and often very much less, on his shooting has had far better sport than many of those who have spent thousands. WHO IS TO RIDE HIM? In a remote and lonely part of Dorsetshire stood, in a beautifully-wooded park, a fine old mansion, Bradon Hall, belonging to George Bradon, Esq., who at the time I speak of was about eight-and-twenty. He was one of the old school, as his father had been before him. Early in life he had been placed in a crack regiment of Dragoons, so he was not without a pretty good knowledge of the world for his age. Allowed a liberal sum by his father, he had never exceeded it; on the contrary, there was generally a fair balance at the end of the year in the hands of his agent. He was a remarkably handsome young fellow. Bred up in the country, and left to do pretty nearly as he liked, it was not wonderful he turned out an adept at all sorts of sports. A good cricketer, a still better fisherman, a magnificent shot, and not only the straightest but the best rider in the country; indeed riding was his forte. Not so with our late friend Artemus Ward at "playing 'oss." With all these sporting accomplishments he was much looked up to in his regiment, and it was said that the man who could live with George Bradon in any country for twenty minutes was A1 in the pigskin. Two years previous to the time I am speaking of, he found himself master of Bradon Hall; his mother had gone many years before. The first thing he did was to sell out and come home, where he had ever since resided. All the men in his regiment had the blues when he left. "It was an infernal bore," Captain Swagger remarked, "to lose such a vewey fine fellaw as Bwadon; he should like to know who the devil could bwoo such a cwawat-cup as Bwadon?" At any rate George left, taking with him a magnificent gold snuff-box, a present from his fellow-officers, "which would be," as the lieutenant-colonel said, "a doocid nice thing to push about the dinner-table when he and his old friends of the regiment came down to hunt and shoot with him." Some of them had been true to their word, and paid him a visit now and then in the sporting season. George was delighted to see them; it put him in mind of old times, and he was always glad to know how matters were going on in his old corps. His father had been a great breeder of horses, and as George was just as enthusiastically fond of them, the old blood had been kept up; and with the exception of a fine specimen of an old English gentleman, who used to be daily seen walking about in a blue coat with gilt buttons, buckskins and tops, looking over his brood mares and colts, everything was the same as before. All the servants had been retained; they loved "Master George" too well to quit, nor had they been asked to. Bradon, when with his regiment, had been the crack rider in it, and many a good stake had he won for that gallant corps. His services had always been most anxiously sought after, and mounts given him in most of the great steeple-chases of the day. He was so cool and collected, no bustle or flurrying with him. A fine eye, a fine hand, a famous judge of pace, and strong at the finish, with a knowledge, that must almost have been born in him, when to ease his horse, force the running, or take advantage of any mistake. "On the whole," Lord Plunger, who was no mean judge, used to say--"on the whole I consider George Bradon the finest cross-country rider in Europe." Bradon, though uncommonly lucky in his mounts, bore his honours meekly, and when he sold out and came down to the old place to live, gave up steeple-chasing altogether. "He had so much to do, so much to attend to; after a bit he would have another squeeze at the lemon, but really he must attend to his affairs first." Repeated refusals damped the ardour of his friends, so at last they gave up asking him to ride, and he was left in quiet to pursue his own way. Time went on, and such a person as George Bradon had almost been forgotten by the sporting public. One morning, some eighteen months after he had come home, going into the harness-room, he carelessly seated himself in the weighing-chair, and exclaimed to the old stud-groom, an heirloom his father had left him: "The same weight, Tim, I suppose--eleven three?" The person thus appealed to, standing on tiptoe, looked up at the dial as well as he was able; for, in addition to being short and stout, he had a very tight pair of trousers, which seemed to have been made on him, and was moreover incommoded by a stiff white neckcloth, which threatened to strangle him. After having studied the dial for a few seconds, he started back, and blurted out in a voice of horror and amazement: "Can I believe my haged heyes, Master George? You're twelve five, as I'm a miserable sinner!" "What!" exclaimed George, jumping out of the chair considerably quicker than he had got into it, and throwing away the cigar which he had been indolently puffing--"what! twelve five? It cannot be; weigh me again, Tim." The old man did so with the same result. "Oh, hang it!" said George, "the scale is wrong; it cannot be. I am not a bit heavier than I was; the same clothes fit me I wore two years ago. It's all bosh." "I don't know, Master George, if it's all bosh or no," replied his old servant, "but the scale is right. Now lookee, sir, I've been fourteen stun nine for the last eleven years--not a hounce more or less. See my weight, sir." George cast his eyes up at the dial as Tim wriggled himself into the chair. "Yes," he said, "you are right--fourteen nine to a fraction, Tim. How the deuce I came to be this weight I have no idea; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that, instead of eleven three, my old walking weight, I am twelve five--sixteen pounds in less than two years," he muttered, as he sauntered away. "By George, I'll knock off that sixteen pounds pretty quickly, though. I detest fat people. An idle life will not suit me. I'll do Banting or something." Tim looked after his young master as he walked away. "Well," he exclaimed at length, "Master George"--he was always Master George with the old servants--"twelve five; I'd never have thought it. There's something in his heye, though, that tells me he won't be that weight long. Although he is so cool he'll hunt every day the coming season, I'll bet my life; walk like blazes, and take physic enough to float a jolly-boat. I'll lay a sov," he remarked, as he slowly drew one out of a bag which he extracted from the depths of his capacious breeches-pocket, "that he is in his old form this day six months; dashed if I don't bet a fiver, or any part of it." But as no one was there to take him, he put back the coin, gave the neck of the bag a twist, and after a struggle managed to convey it to his breeches pocket again. "What will my old woman say," he continued, "when I tells her o' this? she as nussed him as a foal, and said he'd never get fat like me. It's heart-breaking to think on. And there's Guardsman, the finest and fastest hunter in England, just coming six; how will he be able to carry him if he goes sticking mountains of flesh on like that?--he can't do it. He'll have to ride in a seven-pound saddle; but I don't let him do that, not if I knows it--he'd break his precious neck, and then I should like to be told where Tim Mason would be, the old woman, and all the kids. No seven-pound saddle for me. I ain't a-going to have my boy a-smashing of hisself, and all because he will put flesh on. He's the only one left of the old stock; it's time he married, and I hope he will. I'm almost afraid to tell the old woman. Twelve stun five!" he ejaculated, as he wended his way thoughtfully across the yard; "it seems almost impossible." "Tim," said his master the next morning, "this idle life won't do for me. I'm going over to France for three or four months. Would you like a trip?" "Me, sir?" said the old man. "Why in course I should like to see them mounseer fellows eat frogs, and taste their brandy, too." "Well, Tim, so you shall," replied George; "and look here, we will take Guardsman and the gray with us. I will run them both at some of the meetings. Young Harry shall go with us; he is a good rider, a light weight, and can keep his mouth shut." "Yes, sir," said Tim. "He and I can do the horses as they ought to be done, and a little work now will do them good." "Well," continued his master, "I'm off to London this afternoon to make some arrangements. Travel the horses down to Southampton, and meet me at the 'Dolphin,' in High Street, you know. Be there on Monday morning; take saddles, clothing, and all you want. However, I need not tell you all this, or of the necessity of keeping our movements a profound secret." "No occasion--no occasion, sir; I'll be there. Huzza!" he exclaimed, as soon as his master was out of hearing. "My words are coming true--racing again, by all that's jolly! This is a proud day for me. My boy will get into form again, I know he will. I should like to give him a leg up once more, and see him set a field." So saying he waddled off to inform his old woman, as he irreverently called her, of the change about to take place. Some few days after this Bradon, his servants and horses, were located in a quiet little village in Lower Brittany. "Well, Tim," said his master one morning, as the old stud-groom came in to say the horses were well, and ask what exercise they were to take. "What exercise?" said George; "why, I'll tell you. They are to go into regular training; they are in pretty good fettle now, but they must be better. We can do it in quiet here, without those confounded touts and fellows watching us, as they would have done at home. I should have had a scoundrel perched up in nearly every tree in the park if they knew the game I was flying at. I have found out good ground here, and have permission to use it. Now, Tim, I am going to astonish your weak nerves. I need not caution you of the necessity of being silent. All the races, I find, are over in France for the year; but, Tim, what do you think? I have entered both the horses for the Grand Silverpool Steeple-chase. I did it when I was in town the other day." "What!" said the astonished old man, "the Grand Silverpool?--my horses going to run for the Grand Silverpool? Oh, Master George, this is a joyful day. Guardsman will win it; he has never run, and if there is any justice he must be put in light. But who is to ride him?" "Who?" returned his master. "For your life, Tim, not a word." And pulling him closer by the arm, whispered: "MYSELF!" "You, sir?--but your weight, sir? Twelve stun five and your saddle. Oh, no, Master George, that won't do." "Now, Tim, you are a clever fellow, but others are as knowing as you. Look here. You see this weighing-chair; well, I bought that in London. Now weigh me." The old man did as he was bid. "Why, sir," he exclaimed, after looking at it, "only twelve stun one; four pounds lighter in less than a week, and without exercise." "Or physic," continued Bradon. "Banting, Tim, Banting. No bread, no butter, no sugar, no beer, no saccharine matter of any sort; plenty of meat, biscuits, toast, claret, and seltzer-water. That is my diet, and I never felt so well. If wanted I shall be able to ride eleven stone with the greatest ease." * * * * * In a luxuriously-furnished dining-room, some three months after the events which we have described, five or six gentlemen were discussing their wine. "I cannot make it out," said a heavy-built man of five-and-forty or so; "I have tried everything I know, and am not a bit the wiser than when I began. This Bradon is a most extraordinary fellow. I took the trouble of going down to Dorsetshire myself, and all I could arrive at was that Bradon was travelling. The servants knew nothing, or would know nothing. They were aware the stud-groom had gone and taken two horses and a lad with him; that was all I could get out of them. Well, I went to the groom's house and saw his wife. She looked at me, and received me as if I had been a thief. It was a regular mull. That Bradon has got two horses with him I am certain; but what they are, and where they are, hang me if I can find out. I have tried every tout and stable in the kingdom, but to no purpose, so I have given it up as a bad job." "Ah!" replied a fashionably-dressed and bewhiskered young man, "with all your cleverness and knowing dodges, you are bowled out, old boy. I know a little more than you. In my opinion George Bradon is training his horses quietly somewhere for the Silverpool. Both are well in, and the handicap has been accepted by him. He is a knowing hand, is Bradon. Now, I got hold of a letter written to a friend of his just before he left England. No matter how or where I got it, this is what he says." And opening his pocket and taking out a letter he read the following:-- Bradon Hall, Nov. 1st. "DEAR JACK, "In answer to yours of this morning I am sorry I cannot accept your kind invitation. I'm off on a bit of travelling, for I am not at all in form. Fancy my disgust on weighing myself yesterday morning to find I was considerably over twelve stone--so you see an idle life will not do for me. I shall go to France first; I may probably remain there for some time. I have entered two nags for the Silverpool. I must engage some one to ride one; it matters little who will get the second mount, as he will merely be wanted to make running for the one I declare to win with. "Yours, ever, "GEORGE BRADON." "There!" he exclaimed, "you see I know more than all of you. As for Bradon's riding, that is an utter impossibility, for both horses are in at ten twelve, and it is equally impossible to get any good hand to ride them now, as all are engaged." "By George, Fred!" exclaimed the first that had spoken, "you have done wonders, but still I can make nothing of it. No end of odds have been offered against his nags for win or a place, and all have been eagerly taken up by the fellows of his old regiment. Why, Plunger alone stands to win over ten thousand. However, the horses are really coming into the betting, which they must not do. I must go down to the rooms to-morrow and give them such a tickler that will knock them out at once. It will not suit my book their taking prominent places in the market. By heaven! if either of them was to pull through I should be a ruined man, and others are in for double as much as I am." "My dear fellow," put in a quiet, sly-looking little man, who had not yet spoken, "you should not do such rash things. Flukes do happen--not that it is likely in this case. I always wait till the last moment, and then come with a rush when I know things are pretty safe." "Come with a rush," replied a tall, delicate-looking stripling; "a pretty rush you made of it last year. You prevented my getting on, and not only put me in the hole, but every one else who attended to you." "I could not help it, my dear boy," returned the other, with a crafty smile. "There is no occasion for you to ruin yourself too quickly, which you will do if you go on in such a reckless manner." "Reckless manner!" passionately exclaimed the young fellow; "why, you have had more of my money than any one else. Where others have had pounds you have had thousands, and now you talk to me of 'recklessness.' That is rather hard lines." "I meant no harm," replied the other. "I only think it is dangerous to lay against Bradon's horses at present." "No doubt you do," said the youth, a little pacified; "but I do not mean to take your advice in this case, and to-morrow, if I do not knock them out of the betting it shall not be my fault." So it was settled between them all over their wine and cigars that Bradon's horses should be set at on the morrow and sent out of market. They were attacked, and such extravagant sums laid against them that astonished every one, many of which odds were booked by Lord Plunger and a few others. How this came about we will now explain. Lord Plunger, as before stated, thought George Bradon "the finest cross-country rider in Europe," and from a letter which Bradon sent in confidence to his lordship, he started for France. Here Bradon put him up to what was going on, and asked him to take some of the heavy odds offered against Guardsman "to win and a place." "I won't have anything to do with it myself," remarked George. "You are a betting-man, Plunger, which I am not; but I will have one more shy, hit or miss. This will be my last appearance in public in the pigskin. I don't admire the way in which matters are carried on in the racing world now; and I am not going to risk my fortune and reputation in having any more to do with it. Of course there are honest people connected with it, but they--like angels' visits--are few and far between; and besides, I know nothing of betting, but this I feel sure of, that such a horse as mine has not been out for years." "That," said his lordship, "I am quite certain of, or you would not run him, and you are too good a judge to be deceived. You may depend on my doing all you wish. I shall be as silent as death on the subject, and not a word shall escape me. Let me see"--consulting his note-book--"I am to go as far as five hundred for you; that ought to win you a handsome sum. I shall go as far for myself. You are to come to me four days before the Silverpool, and I am to take you there in the drag. That is the order of march, is it not?" "Exactly," said George. "Now let's have a cigar--you have plenty of time before you start. If you have any luck you will be sitting _chez vous_ to-morrow evening." It turned out as his friend predicted. The following evening Lord Plunger was comfortably lolling in his arm chair, thinking what a clever fellow Bradon was, and how secretly his own journey to France had been managed. This then was the reason Lord Plunger had taken some of the extravagant long odds that had been laid against Bradon's horse. The morning of the Grand Silverpool broke bright and beautiful; though there had been a good deal of rain during the night, it had cleared off, and the day promised to be all that could be desired. Bradon and Lord Plunger sat at breakfast in a quiet little country hotel some ten miles from the course. "Well, George," said his lordship, "so far, I think we have managed things admirably, not a soul knows of your being in England. They fondly imagine you are roaming about the Continent, and, to crown all, a rumour has got about that your horses will not start, and will be scratched at the last minute. It was a capital idea our coming down here last night." "Yes," replied Bradon, "it was a famous dodge; so they think the horses will be scratched, do they? Well, it strikes me they will be slightly deceived about three o'clock to-day. Nothing can be in more beautiful fettle than the nags are, and if man ever had a certainty I have one in Guardsman; although I have had no trial with him against anything else, he is, I know, a flyer, and a sticker. It will be heavy to-day, and no horse I ever rode goes better through dirt than he does. Bar accidents, I look on the Silverpool as landed." "Bravo, bravo, George!" said his friend; "your heart is in the right place, and if we should pull it off, it will be one of the grandest _coups_ that has been made on the Turf for many a day. We will go in half an hour, if you like, to look at your nags. They are only three miles from this, at a quiet farmhouse; then we will return here, dress, and start at twelve in the drag." The horses were inspected, and nothing could look more beautiful. Tim was in his glory. "Yes, my lord," said he, in answer to a question put to him by that gentleman. "I am glad to be back in the old land, not but what the Moossoos was very jolly and haffable. Still, France ain't up to my notions of a sporting country; but we was in quiet there--no touts, no interlopers, or anything. Now, if I'd a-brought the horses down here by rail, every one would have knowed it; so they came in a van. It's a little more expensive, but by far the best and safest way. Not a soul knows they are here, and no one will be aware of it till I takes them to the saddling-post. I'm just going to start with them now. I've got a couple of boxes close by the course, so you must excuse me, my lord." And, touching his hat, the old man disappeared. * * * * * "Whose yellow drag and grays is that coming up the course?" said one of the occupants of the lawn in front of the Grand Stand. "I do not know it." A dozen glasses were at once levelled at the object. "Whose drag?" said the sly-looking little man we have alluded to before. "Why, Lord Plunger's. George Bradon is sitting on the box seat with him, and the rest are officers of his old regiment--I know their faces." "By jingo!" burst out a score of voices: "then he is in England, and come to see his horses run, or scratch them. Now we shall know something." "I wonder if he will be flattered when he hears the price his nags are at now?" said another. "He will not care a rap," said the sly-looking little man. "Look out, my boys, there's something up, you may depend. Bradon, if his horses do go, has something pretty good, you may rely. I warned you all before. Now, I have not laid a penny against his nags. I have let them alone--till the last minute. But here they come." "Hallo, Bradon!" burst out fifty voices. "What, in England! Come to see the nags beaten?" "Well, I do not know," said George, shaking hands with some of them. "I hope they will be there, or thereabouts; pretty heavy the ground to-day. My horses can stand it, which a good many of the others cannot." "Are your horses here?" said the sly-looking little man. "Not yet," returned Bradon, "but they will be by-and-by. Old Mason has got them stowed away somewhere; but upon my soul I don't know where they are myself at present." "Which shall you declare to win with?" asked the sly-looking little man continuing his interrogations. "Oh, with Guardsman," said George. "And your jocks?" put in another. "All the talent is engaged. A pity you are so heavy--why, you've grown immense. You will want a dray-horse to carry you soon." "Think I have?" said George. "It's my coats, man. Every fellow looks large with a couple of top-coats on, and a huge-wrapper round his throat. I know all the talent is engaged. One of my lads will ride the gray." "I say, Bradon," put in another, "I heard you weighed twelve stone five; is that a fact?" "Yes," said George; "I put on sixteen pounds in less than two years--an idle life at home did for me." "But, Bradon," persisted the sly-looking little man, "you say one of your lads is going to ride the gray. But Guardsman--_who is to ride him_?" "Oh," said George, "who is to ride him?--why, I will tell you in one word, it's a fellow you all know pretty well--MYSELF." Had a thunderbolt fallen amongst them they could not have been more astonished. "What!" they one and all exclaimed, "you? Why you told us not an instant ago that you weighed twelve stone five." "No, my friends, I did not. I said, in answer to a question, that I _had_ weighed twelve stone five. I told you I had put sixteen pounds on, but I did not tell you I had not taken it off. I walk ten stone ten now--Banting, my boys, Banting. And, listen to me, I shall win if I can, and I have a good chance; but, win or lose, this is my last appearance in public. I've grown immense, have I not, old fellow?" addressing himself to the one who had made the remark. "I shall want a dray-horse soon, shall I not?" "By G--," said the sly-looking little man, "I thought there was something up. The very best hand in England going to ride his own horse. I'll be off to back him." The tall youth before alluded to turned deadly pale, but not a word did he utter as he walked away. In less than five minutes it became known in the ring and the stands that George Bradon was to ride his own horse. The utmost consternation ensued and many tried to hedge off their bets--but little or nothing could be done. In the meantime our friend was quietly getting himself ready in the dressing-room. The time at last came, the horses were saddled, and cantered. "Here comes Guardsman," cried the crowd, as the gallant horse came sweeping up the course in magnificent style, with the gray beside him. "By heaven!" muttered a well-known betting-man, and one of the best judges in Europe, "a truly splendid horse--far better in appearance and style than anything here. Bar accidents, he will win in a canter, and if he does, I'm ruined." The betting and other men were positively paralyzed as Bradon and his horse came sweeping by, and it was allowed on all hands that no such animal as Guardsman had been seen for years. "There, my boys," said Lord Plunger, dashing into the ring, "there's a man and horse for you. If he does not do the trick to-day I shall be very much astonished; and if he does, we shall both land a handsome sum, which you will drop." The anxious moment is at last come, the horses are in line--the old stud-groom, Tim Mason, stands close by, with wipers, sponge, and bottle in hand. There is a curious nervous twitching at the corners of his mouth, the lips are dry and parched, and two small red spots adorn each cheek. Not so with our friend. He sits his noble animal with confidence, ease, and grace, and as cool as a cucumber. Spying out his faithful old servant, he said, "What do you think of him, Tim?" "Why, sir," he called out, "he's the best horse as was ever foaled; and if he don't beat that lot"--pointing with extreme contempt towards the line of horses--"Tim Mason knows nothing about it, and is jolly well d----d." The word is at last given, and at the first attempt the lot are off. "They're off!" shouted the hoarse voices of thousands, and streaming along were some thirty gallant animals striving for the pride of place--thousands, nay hundreds and hundreds of thousands, depending on the lucky animal that first caught the judge's eye. The conspicuous colours of George Bradon--scarlet and white hoops--were in the extreme rear, but suddenly as they got into the grass land his gray took first place and made the pace a cracker. "The gray in to pump the field," muttered the sly-looking little man to his neighbour. "The fastest thing I have ever seen," said another. "By jingo, one, two, three down, and look, Bradon is taking quite a line of his own. By George, how well his horse jumps; it's a dead certainty." "So I think," returned the other. There is an awful tailing off now, the pace has told its tale; only eighteen or twenty are really in it. The dangerous brook and the double bank are passed, and the gallant gray who has set the field has shot his bolt. "Well done, Harry," cried George, as he passed him. "Well done, pull him up." The great water jump in front of the Grand Stand is approached again. "Here they come!" roared the multitude. "Who's first? Scarlet and white hoops," cried the excited thousands--"scarlet and white over the water first for money!" George knowing the danger of a lot of horses, which he thought would be down at this, resolved to lead over it. Dropping his hands a bit the gallant animal rushed to the front, a length or so, and there he was kept. The water is approached, the excitement of the multitude is something fearful as they sway to and fro to catch a glimpse. "Magnificent!" burst from thousands of throats, as Guardsman hopped over the formidable eighteen feet like a bird. George turned slightly in his saddle to take stock. "All safe but three," he uttered; "well, that is more than I thought would get over. Now, old man, I must take a pull at you. You have only done part of the journey. I can't afford to pump you yet." "Guardsman has cut it," shouted a hundred voices as the gallant horse was pulled back. "The cowardly brute!" bawled another. "Don't you believe it," cried the sly-looking little man, in a shrill voice that was heard all over the place. "I'll take three to one in thous, and do it twice, that Guardsman wins, or is placed." "Done," said the pale delicate youth; "I'm on for twice." And the pencils went to work. There was but one opinion amongst the countless thousands that Guardsman was the best horse in the race, and that, bar accidents, he must win. The field has become very select now; still what do remain in the chase go well. The excitement is intense; men are gnawing their lips and nails; ladies are quivering with emotion and biting the tips of their delicate-coloured gloves. Wild and staring eyes are everywhere. Men eagerly grasp each other by the arm with a wild convulsive clutch as the horses clear each obstacle. Some stand stony and immovable, without the slightest appearance of interest. Little is known of the fearful beatings of their hearts under that cold, calm exterior. "Here they come!" said the crowd, as some eight or ten horses make the turn for home. "Guardsman baked!" shouts the ring, as the horse is seen nearly last. "The Irish horse wins for a thousand," shouts an over-excited speculator. "Done," says the sly-looking little man, and again the metallics are at work. Lord Plunger looks on with a calm indifferent demeanour. "By G--, Plunger," said one of George's old messmates, with a scared countenance, "Bradon is done. We shall all drop finely." "Wait!" was the quiet answer. The last hurdle but one is taken, which the Irish horse jumps first; but what a change has taken place in the field! Scarlet and white hoops, instead of being nearly last, is hanging on the leading horse's quarters, and it is very patent to all those skilled in racing matters that from the manner Guardsman skimmed over the hurdle the other horse was only permitted to lead on sufferance. Turn where you will, the same look of intense excitement is discernible on every countenance; the vast mass surges to and fro, the hoarse murmur of the frenzied multitude has something unearthly in it. "The Irish horse wins,--Guardsman wins!" is shouted on all sides. The horses come up closely locked together; never moving on his horse Bradon sits as quiet as a statue, but the heels of the other horseman are at work; the whip arm is raised, but just as it is the strain on Guardsman's jaws is relaxed, and the noble horse, without the slightest effort, quits the other, and is landed an easy winner by some half-dozen lengths. "There," said Lord Plunger, heaving a vast sigh, which seemed to relieve him immensely; "did you ever see such a horse, and such a bit of riding?" His lordship is not calm now; there is a wild feverish light in his eyes; he trembles, too, slightly; a bright hectic spot is on either cheek, and the veins in his temples are swollen, and seem ready to burst as he takes off his hat to draw his hand across his clammy brow. "Thank God!" he muttered, as he turned to meet his friend, who was returning to the weighing-stand, amidst such shouts as are seldom heard. Cheer after cheer rent the air. "God bless you, old fellow!" said his lordship, as his friend passed him in the enclosure; "there never was, and never will be, such a Silverpool again. I will never bet another farthing! I'm square again." George is now dismounted. Taking the saddle off his noble favourite, as he has it on one arm, he fondly and proudly pats his neck. Tim is standing at the horse's head, with a rein in each hand; tears are coursing down the old man's cheek. "God spare you many years, sir!" said he to his master, who looked kindly at him; "but never ride another race whilst I am alive; I can't bear it; one more day such as this would be my last." George entered the weighing-room. "Guardsman, ten twelve," said he, seating himself in the chair. The clerk of the scales approached with book in hand and pencil in mouth, looking up to the dial for an instant said, "Right!" Cheer after cheer rent the air again as he came out in his top-coat. "For God's sake, George, come to the drag and have some champagne; I'm ready to faint," said Lord Plunger, as he seized his arm. "Come on, then," returned Bradon; "I'm thirsty too; but just let me look to the horse and Tim first." But Tim had clothed the horses up, as he said the boxes were only a few paces off, and they would be better dressed there. As he turned to follow Lord Plunger, he was seized by a host of his old companions-in-arms, hoisted up, and carried to the drag on their shoulders. "Bradon," said Lord Plunger, after he had drained off a silver goblet of the sparkling wine, "we have pulled out of this well, right well; for myself, I have now done with betting and the Turf. I have been hit, and hard hit, but this _coup_ more than squares me. I'll tempt the fickle goddess no more." "My decision you knew long ago," returned his friend. "This is my last appearance in public. I shall only hunt, and I think with such a horse as Guardsman I may be a first-flight man." His lordship and Bradon were ever afterwards only lookers-on at the few race-meetings they attended, and here we must take leave of them. In a snug little cottage close by Bradon Hall lives Tim Mason, now rather an infirm old man; still he looks after the stud as usual. In his pretty little parlour, on a side table, stand two glass cases. Under one is a saddle, bridle, &c., in the other a satin racing jacket and cap--scarlet and white hoops. It may easily be divined whose they were. "They were only used once," he would say, pointing them out to some friend who had dropped in to see him, "only once; but they won a pot of money for my boy. Lord, you should have seen him ride and win that Silverpool--it was a sight for sore eyes, I can tell you. Never were two better horses than Guardsman and my gray. It's rather the ticket to see them in the field now; they're the best hunters as ever was foaled." [This story was first published in _Baily's Magazine_ (1870).--ED.] A CUB-HUNTING INVITATION _Monday._--Received letter from POWNCEBY. "Come down to my little place and we'll do a morning's cubbing. Can mount you. Say Tuesday night by 6.5, and I'll meet you at Chickenham Station." Deuced good of POWNCEBY. Hardly known him a week. Will wire at once to accept. _Tuesday._--Go down by 6.5 train. Pouring all the way. Wonder how far Chickenham is. Inquire, and am told next station. POWNCEBY receives me on platform. Awfully dark and still raining. Hope he has brought closed carriage of some sort. Hate open carts this weather. POWNCEBY greets me heartily. Seems a deuced good chap this. So thoroughly pleased to see me. "My little place only a short step from here, so hope you won't mind walking? Porter will take your bag. Yes, the roads _are_ a bit muddy, but that's nothing. Ready? We'll start, then." Don't think walking is quite in my line, especially on pouring wet night. We trudge along dark lane, splashing into deep puddles at every other step. "Don't mind going a little out of our way, do you?" says POWNCEBY, "must just run into the butcher's and the grocer's to take a few things home with me." We diverge into dimly-lit street. POWNCEBY disappears into shop, leaving me standing outside. Seems to be at least an hour in grocer's; another ten minutes in butcher's. My teeth chattering now. Start again, and walk on and on. Ask, "Where's your place, are we anywhere near it?" "Oh, close by," says POWNCEBY, cheerily. Trudge on again; wet through by this time. Am seriously marshalling supply of cuss-words into their places for use in the near future, when POWNCEBY suddenly grips my arm, dropping pound of sausages from under his own at same moment. They fall into puddle. "There's my little place, old chap." Wish he wouldn't "old chap" me. Hardly know the fellow, and begin to hate him now. He picks up sausages, and repeats, "there's my little place; jolly little crib, ain't it?" Fear POWNCEBY is vulgar, never noticed it before. Can just see feeble light in cottage window, apparently miles off. Murmur, faintly, "Oh, I see," and struggle along again. My boots like wet paper, now, and trying to imitate suction pump. Do rest of journey silently. Cottage at last. POWNCEBY lifts latch, and we enter. Smell of lamp-oil overpowering. POWNCEBY's "little place" is labourer's four-roomed cottage, and singularly dirty at that. Met by aggressive elderly female, even dirtier than cottage. POWNCEBY silently hands her mud-stained sausages and two chops, wrapped in newspaper. I don't exactly dine, says POWNCEBY to me, "I have supper, you know; same thing, only different name. Being a bachelor, I make no fuss with anyone." Rather wish he would. "Come upstairs and put yourself straight. Mind that loose board. Not 'up to weight,' as we say, eh?" Avoid loose plank and stumble upstairs into sloping-roofed attic. Painted wooden bedstead; ditto washstand. Smells musty. Paper peeling off walls, and ceiling coming down in patches. I shudder, and ask when I may expect portmanteau. "Oh, in about an hour, I daresay. Got all you want? Sure that you're _quite_ comfortable?" _Mem._ This man evidently an unconscious humorist. Have to borrow (greatly against my will) some dry clothes of POWNCEBY's in absence of my own. Wash, and descend ricketty stairs to sitting room. Fire smokes. "Like me," says POWNCEBY, facetiously, and laughs uproariously. Must have _very_ keen sense of humour, this man. Aggressive female enters with two chops (fried) and ditto sausages; small jug of table beer and tinned loaf complete picture. "Let's fall to," says POWNCEBY; "you see your meal before you. None of your French dishes for me!" (_Mem._ nor for me either, unfortunately,) "but, good, plain, English food, eh?" Do not reply, but attack sausage. Decline fried chop. Beer turgid; leave it untasted; Thank goodness, my portmanteau arrives during repast. Pay porter half-a-crown--looks as if he had earned it. POWNCEBY finishes off my chop and his own too, smacks his lips, and produces bottle of "cooking" brandy. I light cigar, and take one sip of the brandy. Find one sip more than satisfying and do not try another. "Got a nice horse for you, to-morrow," says POWNCEBY; "he ain't a beauty, but a real good 'un. Useful horse, too. Does all the chain-harrowing and carting work. Must start at 5 A.M. sharp and get breakfast afterwards." I nod. Am past the speaking stage now. Retire to bed, damp and shivering, and very hungry. Find mouse seated on dressing table, regarding me contemptuously. Shy boot at him. Miss mouse, but smash mirror. Feel glow of unholy satisfaction at this. Toss about all night. _Wednesday._--Rise 4.30, dress by candle-light, and crawl down stairs. Ask POWNCEBY where are horses? "Oh, we'll walk round to the stable for 'em," says POWNCEBY. Plod through many puddles, and enter evil smelling shed. Labourer saddling melancholy grey, elaborately stained on both quarters. "There you are, and as good as they make 'em." Don't know who "they" are, but wish "they" would "make 'em" a little cleaner. Mount, and am joined by POWNCEBY on equine framework. Beginning to rain again. "This is jolly, eh?" he says. "Oh, awfully," I reply, feebly, as my wreck nearly blunders down on to his fiddle head. Arrive at meet 6.30. "Oh, the 'ounds 'as bin gorn this 'arf hour or more. The meet was at six," says a yokel. POWNCEBY borrows fiver on road home. Caught 10.15 back to town, and if ever----! TOLD AFTER MESS "You want to hear the story, eh?" Loud chorus of subalterns: "No!" "All right, then, that settles your fate, and you shall!" and I lit a cigar preliminary to starting the yarn. "Well do I remember the episode. It was a cut-throat country that we had to ride over. Many of my soldier comrades, brave and true, fell that day thickly around me--but as they all got up again, it did not really so much matter." Having deftly dodged a sofa-cushion shied at my head by way of a gentle hint to "get forrard," I dropped from airy heights to the sober realms of fact, and proceeded to tell my plain unvarnished tale. "After hunting for ten years with a pack belonging to a Cavalry regiment--let us call it the 'Heavyshot Drag'--the Fates (and Taylor & Co.) removed me into a far country, and but for the kindness of some members of the hunt, who often asked me up and gave me a mount, I should have known the Heavyshot no more, as it was too far to bring any of my own select stud--consisting of a musical one, with three legs and a swinger, a bolter with a blind eye, and a 13.2 pony!--up for the gallop. And what jolly gallops they always were, too! "One day I got a wire from my excellent friend Major Laughton, who was then Master of the Heavyshot, 'Come up, Friday. Lunch mess. Hounds meet Pickles Common.' To which, in the degenerate language of the times, I wired reply, 'You bet,' and one P.M. on the day named found my breeched and booted legs beneath the mahogany of the hospitable mess room. "Major Laughton, in greeting me, said, 'So sorry, my dear boy, I can't give you my second horse, as he's all wrong to-day--a severe "pain under the pinafore" has floored him. But I've got you a gee from--well, never mind where from, I know he can jump.' And with these words the conversation dropped. As to where my mount came from--well, it was no concern of mine, was it? I thought I noticed a slight deflection of the gallant Major's left eyelid when he was speaking, but that, after all, might have been my fancy. "After putting in some strong work over the luncheon course, we lit cigars, and in a few minutes both horses and hounds appeared on the parade ground. My horse with the mysterious origin was a good-looking bay, who carried his head in the 'cocky' fashion beloved of riding-masters, and proved a very pleasant hack. We jogged along and soon reached the meet. "The usual scene of eagerness and excitement, hounds supplying the latter element, whilst the superior animal, man, jostled his fellows consumedly, in his natural desire to 'get off the mark' as soon as decency and the Master permitted. The last-named held forth vigorously to us, as with a 'Tow-yow-yow!' hounds dashed across the first field, and jumped, scrambled, or squeezed through the first fence. "'Let 'em get over before you start, bless you all! Come back there, you man on the grey! What the saintly St Ursula are you doing? All right, now you can go, and be past-participled to you all!' "And away we went as if His Satanic Majesty had assisted us with the toe of his boot! Swish! and the first fence, long looked at and much disliked, is a thing of the past; horses pull and bore to get their heads as we sail down a stiffish hill and over a broad ditch at the bottom. My horse drops one hind leg in, and loses a couple of lengths by the performance. Up a slight slope we stand in our stirrups--to ease our horses, _bien entendu_--not to look at the forbidding obstacle in front of us, oh dear no! a post and rails, with no top bar broken anywhere, and what I hear a groom behind me calling a 'narsetty' great ditch on the landing side. Our gallant first Whip crams his horse at it, and but for the animal's forgetfulness in leaving both hind legs the wrong side, would have led over in great style; but 'tis an ill wind which blows nobody any good, and those legs break the top rail for us. Did I follow the Whip over a bit close? Well, I hope not; verdict, 'not guilty, but don't do it again.' Two flights of hurdles and a ploughed field bring us to the main road. We jump into, and out of, this, leaving two of our number as 'bookmakers'--_i.e._, 'laying on the field.' On we go again over about three miles of pretty hunting country, with nice, plain-sailing fences; then comes a stile, at which one refusal and two 'downers' still further reduces the field; and, with another flight of hurdles surmounted, we come to a check. Oh, the shaking of tails and blowing of nostrils! the 'soaping' of reins and the sweat on the foam-flecked bodies of the poor gees! "'Horses seem to have had about enough of it, don't you think so?' said a man who had pulled up just alongside of me. "I turned in my saddle to answer, when, without the slightest warning, and giving vent to a groan which I seem to hear still, my horse suddenly fell to the ground. A dozen men slipped off their horses to lend a hand. We quickly unbuckled the girths and pulled the saddle off, but, even as we did so, I saw the glazing eye, which told unmistakably that the poor old chap had done his last gallop and jumped his last fence. He was as dead as Julius Cæsar! "'By Jove, and it's one of the Queen's, too!' exclaimed an impetuous Subaltern. "'Shut up, you young ass!' quickly rejoined his Major in low tones, and the good youth incontinently closed the floodgates of his eloquence just as an enormous man, Colonel de Boots, in command of the Cavalry depôt, who had driven out to see the fun, pushed his way through the little crowd assembled round the 'stiff un' in order to tender his advice. "It was a tight place for those concerned, but the tension was quickly relaxed when, instead of looking at the horse, he turned to me and said, 'Deuced sorry _for your loss_, really--most annoying. My wife will be delighted to give you a seat in her carriage. My servant shall look after your horse until----' "'Not for worlds, sir,' I replied hastily, 'that is all arranged for. But if you will really be so good as to take me to Mrs de Boots' carriage, and if she would not mind my entering it in this very muddy condition----?' "'Delighted; come along with me!' We walked off, and the situation was saved. "Only temporarily, though. I blandly received Colonel and Mrs de Boots' condolences on the loss of _my_ horse all the way home to Barracks, and I heard afterwards that they thought I 'took it in very good part.' The moment I was released from their carriage, after thanking them warmly for picking me up as they had done, I took to my heels and ran down to Major Laughton's quarters. "'Here's a pretty mess, my boy!' he exclaimed; 'there'll have to be a Board to "sit on" the departed, to-morrow, and report in what way he came to his "frightful end," as the newspaper Johnnies call it. Which _is_ his "frightful end," by the way?' he added in meditative tones. "'Give it up; ask me another,' I rejoined, with a grin. 'But, seriously, will there be an awful row when it comes out that we were hunting one of Her Majesty's?' "'Well, naturally, a Paternal Government doesn't provide hunters for "all and sundry." Come along with me: we'll see the Vet., and find out what can be done.' "Away we went to the Vet.'s office, and fortunately found him in. Laughton related the whole affair to him, and wound up by saying, 'I don't want you to do anything that isn't strictly right, you know; but if you can see a way of helping us out of the difficulty, I shall be awfully obliged. The worst of it is that it's a young horse--Bradford.' "'Bradford? Oh, no; I saw Bradford in his stall not ten minutes ago.' "'Are you sure of that?' "'Oh, perfectly.' "'How strange! I sent a man down to the stables this morning to tell them to send Bradford up--but I'll ask him at once: he's just in the yard there,' and the next minute we were eagerly questioning the 'Tommy' as he stood rigidly at attention. "'Did you tell them I wanted Bradford?' "'Yessir.' "'What did they say?' "'Said there was no such 'orse as Radford.' "'Bradford, I said.' "'Beg pardon, sir. Understood the name was Radford, and the Sergeant----' "'Yes, the Sergeant, what did he say then?' "'Said I was a hass, sir----' "'Quite right, go on,' said the Major, encouragingly. "'And that I must mean Radnor, and Radnor was the 'orse as was sent up, sir.' "The Major turned on his heel without a word, and walked again into the Vet.'s office, followed by me. The 'Tommy' remained at 'attention,' and may be in the same attitude now, as far as I know. "'This is a relief, anyhow,' said Laughton, 'Radnor would have been "cast" very soon, and so his sudden death won't be so surprising to the Board.' "Up to this point the Vet. had been silent; now a smile hovered over his face as he said, 'Leave the whole business to me, Major. Where's the defunct?' "The Major described the place, and the interview ended, and we walked back to Laughton's quarters." * * * * * "The Board assembled, and briefly, the result of their deliberations was to find that the bay gelding Radnor was discovered dead in his stall, the certified cause of death being fatty degeneration of the heart." * * * * * "Yes, that's all very fine and large, but how the----? what the----? when the----!!!" broke in a Babel of voices. "Hold on, boys, and you shall know one or two things which the Board didn't know. Picture a scene in the barrack yard like this: a dark night, moon only showing in fitful gleams now and then; a trolly with a couple of horses; four stalwart Tommies and a sergeant-major seated on the trolly; it rattles out of the barrack square and over some five miles or so of road to the heath where the hero of the day breathed his last. The trolly is drawn up on to the grass, and after a few minutes' search the Sergeant-Major discovers the _corpus delicti_; with much exertion it is hauled up on to the trolly, and the return journey commences. "Just before the witching hour of midnight 'when sentries yawn and Colonels go to bed'--Shakespeare freely transposed, boys, this--enter the trolly to the stable yard again. The dead horse is hoisted out, put in its stall, and the head-collar most carefully adjusted ('in case he should get loose,' observed one Tommy to another, with an unholy grin). "All the actors in the little drama retire to imbibe liquid sustenance 'stood' by an invisible donor--peace reigns again all around the barrack square, and----and that's the end. Waiter, bring me a whiskey and soda, and some matches." TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
16957	----	Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour. R.S. Surtees [Illustration: _Mr. Sponge completely scatters his Lordship_] Transcriber's Note: Minor typos corrected and footnotes moved to end of text. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ELCHO, IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY SEASONS OF EXCELLENT SPORT WITH HIS HOUNDS, ON THE BORDER. THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, BY HIS OBLIGED AND FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE The author gladly avails himself of the convenience of a Preface for stating, that it will be seen at the close of the work why he makes such a characterless character as Mr. Sponge the hero of his tale. He will be glad if it serves to put the rising generation on their guard against specious, promiscuous acquaintance, and trains them on to the noble sport of hunting, to the exclusion of its mercenary, illegitimate off-shoots. _November 1852_ CHAPTER I OUR HERO [Illustration] It was a murky October day that the hero of our tale, Mr. Sponge, or Soapey Sponge, as his good-natured friends call him, was seen mizzling along Oxford Street, wending his way to the West. Not that there was anything unusual in Sponge being seen in Oxford Street, for when in town his daily perambulations consist of a circuit, commencing from the Bantam Hotel in Bond Street into Piccadilly, through Leicester Square, and so on to Aldridge's, in St. Martin's Lane, thence by Moore's sporting-print shop, and on through some of those ambiguous and tortuous streets that, appearing to lead all ways at once and none in particular, land the explorer, sooner or later, on the south side of Oxford Street. Oxford Street acts to the north part of London what the Strand does to the south: it is sure to bring one up, sooner or later. A man can hardly get over either of them without knowing it. Well, Soapey having got into Oxford Street, would make his way at a squarey, in-kneed, duck-toed, sort of pace, regulated by the bonnets, the vehicles, and the equestrians he met to criticize; for of women, vehicles, and horses, he had voted himself a consummate judge. Indeed, he had fully established in his own mind that Kiddey Downey and he were the only men in London who _really_ knew anything about, horses, and fully impressed with that conviction, he would halt, and stand, and stare, in a way that with any other man would have been considered impertinent. Perhaps it was impertinent in Soapey--we don't mean to say it wasn't--but he had done it so long, and was of so sporting a gait and cut, that he felt himself somewhat privileged. Moreover, the majority of horsemen are so satisfied with the animals they bestride, that they cock up their jibs and ride along with a 'find any fault with either me or my horse, if you can' sort of air. Thus Mr. Sponge proceeded leisurely along, now nodding to this man, now jerking his elbow to that, now smiling on a phaeton, now sneering at a 'bus. If he did not look in at Shackell's or Bartley's, or any of the dealers on the line, he was always to be found about half-past five at Cumberland Gate, from whence he would strike leisurely down the Park, and after coming to a long check at Rotten Row rails, from whence he would pass all the cavalry in the Park in review, he would wend his way back to the Bantam, much in the style he had come. This was his summer proceeding. Mr. Sponge had pursued this enterprising life for some 'seasons'--ten at least--and supposing him to have begun at twenty or one-and-twenty, he would be about thirty at the time we have the pleasure of introducing him to our readers--a period of life at which men begin to suspect they were not quite so wise at twenty as they thought. Not that Mr. Sponge had any particular indiscretions to reflect upon, for he was tolerably sharp, but he felt that he might have made better use of his time, which may be shortly described as having been spent in hunting all the winter, and in talking about it all the summer. With this popular sport he combined the diversion of fortune-hunting, though we are concerned to say that his success, up to the period of our introduction, had not been commensurate with his deserts. Let us, however, hope that brighter days are about to dawn upon him. Having now introduced our hero to our male and female friends, under his interesting pursuits of fox and fortune-hunter, it becomes us to say a few words as to his qualifications for carrying them on. Mr. Sponge was a good-looking, rather vulgar-looking man. At a distance--say ten yards--his height, figure, and carriage gave him somewhat of a commanding appearance, but this was rather marred by a jerky, twitchy, uneasy sort of air, that too plainly showed he was not the natural, or what the lower orders call the _real_ gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Far from it. He never hesitated about offering to a lady after a three days' acquaintance, or in asking a gentleman to take him a horse in over-night, with whom he might chance to come in contact in the hunting-field. And he did it all in such a cool, off-hand, matter-of-course sort of way, that people who would have stared with astonishment if anybody else had hinted at such a proposal, really seemed to come into the humour and spirit of the thing, and to look upon it rather as a matter of course than otherwise. Then his dexterity in getting into people's houses was only equalled by the difficulty of getting him out again, but this we must waive for the present in favour of his portraiture. In height, Mr. Sponge was above the middle size--five feet eleven or so--with a well borne up, not badly shaped, closely cropped oval head, a tolerably good, but somewhat receding forehead, bright hazel eyes, Roman nose, with carefully tended whiskers, reaching the corners of a well-formed mouth, and thence descending in semicircles into a vast expanse of hair beneath the chin. Having mentioned Mr. Sponge's groomy gait and horsey propensities, it were almost needless to say that his dress was in the sporting style--you saw what he was by his clothes. Every article seemed to be made to defy the utmost rigour of the elements. His hat (Lincoln and Bennett) was hard and heavy. It sounded upon an entrance-hall table like a drum. A little magical loop in the lining explained the cause of its weight. Somehow, his hats were never either old or new--not that he bought them second-hand, but when he got a new one he took its 'long-coat' off, as he called it, with a singeing lamp, and made it look as if it had undergone a few probationary showers. When a good London hat recedes to a certain point, it gets no worse; it is not like a country-made thing that keeps going and going until it declines into a thing with no sort of resemblance to its original self. Barring its weight and hardness, the Sponge hat had no particular character apart from the Sponge head. It was not one of those punty ovals or Cheshire-cheese flats, or curly-sided things that enables one to say who is in a house and who is not, by a glance at the hats in the entrance, but it was just a quiet, round hat, without anything remarkable, either in the binding, the lining, or the band, but still it was a very becoming hat when Sponge had it on. There is a great deal of character in hats. We have seen hats that bring the owners to the recollection far more forcibly than the generality of portraits. But to our hero. That there may be a dandified simplicity in dress, is exemplified every day by our friends the Quakers, who adorn their beautiful brown Saxony coats with little inside velvet collars and fancy silk buttons, and even the severe order of sporting costume adopted by our friend Mr. Sponge is not devoid of capability in the way of tasteful adaptation. This Mr. Sponge chiefly showed in promoting a resemblance between his neck-cloths and waistcoats. Thus, if he wore a cream-coloured cravat, he would have a buff-coloured waistcoat, if a striped waistcoat, then the starcher would be imbued with somewhat of the same colour and pattern. The ties of these varied with their texture. The silk ones terminated in a sort of coaching fold, and were secured by a golden fox-head pin, while the striped starchers, with the aid of a pin on each side, just made a neat, unpretending tie in the middle, a sort of miniature of the flagrant, flyaway, Mile-End ones of aspiring youth of the present day. His coats were of the single-breasted cut-away order, with pockets outside, and generally either Oxford mixture or some dark colour, that required you to place him in a favourable light to say what it was. His waistcoats, of course, were of the most correct form and material, generally either pale buff, or buff with a narrow stripe, similar to the undress vests of the servants of the Royal Family, only with the pattern run across instead of lengthways, as those worthies mostly have theirs, and made with good honest step collars, instead of the make-believe roll collars they sometimes convert their upright ones into. When in deep thought, calculating, perhaps, the value of a passing horse, or considering whether he should have beefsteaks or lamb chops for dinner, Sponge's thumbs would rest in the arm-holes of his waistcoat; in which easy, but not very elegant, attitude he would sometimes stand until all trace of the idea that elevated them had passed away from his mind. In the trouser line he adhered to the close-fitting costume of former days; and many were the trials, the easings, and the alterings, ere he got a pair exactly to his mind. Many were the customers who turned away on seeing his manly figure filling the swing mirror in 'Snip and Sneiders',' a monopoly that some tradesmen might object to, only Mr. Sponge's trousers being admitted to be perfect 'triumphs of the art,' the more such a walking advertisement was seen in the shop the better. Indeed, we believe it would have been worth Snip and Co.'s while to have let him have them for nothing. They were easy without being tight, or rather they looked tight without being so; there wasn't a bag, a wrinkle, or a crease that there shouldn't be, and strong and storm-defying as they seemed, they were yet as soft and as supple as a lady's glove. They looked more as if his legs had been blown in them than as if such irreproachable garments were the work of man's hands. Many were the nudges, and many the 'look at this chap's trousers,' that were given by ambitious men emulous of his appearance as he passed along, and many were the turnings round to examine their faultless fall upon his radiant boot. The boots, perhaps, might come in for a little of the glory, for they were beautifully soft and cool-looking to the foot, easy without being loose, and he preserved the lustre of their polish, even up to the last moment of his walk. There never was a better man for getting through dirt, either on foot or horseback, than our friend. To the frequenters of the 'corner,' it were almost superfluous to mention that he is a constant attendant. He has several volumes of 'catalogues,' with the prices the horses have brought set down in the margins, and has a rare knack at recognizing old friends, altered, disguised, or disfigured as they may be--'I've seen that rip before,' he will say, with a knowing shake of the head, as some woe-begone devil goes, best leg foremost, up to the hammer, or, 'What! is that old beast back? why he's here every day.' No man can impose upon Soapy with a horse. He can detect the rough-coated plausibilities of the straw-yard, equally with the metamorphosis of the clipper or singer. His practised eye is not to be imposed upon either by the blandishments of the bang-tail, or the bereavements of the dock. Tattersall will hail him from his rostrum with--'Here's a horse will suit you, Mr. Sponge! cheap, good, and handsome! come and buy him.' But it is needless describing him here, for every out-of-place groom and dog-stealer's man knows him by sight. CHAPTER II MR. BENJAMIN BUCKRAM Having dressed and sufficiently described our hero to enable our readers to form a general idea of the man, we have now to request them to return to the day of our introduction. Mr. Sponge had gone along Oxford Street at a somewhat improved pace to his usual wont--had paused for a shorter period in the ''bus' perplexed 'Circus,' and pulled up seldomer than usual between the Circus and the limits of his stroll. Behold him now at the Edgeware Road end, eyeing the 'buses with a wanting-a-ride like air, instead of the contemptuous sneer he generally adopts towards those uncouth productions. Red, green, blue, drab, cinnamon-colour, passed and crossed, and jostled, and stopped, and blocked, and the cads telegraphed, and winked, and nodded, and smiled, and slanged, but Mr. Sponge regarded them not. He had a sort of ''bus' panorama in his head, knew the run of them all, whence they started, where they stopped, where they watered, where they changed, and, wonderful to relate, had never been entrapped into a sixpenny fare when he meant to take a threepenny one. In cab and ''bus' geography there is not a more learned man in London. Mark him as he stands at the corner. He sees what he wants, it's the chequered one with the red and blue wheels that the Bayswater ones have got between them, and that the St. John's Wood and two Western Railway ones are trying to get into trouble by crossing. What a row! how the ruffians whip, and stamp, and storm, and all but pick each other's horses' teeth with their poles, how the cads gesticulate, and the passengers imprecate! now the bonnets are out of the windows, and the row increases. Six coachmen cutting and storming, six cads sawing the air, sixteen ladies in flowers screaming, six-and-twenty sturdy passengers swearing they will 'fine them all,' and Mr. Sponge is the only cool person in the scene. He doesn't rush into the throng and 'jump in,' for fear the 'bus should extricate itself and drive on without him; he doesn't make confusion worse confounded by intimating his behest; he doesn't soil his bright boots by stepping off the kerb-stone; but, quietly waiting the evaporation of the steam, and the disentanglement of the vehicles, by the smallest possible sign in the world, given at the opportune moment, and a steady adhesion to the flags, the 'bus is obliged either to 'come to,' or lose the fare, and he steps quietly in, and squeezes along to the far end, as though intent on going the whole hog of the journey. Away they rumble up the Edgeware Road; the gradual emergence from the brick and mortar of London being marked as well by the telling out of passengers as by the increasing distances between the houses. First, it is all close huddle with both. Austere iron railings guard the subterranean kitchen areas, and austere looks indicate a desire on the part of the passengers to guard their own pockets; gradually little gardens usurp the places of the cramped areas, and, with their humanizing appearance, softer looks assume the place of frowning _anti_ swell-mob ones. Presently a glimpse of green country or of distant hills may be caught between the wider spaces of the houses, and frequent settings down increase the space between the passengers; gradually conservatories appear and conversation strikes up; then come the exclusiveness of villas, some detached and others running out at last into real pure green fields studded with trees and picturesque pot-houses, before one of which latter a sudden wheel round and a jerk announces the journey done. The last passenger (if there is one) is then unceremoniously turned loose upon the country. Our readers will have the kindness to suppose our hero, Mr. Sponge, shot out of an omnibus at the sign of the Cat and Compasses, in the full rurality of grass country, sprinkled with fallows and turnip-fields. We should state that this unwonted journey was a desire to pay a visit to Mr. Benjamin Buckram, the horse-dealer's farm at Scampley, distant some mile and a half from where he was set down, a space that he now purposed travelling on foot. Mr. Benjamin Buckram was a small horse-dealer--small, at least, when he was buying, though great when he was selling. It would do a youngster good to see Ben filling the two capacities. He dealt in second hand, that is to say, past mark of mouth horses; but on the present occasion, Mr. Sponge sought his services in the capacity of a letter rather than a seller of horses. Mr. Sponge wanted to job a couple of plausible-looking horses, with the option of buying them, provided he (Mr. Sponge) could sell them for more than he would have to give Mr. Buckram, exclusive of the hire. Mr. Buckram's job price, we should say, was as near twelve pounds a month, containing twenty-eight days, as he could screw, the hirer, of course, keeping the animals. Scampley is one of those pretty little suburban farms, peculiar to the north and north-west side of London--farms varying from fifty to a hundred acres of well-manured, gravelly soil; each farm with its picturesque little buildings, consisting of small, honey-suckled, rose-entwined brick houses, with small, flat, pan-tiled roofs, and lattice-windows; and, hard by, a large hay-stack, three times the size of the house, or a desolate barn, half as big as all the rest of the buildings. From the smallness of the holdings, the farmhouses are dotted about as thickly, and at such varying distances from the roads, as to look like inferior 'villas,' falling out of rank; most of them have a half-smart, half-seedy sort of look. The rustics who cultivate them, or rather look after them, are neither exactly town nor country. They have the clownish dress and boorish gait of the regular 'chaws,' with a good deal of the quick, suspicious, sour sauciness of the low London resident. If you can get an answer from them at all, it is generally delivered in such a way as to show that the answerer thinks you are what they call 'chaffing them,' asking them what you know. These farms serve the double purpose of purveyors to the London stables, and hospitals for sick, overworked, or unsaleable horses. All the great job-masters and horse-dealers have these retreats in the country, and the smaller ones pretend to have, from whence, in due course, they can draw any sort of an animal a customer may want, just as little cellarless wine-merchants can get you any sort of wine from real establishments--if you only give them time. There was a good deal of mystery about Scampley. It was sometimes in the hands of Mr. Benjamin Buckram, sometimes in the hands of his assignees, sometimes in those of his cousin, Abraham Brown, and sometimes John Doe and Richard Roe were the occupants of it. Mr. Benjamin Buckram, though very far from being one, had the advantage of looking like a respectable man. There was a certain plump, well-fed rosiness about him, which, aided by a bright-coloured dress, joined to a continual fumble in the pockets of his drab trousers, gave him the air of a 'well-to-do-in-the-world' sort of man. Moreover, he sported a velvet collar to his blue coat, a more imposing ornament than it appears at first sight. To be sure, there are two sorts of velvet collars--the legitimate velvet collar, commencing with the coat, and the adopted velvet collar, put on when the cloth one gets shabby. Buckram's was always the legitimate velvet collar, new from the first, and, we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in storm and in sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world. It shows a spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and we think a person would be much more excusable for being victimized by a man with a good velvet collar to his coat, than by one exhibiting that spurious sign of gentility--a horse and gig. The reader will now have the kindness to consider Mr. Sponge arriving at Scampley. 'Ah, Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed Mr. Buckram, who, having seen our friend advancing up the little twisting approach from the road to his house through a little square window almost blinded with Irish ivy, out of which he was in the habit of contemplating the arrival of his occasional lodgers, Doe and Roe. 'Ah, Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed he, with well-assumed gaiety; 'you should have been here yesterday; sent away two sich osses--perfect 'unters--the werry best I do think I ever saw in my life; either would have bin the werry oss for your money. But come in, Mr. Sponge, sir, come in,' continued he, backing himself through a little sentry-box of a green portico, to a narrow passage which branched off into little rooms on either side. As Buckram made this retrograde movement, he gave a gentle pull to the wooden handle of an old-fashioned wire bell-pull in the midst of buggy, four-in-hand, and other whips, hanging in the entrance, a touch that was acknowledged by a single tinkle of the bell in the stable-yard. They then entered the little room on the right, whose walls were decorated with various sporting prints chiefly illustrative of steeple-chases, with here and there a stunted fox-brush, tossing about as a duster. The ill-ventilated room reeked with the effluvia of stale smoke, and the faded green baize of a little round table in the centre was covered with filbert-shells and empty ale-glasses. The whole furniture of the room wasn't worth five pounds. Mr. Sponge, being now on the dealing tack, commenced in the poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion. Having deposited his hat on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward rub with his right hand, he thus commenced: 'Now, Buckram,' said he, 'I'll tell you how it is. I'm deuced hard-up--regularly in Short's Gardens. I lost eighteen 'undred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, the best part of my year's income, indeed; and I just want to hire two or three horses for the season, with the option of buying, if I like; and if you supply me well, I may be the means of bringing grist to your mill; you twig, eh?' 'Well, Mr. Sponge,' replied Buckram, sliding several consecutive half-crowns down the incline plane of his pocket. 'Well, Mr. Sponge, I shall be happy to do my best for you. I wish you'd come yesterday, though, as I said before, I jest had two of the neatest nags--a bay and a grey--not that colour makes any matter to a judge like you; there's no sounder sayin' than that a good oss is not never of a bad colour; only to a young gemman, you know, it's well to have 'em smart, and the ticket, in short; howsomever, I must do the best I can for you, and if there's nothin' in that tickles your fancy, why, you must give me a few days to see if I can arrange an exchange with some other gent; but the present is like to be a werry haggiwatin' season; had more happlications for osses nor ever I remembers, and I've been a dealer now, man and boy, turned of eight-and-thirty years; but young gents is whimsical, and it was a young 'un wot got these, and there's no sayin' but he mayn't like them--indeed, one's rayther difficult to ride--that's to say, the grey, the neatest of the two, and he _may_ come back, and if so, you shall have him; and a safer, sweeter oss was never seen, or one more like to do credit to a gent: but you knows what an oss is, Mr. Sponge, and can do justice to me, and I should like to put summut good into your hands--_that_ I should.' With conversation, or rather with balderdash, such as this, Mr. Buckram beguiled the few minutes necessary for removing the bandages, hiding the bottles, and stirring up the cripples about to be examined, and the heavy flap of the coach-house door announcing that all was ready, he forthwith led the way through a door in a brick wall into a little three-sides of a square yard, formed of stables and loose boxes, with a dilapidated dove-cote above a pump in the centre; Mr. Buckram, not growing corn, could afford to keep pigeons. CHAPTER III PETER LEATHER Nothing bespeaks the character of a dealer's trade more than the servants and hangers-on of the establishment. The civiler in manner, and the better they are 'put on,' the higher the standing of the master, and the better the stamp of the horses. Those about Mr. Buckram's were of a very shady order. Dirty-shirted, sloggering, baggy-breeched, slangey-gaitered fellows, with the word 'gin' indelibly imprinted on their faces. Peter Leather, the head man, was one of the fallen angels of servitude. He had once driven a duke--the Duke of Dazzleton--having nothing whatever to do but dress himself and climb into his well-indented richly fringed throne, with a helper at each horse's head to 'let go' at a nod from his broad laced three-cornered hat. Then having got in his cargo (or rubbish, as he used to call them), he would start off at a pace that was truly terrific, cutting out this vehicle, shooting past that, all but grazing a third, anathematizing the 'buses, and abusing the draymen. We don't know how he might be with the queen, but he certainly drove as though he thought nobody had any business in the street while the Duchess of Dazzleton wanted it. The duchess liked going fast, and Peter accommodated her. The duke jobbed his horses and didn't care about pace, and so things might have gone on very comfortably, if Peter one afternoon hadn't run his pole into the panel of a very plain but very neat yellow barouche, passing the end of New Bond Street, which having nothing but a simple crest--a stag's head on the panel--made him think it belonged to some bulky cit, taking the air with his rib, but who, unfortunately, turned out to be no less a person than Sir Giles Nabem, Knight, the great police magistrate, upon one of whose myrmidons in plain clothes, who came to the rescue, Peter committed a most violent assault, for which unlucky casualty his worship furnished him with rotatory occupation for his fat calves in the 'H. of C.,' as the clerk shortly designated the House of Correction. Thither Peter went, and in lieu of his lace-bedaubed coat, gold-gartered plushes, stockings, and buckled shoes, he was dressed up in a suit of tight-fitting yellow and black-striped worsteds, that gave him the appearance of a wasp without wings. Peter Leather then tumbled regularly down the staircase of servitude, the greatness of his fall being occasionally broken by landing in some inferior place. From the Duke of Dazzleton's, or rather from the tread-mill, he went to the Marquis of Mammon, whom he very soon left because he wouldn't wear a second-hand wig. From the marquis he got hired to the great Irish Earl of Coarsegab, who expected him to wash the carriage, wait at table, and do other incidentals never contemplated by a London coachman. Peter threw this place up with indignation on being told to take the letters to the post. He then lived on his 'means' for a while, a thing that is much finer in theory than in practice, and having about exhausted his substance and placed the bulk of his apparel in safe keeping, he condescended to take a place as job coachman in a livery-stable--a 'horses let by the hour, day, or month' one, in which he enacted as many characters, at least made as many different appearances, as the late Mr. Mathews used to do in his celebrated 'At Homes.' One day Peter would be seen ducking under the mews' entrance in one of those greasy, painfully well-brushed hats, the certain precursors of soiled linen and seedy, most seedy-covered buttoned coats, that would puzzle a conjuror to say whether they were black, or grey, or olive, or invisible green turned visible brown. Then another day he might be seen in old Mrs. Gadabout's sky-blue livery, with a tarnished, gold-laced hat, nodding over his nose; and on a third he would shine forth in Mrs. Major-General Flareup's cockaded one, with a worsted shoulder-knot, and a much over-daubed light drab livery coat, with crimson inexpressibles, so tight as to astonish a beholder how he ever got into them. Humiliation, however, has its limits as well as other things; and Peter having been invited to descend from his box--alas! a regular country patent leather one, and invest himself in a Quaker-collared blue coat, with a red vest, and a pair of blue trousers with a broad red stripe down the sides, to drive the Honourable old Miss Wrinkleton, of Harley Street, to Court in a 'one oss pianoforte-case,' as he called a Clarence, he could stand it no longer, and, chucking the nether garments into the fire, he rushed frantically up the area-steps, mounted his box, and quilted the old crocodile of a horse all the way home, accompanying each cut with an imprecation such as '_me_ make a guy of myself!' (whip) '_me_ put on sich things!' (whip, whip) '_me_ drive down Sin Jimses-street!' (whip, whip, whip), '_I'd_ see her ---- fust!' (whip, whip, whip), cutting at the old horse just as if he was laying it into Miss Wrinkleton, so that by the time he got home he had established a considerable lather on the old nag, which his master resenting a row ensued, the sequel of which may readily be imagined. After assisting Mrs. Clearstarch, the Kilburn laundress, in getting in and taking out her washing, for a few weeks, chance at last landed him at Mr. Benjamin Buckram's, from whence he is now about to be removed to become our hero Mr. Sponge's Sancho Panza, in his fox-hunting, fortune-hunting career, and disseminate in remote parts his doctrines of the real honour and dignity of servitude. Now to the inspection. Peter Leather, having a peep-hole as well as his master, on seeing Mr. Sponge arrive, had given himself an extra rub over, and covered his dirty shirt with a clean, well-tied, white kerchief, and a whole coloured scarlet waistcoat, late the property of one of his noble employers, in hopes that Sponge's visit might lead to something. Peter was about sick of the suburbs, and thought, of course, that he couldn't be worse off than where he was. 'Here's Mr. Sponge wants some osses,' observed Mr. Buckram, as Leather met them in the middle of the little yard, and brought his right arm round with a sort of military swing to his forehead; 'what 'ave we in?' continued Buckram, with the air of a man with so many horses that he didn't know what were in and what were out. 'Vy we 'ave Rumbleton in,' replied Leather, thoughtfully, stroking down his hair as he spoke, 'and we 'ave Jack o'Lanthorn in, and we 'ave the Camel in, and there's the little Hirish oss with the sprig tail--Jack-a-Dandy, as I calls him, and the Flyer will be in to-night, he's just out a hairing, as it were, with old Mr. Callipash.' 'Ah, Rumbleton won't do for Mr. Sponge,' observed Buckram, thoughtfully, at the same time letting go a tremendous avalanche of silver down his trouser pocket, 'Rumbleton won't do,' repeated he, 'nor Jack-a-Dandy nouther.' 'Why, I wouldn't commend neither on 'em,' replied Peter, taking his cue from his master, 'only ven you axes me vot there's in, you knows vy I must give you a _cor_-rect answer, in course.' 'In course,' nodded Buckram. Leather and Buckram had a good understanding in the lying line, and had fallen into a sort of tacit arrangement that if the former was staunch about the horses he was at liberty to make the best terms he could for himself. Whatever Buckram said, Leather swore to, and they had established certain signals and expressions that each understood. 'I've an unkimmon nice oss,' at length observed Mr. Buckram, with a scrutinizing glance at Sponge, 'and an oss in hevery respect werry like your work, but he's an oss I'll candidly state, I wouldn't put in every one's 'ands, for, in the fust place, he's wery walueous, and in the second, he requires an ossman to ride; howsomever, as I knows that you _can_ ride, and if you doesn't mind taking my 'ead man,' jerking his elbow at Leather, 'to look arter him, I wouldn't mind 'commodatin' on you, prowided we can 'gree upon terms.' 'Well, let's see him,' interrupted Sponge, 'and we can talk about terms after.' 'Certainly, sir, certainly,' replied Buckram, again letting loose a reaccumulated rush of silver down his pocket. 'Here, Tom! Joe! Harry! where's Sam?' giving the little tinkler of a bell a pull as he spoke. 'Sam be in the straw 'ouse,' replied Leather, passing through a stable into a wooden projection beyond, where the gentleman in question was enjoying a nap. 'Sam!' said he, 'Sam!' repeated he, in a louder tone, as he saw the object of his search's nose popping through the midst of the straw. 'What now?' exclaimed Sam, starting up, and looking wildly around; 'what now?' repeated he, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands. 'Get out Ercles,' said Leather, _sotto voce_. The lad was a mere stripling--some fifteen or sixteen, years, perhaps--tall, slight, and neat, with dark hair and eyes, and was dressed in a brown jacket--a real boy's jacket, without laps, white cords, and top-boots. It was his business to risk his neck and limbs at all hours of the day, on all sorts of horses, over any sort of place that any person chose to require him to put a horse at, and this he did with the daring pleasure of youth as yet undaunted by any serious fall. Sam now bestirred himself to get out the horse. The clambering of hoofs presently announced his approach. Whether Hercules was called Hercules on account of his amazing strength, or from a fanciful relationship to the famous horse of that name, we know not; but his strength and his colour would favour either supposition. He was an immense, tall, powerful, dark brown, sixteen hands horse, with an arched neck and crest, well set on, clean, lean head, and loins that looked as if they could shoot a man into the next county. His condition was perfect. His coat lay as close and even as satin, with cleanly developed muscle, and altogether he looked as hard as a cricket-ball. He had a famous switch tail, reaching nearly to his hocks, and making him look less than he would otherwise have done. Mr. Sponge was too well versed in horse-flesh to imagine that such an animal would be in the possession of such a third-rate dealer as Buckram, unless there was something radically wrong about him, and as Sam and Leather were paying the horse those stable attentions that always precede a show out, Mr. Sponge settled in his own mind that the observation about his requiring a horseman to ride him, meant that he was vicious. Nor was he wrong in his anticipations, for not all Leather's whistlings, or Sam's endearings and watchings, could conceal the sunken, scowling eye, that as good as said, 'you'd better keep clear of me.' Mr. Sponge, however, was a dauntless horseman. What man dared he dared, and as the horse stepped proudly and freely out of the stable, Mr. Sponge thought he looked very like a hunter. Nor were Mr. Buckram's laudations wanting in the animal's behalf. 'There's an 'orse!' exclaimed he, drawing his right hand out of his trouser pocket, and flourishing it towards him. 'If that 'orse were down in Leicestersheer,' added he, 'he'd fetch three 'under'd guineas. Sir Richard would 'ave him in a minnit--_that he would!_' added he, with a stamp of his foot as he saw the animal beginning to set up his back and wince at the approach of the lad. (We may here mention by way of parenthesis, that Mr. Buckram had brought him out of Warwicksheer for thirty pounds, where the horse had greatly distinguished himself, as well by kicking off sundry scarlet swells in the gaily thronged streets of Leamington, as by running away with divers others over the wide-stretching grazing grounds of Southam and Dunchurch.) But to our story. The horse now stood staring on view: fire in his eye, and vigour in his every limb. Leather at his head, the lad at his side. Sponge and Buckram a little on the left. 'W--h--o--a--a--y, my man, w--h--o--a--a--y,' continued Mr. Buckram, as a liberal show of the white of the eye was followed by a little wince and hoist of the hind quarters on the nearer approach of the lad. 'Look sharp, boy,' said he, in a very different tone to the soothing one in which he had just been addressing the horse. The lad lifted up his leg for a hoist. Leather gave him one as quick as thought, and led on the horse as the lad gathered up his reins. They then made for a large field at the back of the house, with leaping-bars, hurdles, 'on and offs,' 'ins and outs,' all sorts of fancy leaps scattered about. Having got him fairly in, and the lad having got himself fairly settled in the saddle he gave the horse a touch with the spur as Leather let go his head, and after a desperate plunge or two started off at a gallop. 'He's fresh,' observed Mr. Buckram confidentially to Mr. Sponge, 'he's fresh--wants work, in short--short of work--wouldn't put every one on him--wouldn't put one o' your timid cocknified chaps on him, for if ever he were to get the hupper 'and, vy I doesn't know as 'ow that we might get the hupper 'and o' him, agen, but the playful rogue knows ven he's got a workman on his back--see how he gives to the lad though he's only fifteen, and not strong of his hage nouther,' continued Mr. Buckram, 'and I guess if he had sich a consternation of talent as you on his back, he'd wery soon be as quiet as a lamb--not that he's wicious--far from it, only play--full of play, I may say, though to be sure, if a man gets spilt it don't argufy much whether it's done from play or from wice.' During this time the horse was going through his evolutions, hopping over this thing, popping over that, making as little of everything as practice makes them do. Having gone through the usual routine, the lad now walked the glowing coated snorting horse back to where the trio stood. Mr. Sponge again looked him over, and still seeing no exception to take to him, bid the lad get off and lengthen the stirrups for him to take a ride. That was the difficulty. The first two minutes always did it. Mr. Sponge, however, nothing daunted, borrowed Sam's spurs, and making Leather hold the horse by the head till he got well into the saddle, and then lead him on a bit; he gave the animal such a dig in both sides as fairly threw him off his guard, and made him start away at a gallop, instead of standing and delivering, as was his wont. Away Mr. Sponge shot, pulling him about, trying all his paces, and putting him at all sorts of leaps. Emboldened by the nerve and dexterity displayed by Mr. Sponge, Mr. Buckram stood meditating a further trial of his equestrian ability, as he watched him bucketing 'Ercles' about. Hercules had 'spang-hewed' so many triers, and the hideous contraction of his resolute back had deterred so many from mounting, that Buckram had begun to fear he would have to place him in the only remaining school for incurables, the 'bus. Hack-horse riders are seldom great horsemen. The very fact of their being hack-horse riders shows they are little accustomed to horses, or they would not give the fee-simple of an animal for a few weeks' work. 'I've a wonderful clever little oss,' observed Mr. Buckram, as Sponge returned with a slack-rein and a satisfied air on the late resolute animal's back. '_Little_ I can 'ardly call 'im,' continued Mr. Buckram, 'only he's low; but you knows that the 'eight of an oss has nothin' to do with his size. Now this is a perfect dray-oss in miniature. An 'Arrow gent, lookin' at him t'other day christen'd him "Multum in Parvo." But though he's so _ter-men_-dous strong, he has the knack o' goin', specially in deep; and if you're not a-goin' to Sir Richard, but into some o' them plough sheers (shires), I'd 'commend him to you.' 'Let's have a look at him,' replied Mr. Sponge, throwing his right leg over Hercules' head and sliding from the saddle on to the ground, as if he were alighting from the quietest shooting pony in the world. All then was hurry, scurry, and scamper to get this second prodigy out. Presently he appeared. Multum in Parvo certainly was all that Buckram described him. A long, low, clean-headed, clean-necked, big-hocked, chestnut, with a long tail, and great, large, flat white legs, without mark or blemish upon them. Unlike Hercules, there was nothing indicative of vice or mischief about him. Indeed, he was rather a sedate, meditative-looking animal; and, instead of the watchful, arms'-length sort of way Leather and Co. treated Hercules, they jerked and punched Parvo about as if he were a cow. Still Parvo had his foibles. He was a resolute, head-strong animal, that would go his own way in spite of all the pulling and hauling in the world. If he took it into his obstinate head to turn into a particular field, into it he would be; or against the gate-post he would bump the rider's leg in a way that would make him remember the difference of opinion between them. His was not a fiery, hot-headed spirit, with object or reason for its guide, but just a regular downright pig-headed sort of stupidity, that nobody could account for. He had a mouth like a bull, and would walk clean through a gate sometimes rather than be at the trouble of rising to leap it; at other times he would hop over it like a bird. He could not beat Mr. Buckram's men, because they were always on the look-out for objects of contention with sharp spur rowels, ready to let into his sides the moment he began to stop; but a weak or a timid man on his back had no more chance than he would on an elephant. If the horse chose to carry him into the midst of the hounds at the meet, he would have him in--nay, he would think nothing of upsetting the master himself in the middle of the pack. Then the provoking part was, that the obstinate animal, after having done all the mischief, would just set to to eat as if nothing had happened. After rolling a sportsman in the mud, he would repair to the nearest hay-stack or grassy bank, and be caught. He was now ten years old, or a _leetle_ more perhaps, and very wicked years some of them had been. His adventures, his sellings and his returning, his lettings and his unlettings, his bumpings and spillings, his smashings and crashings, on the road, in the field, in single and in double harness, would furnish a volume of themselves; and in default of a more able historian, we purpose blending his future fortune with that of 'Ercles,' in the service of our hero Mr. Sponge, and his accomplished groom, and undertaking the important narration of them ourselves. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV LAVERICK WELLS We trust our opening chapters, aided by our friend Leech's pencil, will have enabled our readers to embody such a Sponge in their mind's eye as will assist them in following us through the course of his peregrinations. We do not profess to have drawn such a portrait as will raise the same sort of Sponge in the minds of all, but we trust we have given such a general outline of style, and indication of character, as an ordinary knowledge of the world will enable them to imagine a good, pushing, free-and-easy sort of man, wishing to be a gentleman without knowing how. Far more difficult is the task of conveying to our readers such information as will enable them to form an idea of our hero's ways and means. An accommodating world--especially the female portion of it--generally attribute ruin to the racer, and fortune to the fox-hunter; but though Mr. Sponge's large losses on the turf, as detailed by him to Mr. Buckram on the occasion of their deal or 'job,' would bring him in the category of the unfortunates; still that representation was nearly, if not altogether, fabulous. That Mr. Sponge might have lost a trifle on the great races of the year, we don't mean to deny, but that he lost such a sum as eighteen hundred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, we are in a condition to contradict, for the best of all possible reasons, that he hadn't it to lose. At the same time we do not mean to attribute falsehood to Mr. Sponge--quite the contrary--it is no uncommon thing for merchants and traders--men who 'talk in thousands,' to declare that they lost twenty thousand by this, or forty thousand by that, simply meaning that they didn't make it, and if Mr. Sponge, by taking the longest of the long odds against the most wretched of the outsiders, might have won the sums he named, he surely had a right to say he lost them when he didn't get them. It never does to be indigenously poor, if we may use such a term, and when a man gets to the end of his tether, he must have something or somebody to blame rather than his own extravagance or imprudence, and if there is no 'rascally lawyer' who has bolted with his title-deeds, or fraudulent agent who has misappropriated his funds, why then, railroads, or losses on the turf, or joint-stock banks that have shut up at short notice, come in as the scapegoats. Very willing hacks they are, too, railways especially, and so frequently ridden, that it is no easy matter to discriminate between the real and the fictitious loser. But though we are able to contradict Mr. Sponge's losses on the turf, we are sorry we are not able to elevate him to the riches the character of a fox-hunter generally inspires. Still, like many men of whom the common observation is, 'nobody knows how he lives,' Mr. Sponge always seemed well to do in the world. There was no appearance of want about him. He always hunted: sometimes with five horses, sometimes with four, seldom with less than three, though at the period of our introduction he had come down to two. Nevertheless, those two, provided he could but make them 'go,' were well calculated to do the work of four. And hack horses, of all sorts, it may be observed, generally do double the work of private ones; and if there is one man in the world better calculated to get the work out of them than another, that man most assuredly is Mr. Sponge. And this reminds us, that we may as well state that his bargain with Buckram was a sort of jobbing deal. He had to pay ten guineas a month for each horse, with a sort of sliding scale of prices if he chose to buy--the price of 'Ercles' (the big brown) being fixed at fifty, inclusive of hire at the end of the first month, and gradually rising according to the length of time he kept him beyond that; while, 'Multum in Parvo,' the resolute chestnut, was booked at thirty, with the right of buying at five more, a contingency that Buckram little expected. He, we may add, had got him for ten, and dear he thought him when he got him home. The world was now all before Mr. Sponge where to choose; and not being the man to keep hack horses to look at, we must be setting him a-going. 'Leicesterscheer swells,' as Mr. Buckram would call them, with their fourteen hunters and four hacks, will smile at the idea of a man going from home to hunt with only a couple of 'screws,' but Mr. Sponge knew what he was about, and didn't want any one to counsel him. He knew there were places where a man can follow up the effect produced by a red coat in the morning to great advantage in the evening; and if he couldn't hunt every day in the week, as he could have wished, he felt he might fill up his time perhaps quite as profitably in other ways. The ladies, to do them justice, are never at all suspicious about men--on the 'nibble'--always taking it for granted, they are 'all they could wish,' and they know each other so well, that any cautionary hint acts rather in a man's favour than otherwise. Moreover, hunting men, as we said before, are all supposed to be rich, and as very few ladies are aware that a horse can't hunt every day in the week, they just class the whole 'genus' fourteen-horse power men, ten-horse power men, five-horse power men, two-horse power men, together, and tying them in a bunch, label it '_very rich_,' and proceed to take measures accordingly. Let us now visit one of the 'strongholds' of fox and fortune-hunting. A sudden turn of a long, gently rising, but hitherto uninteresting road, brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, well-wooded, beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose fine green pastures are brightened with occasional gleams of a meandering river, flowing through the centre of the vale. In the far distance, looking as though close upon the blue hills, though in reality several miles apart, sundry spires and taller buildings are seen rising above the grey mists towards which a straight, undeviating, matter-of-fact line of railway passing up the right of the vale, directs the eye. This is the famed Laverick Wells, the resort, as indeed all watering-places are, according to newspaper accounts, of 'Knights and dames, And all that wealth and lofty lineage claim.' At the period of which we write, however, 'Laverick Wells' was in great feather--it had never known such times. Every house, every lodging, every hole and corner was full, and the great hotels, which more resemble Lancashire cotton-mills than English hostelries, were sending away applicants in the most offhand, indifferent way. The Laverick Wells hounds had formerly been under the management of the well-known Mr. Thomas Slocdolager, a hard-riding, hard-bitten, hold-harding sort of sportsman, whose whole soul was in the thing, and who would have ridden over his best friend in the ardour of the chase. [Illustration: MR. THOMAS SLOCDOLAGER, LATE MASTER OF THE LAVERICK WELLS HOUNDS] In some countries such a creature may be considered an acquisition, and so long as he reigned at the Wells, people made the best they could of him, though it was painfully apparent to the livery-stable keepers, and others, who had the best interest of the place at heart, that such a red-faced, gloveless, drab-breeched, mahogany-booted buffer, who would throw off at the right time, and who resolutely set his great stubbly-cheeked face against all show meets and social intercourse in the field, was not exactly the man for a civilized place. Whether time might have enlightened Mr. Slocdolager as to the fact, that continuous killing of foxes, after fatiguingly long runs, was not the way to the hearts of the Laverick Wells sportsmen, is unknown, for on attempting to realize as fine a subscription as ever appeared upon paper, it melted so in the process of collection, that what was realized was hardly worth his acceptance; saying so, in his usual blunt way, that if he hunted a country at his own expense he would hunt one that wasn't encumbered with fools, he just stamped his little wardrobe into a pair of old black saddle-bags, and rode out of town without saying 'tar, tar,' good-bye, carding, or P.P.C.-ing anybody. This was at the end of a season, a circumstance that considerably mitigated the inconvenience so abrupt a departure might have occasioned, and as one of the great beauties of Laverick Wells is, that it is just as much in vogue in summer as in winter, the inhabitants consoled themselves with the old aphorism, that there is as 'good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,' and cast about in search of some one to supply his place at as small cost to themselves as possible. In a place so replete with money and the enterprise of youth, little difficulty was anticipated, especially when the old bait of 'a name' being all that was wanted, 'an ample subscription,' to defray all expenses figuring in the background, was held out. CHAPTER V MR. WAFFLES Among a host of most meritorious young men--(any of whom would get up behind a bill for five hundred pounds without looking to see that it wasn't a thousand)--among a host of most meritorious young men who made their appearance at Laverick Wells towards the close of Mr. Slocdolager's reign, was Mr. Waffles; a most enterprising youth, just on the verge of arriving of age, and into the possession of a very considerable amount of charming ready money. Were it not that a 'proud aristocracy,' as Sir Robert Peel called them, have shown that they can get over any little deficiency of birth if there is sufficiency of cash, we should have thought it necessary to make the best of Mr. Waffles' pedigree, but the tide of opinion evidently setting the other way, we shall just give it as we had it, and let the proud aristocracy reject him if they like. Mr. Waffles' father, then, was either a great grazier or a great brazier--which, we are unable to say, 'for a small drop of ink having fallen,' not 'like dew,' but like a black beetle, on the first letter of the word in our correspondent's communication, it may do for either--but in one of which trades he made a 'mint of money,' and latish on in life married a lady who hitherto had filled the honourable office of dairy-maid in his house; she was a fine handsome woman and a year or two after the birth of this their only child, he departed this life, nearer eighty than seventy, leaving an 'inconsolable,' &c., who unfortunately contracted matrimony with a master pork-butcher, before she got the fine flattering white monument up, causing young Waffles to be claimed for dry-nursing by that expert matron the High Court of Chancery; who, of course, had him properly educated--where, it is immaterial to relate, as we shall step on till we find him at college. Our friend, having proved rather too vivacious for the Oxford Dons, had been recommended to try the effects of the Laverick Wells, or any other waters he liked, and had arrived with a couple of hunters and a hack, much to the satisfaction of the neighbouring master of hounds and his huntsman; for Waffles had ridden over and maimed more hounds to his own share, during the two seasons he had been at Oxford, than that gentleman had been in the habit of appropriating to the use of the whole university. Corresponding with that gentleman's delight at getting rid of him was Mr. Slocdolager's dismay at his appearance, for fully satisfied that Oxford was the seat of fox-hunting as well as of all the other arts and sciences, Mr. Waffles undertook to enlighten him and his huntsman on the mysteries of their calling, and 'Old Sloc,' as he was called, being a very silent man, while Mr. Waffles was a very noisy one, Sloc was nearly talked deaf by him. Mr. Waffles was just in the hey-day of hot, rash, youthful indiscretion and extravagance. He had not the slightest idea of the value of money, and looked at the fortune he was so closely approaching as perfectly inexhaustible. His rooms, the most spacious and splendid at that most spacious and splendid hotel, the 'Imperial,' were filled with a profusion of the most useless but costly articles. Jewellery without end, pictures innumerable, pictures that represented all sorts of imaginary sums of money, just as they represented all sorts of imaginary scenes, but whose real worth or genuineness would never be tested till the owner wanted to 'convert them.' Mr. Waffles was a 'pretty man.' Tall, slim, and slight, with long curly light hair, pink and white complexion, visionary whiskers, and a tendency to moustache that could best be seen sideways. He had light blue eyes; while his features generally were good, but expressive of little beyond great good-humour. In dress, he was both smart and various; indeed, we feel a difficulty in fixing him in any particular costume, so frequent and opposite were his changes. He had coats of every cut and colour. Sometimes he was the racing man with a bright-button'd Newmarket brown cut-away, and white-cord trousers, with drab cloth-boots; anon, he would be the officer, and shine forth in a fancy forage cap, cocked jauntily over a profusion of well-waxed curls, a richly braided surtout, with military overalls strapped down over highly varnished boots, whose hypocritical heels would sport a pair of large rowelled long-necked, ringing, brass spurs. Sometimes he was a Jack tar, with a little glazed hat, a once-round tie, a checked shirt, a blue jacket, roomy trousers, and broad-stringed pumps; and, before the admiring ladies had well digested him in that dress, he would be seen cantering away on a long-tailed white barb, in a pea-green duck-hunter, with cream-coloured leather and rose-tinted tops. He was 'All things by turns, and nothing long.' Such was the gentleman elected to succeed the silent, matter-of-fact Mr. Slocdolager in the important office of Master of the Laverick Wells Hunt; and whatever may be the merits of either--upon which we pass no opinion--it cannot be denied that they were essentially different. Mr. Slocdolager was a man of few words, and not at all a ladies' man. He could not even talk when he was crammed with wine, and though he could hold a good quantity, people soon found out they might just as well pour it into a jug as down his throat, so they gave up asking him out. He was a man of few coats, as well as of few words; one on, and one off, being the extent of his wardrobe. His scarlet was growing plum-colour, and the rest of his hunting costume has been already glanced at. He lodged above Smallbones, the veterinary surgeon, in a little back street, where he lived in the quietest way, dining when he came in from hunting,--dressing, or rather changing, only when he was wet, hunting each fox again over his brandy-and-water, and bundling off to bed long before many of his 'field' had left the dining-room. He was little better than a better sort of huntsman. Waffles, as we said before, had made himself conspicuous towards the close of Mr. Slocdolager's reign, chiefly by his dashing costume, his reckless riding, and his off-hand way of blowing up and slanging people. Indeed, a stranger would have taken him for the master, a delusion that was heightened by his riding with a formidable-looking sherry-case, in the shape of a horn, at his saddle. Save when engaged in sucking this, his tongue was never at fault. It was jabber, jabber, jabber; chatter, chatter, chatter; prattle, prattle, prattle; occasionally about something, oftener about nothing, but in cover or out, stiff country or open, trotting or galloping, wet day or dry, good scenting day or bad, Waffles' clapper never was at rest. Like all noisy chaps, too, he could not bear any one to make a noise but himself. In furtherance of this, he called in the aid of his Oxfordshire rhetoric. He would halloo _at_ people, designating them by some peculiarity that he thought he could wriggle out of, if necessary, instead of attacking them by name. Thus, if a man spoke, or placed himself where Waffles thought he ought not to be (that is to say, anywhere but where Waffles was himself), he would exclaim, 'Pray, sir, hold your tongue!--you, sir!--no, sir, not you--the man that speaks as if he had a brush in his throat!'--or, '_Do_ come away, sir!--you, sir!--the man in the mushroom-looking hat!'--or, 'that gentleman in the parsimonious boots!' looking at some one with very narrow tops. [Illustration: MR. WAFFLES, THE PRESENT MASTER OF THE LAVERICK WELLS HOUNDS] Still, he was a rattling, good-natured, harum-scarum fellow; and masterships of hounds, memberships of Parliament--all expensive unmoney-making offices,--being things that most men are anxious to foist upon their friends, Mr. Waffles' big talk and interference in the field procured him the honour of the first refusal. Not that he was the man to refuse, for he jumped at the offer, and, as he would be of age before the season came round, and would have got all his money out of Chancery, he disdained to talk about a subscription, and boldly took the hounds as his own. He then became a very important personage at Laverick Wells. He had always been a most important personage among the ladies, but as the men couldn't marry him, those who didn't want to borrow money of him, of course, ran him down. It used to be, 'Look at that dandified ass, Waffles, I declare the sight of him makes me sick'; or, 'What a barber's apprentice that fellow is, with his ringlets all smeared with Macassar.' Now it was Waffles this, Waffles that, 'Who dines with Waffles?' 'Waffles is the best fellow under the sun! By Jingo, I know no such man as Waffles!' '_Most deserving_ young man!' In arriving at this conclusion, their judgement was greatly assisted by the magnificent way he went to work. Old Tom Towler, the whip, who had toiled at his calling for twenty long years on fifty pounds and what he could 'pick up,' was advanced to a hundred and fifty, with a couple of men under him. Instead of riding worn-out, tumble-down, twenty-pound screws, he was mounted on hundred-guinea horses, for which the dealers were to have a couple of hundred, _when they were paid_. Everything was in the same proportion. Mr. Waffles' succession to the hunt made a great commotion among the fair--many elegant and interesting young ladies, who had been going on the pious tack against the Reverend Solomon Winkeyes, the popular bachelor preacher of St. Margaret's, teaching in his schools, distributing his tracts, and collecting the penny subscriptions for his clothing club, now took to riding in fan-tailed habits and feathered hats, and talking about leaping and hunting, and riding over rails. Mr. Waffles had a pound of hat-strings sent him in a week, and muffatees innumerable. Some, we are sorry to say, worked him cigar-cases. He, in return, having expended a vast of toil and ingenuity in inventing a 'button,' now had several dozen of them worked up into brooches, which he scattered about with a liberal hand. It was not one of your matter-of-fact story-telling buttons--a fox with 'TALLY-HO,' or a fox's head grinning in grim death--making a red coat look like a miniature butcher's shamble, but it was one of your queer-twisting lettered concerns, that may pass either for a military button or a naval button, or a club button, or even for a livery button. The letters, two W's, were so skilfully entwined, that even a compositor--and compositors are people who can read almost anything--would have been puzzled to decipher it. The letters were gilt, riveted on steel, and the wearers of the button-brooches were very soon dubbed by the non-recipients, 'Mr. Waffles' sheep.' [Illustration] A fine button naturally requires a fine coat to put it on, and many were the consultations and propositions as to what it should be. Mr. Slocdolager had done nothing in the decorative department, and many thought the failure of funds was a good deal attributable to that fact. Mr. Waffles was not the man to lose an opportunity of adding another costume to his wardrobe, and after an infinity of trouble, and trials of almost all the colours of the rainbow, he at length settled the following uniform, which, at least, had the charm of novelty to recommend it. The morning, or hunt-coat, was to be scarlet, with a cream-coloured collar and cuffs; and the evening, or dress coat, was to be cream-colour, with a scarlet collar and cuffs, and scarlet silk facings and linings, looking as if the wearer had turned the morning one inside out. Waistcoats, and other articles of dress, were left to the choice of the wearer, experience having proved that they are articles it is impossible to legislate upon with any effect. The old ladies, bless their disinterested hearts, alone looked on the hound freak with other than feelings of approbation. They thought it a pity he should take them. They wished he mightn't injure himself--hounds were expensive things--led to habits of irregularity--should be sorry to see such a nice young man as Mr. Waffles led astray--not that it would make any difference to them, _but_--(looking significantly at their daughters). No fox had been hunted by more hounds than Waffles had been by the ladies; but though he had chatted and prattled with fifty fair maids--any one of whom he might have found difficult to resist, if 'pinned' single-handed by, in a country house, yet the multiplicity of assailants completely neutralized each other, and verified the truth of the adage that there is 'safety in a crowd.' If pretty, lisping Miss Wordsworth thought she had shot an arrow home to his heart over night, a fresh smile and dart from little Mary Ogleby's dark eyes extracted it in the morning, and made him think of her till the commanding figure and noble air of the Honourable Miss Letitia Amelia Susannah Jemimah de Jenkins, in all the elegance of first-rate millinery and dressmakership, drove her completely from his mind, to be in turn displaced by some one more bewitching. Mr. Waffles was reputed to be made of money, and he went at it as though he thought it utterly impossible to get through it. He was greatly aided in his endeavours by the fact of its being all in the funds--a great convenience to the spendthrift. It keeps him constantly in cash, and enables him to 'cut and come again,' as quick as ever he likes. Land is not half so accommodating; neither is money on mortgage. What with time spent in investigating a title, or giving notice to 'pay in,' an industrious man wants a second loan by the time, or perhaps before, he gets the first. Acres are not easy of conversion, and the mere fact of wanting to sell implies a deficiency somewhere. With money in the funds, a man has nothing to do but lodge a power of attorney with his broker, and write up for four or five thousand pounds, just as he would write to his bootmaker for four or five pairs of boots, the only difference being, that in all probability the money would be down before the boots. Then, with money in the funds, a man keeps up his credit to the far end--the last thousand telling no more tales than the first, and making just as good a show. We are almost afraid to say what Mr. Waffles' means were, but we really believe, at the time he came of age, that he had 100,000_l._ in the funds, which were nearly at 'par'--a term expressive of each hundred being worth a hundred, and not eighty-nine or ninety pounds as is now the case, which makes a considerable difference in the melting. Now a real _bona fide_ 100,000_l._ always counts as three in common parlance, which latter sum would yield a larger income than gilds the horizon of the most mercenary mother's mind, say ten thousand a-year, which we believe is generally allowed to be 'v--a--a--ry handsome.' No wonder, then, that Mr. Waffles was such a hero. Another great recommendation about him was, that he had not had time to be much plucked. Many of the young men of fortune that appear upon town have lost half their feathers on the race-course or the gaming-table before the ladies get a chance at them; but here was a nice, fresh-coloured youth, with all his downy verdure full upon him. It takes a vast of clothes, even at Oxford prices, to come to a thousand pounds, and if we allow four or five thousand for his other extravagances, he could not have done much harm to a hundred thousand. Our friend, soon finding that he was 'cock of the walk,' had no notion of exchanging his greatness for the nothingness of London, and, save going up occasionally to see about opening the flood-gates of his fortune, he spent nearly the whole summer at Laverick Wells. A fine season it was, too--the finest season the Wells had ever known. When at length the long London season closed, there was a rush of rank and fashion to the English watering-places, quite unparalleled in the 'recollection of the oldest inhabitants.' There were blooming widows in every stage of grief and woe, from the becoming cap to the fashionable corset and ball flounce--widows who would never forget the dear deceased, or think of any other man--_unless he had at least five thousand a year_. Lovely girls, who didn't care a farthing if the man was 'only handsome'; and smiling mammas 'egging them on,' who would look very different when they came to the horrid £ s. d. And this mercantile expression leads us to the observation that we know nothing so dissimilar as a trading town and a watering-place. In the one, all is bustle, hurry, and activity; in the other, people don't seem to know what to do to get through the day. The city and west-end present somewhat of the contrast, but not to the extent of manufacturing or sea-port towns and watering-places. Bathing-places are a shade better than watering-places in the way of occupation, for people can sit staring at the sea, counting the ships, or polishing their nails with a shell, whereas at watering-places, they have generally little to do but stare at and talk of each other, and mark the progress of the day, by alternately drinking at the wells, eating at the hotels, and wandering between the library and the railway station. The ladies get on better, for where there are ladies there are always fine shops, and what between turning over the goods, and sweeping the streets with their trains, making calls, and arranging partners for balls, they get through their time very pleasantly; but what is 'life' to them is often death to the men. CHAPTER VI LAVERICK WELLS [Illustration] The flattering accounts Mr. Sponge read in the papers of the distinguished company assembled at Laverick Wells, together with details of the princely magnificence of the wealthy commoner, Mr. Waffles, who appeared to entertain all the world at dinner after each day's hunting made Mr. Sponge think it would be a very likely place to suit him. Accordingly, thither he despatched Mr. Leather with the redoubtable horses by the road, intending to follow in as many hours by the rail as it took them days to trudge on foot. Railways have helped hunting as well as other things, and enables a man to glide down into the grass 'sheers,' as Mr. Buckram calls them, with as little trouble, and in as short a time almost, as it took him to accomplish a meet at Croydon, or at the Magpies at Staines. But to our groom and horses. Mr. Sponge was too good a judge to disfigure the horses with the miserable, pulpy, weather-bleached job-saddles and bridles of 'livery,' but had them properly turned out with well-made, slightly-worn London ones of his own, and nice, warm brown woollen rugs, below broadly bound, blue-and-white-striped sheeting, with richly braided lettering, and blue and white cordings. A good saddle and bridle makes a difference of ten pounds in the looks of almost any horse. There is no need because a man rides a hack horse to proclaim it to all the world; a fact that few hack horse letters seem to be aware of. Perhaps, indeed, they think to advertise them by means of their inferior appointments. Leather, too, did his best to keep up appearances, and turned out in a very stud-groomish-looking, basket-button'd, brown cutaway, with a clean striped vest, ample white cravat, drab breeches and boots, that looked as though they had brushed through a few bullfinches; and so they had, but not with Leather's legs in them, for he had bought them second-hand of a pad groom in distress. His hands were encased in cat's-skin sable gloves, showing that he was a gentleman who liked to be comfortable. Thus accoutred, he rode down Broad Street at Laverick Wells, looking like a fine, faithful old family servant, with a slight scorbutic affection of the nose. He had everything correctly arranged in true sporting marching order. The collar-shanks were neatly coiled under the headstalls, the clothing tightly rolled and balanced above the little saddle-bags on the led horse, 'Multum in Parvo's' back, with the story-telling whip sticking through the roller. Leather arrived at Laverick Wells just as the first shades of a November night were drawing on, and anxious mammas and careful _chaperons_ were separating their fair charges from their respective admirers and the dreaded night air, leaving the streets to the gaslight men and youths 'who love the moon.' The girls having been withdrawn, licentious youths linked arms, and bore down the broad _pavé_, quizzing this person, laughing at that, and staring the pin-stickers and straw-chippers out of countenance. 'Here's an arrival!' exclaimed one. 'Dash my buttons, who have we here?' asked another, as Leather hove in sight. 'That's not a bad looking horse,' observed a third. 'Bid him five pounds for it for me,' rejoined a fourth. 'I say, old Bardolph! who do them 'ere quadrupeds belong to?' asked one, taking a scented cigar out of his mouth. Leather, though as impudent a dog as any of them, and far more than a match for the best of them at a tournament of slang, being on his preferment, thought it best to be civil, and replied, with a touch of his hat, that they were 'Mr. Sponge's.' 'Ah! old sponge biscuits!--I know him!' exclaimed a youth in a Tweed wrapper. 'My father married his aunt. Give my love to him, and tell him to breakfast with me at six in the morning--he! he! he!' 'I say, old boy, that copper-coloured quadruped hasn't got all his shoes on before,' squeaked a childish voice, now raised for the first time. 'That's intended, gov'nor,' growled Leather, riding on, indignant at the idea of any one attempting to 'sell him' with such an old stable joke. So Leather passed on through the now splendidly lit up streets, the large plate-glass windowed shops, radiant with gas, exhibiting rich, many-coloured velvets, silver gauzes, ribbons without end, fancy flowers, elegant shawls labelled 'Very chaste,' 'Patronized by Royalty,' 'Quite the go!' and white kid-gloves in such profusion that there seemed to be a pair for every person in the place. Mr. Leather established himself at the 'Eclipse Livery and Bait Stables,' in Pegasus Street, or Peg Street, as it is generally called, where he enacted the character of stud-groom to perfection, doing nothing himself, but seeing that others did his work, and strutting consequentially with the corn-sieves at feeding time. After Leather's long London experience, it is natural to suppose that he would not be long in falling in with some old acquaintance at a place like the 'Wells,' and the first night fortunately brought him in contact with a couple of grooms who had had the honour of his acquaintance when in all the radiance of his glass-blown wigged prosperity as body-coachman to the Duke of Dazzleton, and who knew nothing of the treadmill, or his subsequent career. This introduction served with his own easy assurance, and the deference country servants always pay to London ones, at once to give him standing, and it is creditable to the etiquette of servitude to say, that on joining the 'Mutton Chop and Mealy Potato Club,' at the Cat and Bagpipes, on the second night after his arrival, the whole club rose to receive him on entering, and placed him in the post of honour, on the right of the president. He was very soon quite at home with the whole of them, and ready to tell anything he knew of the great families in which he had lived. Of course, he abused the duke's place, and said he had been obliged to give him 'hup' at last, 'bein' quite an unpossible man to live with; indeed, his only wonder was, that he had been able to put hup with him so long.' The duchess was a 'good cretur,' he said, and, indeed, it was mainly on her account that he stayed, but as to the duke, he was--everything that was bad, in short. Mr. Sponge, on the other hand, had no reason to complain of the colours in which his stud-groom painted him. Instead of being the shirtless strapper of a couple of vicious hack hunters, Leather made himself out to be the general superintendent of the opulent owner of a large stud. The exact number varied with the number of glasses of grog Leather had taken, but he never had less than a dozen, and sometimes as many as twenty hunters under his care. These, he said, were planted all over the kingdom; some at Melton, to ''unt with the Quorn'; some at Northampton, to ''unt with the Pytchley'; some at Lincoln, to ''unt with Lord 'Enry'; and some at Louth, to ''unt with'--he didn't know who. What a fine flattering, well-spoken world this is, when the speaker can raise his own consequence by our elevation! One would think that 'envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness' had gone to California. A weak-minded man might have his head turned by hearing the description given of him by his friends. But hear the same party on the running-down tack!--when either his own importance is not involved, or dire offence makes it worth his while 'to cut off his nose to spite his face.' No one would recognize the portrait then drawn as one of the same individual. Mr. Leather, as we said before, was in the laudatory strain, but, like many indiscreet people, he overdid it. Not content with magnifying the stud to the liberal extent already described, he must needs puff his master's riding, and indulge in insinuations about 'showing them all the way,' and so on. Now nothing 'aggrawates' other grooms so much as this sort of threat, and few things travel quicker than these sort of vapourings to their masters' ears. Indeed, we can only excuse the lengths to which Leather went, on the ground of his previous coaching career not having afforded him a due insight into the delicacies of the hunting stable; it being remembered that he was only now acting as stud-groom for the first time. However, be that as it may, he brewed up a pretty storm, and the longer it raged the stronger it became. ''Ord dash it!' exclaimed young Spareneck, the steeple-chase rider, bursting into Scorer's billiard-room in the midst of a full gathering, who were looking on at a grand game of poule, 'Ord dash it! there's a fellow coming who swears by Jove that he'll take the shine out of us all, "cut us all down!"' 'I'll play him for what he likes!' exclaimed the cool, coatless Captain Macer, striking his ball away for a cannon. 'Hang your play!' replied Spareneck; 'you're always thinking of play--it's hunting I'm talking of.' bringing his heavy, silver-mounted jockey-whip a crack down his leg. 'You don't say so!' exclaimed Sam Shortcut, who had been flattered into riding rather harder than he liked, and feared his pluck might be put to the test. 'What a ruffian!'--(puff)--observed Mr. Waffles, taking his cigar from his mouth as he sat on the bench, dressed as a racket-player, looking on at the game, 'he shalln't ride roughshod over us.' 'That he shalln't!' exclaimed Caingey Thornton, Mr. Waffles's premier toady, and constant trencherman. 'I'll ride him!' rejoined Mr. Spareneck, jockeying his arms, and flourishing his whip as if he was at work, adding: 'his old brandy-nosed, frosty-whiskered trumpeter of a groom says he's coming down by the five o'clock train. I vote we go and meet him--invite him to a steeple-chase by moonlight.' 'I vote we go and see him, at all events,' observed Frank Hoppey, laying down his cue and putting on his coat, adding, 'I should like to see a man bold enough to beard a whole hunt--especially such a hunt as _ours_.' 'Finish the game first,' observed Captain Macer, who had rather the best of it. 'No, leave the balls as they are till we come back,' rejoined Ned Stringer; 'we shall be late. See, it's only ten _to_, now,' continued he, pointing to the timepiece above the fire; whereupon there was a putting away of cues, hurrying on of coats, seeking of hats, sorting of sticks, and a general desertion of the room for the railway station. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE ARRIVES AT LAVERICK WELLS] CHAPTER VII OUR HERO ARRIVES AT LAVERICK WELLS Punctual to the moment, the railway train, conveying the redoubtable genius, glid into the well-lighted, elegant little station of Laverick Wells, and out of a first-class carriage emerged Mr. Sponge, in a 'down the road' coat, carrying a horse-sheet wrapper in his hand. So small and insignificant did the station seem after the gigantic ones of London, that Mr. Sponge thought he had wasted his money in taking a first-class ticket, seeing there was no one to know. Mr. Leather, who was in attendance, having received him hat in hand, with all the deference due to the master of twenty hunters, soon undeceived him on that point. Having eased him of his wrapper, and inquired about his luggage, and despatched a porter for a fly, they stood together over the portmanteau and hat-box till it arrived. 'How are the horses?' asked Sponge. 'Oh, the osses be nicely, sir,' replied Leather; 'they travelled down uncommon well, and I've had 'em both removed sin they com'd, so either on 'em is fit to go i' the mornin' that you think proper.' 'Where are the hounds?' asked our hero. ''Ounds be at Whirleypool Windmill,' replied Leather, 'that's about five miles off.' 'What sort of country is it?' inquired Sponge. 'It be a stiffish country from all accounts, with a good deal o' water jumpin'; that is to say, the Liffey runs twistin' and twinin' about it like a H'Eel.' 'Then I'd better ride the brown, I think,' observed Sponge, after a pause: 'he has size and stride enough to cover anything, if he will but face water.' 'I'll warrant him for that,' replied Leather; 'only let the Latchfords well into him, and he'll go.' 'Are there many hunting-men down?' inquired our friend casually. 'Great many,' replied Leather, 'great many; some good 'ands among 'em too; at least to say their grums, though I never believe all these jockeys say. There be some on 'em 'ere now,' observed Leather, in an undertone, with a wink of his roguish eye, and jerk of his head towards where a knot of them stood eyeing our friend most intently. 'Which?' inquired Sponge, looking about the thinly peopled station. 'There,' replied Leather, 'those by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. 'Which?' inquired Mr. Sponge eagerly. 'The gent in the green wide-awake 'at, and big-button'd overcoat,' replied Leather, 'jest now a speakin' to the youth in the tweed and all tweed; that be Master Caingey Thornton, as big a little blackguard as any in the place--lives upon Waffles, and yet never has a good word to say for him, no, nor for no one else--and yet to 'ear the little devil a-talkin' to him, you'd really fancy he believed there wasn't not never sich another man i' the world as Waffles--not another sich rider--not another sich racket-player--not another sich pigeon-shooter--not another sich fine chap altogether.' 'Has Thornton any horses?' asked Sponge. 'Not he,' replied Leather, 'not he, nor the gen'lman next him nouther--he, in the pilot coat, with the whip sticking out of the pocket, nor the one in the coffee-coloured 'at, nor none on 'em in fact'; adding, 'they all live on Squire Waffles--breakfast with him--dine with him--drink with him--smoke with him--and if any on 'em 'appen to 'ave an 'orse, why they sell to him, and so ride for nothin' themselves.' 'A convenient sort of gentleman,' observed Mr. Sponge, thinking he, too, might accommodate him. The fly-man now touched his hat, indicative of a wish to be off, having a fare waiting elsewhere. Mr. Sponge directed him to proceed to the Brunswick Hotel, while, accompanied by Leather, he proceeded on foot to the stables. Mr. Leather, of course, had the valuable stud under lock and key, with every crevice and air-hole well stuffed with straw, as if they had been the most valuable horses in the world. Having produced the ring-key from his pocket, Mr. Leather opened the door, and having got his master in, speedily closed it, lest a breath of fresh air might intrude. Having lighted a lucifer, he turned on the gas, and exhibited the blooming-coated horses, well littered in straw, showing that he was not the man to pay four-and-twenty shillings a week for nothing. Mr. Sponge stood eyeing them for some seconds with evident approbation. 'If any one asks you about the horses, you can say they are _mine_, you know,' at length observed he casually, with an emphasis on the mine. 'In course,' replied Leather. 'I mean, you needn't say anything about their being _jobs_,' observed Sponge, fearing Leather mightn't exactly 'take.' 'You trust me,' replied Leather, with a knowing wink and a jerk of his elbow against his master's side; 'you trust me,' repeated he, with a look as much as to say, 'we understand each other.' 'I've hadded a few to them, indeed,' continued Leather, looking to see how his master took it. 'Have you?' observed Mr. Sponge inquiringly. 'I've made out that you've as good as twenty, one way or another,' observed Leather; 'some 'ere, some there, all over in fact, and that you jest run about the country, and 'unt with 'oever comes h'uppermost.' 'Well, and what's the upshot of it all?' inquired Mr. Sponge, thinking his groom seemed wonderfully enthusiastic in his interest. 'Why, the hupshot of it is,' replied Leather, 'that the men are all mad, and the women all wild to see you. I hear at my club, the Mutton Chop and Mealy Potato Club, which is frequented by flunkies as well as grums, that there's nothin' talked of at dinner or tea, but the terrible rich stranger that's a comin', and the gals are all pulling caps, who's to have the first chance.' 'Indeed,' observed Mr. Sponge, chuckling at the sensation he was creating. 'The Miss Shapsets, there be five on 'em, have had a game at fly loo for you,' continued Leather, 'at least so their little maid tells me.' 'Fly _what_?' inquired Mr. Sponge. 'Fly loo,' repeated Leather, 'fly loo.' Mr. Sponge shook his head. For once he was not 'fly.' 'You see,' continued Leather, in explanation, 'their father is one of them tight-laced candlestick priests wot abhors all sorts of wice and himmorality, and won't stand card playin', or gamblin', or nothin' o' that sort, so the young ladies when they want to settle a point, who's to be married first, or who's to have the richest 'usband, play fly loo. 'Sposing it's at breakfast time, they all sit quiet and sober like round the table, lookin' as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, and each has a lump o' sugar on her plate, or by her cup, or somewhere, and whoever can 'tice a fly to come to her sugar first, wins the wager, or whatever it is they play for.' 'Five on 'em,' as Leather said, being a hopeless number to extract any good from, Mr. Sponge changed the subject by giving orders for the morrow. Mr. Sponge's appearance being decidedly of the sporting order, and his horses maintaining the character, did not alleviate the agitated minds of the sporting beholders, ruffled as they were with the threatening, vapouring insinuations of the coachman-groom, Peter Leather. There is nothing sets men's backs up so readily, as a hint that any one is coming to take the 'shine' out of them across country. We have known the most deadly feuds engendered between parties who never spoke to each other by adroit go-betweens reporting to each what the other said, or, perhaps, did not say, but what the 'go-betweens' knew would so rouse the British lion as to make each ride to destruction if necessary. 'He's a varmint-looking chap,' observed Mr. Waffles, as the party returned from the railway station; 'shouldn't wonder if he can go--dare say he'll try--shouldn't wonder if he's floored--awfully stiff country this for horses that are not used to it--most likely his are Leicestershire nags, used to fly--won't do here. If he attempts to take some of our big banked bullfinches in his stride, with a yawner on each side, will get into grief.' 'Hang him,' interrupted Caingey Thornton, 'there are good men in all countries.' 'So there are!' exclaimed Mr. Spareneck, the steeple-chase rider. 'I've no notion of a fellow lording it, because he happens to come out of Leicestershire,' rejoined Mr. Thornton. 'Nor I!' exclaimed Mr. Spareneck. 'Why doesn't he stay in Leicestershire?' asked Mr. Hoppey, now raising his voice for the first time--adding, 'Who asked him here?' 'Who, indeed?' sneered Mr. Thornton. In this mood our friends arrived at the Imperial Hotel, where there was always a dinner the day before hunting--a dinner that, somehow, was served up in Mr. Waffles's rooms, who was allowed the privilege of paying for all those who did not pay for themselves; rather a considerable number, we believe. The best of everything being good enough for the guests, and profuse liberality the order of the day, the cloth generally disappeared before a contented audience, whatever humour they might have set down in. As the least people can do who dine at an inn and don't pay their own shot, is to drink the health of the man who does pay, Mr. Waffles was always lauded and applauded to the skies--such a master--such a sportsman--such knowledge--such science--such a pattern-card. On this occasion the toast was received with extra enthusiasm, for the proposer, Mr. Caingey Thornton, who was desperately in want of a mount, after going the rounds of the old laudatory course, alluded to the threatened vapourings of the stranger, and expressed his firm belief that he would 'meet with his match,' a 'taking of the bull by the horns,' that met with very considerable favour from the wine-flushed party, the majority of whom, at that moment, made very 'small,' in their own minds, of the biggest fence that ever was seen. There is nothing so easy as going best pace over the mahogany. Mr. Waffles, who was received with considerable applause, and patting of the table, responded to the toast in his usual felicitous style, assuring the company that he lived but for the enjoyment of their charming society, and that all the money in the world would be useless, if he hadn't Laverick Wells to spend it in. With regard to the vapourings of a 'certain gentleman,' he thought it would be very odd if some of them could not take the shine out of him, observing that 'Brag' was a good dog, but 'Holdfast' was a better, with certain other sporting similes and phrases, all indicative of showing fight. The steam is soon got up after dinner, and as they were all of the same mind, and all agreed that a gross insult had been offered to the hunt in general, and themselves in particular, the only question was, how to revenge it. At last they hit upon it. Old Slocdolager, the late master of the hunt, had been in the habit of having Tom Towler, the huntsman, to his lodgings the night before hunting, where, over a glass of gin-and-water, they discussed the doings of the day, and the general arrangements of the country. Mr. Waffles had had him in sometimes, though for a different purpose--at least, in reality for a different purpose, though he always made hunting the excuse for sending for him, and that purpose was, to try how many silver foxes' heads full of port wine Tom could carry off without tumbling, and the old fellow being rather liquorishly inclined, had never made any objection to the experiment. Mr. Waffles now wanted him, to endeavour, under the mellowing influence of drink, to get him to enter cordially into what he knew would be distasteful to the old sportsman's feelings, namely, to substitute a 'drag' for the legitimate find and chase of the fox. Fox-hunting, though exciting and exhilarating at all times, except, perhaps, when the 'fallows are flying,' and the sportsman feels that in all probability, the further he goes the further he is left behind--Fox-hunting, we say, though exciting and exhilarating, does not, when the real truth is spoken, present such conveniences for neck-breaking, as people, who take their ideas from Mr. Ackermann's print-shop window, imagine. That there are large places in most fences is perfectly true; but that there are also weak ones is also the fact, and a practised eye catches up the latter uncommonly quick. Therefore, though a madman may ride at the big places, a sane man is not expected to follow; and even should any one be tempted so to do, the madman having acted pioneer, will have cleared the way, or at all events proved its practicability for the follower. In addition to this, however, hounds having to smell as they go, cannot travel at the ultra steeple-chase pace, so opposed to 'looking before you leap,' and so conducive to danger and difficulty, and as going even at a fair pace depends upon the state of the atmosphere, and the scent the fox leaves behind, it is evident that where mere daring hard riding is the object, a fox-hunt cannot be depended upon for furnishing the necessary accommodation. A drag-hunt is quite a different thing. The drag can be made to any strength; enabling hounds to run as if they were tied to it, and can be trailed so as to bring in all the dangerous places in the country with a certain air of plausibility, enabling a man to look round and exclaim, as he crams at a bullfinch or brook, 'he's leading us over a most desperate country--never saw such fencing in all my life!' Drag-hunting, however, as we said before, is not popular with sportsmen, certainly not with huntsmen, and though our friends with their wounded feelings determined to have one, they had yet to smooth over old Tom to get him to come into their views. That was now the difficulty. CHAPTER VIII OLD TOM TOWLER [Illustration] There are few more difficult persons to identify than a huntsman in undress, and of all queer ones perhaps old Tom Towler was the queerest. Tom in his person furnished an apt illustration of the right appropriation of talent and the fitness of things, for he would neither have made a groom, nor a coachman, nor a postillion, nor a footman, nor a ploughman, nor a mechanic, nor anything we know of, and yet he was first-rate as a huntsman. He was too weak for a groom, too small for a coachman, too ugly for a postillion, too stunted for a footman, too light for a ploughman, too useless-looking for almost anything. Any one looking at him in 'mufti' would exclaim, 'what an unfortunate object!' and perhaps offer him a penny, while in his hunting habiliments lords would hail him with, 'Well, Tom, how are you?' and baronets ask him 'how he was?' Commoners felt honoured by his countenance, and yet, but for hunting, Tom would have been wasted--a cypher--an inapplicable sort of man. Old Tom, in his scarlet coat, black cap, and boots, and Tom in his undress--say, shirt-sleves, shorts, grey stockings and shoes, bore about the same resemblance to each other that a three months dead jay nailed to a keeper's lodge bears to the bright-plumaged bird when flying about. On horseback, Tom was a cockey, wiry-looking, keen-eyed, grim-visaged, hard-bitten little fellow, sitting as though he and his horse were all one, while on foot he was the most shambling, scambling, crooked-going crab that ever was seen. He was a complete mash of a man. He had been scalped by the branch of a tree, his nose knocked into a thing like a button by the kick of a horse, his teeth sent down his throat by a fall, his collar-bone fractured, his left leg broken and his right arm ditto, to say nothing of damage to his ribs, fingers, and feet, and having had his face scarified like pork by repeated brushings through strong thorn fences. But we will describe him as he appeared before Mr. Waffles, and the gentlemen of the Laverick Wells Hunt, on the night of Mr. Sponge's arrival. Tom's spirit being roused at hearing the boastings of Mr. Leather, and thinking, perhaps, his master might have something to say, or thinking, perhaps, to partake of the eleemosynary drink generally going on in large houses of public entertainment, had taken up his quarters in the bar of the 'Imperial,' where he was attentively perusing the 'meets' in _Bell's Life_, reading how the Atherstone met at Gopsall, the Bedale at Hornby, the Cottesmore at Tilton Wood, and so on, with an industry worthy of a better cause; for Tom neither knew country, nor places, nor masters, nor hounds, nor huntsmen, nor anything, though he still felt an interest in reading where they were going to hunt. Thus he sat with a quick ear, one of the few undamaged organs of his body, cocked to hear if Tom Towler was asked for; when a waiter dropping his name from the landing of the staircase to the hall porter, asking if anybody had seen anything of him, Tom folded up his paper, put it in his pocket, and passing his hand over the few straggling bristles yet sticking about his bald head, proceeded, hat in hand, upstairs to his master's room. His appearance called forth a round of view halloos! Who-hoops! Tally-ho's! Hark forwards! amidst which, and the waving of napkins, and general noises, Tom proceeded at a twisting, limping, halting, sideways sort of scramble up the room. His crooked legs didn't seem to have an exact understanding with his body which way they were to go; one, the right one, being evidently inclined to lurch off to the side, while the left one went stamp, stamp, stamp, as if equally determined to resist any deviation. At length he reached the top of the table, where sat his master, with the glittering Fox's head before him. Having made a sort of scratch bow, Tom proceeded to stand at ease, as it were, on the left leg, while he placed the late recusant right, which was a trifle shorter, as a prop behind. No one, to look at the little wizen'd old man in the loose dark frock, baggy striped waistcoat, and patent cord breeches, extending below where the calves of his bow legs ought to have been, would have supposed that it was the noted huntsman and dashing rider, Tom Towler, whose name was celebrated throughout the country. He might have been a village tailor, or sexton, or barber; anything but a hero. 'Well, Tom,' said Mr. Waffles, taking up the Fox's head, as Tom came to anchor by his side, 'how are you?' 'Nicely, thank you, sir,' replied Tom, giving the bald head another sweep. Mr. Waffles.--'What'll you drink?' Tom.--'Port, if you please, sir.' 'There it is for you, then,' said Mr. Waffles, brimming the Fox's head, which held about the third of a bottle (an inn bottle at least), and handing it to him. 'Gentlemen all,' said Tom, passing his sleeve across his mouth, and casting a side-long glance at the company as he raised the cup to drink their healths. He quaffed it off at a draught. 'Well, Tom, and what shall we do to-morrow?' asked Mr. Waffles, as Tom replaced the Fox's head, nose uppermost, on the table. [Illustration: OLD TOM TOWLER] 'Why, we must draw Ribston Wood fust, I s'pose,' replied Tom, 'and then on to Bradwell Grove, unless you thought well of tryin' Chesterton Common on the road, or--' 'Aye, aye,' interrupted Waffles, 'I know all that; but what I want to know is, whether we can make sure of a run. We want to give this great metropolitan swell a benefit. You know who I mean?' 'The gen'leman as is com'd to the Brunswick, I 'spose,' replied Tom; 'at least as _is_ comin', for I've not heard that he's com'd yet.' 'Oh, but he _has_,' replied Mr. Waffles, 'and I make no doubt will be out to-morrow.' 'S--o--o,' observed Tom, in a long drawled note. 'Well, now! do you think you can engage to give us a run?' asked Mr. Waffles, seeing his huntsman did not seem inclined to help him to his point. 'I'll do my best,' replied Tom, cautiously running the many contingencies through his mind. 'Take another drop of something,' said Mr. Waffles, again raising the Fox's head. 'What'll you have?' 'Port, if you please,' replied Tom. 'There,' said Mr. Waffles, handing him another bumper; 'drink Fox-hunting.' 'Fox-huntin',' said old Tom, quaffing off the measure, as before. A flush of life came into his weather-beaten face, just as a glow of heat enlivens a blacksmith's hearth, after a touch of the bellows. 'You must never let this bumptious cock beat us,' observed Mr. Waffles. 'No--o--o,' replied Tom, adding, 'there's no fear of that.' 'But he swears he _will_!' exclaimed Mr. Caingey Thornton. 'He swears there isn't a man shall come within a field of him.' 'Indeed,' observed Tom, with a twinkle of his little bright eyes. 'I tell you what, Tom,' observed Mr. Waffles, 'we must sarve him out, somehow.' 'Oh! he'll sarve hissel' out, in all probability,' replied Tom; carelessly adding, 'these boastin' chaps always do.' 'Couldn't we contrive something,' asked Mr. Waffles, 'to draw him out?' Tom was silent. He was a hunting huntsman, not a riding one. 'Have a glass of something,' said Mr. Waffles, again appealing to the Fox's head. 'Thank you, sir, I've had a glass,' replied Tom, sinking the second one. 'What will you have?' asked Mr. Waffles. 'Port, if you please,' replied Tom. 'Here it is,' rejoined Mr. Waffles, again handing him the measure. Up went the cup, over went the contents; but Tom set it down with a less satisfied face than before. He had had enough. The left leg prop, too, gave way, and he was nearly toppling on the table. Having got a chair for the dilapidated old man, they again essayed to get him into their line, with better success than before. Having plied him well with port, they now plied him well with the stranger, and what with the one and the other, and a glass or two of brandy-and-water, Tom became very tractable, and it was ultimately arranged that they should have a drag over the very stiffest parts of the country, wherein all who liked should take part, but that Mr. Caingey Thornton and Mr. Spareneck should be especially deputed to wait upon Mr. Sponge, and lead him into mischief. Of course it was to be a 'profound secret,' and equally, of course, it stood a good chance of being kept, seeing how many were in it, the additional number it would have to be communicated to before it could be carried out, and the happy state old Tom was in for arranging matters. Nevertheless, our friends at the 'Imperial' congratulated themselves on their success; and after a few minutes spent in discussing old Tom on his withdrawal, the party broke up, to array themselves in the splendid dress uniform of the 'Hunt,' to meet again at Miss Jumpheavy's ball. CHAPTER IX THE MEET--THE FIND, AND THE FINISH [Illustration] Early to bed and early to rise being among Mr. Sponge's maxims, he was enjoying the view of the pantiles at the back of his hotel shortly after daylight the next morning, a time about as difficult to fix in a November day as the age of a lady of a 'certain age.' It takes even an expeditious dresser ten minutes or a quarter of an hour extra the first time he has to deal with boots and breeches; and Mr. Sponge being quite a pattern card in his peculiar line, of course took a good deal more to get himself 'up'. An accustomed eye could see a more than ordinary stir in the streets that morning. Riding-masters and their assistants might be seen going along with strings of saddled and side-saddled screws; flys began to roll at an earlier hour, and natty tigers to kick about in buckskins prior to departing with hunters, good, bad, and indifferent. Each man had told his partner at Miss Jumpheavy's ball of the capital trick they were going to play the stranger; and a desire to see the stranger, far more than a desire to see the trick, caused many fair ones to forsake their downy couches who had much better have kept them. The world is generally very complaisant with regard to strangers, so long as they _are_ strangers, generally making them out to be a good deal better than they really are, and Mr. Sponge came in for his full share of stranger credit. They not only brought all the twenty horses Leather said he had scattered about to Laverick Wells, but made him out to have a house in Eaton Square, a yacht at Cowes, and a first-rate moor in Scotland, and some said a peerage in expectancy. No wonder that he 'drew,' as theatrical people say. Let us now suppose him breakfasted, and ready for a start. He was 'got up' with uncommon care in the most complete style of the severe order of sporting costume. It being now the commencement of the legitimate hunting season--the first week in November--he availed himself of the privileged period for turning out in everything new. Rejecting the now generally worn cap, he adhered to the heavy, close-napped hat, described in our opening chapter, whose connexion with his head, or back, if it came off, was secured by a small black silk cord, hooked through the band by a fox's tooth, and anchored to a button inside the haven of his low coat-collar. His neck was enveloped in the ample folds of a large white silk cravat, tied in a pointing diamond tie, and secured with a large silver horse-shoe pin, the shoe being almost large enough for the foot of a young donkey. His low, narrow-collared coat was of the infinitesimal order; that is to say, a coat, and yet as little of a coat as possible--very near a jacket, in fact. The seams, of course, were outside, and were it not for the extreme strength and evenness of the sewing and the evident intention of the thing, an ignorant person might have supposed that he had had his coat turned. A double layer of cloth extended the full length of the outside of the sleeves, much in the fashion of the stage-coachmen's greatcoats in former times; and instead of cuffs, the sleeves were carried out to the ends of the fingers, leaving it to the fancy of the wearer to sport a long cuff or a short cuff, or no cuff at all--just as the weather dictated. Though the coat was single-breasted, he had a hole made on the button side, to enable him to keep it together by means of a miniature snaffle, instead of a button. The snaffle passed across his chest, from whence the coatee, flowing easily back, displayed the broad ridge and furrow of a white cord waistcoat, with a low step collar, the vest reaching low down his figure, with large flap pockets and a nick out in front, like a coachman's. Instead of buttons, the waistcoat was secured with foxes' tusks and catgut loops, while a heavy curb chain, passing from one pocket to the other, raised the impression that there was a watch in one and a bunch of seals in the other. The waistcoat was broadly bound with white binding, and, like the coat, evinced great strength and powers of resistance. His breeches were of a still broader furrow than the waistcoat, looking as if the ploughman had laid two ridges into one. They came low down the leg, and were met by a pair of well-made, well put on, very brown topped boots, a colour then unknown at Laverick Wells. His spurs were bright and heavy, with formidable necks and rowels, whose slightest touch would make a horse wince, and put him on his good behaviour. Nor did the great slapping brown horse, Hercules, turn out less imposingly than his master. Leather, though not the man to work himself, had a very good idea of work, and right manfully he made the helpers at the Eclipse livery and bait stables strap and groom his horses. Hercules was a fine animal. It did not require a man to be a great judge of a horse to see that. Even the ladies, though perhaps they would rather have had him a white or a cream colour, could not but admire his nut-brown muzzle, his glossy coat, his silky mane, and the elegant way in which he carried his flowing tail. His step was delightful to look at--so free, so accurate, and so easy. And that reminds us that we may as well be getting Mr. Sponge up--a feat of no easy accomplishment. Few hack hunters are without their little peculiarities. Some are runaways--some kick--some bite--some go tail first on the road--some go tail first at their fences--some rush as if they were going to eat them, others baulk them altogether--and few, very few, give satisfaction. Those that do, generally retire from the public stud to the private one. But to our particular quadruped, 'Hercules.' Mr. Sponge was not without his misgivings that, regardless of being on his preferment, the horse might exhibit more of his peculiarity than would forward his master's interests, and, independently of the disagreeableness of being kicked off at the cover side, not being always compensated for by falling soft, Mr. Sponge thought, as the meet was not far off, and he did not sport a cover hack, it would look quite as well to ride his horse quietly on as go in a fly, provided always he could accomplish the mount--the mount--like the man walking with his head under his arm--being the first step to everything. Accordingly, Mr. Leather had the horse saddled and accoutred as quietly as possible--his warm clothing put over the saddle immediately, and everything kept as much in the usual course as possible, so that the noble animal's temper might not be ruffled by unaccustomed trouble or unusual objects. Leather having seen that the horse could not eject Mr. Sponge even in trousers, had little fear of his dislodging him in boots and breeches; still it was desirable to avoid all unseemly contention, and maintain the high character of the stud, by which means Leather felt that his own character and consequence would best be maintained. Accordingly, he refrained from calling in the aid of any of the stable assistants, preferring for once to do a little work himself, especially when the rider was up to the trick, and not 'a gent' to be cajoled into 'trying a horse.' Mr. Sponge, punctual to his time, appeared at the stable, and after much patting, whistling, so--so--ing, my man, and general ingratiation, the redoubtable nag was led out of the stable into a well-littered straw-yard, where, though he might be gored by a bull if he fell, the 'eyes of England' at all events would not witness the floorer. Horses, however, have wonderful memories and discrimination. Though so differently attired to what he was on the occasion of his trial, the horse seemed to recognize Mr. Sponge, and independently of a few snorts as he was led out, and an indignant stamp or two of his foot as it was let down, after Mr. Sponge was mounted he took things very quietly. 'Now,' said Leather, in an undertone, patting the horse's arched neck, 'I'll give you a hint; they're a goin' to run a drag to try what he's made on, so be on the look-out.' 'How do you know?' asked Mr. Sponge, in surprise, drawing his reins as he spoke. '_I know_,' replied Mr. Leather with a wink. Just then the horse began to plunge, and paw, and give symptoms of uneasiness, and not wishing to fret or exhibit his weak points, Mr. Sponge gave him his head, and passing through the side-gate was presently in the street. He didn't exactly understand it, but having full confidence in his horsemanship, and believing the one he was on required nothing but riding, he was not afraid to take his chance. Not being the man to put his candle under a bushel, Mr. Sponge took the principal streets on his way out of town. We are not sure that he did not go rather out of his way to get them in, but that is neither here nor there, seeing he was a stranger who didn't know the way. What a sensation his appearance created as the gallant brown stepped proudly and freely up Coronation Street, showing his smart, clean, well-put-on head up and down on the unrestrained freedom of the snaffle. 'Oh, d--n it, there he is!' exclaimed Mr. Spareneck, jumping up from the breakfast-table, and nearly sweeping the contents off by catching the cloth with his spur. 'Where?' exclaimed half-a-dozen voices, amid a general rush to the windows. 'What a fright!' exclaimed little Miss Martindale, whispering into Miss Beauchamp's ear: 'I'm sure anybody may have him for me,' though she felt in her heart that he was far from bad looking. 'I wonder how long he's taken to put on that choker,' observed Mr. Spareneck, eyeing him intently, not without an inward qualm that he had set himself a more difficult task than he imagined, to 'cut him down,' especially when he looked at the noble animal he bestrode, and the masterly way he sat him. 'What a pair of profligate boots,' observed Captain Whitfield, as our friend now passed his lodgings. 'It would be the duty of a right-thinking man to ride over a fellow in such a pair,' observed his friend, Mr. Cox, who was breakfasting with him. 'Ride over a fellow in such a pair!' exclaimed Whitfield. 'No well-bred horse would face such things, I should think.' 'He seems to think a good deal of himself!' observed Mr. Cox, as Sponge cast an admiring eye down his shining boot. 'Shouldn't wonder,' replied Whitfield; 'perhaps he'll have the conceit taken out of him before night.' 'Well, I hope you'll be in time, old boy!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles to himself, as looking down from his bedroom window, he espied Mr. Sponge passing up the street on his way to cover. Mr. Waffles was just out of bed, and had yet to dress and breakfast. One man in scarlet sets all the rest on the fidget, and without troubling to lay 'that or that' together, they desert their breakfasts, hurry to the stables, get out their horses and rattle away, lest their watches should be wrong or some arrangement made that they are ignorant of. The hounds too, were on, as was seen as well by their footmarks, as by the bob, bob, bobbing of sundry black caps above the hedges, on the Borrowdon road as the huntsman and whips proceeded at that pleasant post-boy trot, that has roused the wrath of so many riders against horses that they could not get to keep in time. Now look at old Tom, cocked jauntily on the spicey bay and see what a different Tom he is to what he was last night. Instead of a battered, limping, shabby-looking little old man, he is all alive and rises to the action of his horse, as though they were all one. A fringe of grey hair protrudes beneath his smart velvet cap, which sets off a weather-beaten but keen and expressive face, lit up with little piercing black eyes. See how chirpy and cheery he is; how his right arm keeps rising and falling with his whip, beating responsive to the horse's action with the butt-end against his thigh. His new scarlet coat imparts a healthy hue to his face, and good boots and breeches hide the imperfections of his bad legs. His hounds seem to partake of the old man's gaiety, and gather round his horse or frolic forward on the grassy sidings of the road, till, getting almost out of earshot, a single 'yooi doit!--Arrogant!'--or 'here again, Brusher!' brings them cheerfully back to whine and look in the old man's face for applause. Nor is he chary of his praise. 'G--oood betch!--Arrogant!--g--oood betch!' says he, leaning over his horse's shoulder towards her, and jerking his hand to induce her to proceed forward again. So the old man trots gaily on, now making of his horse, now coaxing a hound, now talking to a 'whip,' now touching or taking off his cap as he passes a sportsman, according to the estimation in which he holds him. As the hounds reach Whirleypool Windmill, there is a grand rush of pedestrians to meet them. First comes a velveteen-jacketed, leather-legginged keeper, with whom Tom (albeit suspicious of his honesty) thinks it prudent to shake hands; the miller and he, too, greet; and forthwith a black bottle with a single glass make their appearance, and pass current with the company. Then the earth-stopper draws nigh, and, resting a hand on Tom's horse's shoulder, whispers confidentially in his ear. The pedestrian sportsman of the country, too, has something to say; also a horse-breaker; while groups of awe-stricken children stand staring at the mighty Tom, thinking him the greatest man in the world. Railways and fox-hunting make most people punctual, and in less than five minutes from the halting of the hounds by the Windmill, the various roads leading up to it emit dark-coated grooms, who, dismounting, proceed to brush off the mud sparks, and rectify any little derangement the horses or their accoutrements may have contracted on the journey. Presently Mr. Sponge, and such other gentlemen as have ridden their own horses on, cast up, while from the eminence the road to Laverick Wells is distinctly traceable with scarlet coats and flys, with furs and flaunting feathers. Presently the foremost riders begin to canter up the hill, when All around is gay, men, horses, dogs, And in each smiling countenance appears Fresh blooming health and universal joy. Then the ladies mingle with the scene, some on horseback, some in flys, all chatter and prattle as usual, some saying smart things, some trying, all making themselves as agreeable as possible, and of course as captivating. Some were in ecstasies at dear Miss Jumpheavy's ball--she was such a _nice_ creature--such a charming ball, and so well managed, while others were anticipating the delights of Mrs. Tom Hoppey's, and some again were asking which was Mr. Sponge. Then up went the eye-glasses, while Mr. Sponge sat looking as innocent and as killing as he could. 'Dear me!' exclaimed one, 'he's younger than I thought.' 'That's him, is it?' observed another; 'I saw him ride up the street'; while the propriety-playing ones praised his horse, and said it was a beauty. The hounds, which they all had come to see, were never looked at. Mr. Waffles, like many men with nothing to do, was most unpunctual. He never seemed to know what o'clock it was, and yet he had a watch, hung in chains, and gewgaws, like a lady's chatelaine. Hunting partook of the general confusion. He did not profess to throw off till eleven, but it was often nearly twelve before he cast up. Then he would come up full tilt, surrounded by 'scarlets,' like a general with his staff; and once at the meet, there was a prodigious hurry to begin, equalled only by the eagerness to leave off. On this auspicious day he hove in sight, coming best pace along the road, about twenty minutes before twelve, with a more numerous retinue than usual. In dress, Mr. Waffles was the light, butterfly order of sportsman--once-round tie, French polish, paper boots, and so on. On this occasion he sported a shirt-collar with three or four blue lines, and then a white space followed by three or more blue lines, the whole terminating in blue spots about the size of fourpenny pieces at the points; a once-round blue silk tie, with white spots and flying ends. His coat was a light, jackety sort of thing, with little pockets behind, something in the style of Mr. Sponge's (a docked dressing-gown), but wanting the outside seaming, back strapping, and general strength that characterized Mr. Sponge's. His waistcoat, of course, was a worked one--heart's-ease mingled with foxes' heads, on a true blue ground, the gift of--we'll not say who--his leathers were of the finest doe-skin, and his long-topped, pointed-toed boots so thin as to put all idea of wet or mud out of the question. Such was the youth who now cantered up and took off his cap to the rank, beauty, and fashion, assembled at Whirleypool Windmill. He then proceeded to pay his respects in detail. At length, having exhausted his 'nothings,' and said the same thing over again in a dozen different ways to a dozen different ladies, he gave a slight jerk of the head to Tom Towler, who forthwith whistled his hounds together, and attended by the whips, bustled from the scene. [Illustration: CAPTAIN GREATGUN] Epping Hunt, in its most palmy days could not equal the exhibition that now took place. Some of the more lively of the horses, tired of waiting, perhaps pinched by the cold, for most of them were newly clipped, evinced their approbation of the move, by sundry squeals and capers, which being caught by others in the neighbourhood, the infection quickly spread, and in less than a minute there was such a scene of rocking, and rearing, and kicking, and prancing, and neighing and shooting over heads, and rolling over tails, and hanging on by manes, mingled with such screamings from the ladies in the flys, and such hearty-sounding kicks against splash boards and fly bottoms, from sundry of the vicious ones in harness, as never was witnessed. One gentleman, in a bran-new scarlet, mounted on a flourishing piebald, late the property of Mr. Batty, stood pawing and fighting the air, as if in the saw-dust circle, his unfortunate rider clinging round his neck, expecting to have the beast back over upon him. Another little wiry chestnut, with abundance of rings, racing martingale, and tackle generally, just turned tail on the crowd and ran off home as hard as ever he could lay legs to the ground; while a good steady bay cob, with a barrel like a butt, and a tail like a hearth-brush, having selected the muddiest, dirtiest place he could find, deliberately proceeded to lie down, to the horror of his rider, Captain Greatgun, of the royal navy, who, feeling himself suddenly touch mother earth, thought he was going to be swallowed up alive, and was only awoke from the delusion by the shouts of the foot people, telling him to get clear of his horse before he began to roll. [Illustration] Hercules would fain have joined the truant set, and, at the first commotion, up went his great back, and down went his ears, with a single lash out behind that meant mischief, but Mr. Sponge was on the alert, and just gave him such a dig with his spurs as restored order, without exposing anything that anybody could take notice of. The sudden storm was quickly lulled. The spilt ones scrambled up; the loose riders got tighter hold of their horses; the screaming fair ones sank languidly in their carriages; and the late troubled ocean of equestrians fell into irregular line _en route_ for the cover. Bump, bump, bump; trot, trot, trot; jolt, jolt, jolt; shake, shake, shake; and carriages and cavalry got to Ribston Wood somehow or other. It is a long cover on a hill-side, from which parties, placing themselves in the green valley below, can see hounds 'draw,' that is to say, run through with their noses to the ground, if there are any men foolish enough to believe that ladies care for seeing such things. However, there they were. 'Eu leu, in!' cries old Tom, with a wave of his arm, finding he can no longer restrain the ardour of the pack as they approach, and thinking to save his credit, by appearing to direct. 'Eu leu, in!' repeats he, with a heartier cheer, as the pack charge the rotten fence with a crash that echoes through the wood. The whips scuttle off to their respective points, gentlemen feel their horses' girths, hats are thrust firmly on the head, and the sherry and brandy flasks begin to be drained. 'Tally ho!' cries a countryman at the top of the wood, hoisting his hat on a stick. At the magic sound, fear comes over some, joy over others, intense anxiety over all. What commotion! What indecision! What confusion! 'Which way?--Which way?' is the cry. 'Twang, twang, twang,' goes old Tom's horn at the top of the wood, whither he seems to have flown, so quick has he got there. A dark-coated gentleman on a good family horse solves the important question--'Which way?'--by diving at once into the wood, crashing along till he comes to a cross-road that leads to the top, when the scene opening to 'open fresh fields and pastures new,' discloses divers other sections struggling up in long drawn files, following other leaders, all puffing, and wheezing and holding on by the manes, many feeling as if they had had enough already--'Quick!' is the word, for the tail-hounds are flying the fence out of the first field over the body of the pack, which are running almost mute at best pace beyond, looking a good deal smaller than is agreeable to the eyes of a sportsman. 'F--o--o--r--rard!' screams old Tom, flying the fence after them, followed by jealous jostling riders in scarlet and colours, some anxious, some easy, some wanting to be at it, some wanting to look as if they did, some wishing to know if there was anything on the far side. Now Tom tops another fence, rising like a rocket and dropping like a bird; still 'F--o--o--r--rard!' is the cry--away they go at racing pace. The field draws out like a telescope, leaving the largest portion at the end, and many--the fair and fat ones in particular--seeing the hopelessness of the case, pull up their horses, while yet on an eminence that commands a view. Fifteen or twenty horsemen enter for the race, and dash forward, though the hounds rather gain on old Tom, and the further they go the smaller the point of the telescope becomes. The pace is awful; many would give in but for the ladies. At the end of a mile or so, the determined ones show to the front, and the spirters and 'make-believes' gladly avail themselves of their pioneering powers. Mr. Sponge, who got well through the wood, has been going at his ease, the great striding brown throwing the large fields behind him with ease, and taking his leaps safely and well. He now shows to the front, and old Tom, who is still 'F--o--o--r--rarding' to his hounds, either rather falls back to the field or the field draws upon him. At all events they get together somehow. A belt of Scotch fir plantation, with a stiffish fence on each side, tries their mettle and the stoutness of their hats: crash they get through it, the noise they make among the thorns and rotten branches resembling the outburst of a fire. Several gentlemen here decline under cover of the trees. 'F--o--o--r--rard!' screams old Tom, as he dives through the stiff fence and lands in the field outside the plantation. He might have saved his breath, for the hounds were beating him as it was. Mr. Sponge bores through the same place, little aided, however, by anything old Tom has done to clear the way for him, and the rest follow in his wake. The field is now reduced to six, and two of the number, Mr. Spareneck and Caingey Thornton, become marked in their attention to our hero. Thornton is riding Mr. Waffles' crack steeple-chaser 'Dare-Devil,' and Mr. Spareneck is on a first-rate hunter belonging to the same gentleman, but they have not been able to get our friend Sponge into grief. On the contrary, his horse, though lathered goes as strong as ever, and Mr. Sponge, seeing their design, is as careful of him as possible, so as not to lose ground. His fine, strong, steady seat, and quiet handling, contrasts well with Thornton's rolling bucketing style, who has already begun to ply a heavy cutting whip, in aid of his spurs at his fences, accompanied with a half frantic 'g--u--r--r--r along!' and inquires of the horse if he thinks he stole him? The three soon get in front; fast as they go, the hounds go faster, and fence after fence is thrown behind them, just as a girl throws her skipping-rope. Tom and the whips follow, grinning with their tongues in their cheeks, Tom still screeching 'F--o--o--o--rard!--F--o--o--o--rard!' at intervals. A big stone wall, built with mortar, and coped with heavy blocks of stone, is taken by the three abreast, for which they are rewarded by a gallop up Stretchfurrow pasture, from the summit of which they see the hounds streaming away to a fine grass country below, with pollard willows dotted here and there in the bottom. 'Water!' says our friend Sponge to himself, wondering whether Hercules would face it. A desperate black bullfinch, so thick that they could hardly see through it, is shirked by consent, for a gate which a countryman opens, and another fence or two being passed, the splashing of some hounds in the water, and the shaking of others on the opposite bank, show that, as usual, the willows are pretty true prophets. Caingey, grinning his coarse red face nearly double, and getting his horse well by the head, rams in the spurs, and flourishes his cutting whip high in air, with a 'g--u--u--ur along! do you think I'--the 'stole you' being lost under water just as Sponge clears the brook a little lower down. Spareneck then pulls up. When Nimrod had Dick Christian under water in the Whissendine in his Leicestershire run, and someone more humane than the rest of the field observed, as they rode on, 'But he'll be drowned.' 'Shouldn't wonder,' exclaimed another. 'But the pace,' Nimrod added, 'was too good to inquire.' Such, however, was not the case with our watering-place cock, Mr. Sponge. Independently of the absurdity of a man risking his neck for the sake of picking up a bunch of red herrings, Mr. Sponge, having beat everybody, could afford a little humanity, more especially as he rode his horse on sale, and there was now no one left to witness the further prowess of the steed. Accordingly, he availed himself of a heavy, newly-ploughed fallow, upon which he landed as he cleared the brook, for pulling up, and returned just as Mr. Spareneck, assisted by one of the whips, succeeded in landing Caingey on the taking-off side. Caingey was not a pretty boy at the best of times--none but the most partial parents could think him one--and his clumsy-featured, short, compressed face, and thick, lumpy figure, were anything but improved by a sort of pea-green net-work of water-weeds with which he arose from his bath. He was uncommonly well soaked, and had to be held up by the heels to let the water run out of his boots, pockets, and clothes. In this undignified position he was found by Mr. Waffles and such of the field as had ridden the line. 'Why, Caingey, old boy! you look like a boiled porpoise with parsley sauce!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles, pulling up where the unfortunate youth was spluttering and getting emptied like a jug. 'Confound it!' added he, as the water came gurgling out of his mouth, 'but you must have drunk the brook dry.' Caingey would have censured his inhumanity, but knowing the imprudence of quarrelling with his bread and butter, and also aware of the laughable, drowned-rat figure he must then be cutting, he thought it best to laugh, and take his change out of Mr. Waffles another time. Accordingly, he chuckled and laughed too, though his jaws nearly refused their office, and kindly transferred the blame of the accident from the horse to himself. [Illustration: MR. CAINGEY THORNTON DOESN'T 'PUT ON STEAM ENOUGH'] 'He didn't put on steam enough,' he said. Meanwhile, old Tom, who had gone on with the hounds, having availed himself of a well-known bridge, a little above where Thornton went in, for getting over the brook, and having allowed a sufficient time to elapse for the proper completion of the farce, was now seen rounding the opposite hill, with his hounds clustered about his horse, with his mind conning over one of those imaginary runs that experienced huntsmen know so well how to tell, when there is no one to contradict them. Having quartered his ground to get at his old friend the bridge again, he just trotted up with well-assumed gaiety as Caingey Thornton spluttered the last piece of green weed out from between his great thick lips. 'Well, Tom!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles, 'what have you done with him?' 'Killed him, sir,' replied Tom, with a slight touch of his cap, as though 'killing' was a matter of every-day occurrence with them. 'Have you, indeed!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles, adopting the lie with avidity. 'Yes, sir,' said Tom gravely; 'he was nearly beat afore he got to the brook. Indeed, I thought Vanquisher would have had him in it; but, however, he got through, and the scent failed on the fallow, which gave him a chance; but I held them on to the hedgerow beyond, where they hit it off like wildfire, and they never stopped again till they tumbled him over at the back of Mr. Plummey's farm-buildings, at Shapwick. I've got his brush,' added Tom, producing a much tattered one from his pocket, 'if you'd like to have it?' 'Thank you, no--yes--no,' replied Waffles, not wanting to be bothered with it; 'yet stay,' continued he, as his eye caught Mr. Sponge, who was still on foot beside his vanquished friend; 'give it to Mr. What-de-ye-call-'em,' added he, nodding towards our hero. 'Sponge,' observed Tom, in an undertone, giving the brush to his master. 'Mr. Sponge, will you do me the favour to accept the brush?' asked Mr. Waffles, advancing with it towards him; adding, 'I am sorry this unlucky bather should have prevented your seeing the end.' Mr. Sponge was a pretty good judge of brushes, and not a bad one of camphire; but if this one had smelt twice as strong as it did--indeed, if it had dropped to pieces in his hand, or the moths had flown up in his face, he would have pocketed it, seeing it paved the way to what he wanted--an introduction. 'I'm very much obliged, I'm sure,' observed he, advancing to take it--'very much obliged, indeed; been an extremely good run, and fast.' 'Very fair--very fair,' observed Mr. Waffles, as though it were nothing in their way; 'seven miles in twenty minutes, I suppose, or something of that sort.' '_One_-and-twenty,' interposed Tom, with a laudable anxiety for accuracy. 'Ah! one-and-twenty,' rejoined Mr. Waffles. 'I thought it would be somewhere thereabouts. Well, I suppose we've all had enough,' added he, 'may as well go home and have some luncheon, and then a game at billiards, or rackets, or something. How's the old water-rat?' added he, turning to Thornton, who was now busy emptying his cap and mopping the velvet. The water-rat was as well as could be expected, but did not quite like the new aspect of affairs. He saw that Mr. Sponge was a first-rate horseman, and also knew that nothing ingratiated one man with another so much as skill and boldness in the field. It was by that means, indeed, that he had established himself in Mr. Waffles' good graces--an ingratiation that had been pretty serviceable to him, both in the way of meat, drink, mounting, and money. Had Mr. Sponge been, like himself, a needy, penniless adventurer, Caingey would have tried to have kept him out by some of those plausible, admonitory hints, that poverty makes men so obnoxious to; but in the case of a rich, flourishing individual, with such an astonishing stud as Leather made him out to have, it was clearly Caingey's policy to knock under and be subservient to Mr. Sponge also. Caingey, we should observe, was a bold, reckless rider, never seeming to care for his neck, but he was no match for Mr. Sponge, who had both skill and courage. Caingey being at length cleansed from his weeds, wiped from his mud, and made as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, was now hoisted on to the renowned steeple-chase horse again, who had scrambled out of the brook on the taking-off side, and, after meandering the banks for a certain distance, had been caught by the bridle in the branch of a willow--Caingey, we say, being again mounted, Mr. Sponge also, without hindrance from the resolute brown horse, the first whip put himself a little in advance, while old Tom followed with the hounds, and the second whip mingled with the now increasing field, it being generally understood (by the uninitiated, at least) that hounds have no business to go home so long as any gentleman is inclined for a scurrey, no matter whether he has joined early or late. Mr. Waffles, on the contrary, was very easily satisfied, and never took the shine off a run with a kill by risking a subsequent defeat. Old Tom, though keen when others were keen, was not indifferent to his comforts, and soon came into the way of thinking that it was just as well to get home to his mutton-chops at two or three o'clock, as to be groping his way about bottomless bye-roads on dark winter nights. As he retraced his steps homeward, and overtook the scattered field of the morning, his talent for invention, or rather stretching, was again called into requisition. 'What have you done with him, Tom?' asked Major Bouncer, eagerly bringing his sturdy collar-marked cob alongside of our huntsman. 'Killed him, sir,' replied Tom, with the slightest possible touch of the cap. (Bouncer was no tip.) 'Indeed!' exclaimed Bouncer, gaily, with that sort of sham satisfaction that most people express about things that can't concern them in the least. 'Indeed! I'm deuced glad of that! Where did you kill him?' 'At the back of Mr. Plummey's farm-buildings, at Shapwick,' replied Tom; adding, 'but, my word, he led us a dance afore we got there--up to Ditchington, down to Somerby, round by Temple Bell Wood, cross Goosegreen Common, then away for Stubbington Brooms, skirtin' Sanderwick Plantations, but scarce goin' into 'em, then by the round hill at Camerton leavin' great Heatherton to the right, and so straight on to Shapwick, where we killed, with every hound up--' 'God bless me!' exclaimed Bouncer, apparently lost in admiration, though he scarcely knew the country; 'God bless me!' repeated he, 'what a run! The finest run that ever was seen.' 'Nine miles in twenty-five minutes,' replied Tom, tacking on a little both for time and distance. '_B-o-y_ JOVE!' exclaimed the major. Having shaken hands with, and congratulated Mr. Waffles most eagerly and earnestly, the major hurried off to tell as much as he could remember to the first person he met, just as the cheese-bearer at a christening looks out for some one to give the cheese to. The cheese-getter on this occasion was Doctor Lotion, who was going to visit old Jackey Thompson, of Woolleyburn. Jackey being then in a somewhat precarious state of health, and tolerably advanced in life, without any very self-evident heir, was obnoxious to the attentions of three distinct litters of cousins, some one or other of whom was constantly 'baying him.' Lotion, though a sapient man, and somewhat grinding in his practice, did not profess to grind old people young again, and feeling he could do very little for the body corporate, directed his attention to amusing Jackey's mind, and anything in the shape of gossip was extremely acceptable to the doctor to retail to his patient. Moreover, Jackey had been a bit of a sportsman, and was always extremely happy to see the hounds--_on anybody's land but his own_. So Lotion got primed with the story, and having gone through the usual routine of asking his patient how he was, how he had slept, looking at his tongue, and reporting on the weather, when the old posing question, 'What's the news?' was put, Lotion replied, as he too often had to reply, for he was a very slow hand at picking up information. 'Nothin' particklar, I think, sir,' adding, in an off-hand sort of way, 'you've heard of the greet run, I s'pose, sir?' 'Great run!' exclaimed the octogenarian, as if it was a matter of the most vital importance to him; 'great run, sir; no, sir, not a word!' The doctor then retailed it. Old Jackey got possessed of this one idea--he thought of nothing else. Whoever came, he out with it, chapter and verse, with occasional variations. He told it to all the 'cousins in waiting'; Jackey Thompson, of Carrington Ford; Jackey Thompson, of Houndesley; Jackey Thompson, of the Mill; and all the Bobs, Bills, Sams, Harrys, and Peters, composing the respective litters;--forgetting where he got it from, he nearly told it back to Lotion himself. We sometimes see old people affected this way--far more enthusiastic on a subject than young ones. Few dread the aspect of affairs so much as those who have little chance of seeing how they go. But to the run. The cousins reproduced the story according to their respective powers of exaggeration. One tacked on two miles, another ten, and so it went on and on, till it reached the ears of the great Mr. Seedeyman, the mighty WE of the country, as he sat in his den penning his 'stunners' for his market-day _Mercury_. It had then distanced the great sea-serpent itself in length, having extended over thirty-three miles of country, which Mr. Seedeyman reported to have been run in one hour and forty minutes. Pretty good going, we should say. CHAPTER X THE FEELER Bag fox-hunts, be they ever so good, are but unsatisfactory things; drag runs are, beyond all measure, unsatisfactory. After the best-managed bag fox-hunt, there is always a sort of suppressed joy, a deadly liveliness in the field. Those in the secret are afraid of praising it too much, lest the secret should ooze out, and strangers suppose that all their great runs are with bag foxes, while the mere retaking of an animal that one has had in hand before is not calculated to arouse any very pleasurable emotions. Nobody ever goes frantic at seeing an old donkey of a deer handed back into his carriage after a canter. Our friends on this occasion soon exhausted what they had to say on the subject. 'That's a nice horse of yours,' observed Mr. Waffles to Mr. Sponge, as the latter, on the strength of the musty brush, now rode alongside the master of the hounds. 'I think he is,' replied Sponge, rubbing some of the now dried sweat from his shoulder and neck; 'I think he is; I like him a good deal better to-day than I did the first time I rode him.' 'What, he's a new one, is he?' asked Mr. Waffles, taking a scented cigar from his mouth, and giving a steady sidelong stare at the horse. 'Bought him in Leicestershire,' replied Sponge. 'He belonged to Lord Bullfrog, who didn't think him exactly up to his weight.' 'Up to his weight!' exclaimed Mr. Caingey Thornton, who had now ridden up on the other side of his great patron, 'why, he must be another Daniel Lambert.' 'Rather so,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'rides nineteen stun.' 'What a monster!' exclaimed Thornton, who was of the pocket order. 'I thought he didn't go fast enough at his fences the first time I rode him,' observed Mr. Sponge, drawing the curb slightly so as to show the horse's fine arched neck to advantage; 'but he went quick enough to-day, in all conscience,' added he. 'He did _that_,' observed Mr. Thornton, now bent on a toadying match. 'I never saw a finer lepper.' 'He flew many feet beyond the brook,' observed Mr. Spareneck, who, thinking discretion was the better part of valour, had pulled up on seeing his comrade Thornton blobbing about in the middle of it, and therefore was qualified to speak to the fact. So they went on talking about the horse, and his points, and his speed, and his action, very likely as much for want of something to say, or to keep off the subject of the run, as from any real admiration of the animal. The true way to make a man take a fancy to a horse is to make believe that you don't want to sell him--at all events, that you are easy about selling. Mr. Sponge had played this game so very often, that it came quite natural to him. He knew exactly how far to go, and having expressed his previous objection to the horse, he now most handsomely made the _amende honorable_ by patting him on the neck, and declaring that he really thought he should keep him. It is said that every man has his weak or 'do-able' point, if the sharp ones can but discover it. This observation does not refer, we believe, to men with an innocent _penchant_ for play, or the turf, or for buying pictures, or for collecting china, or for driving coaches and four, all of which tastes proclaim themselves sooner or later, but means that the most knowing, the most cautious, and the most careful, are all to be come over, somehow or another. There are few things more surprising in this remarkable world than the magnificent way people talk about money, or the meannesses they will resort to in order to get a little. We hear fellows flashing and talking in hundreds and thousands, who will do almost anything for a five-pound note. We have known men pretending to hunt countries at their own expense, and yet actually 'living out of the hounds.' Next to the accomplishment of that--apparently almost impossible feat--comes the dexterity required for living by horse-dealing. A little lower down in the scale comes the income derived from the profession of a 'go-between'--the gentleman who can buy the horse cheaper than you can. This was Caingey Thornton's trade. He was always lurking about people's stables talking to grooms and worming out secrets--whose horse had a cough, whose was a wind-sucker, whose was lame after hunting, and so on--and had a price current of every horse in the place--knew what had been given, what the owners asked, and had a pretty good guess what they would take. Waffles would have been an invaluable customer to Thornton if the former's groom, Mr. Figg, had not been rather too hard with his 'reg'lars.' He insisted on Caingey dividing whatever he got out of his master with him. This reduced profits considerably; but still, as it was a profession that did not require any capital to set up with, Thornton could afford to be liberal, having only to tack on to one end to cut off at the other. After the opening Sponge gave as they rode home with the hounds, Thornton had no difficulty in sounding him on the subject. 'You'll not think me impertinent, I hope,' observed Caingey, in his most deferential style, to our hero when they met at the News'-room the next day--'you'll not think me impertinent, I hope; but I think you said as we rode home, yesterday, that you didn't altogether like the brown horse you were on?' '_Did I?_' replied Mr. Sponge, with apparent surprise; 'I think you must have misunderstood me.' 'Why, no; it wasn't exactly that,' rejoined Mr. Thornton, 'but you said you liked him better than you did, I think?' 'Ah! I believe I did say something of the sort,' replied Sponge casually--'I believe I did say something of the sort; but he carried me so well that I thought better of him. The fact was,' continued Mr. Sponge, confidentially, 'I thought him rather too light mouthed; I like a horse that bears more on the hand.' 'Indeed!' observed Mr. Thornton; 'most people think a light mouth a recommendation.' 'I know they do,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'I know they do; but I like a horse that requires a little riding. Now this is too much of a made horse--too much of what I call an old man's horse, for me. Bullfrog, whom I bought him of, is very fat--eats a great deal of venison and turtle--all sorts of good things, in fact--and can't stand much tewing in the saddle; now, I rather like to feel that I am on a horse, and not in an arm-chair.' 'He's a fine horse,' observed Mr. Thornton. 'So he ought,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'I gave a hatful of money for him--two hundred and fifty golden sovereigns, and not a guinea back. Bullfrog's the biggest screw I ever dealt with.' That latter observation was highly encouraging to Thornton. It showed that Mr. Sponge was not one of your tight-laced dons, who take offence at the mere mention of 'drawbacks,' but, on the contrary, favoured the supposition that he would do the 'genteel,' should he happen to be a seller. 'Well, if you should feel disposed to part with him, perhaps you will have the kindness to let me know,' observed Mr. Thornton; adding, 'he's not for myself, of course, but I think I know a man he would suit, and who would be inclined to give a good price for him.' 'I will,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'I will,' repeated he, adding, 'if I _were_ to sell him, I wouldn't take a farthing under three 'underd for him--three 'underd _guineas_, mind, _not punds_.' 'That's a vast sum of money,' observed Mr. Thornton. 'Not a bit on't,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'He's worth it all, and a great deal more. Indeed, I haven't said, mind that, I'll take that for him; all I've said is, that I wouldn't take less.' 'Just so,' replied Mr. Thornton. 'He's a horse of high character,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'Indeed he has no business out of Leicestershire; and I don't know what set my fool of a groom to bring him here.' 'Well, I'll see if I can coax my friend into giving what you say,' observed Mr. Thornton. 'Nay, never mind coaxing,' replied Mr. Sponge, with the utmost indifference; 'never mind coaxing; if he's not anxious, my name's "easy." Only mind ye, if I ride him again, and he carries me as he did yesterday, I shall clap on another fifty. A horse of that figure can't be dear at any price,' added he. 'Put him in a steeple-chase, and you'd get your money back in ten minutes, and a bagful to boot.' 'True,' observed Mr. Thornton, treasuring that fact up as an additional inducement to use to his friend. So the amiable gentlemen parted. CHAPTER XI THE DEAL, AND THE DISASTER If people are inclined to deal, bargains can very soon be struck at idle watering-places, where anything in the shape of occupation is a godsend, and bargainers know where to find each other in a minute. Everybody knows where everybody is. 'Have you seen Jack Sprat?' 'Oh yes; he's just gone into Muddle's Bazaar with Miss Flouncey, looking uncommon sweet.' Or-- 'Can you tell me where I shall find Mr. Slowman?' Answer.--'You'll find him at his lodgings, No. 15, Belvidere Terrace, till a quarter before seven. He's gone home to dress, to dine with Major and Mrs. Holdsworthy, at Grunton Villa, for I heard him order Jenkins's fly at that time.' Caingey Thornton knew exactly when he would find Mr. Waffles at Miss Lollypop's, the confectioner, eating ices and making love to that very interesting much-courted young lady. True to his time, there was Waffles, eating and eyeing the cherry-coloured ribbons, floating in graceful curls along with her raven-coloured ringlets, down Miss Lollypop's nice fresh plump cheeks. After expatiating on the great merits of the horse, and the certainty of getting all the money back by steeple-chasing him in the spring, and stating his conviction that Mr. Sponge would not take any part of the purchase-money in pictures or jewellery, or anything of that sort, Mr. Waffles gave his consent to deal, on the terms the following conversation shows. 'My friend will give you your price, if you wouldn't mind taking his cheque and keeping it for a few months till he's into funds,' observed Mr. Thornton, who now sought Mr. Sponge out at the billiard-room. 'Why,' observed Mr. Sponge, thoughtfully, 'you know horses are always ready money.' 'True,' replied Thornton; 'at least that's the theory of the thing; only my friend is rather peculiarly situated at present.' 'I suppose Mr. Waffles is your man?' observed Mr. Sponge, rightly judging that there couldn't be two such flats in the place. 'Just so,' said Mr. Thornton. [Illustration: MR. WAFFLES AT MISS LOLLYPOP'S] 'I'd rather take his "stiff" than his cheque,' observed Mr. Sponge, after a pause. 'I could get a bit of stiff _done_, but a cheque, you see--especially a post-dated one--is always objected to.' 'Well, I dare say that will make no difference,' observed Mr. Thornton, '"stiff," if you prefer it--say three months; or perhaps you'll give us four?' 'Three's long enough, in all conscience,' replied Mr. Sponge, with a shake of the head, adding, 'Bullfrog made me pay down on the nail.' 'Well, so be it, then,' assented Mr. Thornton; 'you draw at three months, and Mr. Waffles will accept, payable at Coutts's.' After so much liberality, Mr. Caingey expected that Mr. Sponge would have hinted at something handsome for him; but all Sponge said was, 'So be it,' too, as he walked away to buy a bill-stamp. Mr. Waffles was more considerate, and promised him the first mount on his new purchase, though Caingey would rather have had a ten, or even a five-pound note. Towards the hour of ten on that eventful day, numerous gaitered, trousered, and jacketed grooms began to ride up and down the High Street, most of them with their stirrups crossed negligently on the pommels of the saddles, to indicate that their masters were going to ride the horses, and not them. The street grew lively, not so much with people going to hunt, as with people coming to see those who were. Tattered Hibernians, with rags on their backs and jokes on their lips; young English _chevaliers d'industrie_, with their hands ready to dive into anybody's pockets but their own; stablemen out of place, servants loitering on their errands, striplings helping them, ladies'-maids with novels or three-corner'd notes, and a good crop of beggars. 'What, Spareneck, do you ride the grey to-day? I thought you'd done Gooseman out of a mount,' observed Ensign Downley, as a line of scarlet-coated youths hung over the balcony of the Imperial Hotel, after breakfast and before mounting for the day. Spareneck.--'No, that's for Tuesday. He wouldn't stand one to-day. What do you ride?' Downley.--'Oh, I've a hack, one of Screwman's, Perpetual Motion they call him, because he never gets any rest. That's him, I believe, with the lofty-actioned hind-legs,' added he, pointing to a weedy string-halty bay passing below, high in bone and low in flesh. 'Who's o' the gaudy chestnut?' asked Caingey Thornton, who now appeared, wiping his fat lips after his second glass of _eau de vie_. 'That's Mr. Sponge's,' replied Spareneck in a low tone, knowing how soon a man catches his own name. 'A deuced fine horse he is, too,' observed Caingey, in a louder key; adding, 'Sponge has the finest lot of horses of any man in England--in the world, I may say.' Mr. Sponge himself now rose from the breakfast table, and was speedily followed by Mr. Waffles and the rest of the party, some bearing sofa-pillows and cushions to place on the balustrades, to loll at their ease, in imitation of the Coventry Club swells in Piccadilly. Then our friends smoked their cigars, reviewed the cavalry, and criticised the ladies who passed below in the flys on their way to the meet. 'Come, old Bolter!' exclaimed one, 'here's Miss Bussington coming to look after you--got her mamma with her, too--so you may as well knock under at once, for she's determined to have you.' 'A devil of a woman the old un is, too,' observed Ensign Downley; 'she nearly frightened Jack Simpers of ours into fits, by asking what he meant after dancing three dances with her daughter one night.' 'My word, but Miss Jumpheavy must expect to do some execution to-day with that fine floating feather and her crimson satin dress and ermine,' observed Mr. Waffles, as that estimable lady drove past in her Victoria phaeton. 'She looks like the Queen of Sheba herself. But come, I suppose,' he added, taking a most diminutive Geneva watch out of his waistcoat-pocket, 'we should be going. See! there's your nag kicking up a shindy,' he said to Caingey Thornton, as the redoubtable brown was led down the street by a jean-jacketed groom, kicking and lashing out at everything he came near. 'I'll kick him,' observed Thornton, retiring from the balcony to the brandy-bottle, and helping himself to a pretty good-sized glass. He then extricated his large cutting whip from the confusion of whips with which it was mixed, and clonk, clonk, clonked downstairs to the door. 'Multum in Parvo' stopped the doorway, across whose shoulder Leather passed the following hints, in a low tone of voice, to Mr. Sponge, as the latter stood drawing on his dogskin gloves, the observed, as he flattered himself, of all observers. 'Mind now,' said Leather, 'this oss as a will of his own; though he seems so quiet like, he's not always to be depended on; so be on the look-out for squalls.' Sponge, having had a glass of brandy, just mounted with the air of a man thoroughly at home with his horse, and drawing the rein, with a slight feel of the spur, passed on from the door to make way for the redoubtable Hercules. Hercules was evidently not in a good humour. His ears were laid back, and the rolling white eye showed mischief. Sponge saw all this, and turned to see whether Thornton's clumsy, wash-ball seat, would be able to control the fractious spirit of the horse. 'Whoay!' roared Thornton, as his first dive at the stirrup missed, and was answered by a hearty kick out from the horse, the 'whoay' being given in a very different tone to the gentle, coaxing style of Mr. Buckram and his men. Had it not been for the brandy within and the lookers-on without, there is no saying but Caingey would have declined the horse's further acquaintance. As it was, he quickly repeated his attempt at the stirrup with the same sort of domineering 'whoay,' adding, as he landed in the saddle and snatched at the reins, 'Do you think I stole you?' Whatever the horse's opinion might be on that point, he didn't seem to care to express it, for finding kicking alone wouldn't do, he immediately commenced rearing too, and by a desperate plunge, broke away from the groom, before Thornton had either got him by the head or his feet in the stirrups. Three most desperate bounds he gave, rising at the bit as though he would come back over if the hold was not relaxed, and the fourth effort bringing him to the opposite kerb-stone, he up again with such a bound and impetus that he crashed right through Messrs. Frippery and Flummery's fine plate-glass window, to the terror and astonishment of their elegant young counter-skippers, who were busy arranging their ribbons and finery for the day. Right through the window Hercules went, switching through book muslins and barèges as he would through a bullfinch, and attempting to make his exit by a large plate-glass mirror against the wall of the cloak-room beyond, which he dashed all to pieces with his head. Worse remains to be told. 'Multum in Parvo,' seeing his old comrade's hind-quarters disappearing through the window, just took the bit between his teeth, and followed, in spite of Mr. Sponge's every effort to turn him; and when at length he got him hauled round, the horse was found to have decorated himself with a sky-blue _visite_ trimmed with Honiton lace, which he wore like a charger on his way to the Crusades, or a steed bearing a knight to the Eglinton tournament. Quick as it happened, and soon as it was over, all Laverick Wells seemed to have congregated in the street as our heroes rode out of the folding glass-doors. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII AN OLD FRIEND About a fortnight after the above catastrophe, and as the recollection of it was nearly effaced by Miss Jumpheavy's abduction of Ensign Downley, our friend, Mr. Waffles, on visiting his stud at the four o'clock stable-hour, found a most respectable, middle-aged, rosy-gilled, better-sort-of-farmer-looking man, straddling his tight drab-trousered legs, with a twisted ash plant propping his chin, behind the redoubtable Hercules. He had a bran-new hat on, a velvet-collared blue coat with metal buttons, that anywhere but in the searching glare and contrast of London might have passed for a spic-and-span new one; a small, striped, step-collared toilanette vest; and the aforesaid drab trousers, in the right-hand pocket of which his disengaged hand kept fishing up and slipping down an avalanche of silver, which made a pleasant musical accompaniment to his monetary conversation. On seeing Mr. Waffles, the stranger touched his hat, and appeared to be about to retire, when Mr. Figg, the stud-groom, thus addressed his master: 'This be Mr. Buckram, sir, of London, sir; says he knows our brown 'orse, sir.' 'Ah, indeed,' observed Mr. Waffles, taking a cigar from his mouth; 'knows no good of him, I should think. What part of London do you live in, Mr. Buckram?' asked he. 'Why, I doesn't exactly live in London, my lord--that's to say, sir--a little way out of it, you know--have a little hindependence of my own, you understand.' 'Hang it, how should I understand anything of the sort--never set eyes on you before,' replied Mr. Waffles. The half-crowns now began to descend singly in the pocket, keeping up a protracted jingle, like the notes of a lazy, undecided musical snuff-box. By the time the last had dropped, Mr. Buckram had collected himself sufficiently to resume. Taking the ash-plant away from his mouth, with which he had been barricading his lips, he observed-- 'I know'd that oss when Lord Bullfrog had him,' nodding his head at our old friend as he spoke. 'The deuce you did!' observed Mr. Waffles;' where was that?' 'In Leicestersheer,' replied Mr. Buckram. 'I have a haunt as lives at Mount Sorrel; she has a little hindependence of her own, and I goes down 'casionally to see her--in fact, I believes I'm her _hare_. Well, I was down there just at the beginnin' of the season, the 'ounds met at Kirby Gate--a mile or two to the south, you know, on the Leicester road--it was the fust day of the season, in fact--and there was a great crowd, and I was one; and havin' a heye for an oss, I was struck with this one, you understand, bein' as I thought, a 'ticklar nice 'un. Lord Bullfrog's man was a ridin' of him, and he kept him outside the crowd, showin' off his pints, and passin' him backwards and forwards under people's noses, to 'tract the notish of the nobs--parsecutin, what I call--and I see'd Mr. Sponge struck--I've known Mr. Sponge many years, and a 'ticklar nice gent he is--well, Mr. Sponge pulled hup, and said to the grum, "Who's o' that oss?" "My Lor' Bullfrog's, sir," said the man. "He's a deuced nice 'un," observed Mr. Sponge, thinkin', as he was a lord's, he might praise 'im, seein', in all probability, he weren't for sale. "He is _that_," said the grum, patting him on the neck, as though he were special fond on him. "Is my lord out?" asked Mr. Sponge. "No, sir; he's not come down yet," replied the man, "nor do I know when he will come. He's been down at Bath for some time 'sociatin' with the aldermen o' Bristol and has thrown up a vast o' bad flesh--two stun' sin' last season--and he's afeared this oss won't be able to carry 'im, and so he writ to me to take 'im out to-day, to show 'im." "He'd carry _me_, I think," said Mr. Sponge, making hup his mind on the moment, jist as he makes hup his mind to ride at a fence--not that I think it's a good plan for a gent to show that he's sweet on an oss, for they're sure to make him pay for it. Howsomever, that's nouther here nor there. Well, jist as Mr. Sponge said this, Sir Richard driv' hup, and havin' got his oss, away we trotted to the goss jist below, and the next thing I see'd was Mr. Sponge leadin' the 'ole field on this werry nag. Well, I heard no more till I got to Melton, for I didn't go to my haunt's at Mount Sorrel that night, and I saw little of the run, for my oss was rather puffy, livin' principally on chaff, bran mashes, swedes, and soft food; and when I got to Melton, I heard 'ow Mr. Sponge had bought this oss,' Mr. Buckram nodding his head at the horse as he spoke, 'and 'ow that he'd given the matter o' two 'under'd--or I'm not sure it weren't two 'under'd-and-fifty guineas for 'im, and--' 'Well,' interrupted Mr. Waffles, tired of his verbosity, 'and what did they say about the horse?' 'Why,' continued Mr. Buckram, thoughtfully, propping his chin up with his stick, and drawing all the half-crowns up to the top of his pocket again, 'the fust 'spicious thing I heard was Sir Digby Snaffle's grum, Sam, sayin' to Captain Screwley's bat-man grum, jist afore the George Inn door,-- '"Well, Jack, Tommy's sold the brown oss!" '"N--O--O--R!" exclaimed Jack, starin' 'is eyes out, as if it were unpossible. '"He '_as_ though," said Sam. '"Well, then, I 'ope the gemman's fond o' walkin'," exclaimed Jack, bustin' out a laughin' and runnin' on. 'This rayther set me a thinkin',' continued Mr. Buckram, dropping a second half-crown, which jinked against the nest-egg one left at the bottom, 'and fearin' that Mr. Sponge had fallen 'mong the Philistines--which I was werry concerned about, for he's a real nice gent, but thoughtless, as many young gents are who 'ave plenty of tin--I made it my business to inquire 'bout this oss; and if he _is_ the oss that I saw in Leicestersheer, and I 'ave little doubt about it (dropping two consecutive half-crowns as he spoke), though I've not seen him out, I--' 'Ah! well, I bought him of Mr. Sponge, who said he got him from Lord Bullfrog,' interrupted Mr. Waffles. 'Ah! then he _is_ the oss, in course,' said Mr. Buckram, with a sort of mournful chuck of the chin; 'he _is_ the oss,' repeated he; 'well, then, he's a dangerous hanimal,' added he, letting slip three half-crowns. 'What does he do?' asked Mr. Waffles. 'Do!' repeated Mr. Buckram, 'DO! he'll do for anybody.' 'Indeed,' responded Mr. Waffles; adding, 'how could Mr. Sponge sell me such a brute?' 'I doesn't mean to say, mind ye,' observed Mr. Buckram, drawing back three half-crowns, as though he had gone that much too far,--'I doesn't mean to say, mind, that he's wot you call a misteched, runaway, rear-backwards-over-hanimal--but I mean to say he's a difficultish oss to ride--himpetuous--and one that, if he got the hupper 'and, would be werry likely to try and keep the hupper 'and--you understand me?' said he, eyeing Mr. Waffles intently, and dropping four half-crowns as he spoke. 'I'm tellin' you nothin' but the truth,' observed Mr. Buckram, after a pause, adding, 'in course it's nothin' to me, only bein' down here on a visit to a friend, and 'earin' that the oss were 'ere, I made bold to look in to see whether it was 'im or no. No offence, I 'opes,' added he, letting go the rest of the silver, and taking the prop from under his chin, with an obeisance as if he was about to be off. 'Oh, no offence at all,' rejoined Mr. Waffles, 'no offence--rather the contrary. Indeed, I'm much obliged to you for telling me what you have done. Just stop half a minute,' added he, thinking he might as well try and get something more out of him. While Mr. Waffles was considering his next question, Mr. Buckram saved him the trouble of thinking by 'leading the gallop' himself. 'I believe 'im to be a _good_ oss, and I believe 'im to be a _bad_ oss,' observed Mr. Buckram, sententiously. 'I believe that oss, with a bold rider on his back, and well away with the 'ounds, would beat most osses goin', but it's the start that's the difficulty with him; for if, on the other 'and, he don't incline to go, all the spurrin', and quiltin', and leatherin' in the world won't make 'im. It'll be a mercy o' Providence if he don't cut out work for the crowner some day.' 'Hang the brute!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles, in disgust; 'I've a good mind to have his throat cut.' 'Nay,' replied Mr. Buckram, brightening up, and stirring the silver round and round in his pocket like a whirlpool, 'nay,' replied he, 'he's fit for summat better nor that.' 'Not much, I think,' replied Mr. Waffles, pouting with disgust. He now stood silent for a few seconds. 'Well, but what did they mean by hoping Mr. Sponge was fond of walking?' at length asked he. 'Oh, vy,' replied Mr. Buckram, gathering all the money up again, 'I believe it was this 'ere,' beginning to drop them to half-minute time, and talking very slowly; 'the oss, I believe, got the better of Lord Bullfrog one day, somewhere a little on this side of Thrussinton--that, you know, is where Sir 'Arry built his kennels--between Mount Sorrel and Melton in fact--and havin' got his Lordship off, who, I should tell you, is an uncommon fat 'un, he wouldn't let him on again, and he 'ad to lead him the matter of I don't know 'ow many miles'; Mr. Buckram letting go the whole balance of silver in a rush, as if to denote that it was no joke. 'The brute!' observed Mr. Waffles, in disgust, adding, 'Well, as you seem to have a pretty good opinion of him, suppose you buy him; I'll let you have him cheap.' ''Ord bless you--my lord--that's to say, sir!' exclaimed Buckram, shrugging up his shoulders, and raising his eyebrows as high as they would go, 'he'd be of no use to me, none votsomever--shouldn't know what to do with him--never do for 'arness--besides, I 'ave a werry good machiner as it is--at least, he sarves my turn, and that's everything, you know. No, sir, no,' continued he, slowly and thoughtfully, dropping the silver to half-minute time; 'no, sir, no; if I might make free with a gen'leman o' your helegance,' continued he, after a pause,' I'd say, sell 'im to a post-master or a buss-master, or some sich cattle as those, but I doesn't think I'd put 'im into the 'ands of no gen'leman, that's to say if I were _you_, at least,' added he. 'Well, then, will you speculate on him yourself for the buss-masters?' asked Mr. Waffles, tired alike of the colloquy and the quadruped. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LORD BULLFROG, FORMERLY OWNER OF 'HERCULES'] 'Oh, vy, as to that,' replied Mr. Buckram, with an air of the most perfect indifference, 'vy, as to that--not bein' nouther a post-master nor a buss-master--but 'aving, as I said before, a little hindependence o' my own, vy, I couldn't in course give such a bountiful price as if I could turn 'im to account at once; but if it would be any 'commodation to you,' added he, working the silver up into full cry, 'I wouldn't mind givin' you the with (worth) of 'im--say, deductin' expenses hup to town, and standin' at livery afore I finds a customer--expenses hup to town,' continued Mr. Buckram, muttering to himself in apparent calculation, 'standin' at livery--three-and-sixpence a night, grum, and so on--I wouldn't mind,' continued he briskly, 'givin' of you twenty pund for 'im--if you'd throw me back a sov.,' continued he, seeing Mr. Waffles' brow didn't contract into the frown he expected at having such a sum offered for his three-hundred-guinea horse. In the course of an hour, that wonderful invention of modern times,--the Electric Telegraph--conveyed the satisfactory words 'All right' to our friend Mr. Sponge, just as he was sitting down to dinner in a certain sumptuously sanded coffee-room in Conduit Street, who forthwith sealed and posted the following ready-written letter: 'BANTAM HOTEL, BOND STREET. 'SIR, 'I have been greatly surprised and hurt to hear that you have thought fit to impeach my integrity, and insinuate that I had taken you in with the brown horse. Such insinuations touch one in a tender point--one's self-respect. The bargain, I may remind you, was of your own seeking, and I told you at the time I knew nothing of the horse, having only ridden him once, and I also told you where I got him. To show how unjust and unworthy your insinuations have been, I have now to inform you that, having ascertained that Lord Bullfrog knew he was vicious, I insisted on his lordship taking him back, and have only to add that, on my receiving him from you, I will return you your bill.' 'I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 'H. SPONGE. 'To W. WAFFLES, Esq., 'Imperial Hotel, Laverick Wells.' Mr. Waffles was a good deal vexed and puzzled when he got this letter. He had parted with the horse, who was gone no one knew where, and Mr. Waffles felt that he had used a certain freedom of speech in speaking of the transaction. Mr. Sponge having left Laverick Wells, had, perhaps, led him a little astray with his tongue--slandering an absent man being generally thought a pretty safe game; it now seemed Mr. Waffles was all wrong, and might have had his money back if he had not been in such a hurry to part with the horse. Like a good many people, he thought he had best eat up his words, which he did in the following manner: 'IMPERIAL HOTEL, LAVERICK WELLS. 'DEAR MR. SPONGE, 'You are quite mistaken in supposing that I ever insinuated anything against _you_ with regard to the horse. I said _he_ was a beast, and it seems Lord Bullfrog admits it. However, never mind anything more about him, though I am equally obliged to you for the trouble you have taken. The fact is, I have parted with him. 'We are having capital sport; never go out but we kill, sometimes a brace, sometimes a leash of foxes. Hoping you are recovered from the effects of your ride through the window, and will soon rejoin us, believe me, dear Mr. Sponge,' 'Yours very sincerely, 'W. WAFFLES.' To which Mr. Sponge shortly after rejoined as follows: 'BANTAM HOTEL, BOND STREET. 'DEAR WAFFLES, 'Yours to hand--I am glad to receive a disclaimer of any unworthy imputations respecting the brown horse. Such insinuations are only for horse-dealers, not for men of high gentlemanly feeling. 'I am sorry to say we have not got out of the horse as I hoped. Lord Bullfrog, who is a most cantankerous fellow, insists upon having him back, according to the terms of my letter; I must therefore trouble you to hunt him up, and let us accommodate his lordship with him again. If you will say where he is, I may very likely know some one who can assist us in getting him. You will excuse this trouble, I hope, considering that it was to serve you that I moved in the matter, and insisted on returning him to his lordship, at a loss of £50 to myself, having only given £250 for him.' 'I remain, dear Waffles, 'Yours sincerely, 'H. SPONGE.' 'To W. WAFFLES, Esq., 'Imperial Hotel, Laverick Wells.' 'LAVERICK WELLS. 'DEAR SPONGE, 'I'm afraid Bullfrog will have to make himself happy without his horse, for I hav'n't the slightest idea where he is. I sold him to a cockneyfied, countryfied sort of a man, who said he had a small "hindependence of his own"--somewhere, I believe, about London. He didn't give much for him, as you may suppose, when I tell you he paid for him chiefly in silver. If I were you, I wouldn't trouble myself about him.' 'Yours very truly, 'W. WAFFLES. 'To H. SPONGE, Esq.' Our hero addressed Mr. Waffles again, in the course of a few days, as follows: 'DEAR WAFFLES, 'I am sorry to say Bullfrog won't be put off without the horse. He says I insisted on his taking him back, and now he insists on having him. I have had his lawyer, Mr. Chousam, of the great firm of Chousam, Doem, and Co., of Throgmorton Street, at me, who says his lordship will play old gooseberry with us if we don't return him by Saturday. Pray put on all steam, and look him up.' 'Yours in haste, 'H. SPONGE. 'To W. WAFFLES, Esq.' Mr. Waffles did put on all steam, and so successfully that he ran the horse to ground at our friend Mr. Buckram's. Though the horse was in the box adjoining the house, Mr. Buckram declared he had sold him to go to 'Hireland'; to what county he really couldn't say, nor to what hunt; all he knew was, the gentleman said he was a 'captin,' and lived in a castle. Mr. Waffles communicated the intelligence to Sponge, requesting him to do the best he could for him, who reported what his 'best' was in the following letter: 'DEAR WAFFLES, 'My lawyer has seen Chousam, and deuced stiff he says he was. It seems Bullfrog is indignant at being accused of a "do"; and having got me in the wrong box, by not being able to return the horse as claimed, he meant to work me. At first Chousam would hear of nothing but "l--a--w." Bullfrog's wounded honour could only be salved that way. Gradually, however, we diverged from l--a--w to £--s.--d.; and the upshot of it is, that he will advise his lordship to take £250 and be done with it. It's a bore; but I did it for the best, and shall be glad now to know your wishes on the subject. Meanwhile, I remain, 'Yours very truly, 'H. SPONGE. 'To W. WAFFLES, Esq.' Formerly a remittance by post used to speak for itself. The tender-fingered clerks could detect an enclosure, however skilfully folded. Few people grudged double postage in those days. Now one letter is so much like another, that nothing short of opening them makes one any wiser. Mr. Sponge received Mr. Waffles' answer from the hands of the waiter with the sort of feeling that it was only the continuation of their correspondence. Judge, then, of his delight, when a nice, clean, crisp promissory note, on a five-shilling stamp, fell quivering to the floor. A few lines, expressive of Mr. Waffles' gratitude for the trouble our hero had taken, and hopes that it would not be inconvenient to take a note at two months, accompanied it. At first Mr. Sponge was overjoyed. It would set him up for the season. He thought how he'd spend it. He had half a mind to go to Melton. There were no heiresses there, or else he would. Leamington would do, only it was rather expensive. Then he thought he might as well have done Waffles a little more. 'Confound it!' exclaimed Sponge, 'I don't do myself justice! I'm too much of a gentleman! I should have had five 'under'd--such an ass as Waffles deserves to be done!' CHAPTER XIII A NEW SCHEME [Illustration] Our friend Soapey was now in good feather; he had got a large price for his good-for-nothing horse, with a very handsome bonus for not getting him back, making him better off than he had been for some time. Gentlemen of his calibre are generally extremely affluent in everything except cash. They have bills without end--bills that nobody will touch, and book debts in abundance--book debts entered with metallic pencils in curious little clasped pocket-books, with such utter disregard of method that it would puzzle an accountant to comb them into anything like shape. It is true, what Mr. Sponge got from Mr. Waffles were bills--but they were good bills, and of such reasonable date as the most exacting of the Jew tribe would 'do' for twenty per cent. Mr. Sponge determined to keep the game alive, and getting Hercules and Multum in Parvo together again, he added a showy piebald hack, that Buckram had just got from some circus people who had not been able to train him to their work. The question now was, where to manoeuvre this imposing stud--a problem that Mr. Sponge quickly solved. Among the many strangers who rushed into indiscriminate friendship with our hero at Laverick Wells, was Mr. Jawleyford, of Jawleyford Court, in ----shire. Jawleyford was a great humbug. He was a fine, off-hand, open-hearted, cheery sort of fellow, who was always delighted to see you, would start at the view, and stand with open arms in the middle of the street, as though quite overjoyed at the meeting. Though he never gave dinners, nor anything where he was, he asked everybody, at least everybody who did give them, to visit him at Jawleyford Court. If a man was fond of fishing, he must come to Jawleyford Court, he must, indeed; he would take no refusal, he wouldn't leave him alone till he promised. He would show him such fishing--no waters in the world to compare with his. The Shannon and the Tweed were not to be spoken of in the same day as his waters in the Swiftley. Shooting, the same way. 'By Jove! are you a shooter? Well, I'm delighted to hear it. Well, now, we shall be at home all September, and up to the middle of October, and you must just come to us at your own time, and I will give you some of the finest partridge and pheasant shooting you ever saw in your life; Norfolk can show nothing to what I can. Now, my good fellow, say the word; _do_ say you'll come, and then it will be a settled thing, and I shall look forward to it with such pleasure!' He was equally magnanimous about hunting, though, like a good many people who have 'had their hunts,' he pretended that his day was over, though he was a most zealous promoter of the sport. So he asked everybody who did hunt to come and see him; and what with his hearty, affable manner, and the unlimited nature of his invitations, he generally passed for a deuced hospitable, good sort of fellow, and came in for no end of dinners and other entertainments for his wife and daughters, of which he had two--daughters, we mean, not wives. His time was about up at Laverick Wells when Mr. Sponge arrived there; nevertheless, during the few days that remained to them, Mr. Jawleyford contrived to scrape a pretty intimate acquaintance with a gentleman whose wealth was reported to equal, if it did not exceed, that of Mr. Waffles himself. The following was the closing scene between them: [Illustration: Jawleyford of Jawleyford Court] 'Mr. Sponge,' said he, getting our hero by both hands in Culeyford's Billiard Room, and shaking them as though he could not bear the idea of separation; 'my dear Mr. Sponge,' added he, 'I grieve to say we're going to-morrow; I had hoped to have stayed a little longer, and to have enjoyed the pleasure of your most agreeable society.' (This was true; he would have stayed, only his banker wouldn't let him have any more money.) 'But, however, I won't say adieu,' continued he; 'no, I _won't_ say adieu! I live, as you perhaps know, in one of the best hunting countries in England--my Lord Scamperdale's--Scamperdale and I are like brothers; I can do whatever I like with him--he has, I may say, the finest pack of hounds in the world; his huntsman, Jack Frostyface, I really believe, cannot be surpassed. Come, then, my dear fellow,' continued Mr. Jawleyford, increasing the grasp and shake of the hands, and looking most earnestly in Sponge's face, as if deprecating a refusal; 'come, then, my dear fellow, and see us; we will do whatever we can to entertain and make you comfortable. Scamperdale shall keep our side of the country till you come; there are capital stables at Lucksford, close to the station, and you shall have a stall for your hack at Jawleyford, and a man to look after him, if you like; so now, don't say nay--your time shall be ours--we shall be at home all the rest of the winter, and I flatter myself, if you once come down, you will be inclined to repeat your visit; at least, I hope so.' There are two common sayings; one, 'that birds of a feather flock together'; the other, 'that two of a trade never agree'; which often seem to us to contradict each other in the actual intercourse of life. Humbugs certainly have the knack of drawing together, and yet they are always excellent friends, and will vouch for the goodness of each other in a way that few straight-forward men think it worth their while to adopt with regard to indifferent people. Indeed, humbugs are not always content to defend their absent brother humbugs when they hear them abused, but they will frequently lug each other in neck and crop, apparently for no other purpose than that of proclaiming what excellent fellows they are, and see if anybody will take up the cudgels against them. Mr. Sponge, albeit with a considerable cross of the humbug himself, and one who perfectly understood the usual worthlessness of general invitations, was yet so taken with Mr. Jawleyford's hail-fellow-well-met, earnest sort of manner, that, adopting the convenient and familiar solution in such matters, that there is no rule without an exception, concluded that Mr. Jawleyford was the exception, and really meant what he said. Independently of the attractions offered by hunting, which were both strong and cogent, we have said there were two young ladies, to whom fame attached the enormous fortunes common in cases where there is a large property and no sons. Still Sponge was a wary bird, and his experience of the worthlessness of most general invitations made him think it just possible that it might not suit Mr. Jawleyford to receive him now, at the particular time he wanted to go; so after duly considering the case, and also the impressive nature of the invitation, so recently given, too, he determined not to give Jawleyford the chance of refusing him, but just to say he was coming, and drop down upon him before he could say 'no.' Accordingly, he penned the following epistle: 'BANTAM HOTEL, BOND-STREET, LONDON. 'DEAR JAWLEYFORD, 'I purpose being with you to-morrow, by the express train, which I see, by Bradshaw, arrives at Lucksford a quarter to three. I shall only bring two hunters and a hack, so perhaps you could oblige me by taking them in for the short time I shall stay, as it would not be convenient for me to separate them. Hoping to find Mrs. Jawleyford and the young ladies well, I remain, dear sir,' 'Yours very truly, 'H. SPONGE. 'To--JAWLEYFORD, Esq., Jawleyford Court, Lucksford.' 'Curse the fellow!' exclaimed Jawleyford, nearly choking himself with a fish bone, as he opened and read the foregoing at breakfast. 'Curse the fellow!' he repeated, stamping the letter under foot, as though he would crush it to atoms. 'Who ever saw such a piece of impudence as that!' 'What's the matter, my dear?' inquired Mrs. Jawleyford, alarmed lest it was her dunning jeweller writing again. 'Matter!' shrieked Jawleyford, in a tone that sounded through the thick wall of the room, and caused the hobbling old gardener on the terrace to peep in at the heavy-mullioned window. 'Matter!' repeated he, as though he had got his _coup de grâce_; 'look there,' added he, handing over the letter. 'Oh, my dear,' rejoined Mrs. Jawleyford soothingly, as soon as she saw it was not what she expected. 'Oh, my dear, I'm sure there's nothing to make you put yourself so much out of the way.' 'No!' roared Jawleyford, determined not to be done out of his grievance. 'No!' repeated he; 'do you call that nothing?' 'Why, nothing to make yourself unhappy about,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford, rather pleased than otherwise; for she was glad it was not from Rings, the jeweller, and, moreover, hated the monotony of Jawleyford Court, and was glad of anything to relieve it. If she had had her own way, she would have gadded about at watering-places all the year round. 'Well,' said Jawleyford, with a toss of the head and a shrug of resignation, 'you'll have me in gaol; I see that.' 'Nay, my dear J.,' rejoined his wife, soothingly; 'I'm sure you've plenty of money.' 'Have I!' ejaculated Jawleyford. 'Do you suppose, if I had, I'd have left Laverick Wells without paying Miss Bustlebey, or given a bill at three months for the house-rent?' 'Well, but, my dear, you've nothing to do but tell Mr. Screwemtight to get you some money from the tenants.' 'Money from the tenants!' replied Mr. Jawleyford. 'Screwemtight tells me he can't get another farthing from any man on the estate.' 'Oh, pooh!' said Mrs. Jawleyford; 'you're far too good to them. I always say Screwemtight looks far more to their interest than he does to yours.' [Illustration] Jawleyford, we may observe, was one of the rather numerous race of paper-booted, pen-and-ink landowners. He always dressed in the country as he would in St. James's Street, and his communications with his tenantry were chiefly confined to dining with them twice a year in the great entrance-hall, after Mr. Screwemtight had eased them of their cash in the steward's room. Then Mr. Jawleyford would shine forth the very impersonification of what a landlord ought to be. Dressed in the height of the fashion, as if by his clothes to give the lie to his words, he would expatiate on the delights of such meetings of equality; declare that, next to those spent with his family, the only really happy moments of his life were those when he was surrounded by his tenantry; he doated on the manly character of the English farmer. Then he would advert to the great antiquity of the Jawleyford family, many generations of whom looked down upon them from the walls of the old hall; some on their war-steeds, some armed _cap-à-pie_, some in court-dresses, some in Spanish ones, one in a white dress with gold brocade breeches and a hat with an enormous plume, old Jawleyford (father of the present one) in the Windsor uniform, and our friend himself, the very prototype of what then stood before them. Indeed, he had been painted in the act of addressing his hereditary chawbacons in the hall in which the picture was suspended. There he stood, with his bright auburn hair (now rather badger-pied, perhaps, but still very passable by candlelight)--his bright auburn hair, we say, swept boldly off his lofty forehead, his hazy grey eyes flashing with the excitement of drink and animation, his left hand reposing on the hip of his well-fitting black pantaloons, while the right one, radiant with rings, and trimmed with upturned wristband, sawed the air, as he rounded off the periods of the well-accustomed saws. Jawleyford, like a good many people, was very hospitable when in full fig--two soups, two fishes, and the necessary concomitants; but he would see any one far enough before he would give him a dinner merely because he wanted one. That sort of ostentatious banqueting has about brought country society in general to a deadlock. People tire of the constant revision of plate, linen, and china. Mrs. Jawleyford, on the other hand, was a very rough-and-ready sort of woman, never put out of her way; and though she constantly preached the old doctrine that girls 'are much better single than married,' she was always on the look-out for opportunities of contradicting her assertions. She was an Irish lady, with a pedigree almost as long as Jawleyford's, but more compressible pride, and if she couldn't get a duke, she would take a marquis or an earl, or even put up with a rich commoner. The perusal, therefore, of Sponge's letter, operated differently upon her to what it did upon her husband, and though she would have liked a little more time, perhaps, she did not care to take him as they were. Jawleyford, however, resisted violently. It would be most particularly inconvenient to him to receive company at that time. If Mr. Sponge had gone through the whole three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, he could not have hit upon a more inconvenient one for him. Besides, he had no idea of people writing in that sort of a way, saying they were coming, without giving him the chance of saying no. 'Well, but, my dear, I dare say you asked him,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford. Jawleyford was silent, the scene in the billiard-room recurring to his mind. 'I've often told you, my dear,' continued Mrs. Jawleyford, kindly, 'that you shouldn't be so free with your invitations if you don't want people to come; things are very different now to what they were in the old coaching and posting days, when it took a day and a night and half the next day to get here, and I don't know how much money besides. You might then invite people with safety, but it is very different now, when they have nothing to do but put themselves into the express train and whisk down in a few hours.' 'Well, but, confound him, I didn't ask his horses,' exclaimed Jawleyford; 'nor will I have them either,' continued he, with a jerk of the head, as he got up and rang the bell, as though determined to put a stop to that at all events. 'Samuel,' said he, to the dirty page of a boy who answered the summons, 'tell John Watson to go down to the Railway Tavern directly, and desire them to get a three-stalled stable ready for a gentleman's horses that are coming to-day--a gentleman of the name of Sponge,' added he, lest any one else should chance to come and usurp them--'and tell John to meet the express train, and tell the gentleman's groom where it is.' CHAPTER XIV JAWLEYFORD COURT True to a minute, the hissing engine drew the swiftly gliding train beneath the elegant and costly station at Lucksford--an edifice presenting a rare contrast to the wretched old red-tiled, five-windowed house, called the Red Lion, where a brandy-faced blacksmith of a landlord used to emerge from the adjoining smithy, to take charge of any one who might arrive per coach for that part of the country. Mr. Sponge was quickly on the platform, seeing to the detachment of his horse-box. Just as the cavalry was about got into marching order, up rode John Watson, a ragamuffin-looking gamekeeper, in a green plush coat, with a very tarnished laced hat, mounted on a very shaggy white pony, whose hide seemed quite impervious to the visitations of a heavily-knotted dogwhip, with which he kept saluting his shoulders and sides. 'Please, sir,' said he, riding up to Mr. Sponge, with a touch of the old hat, 'I've got you a capital three-stall stable at the Railway Tavern, here,' pointing to a newly built brick house standing on the rising ground. 'Oh! but I'm going to Jawleyford Court,' responded our friend, thinking the man was the 'tout' of the tavern. 'Mr. Jawleyford don't take in horses, sir,' rejoined the man, with another touch of the hat. 'He'll take in _mine_,' observed Mr. Sponge, with an air of authority. 'Oh, I beg pardon, sir,' replied the keeper, thinking he had made a mistake; 'it was Mr. Sponge whose horses I had to bespeak stalls for,' touching his hat profusely as he spoke. 'Well, _this_ be Mister Sponge,' observed Leather, who had been listening attentively to what passed. ''Deed!' said the keeper, again turning to our hero with an 'I beg pardon, sir, but the stable _is_ for you then, sir--for Mr. Sponge, sir.' 'How do you know that?' demanded our friend. ''Cause Mr. Spigot, the butler, says to me, says he, "Mr. Watson," says he--my name's Watson, you see,' continued the speaker, sawing away at his hat, 'my name's Watson, you see, and I'm the head gamekeeper. "Mr. Watson," says he, "you must go down to the tavern and order a three-stall stable for a gentleman of the name of Sponge, whose horses are a comin' to-day"; and in course I've come 'cordingly,' added Watson. 'A _three_-stall'd stable!' observed Mr. Sponge, with an emphasis. 'A three-stall'd stable,' repeated Mr. Watson. 'Confound him, but he said he'd take in a hack at all events,' observed Sponge, with a sideway shake of the head; 'and a hack he _shall_ take in, too' he added. 'Are your stables full at Jawleyford Court?' he asked. ''Ord bless you, no, sir,' replied Watson with a leer; 'there's nothin' in them but a couple of weedy hacks and a pair of old worn-out carriage-horses.' 'Then I can get this hack taken in, at all events,' observed Sponge, laying his hand on the neck of the piebald as he spoke. 'Why, as to that,' replied Mr. Watson, with a shake of the head, 'I can't say nothin'.' 'I must, though,' rejoined Sponge, tartly; 'he _said_ he'd take in my hack, or I wouldn't have come.' 'Well, sir,' observed the keeper, 'you know best, sir.' 'Confounded screw!' muttered Sponge, turning away to give his orders to Leather. 'I'll _work_ him for it,' he added. 'He sha'n't get rid of _me_ in a hurry--at least, not unless I can get a better billet elsewhere.' Having arranged the parting with Leather, and got a cart to carry his things, Mr. Sponge mounted the piebald, and put himself under the guidance of Watson to be conducted to his destination. The first part of the journey was performed in silence, Mr. Sponge not being particularly well pleased at the reception his request to have his horses taken in had met with. This silence he might perhaps have preserved throughout had it not occurred to him that he might pump something out of the servant about the family he was going to visit. 'That's not a bad-like old cob of yours,' he observed, drawing rein so as to let the shaggy white come alongside of him. 'He belies his looks, then,' replied Watson, with a grin of his cadaverous face, 'for he's just as bad a beast as ever looked through a bridle. It's a parfect disgrace to a gentleman to put a man on such a beast.' Sponge saw the sort of man he had got to deal with, and proceeded accordingly. 'Have you lived long with Mr. Jawleyford?' he asked. 'No, nor will I, if I can help it,' replied Watson, with another grin and another touch of the old hat. Touching his hat was about the only piece of propriety he was up to. 'What, he's not a brick, then?' asked Sponge. 'Mean man,' replied Watson with a shake of the head; 'mean man,' he repeated. 'You're nowise connected with the fam'ly, I s'pose?' he asked with a look of suspicion lest he might be committing himself. 'No,' replied Sponge; 'no; merely an acquaintance. We met at Laverick Wells, and he pressed me to come and see him.' 'Indeed!' said Watson, feeling at ease again. 'Who did you live with before you came here?' asked Mr. Sponge, after a pause. 'I lived many years--the greater part of my life, indeed--with Sir Harry Swift. _He_ was a _real_ gentleman now, if you like--free, open-handed gentleman--none of your close-shavin', cheese-parin' sort of gentlemen, or imitation gentlemen, as I calls them, but a man who knew what was due to good servants and gave them it. We had good wages, and all the proper "reglars." Bless you, I could sell a new suit of clothes there every year, instead of having to wear the last keeper's cast-offs, and a hat that would disgrace anything but a flay-crow. If the linin' wasn't stuffed full of gun-waddin' it would be over my nose,' he observed, taking it off and adjusting the layer of wadding as he spoke. 'You should have stuck to Sir Harry,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'I did,' rejoined Watson. 'I did, I stuck to him to the last. I'd have been with him now, only he couldn't get a manor at Boulogne, and a keeper was of no use without one.' 'What, he went to Boulogne, did he?' observed Mr. Sponge. 'Aye, the more's the pity,' replied Watson. 'He was a gentleman, every inch of him,' he added, with a shake of the head and a sigh, as if recurring to more prosperous times. 'He was what a gentleman ought to be,' he continued, 'not one of your poor, pryin', inquisitive critturs, what's always fancyin' themselves cheated. I ordered everything in my department, and paid for it too; and never had a bill disputed or even commented on. I might have charged for a ton of powder, and never had nothin' said.' 'Mr. Jawleyford's not likely to find his way to Boulogne, I suppose?' observed Mr. Sponge. 'Not he!' exclaimed Watson, 'not he!--safe bird--_very_.' 'He's rich, I suppose?' continued Sponge, with an air of indifference. 'Why, _I_ should say he was; though others say he's not,' replied Watson, cropping the old pony with the dog-whip, as it nearly fell on its nose. 'He can't fail to be rich, with all his property; though they're desperate hands for gaddin' about; always off to some waterin'-place or another, lookin' for husbands, I suppose. I wonder,' he continued, 'that gentlemen can't settle at home, and amuse themselves with coursin' and shootin'.' Mr. Watson, like many servants, thinking that the bulk of a gentleman's income should be spent in promoting the particular sport over which they preside. With this and similar discourse, they beguiled the short distance between the station and the Court--a distance, however, that looked considerably greater after the flying rapidity of the rail. But for these occasional returns to _terra firma_, people would begin to fancy themselves birds. After rounding a large but gently swelling hill, over the summit of which the road, after the fashion of old roads, led, our traveller suddenly looked down upon the wide vale of Sniperdown, with Jawleyford Court glittering with a bright open aspect, on a fine, gradual elevation, above the broad, smoothly gliding river. A clear atmosphere, indicative either of rain or frost, disclosed a vast tract of wild, flat, ill-cultivated-looking country to the south, little interrupted by woods or signs of population; the whole losing itself, as it were, in an indistinct grey outline, commingling with the fleecy white clouds in the distance. 'Here we be,' observed Watson, with a nod towards where a tarnished red-and-gold flag, floated, or rather flapped lazily in the winter's breeze, above an irregular mass of towers, turrets, and odd-shaped chimneys. [Illustration] Jawleyford Court was a fine old mansion, partaking more of the character of a castle than a Court, with its keep and towers, battlements, heavily grated mullioned windows, and machicolated gallery. It stood, sombre and grey, in the midst of gigantic but now leafless sycamores--trees that had to thank themselves for being sycamores; for, had they been oaks, or other marketable wood, they would have been made into bonnets or shawls long before now. The building itself was irregular, presenting different sorts of architecture, from pure Gothic down to some even perfectly modern buildings; still, viewed as a whole, it was massive and imposing; and as Mr. Sponge looked down upon it, he thought far more of Jawleyford and Co. than he did as the mere occupants of a modest, white-stuccoed, green-verandahed house, at Laverick Wells. Nor did his admiration diminish as he advanced, and, crossing by a battlemented bridge over the moat, he viewed the massive character of the buildings rising grandly from their rocky foundation. An imposing, solemn-toned old clock began striking four, as the horsemen rode under the Gothic portico, whose notes re-echoed and reverberated, and at last lost themselves among the towers and pinnacles of the building. Sponge, for a moment, was awe-stricken at the magnificence of the scene, feeling that it was what he would call 'a good many cuts above him'; but he soon recovered his wonted impudence. 'He _would_ have me,' thought he, recalling the pressing nature of the Jawleyford invitation. 'If you'll hold my nag,' said Watson, throwing himself off the shaggy white, 'I'll ring the bell,' added he, running up a wide flight of steps to the hall-door. A riotous peal announced the arrival. CHAPTER XV THE JAWLEYFORD ESTABLISHMENT The loud peal of the Jawleyford Court door-bell, announcing Mr. Sponge's arrival, with which we closed the last chapter, found the inhabitants variously engaged preparing for his reception. Mrs. Jawleyford, with the aid of a very indifferent cook, was endeavouring to arrange a becoming dinner; the young ladies, with the aid of a somewhat better sort of maid, were attractifying themselves, each looking with considerable jealousy on the efforts of the other; and Mr. Jawleyford was trotting from room to room, eyeing the various pictures of himself, wondering which was now the most like, and watching the emergence of curtains, carpets, and sofas from their brown holland covers. A gleam of sunshine seemed to reign throughout the mansion; the long-covered furniture appearing to have gained freshness by its retirement, just as a newly done-up hat surprises the wearer by its goodness; a few days, however, soon restores the defects of either. All these arrangements were suddenly brought to a close by the peal of the door-bell, just as the little stage-tinkle of a theatre stops preparation, and compels the actors to stand forward as they are. Mrs. Jawleyford threw aside her silk apron, and took a hasty glance of her face in the old eagle-topped mirror in the still-room; the young ladies discarded their coarse dirty pocket-handkerchiefs, and gently drew elaborately fringed ones through their taper fingers to give them an air of use, as they took a hasty review of themselves in the swing mirrors; the housemaid hurried off with a whole armful of brown holland; and Jawleyford threw himself into attitude in an elaborately carved, richly cushioned, easy-chair, with a Disraeli's _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ in his hand. But Jawleyford's thoughts were far from his book. He was sitting on thorns lest there might not be a proper guard of honour to receive Mr. Sponge at the entrance. Jawleyford, as we said before, was not the man to entertain unless he could do it 'properly'; and, as we all have our pitch-notes of propriety up to which we play, we may state that Jawleyford's note was a butler and two footmen. A butler and two footmen he looked upon as perfectly indispensable to receiving company. He chose to have two footmen to follow the butler, who followed the gentleman to the spacious flight of steps leading from the great hall to the portico, as he mounted his horse. The world is governed a good deal by appearances. Mr. Jawleyford started life with two most unimpeachable Johns. They were nearly six feet high, heads well up, and legs that might have done for models for a sculptor. They powdered with the greatest propriety, and by two o'clock each day were silk-stockinged and pumped in full-dress Jawleyford livery; sky-blue coats with massive silver _aiguillettes_, and broad silver seams down the front and round their waistcoat-pocket flaps; silver garters at their crimson plush breeches' knees: and thus attired, they were ready to turn out with the butler to receive visitors, and conduct them back to their carriages. Gradually they came down in style, but not in number, and, when Mr. Sponge visited Mr. Jawleyford, he had a sort of out-of-door man-of-all-work who metamorphosed himself into a second footman at short notice. 'My dear Mr. Sponge!--I am delighted to see you!' exclaimed Mr. Jawleyford, rising from his easy-chair, and throwing his Disraeli's _Bentinck_ aside, as Mr. Spigot, the butler, in a deep, sonorous voice, announced our worthy friend. 'This is, indeed, most truly kind of you,' continued Jawleyford, advancing to meet him; and getting our friend by both hands, he began working his arms up and down like the under man in a saw-pit. 'This is, indeed, most truly kind,' he repeated; 'I assure you I shall never forget it. It's just what I like--it's just what Mrs. Jawleyford likes--it's just what we _all_ like--coming without fuss or ceremony. Spigot!' he added, hailing old Pomposo as the latter was slowly withdrawing, thinking what a humbug his master was--'Spigot!' he repeated in a louder voice; 'let the ladies know Mr. Sponge is here. Come to the fire, my dear fellow,' continued Jawleyford, clutching his guest by the arm, and drawing him towards where an ample grate of indifferent coals was crackling and spluttering beneath a magnificent old oak mantelpiece of the richest and costliest carved work. 'Come to the fire, my dear fellow,' he repeated, 'for you feel cold; and I don't wonder at it, for the day is cheerless and uncomfortable, and you've had a long ride. Will you take anything before dinner?' 'What time do you dine?' asked Mr. Sponge, rubbing his hands as he spoke. 'Six o'clock,' replied Mr. Jawleyford, 'six o'clock--say six o'clock--not particular to a moment--days are short, you see--days are short.' 'I think I should like a glass of sherry and a biscuit, then,' observed Mr. Sponge. And forthwith the bell was rung, and in due course of time Mr. Spigot arrived with a tray, followed by the Miss Jawleyfords, who had rather expected Mr. Sponge to be shown into the drawing-room to them, where they had composed themselves very prettily; one working a parrot in chenille, the other with a lapful of crochet. The Miss Jawleyfords--Amelia and Emily--were lively girls; hardly beauties--at least, not sufficiently so to attract attention in a crowd; but still, girls well calculated to 'bring a man to book,' in the country. Mr. Thackeray, who bound up all the home truths in circulation, and many that exist only in the inner chambers of the heart, calling the whole 'Vanity Fair,' says, we think (though we don't exactly know where to lay hand on the passage), that it is not your real striking beauties who are the most dangerous--at all events, that do the most execution--but sly, quiet sort of girls, who do not strike the beholder at first sight, but steal insensibly upon him as he gets acquainted. The Miss Jawleyfords were of this order. Seen in plain morning gowns, a man would meet them in the street, without either turning round or making an observation, good, bad, or indifferent; but in the close quarters of a country house, with all the able assistance of first-rate London dresses, well flounced and set out, each bent on doing the agreeable, they became dangerous. The Miss Jawleyfords were uncommonly well got up, and Juliana, their mutual maid, deserved great credit for the impartiality she displayed in arraying them. There wasn't a halfpenny's worth of choice as to which was the best. This was the more creditable to the maid, inasmuch as the dresses--sea-green glacés--were rather dashed; and the worse they looked, the likelier they would be to become her property. Half-dashed dresses, however, that would look rather seedy by contrast, come out very fresh in the country, especially in winter, when day begins to close in at four. And here we may observe, what a dreary time is that which intervenes between the arrival of a guest and the dinner hour, in the dead winter months in the country. The English are a desperate people for overweighting their conversational powers. They have no idea of penning up their small talk, and bringing it to bear in generous flow upon one particular hour; but they keep dribbling it out throughout the live-long day, wearying their listeners without benefiting themselves--just as a careless waggoner scatters his load on the road. Few people are insensible to the advantage of having their champagne brisk, which can only be done by keeping the cork in; but few ever think of keeping the cork of their own conversation in. See a Frenchman--how light and buoyant he trips into a drawing-room, fresh from the satisfactory scrutiny of the looking-glass, with all the news, and jokes, and tittle-tattle of the day, in full bloom! How sparkling and radiant he is, with something smart and pleasant to say to every one! How thoroughly happy and easy he is; and what a contrast to phlegmatic John Bull, who stands with his great red fists doubled, looking as if he thought whoever spoke to him would be wanting him to endorse a bill of exchange! But, as we said before, the dread hour before dinner is an awful time in the country--frightful when there are two hours, and never a subject in common for the company to work upon. Laverick Wells and their mutual acquaintance was all Sponge and Jawleyford's stock-in-trade; and that was a very small capital to begin upon, for they had been there together too short a time to make much of a purse of conversation. Even the young ladies, with their inquiries after the respective flirtations--how Miss Sawney and Captain Snubnose were 'getting on'? and whether the rich Widow Spankley was likely to bring Sir Thomas Greedey to book?--failed to make up a conversation; for Sponge knew little of the ins and outs of these matters, his attention having been more directed to Mr. Waffles than any one else. Still, the mere questions, put in a playful, womanly way, helped the time on, and prevented things coming to that frightful deadlock of silence, that causes an involuntary inward exclamation of 'How _am I_ to get through the time with this man?' There are people who seem to think that sitting and looking at each other constitutes society. Women have a great advantage over men in the talking way; they have always something to say. Let a lot of women be huddled together throughout the whole of a livelong day, and they will yet have such a balance of conversation at night, as to render it necessary to convert a bedroom into a clearing-house, to get rid of it. Men, however, soon get high and dry, especially before dinner; and a host ought to be at liberty to read the Riot Act, and disperse them to their bedrooms, till such times as they wanted to eat and drink. A most scientifically sounded gong, beginning low, like distant thunder, and gradually increasing its murmur till it filled the whole mansion with its roar, at length relieved all parties from the labour of further efforts; and, looking at his watch, Jawleyford asked Mrs. Jawleyford, in an innocent, indifferent sort of way, which was Mr. Sponge's room; though he had been fussing about it not long before, and dusting the portrait of himself in his green-and-gold yeomanry uniform, with an old pocket-handkerchief. 'The crimson room, my dear,' replied the well-drilled Mrs. Jawleyford; and Spigot coming with candles, Jawleyford preceded 'Mr. Sponge' up a splendid richly carved oak staircase, of such gradual and easy rise that an invalid might almost have been drawn up it in a garden-chair. Passing a short distance along a spacious corridor, Mr. Jawleyford presently opened a door to the right, and led the way into a large gloomy room, with a little newly lighted wood fire crackling in an enormous grate, making darkness visible, and drawing the cold out of the walls. We need scarcely say it was that terrible room--the best; with three creaking, ill-fitting windows, and heavy crimson satin-damask furniture, so old as scarcely to be able to sustain its own weight. 'Ah! here you are,' observed Mr. Jawleyford, as he nearly tripped over Sponge's luggage as it stood by the fire. 'Here you are,' repeated he, giving the candle a flourish, to show the size of the room, and draw it back on the portrait of himself above the mantelpiece. 'Ah! I declare here's an old picture of myself,' said he, holding the candle up to the face, as if he hadn't seen it for some time--'a picture that was done when I was in the Bumperkin yeomanry,' continued he, passing the light before the facings. 'That was considered a good likeness at the time,' said he, looking affectionately at it, and feeling his nose to see if it was still the same size. 'Ours was a capital corps--one of the best, if not the very best in the service. The inspecting officer always spoke of it in the highest possible terms--especially of _my_ company, which really was just as perfect as anything my Lord Cardigan, or any of your crack disciplinarians, can produce. However, never mind,' continued he, lowering the candle, seeing Mr. Sponge didn't enter into the spirit of the thing; 'you'll be wanting to dress. You'll find hot water on the table yonder,' pointing to the far corner of the room, where the outline of a jug might just be descried; 'there's a bell in the bed if you want anything; and dinner will be ready as soon as you are dressed. You needn't make yourself very fine,' added he, as he retired; 'for we are only ourselves: hope we shall have some of our neighbours to-morrow or next day, but we are rather badly off for neighbours just here--at least, for short-notice neighbours.' So saying, he disappeared through the dark doorway. The latter statement was true enough, for Jawleyford, though apparently such a fine open-hearted, sociable sort of man, was in reality a very quarrelsome, troublesome fellow. He quarrelled with all his neighbours in succession, generally getting through them every two or three years; and his acquaintance were divided into two classes--the best and the worst fellows under the sun. A stranger revising Jawleyford after an absence of a year or two, would very likely find the best fellows of former days transformed into the worst ones of that. Thus, Parson Hobanob, that pet victim of country caprice, would come in and go out of season like lamb or asparagus; Major Moustache and Jawleyford would be as 'thick as thieves' one day, and at daggers drawn the next; Squire Squaretoes, of Squaretoes House, and he, were continually kissing or cutting; and even distance--nine miles of bad road, and, of course, heavy tolls--could not keep the peace between lawyer Seedywig and him. What between rows and reconciliations, Jawleyford was always at work. CHAPTER XVI THE DINNER [Illustration] Notwithstanding Jawleyford's recommendation to the contrary, Mr. Sponge made himself an uncommon swell. He put on a desperately stiff starcher, secured in front with a large gold fox-head pin with carbuncle eyes; a fine, fancy-fronted shirt, with a slight tendency to pink, adorned with mosaic-gold-tethered studs of sparkling diamonds (or French paste, as the case might be); a white waistcoat with fancy buttons; a blue coat with bright plain ones, and a velvet collar, black tights, with broad black-and-white Cranbourne-alley-looking stockings (socks rather), and patent leather pumps with gilt buckles--Sponge was proud of his leg. The young ladies, too, turned out rather smart; for Amelia, finding that Emily was going to put on her new yellow watered silk, instead of a dyed satin she had talked of, made Juliana produce her broad-laced blue satin dress out of the wardrobe in the green dressing-room, where it had been laid away in an old tablecloth; and bound her dark hair with a green-beaded wreath, which Emily met by crowning herself with a chaplet of white roses. Thus attired, with smiles assumed at the door, the young ladies entered the drawing-room in the full fervour of sisterly animosity. They were very much alike in size, shape, and face. They were tallish and full-figured. Miss Jawleyford's features being rather more strongly marked, and her eyes a shade darker than her sister's; while there was a sort of subdued air about her--the result, perhaps, of enlarged intercourse with the world--or maybe of disappointments. Emily's eyes sparkled and glittered, without knowing perhaps why. Dinner was presently announced. It was of the imposing order that people give their friends on a first visit, as though their appetites were larger on that day than on any other. They dined off plate; the sideboards glittered with the Jawleyford arms on cups, tankards, and salvers; 'Brecknel and Turner's' flamed and swealed in profusion on the table; while every now and then an expiring lamp on the sideboards or brackets proclaimed the unwonted splendour of the scene, and added a flavour to the repast not contemplated by the cook. The room, which was large and lofty, being but rarely used, had a cold, uncomfortable feel; and, if it hadn't been for the looks of the thing, Jawleyford would, perhaps, as soon that they had dined in the little breakfast parlour. Still there was everything very smart; Spigot in full fig, with a shirt frill nearly tickling his nose, an acre of white waistcoat, and glorious calves swelling within his gauze-silk stockings. The improvised footman went creaking about, as such gentlemen generally do. The style was perhaps better than the repast: still they had turtle-soup (Shell and Tortoise, to be sure, but still turtle-soup); while the wines were supplied by the well-known firm of 'Wintle & Co.' Jawleyford sank where he got it, and pretended that it had been 'ages' in his cellar: 'he really had such a stock that he thought he should never get through it'--to wit, two dozen old port at 36_s._ a dozen, and one dozen at 48_s._; two dozen pale sherry at 36_s._, and one dozen brown ditto at 48_s._; three bottles of Bucellas, of the 'finest quality imported,' at 38_s._ a dozen; Lisbon 'rich and dry,' at 32_s._; and some marvellous creaming champagne at 48_s._, in which they were indulging when he made the declaration: 'don't wait of me, my dear Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed Jawleyford, holding up a long needle-case of a glass with the Jawleyford crests emblazoned about; 'don't wait of me, pray,' repeated he, as Spigot finished dribbling the froth into Sponge's glass; and Jawleyford, with a flourishing bow and waive of his empty needle-case, drank Mr. Sponge's very good health, adding, 'I'm _extremely_ happy to see you at Jawleyford Court.' It was then Jawleyford's turn to have a little froth; and having sucked it up with the air of a man drinking nectar, he set down his glass with a shake of the head, saying: 'There's no such wine as that to be got now-a-days.' 'Capital wine!--Excellent!' exclaimed Sponge, who was a better judge of ale than of champagne. 'Pray, where might you get it?' 'Impossible to say!--Impossible to say!' replied Jawleyford, throwing up his hands with a shake, and shrugging his shoulders. 'I have such a stock of wine as is really quite ridiculous.' '_Quite_ ridiculous,' thought Spigot, who, by the aid of a false key, had been through the cellar. Except the 'Shell and Tortoise' and 'Wintle,' the estate supplied the repast. The carp was out of the home-pond; the tench, or whatever it was, was out of the mill-pond; the mutton was from the farm; the carrot-and-turnip-and-beet-bedaubed stewed beef was from ditto; while the garden supplied the vegetables that luxuriated in the massive silver side-dishes. Watson's gun furnished the old hare and partridges that opened the ball of the second course; and tarts, jellies, preserves, and custards made their usual appearances. Some first-growth Chateaux Margaux 'Wintle,' again at 66_s._, in very richly cut decanters accompanied the old 36_s._ port; and apples, pears, nuts, figs, preserved fruits, occupied the splendid green-and-gold dessert set. Everything, of course, was handed about--an ingenious way of tormenting a person that has 'dined.' The ladies sat long, Mrs. Jawleyford taking three glasses of port (when she could get it); and it was a quarter to eight when they rose from the table. Jawleyford then moved an adjournment to the fire; which Sponge gladly seconded, for he had never been warm since he came into the house, the heat from the fires seeming to go up the chimneys. Spigot set them a little round table, placing the port and claret upon it, and bringing them a plate of biscuits in lieu of the dessert. He then reduced the illumination on the table, and extinguished such of the lamps as had not gone out of themselves. Having cast an approving glance around, and seen that they had what he considered right, he left them to their own devices. 'Do you drink port or claret, Mr. Sponge?' asked Jawleyford, preparing to push whichever he preferred over to him. 'I'll take a little port, _first_, if you please,' replied our friend--as much as to say, 'I'll finish off with claret.' 'You'll find that very good, I expect,' said Mr. Jawleyford, passing the bottle to him; 'it's '20 wine--very rare wine to get now--was a very rich fruity wine, and was a long time before it came into drinking. Connoisseurs would give any money for it.' 'It has still a good deal of body,' observed Sponge, turning off a glass and smacking his lips, at the same time holding the glass up to the candle to see the oily mark it made on the side. 'Good sound wine--good sound wine,' said Mr. Jawleyford. 'Have plenty lighter, if you like.' The light wine was made by watering the strong. 'Oh no, thank you,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'oh no, thank you. I like good strong military port.' 'So do I,' said Mr. Jawleyford, 'so do I; only unfortunately it doesn't like me--am obliged to drink claret. When I was in the Bumperkin yeomanry we drank nothing but port.' And then Jawleyford diverged into a long rambling dissertation on messes and cavalry tactics, which nearly sent Mr. Sponge asleep. 'Where did you say the hounds are to-morrow?' at length asked he, after Mr. Jawleyford had talked himself out. 'To-morrow,' repeated Mr. Jawleyford, thoughtfully, 'to-morrow--they don't hunt to-morrow--not one of their days--next day. Scrambleford Green--Scrambleford Green--no, no, I'm wrong--Dundleton Tower--Dundleton Tower.' 'How far is that from here?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Oh, ten miles--say ten miles,' replied Mr. Jawleyford. It was sometimes ten, and sometimes fifteen, depending upon whether Mr. Jawleyford wanted the party to go or not. These elastic places, however, are common in all countries--to sight-seers as well as to hunters. 'Close by--close by,' one day. 'Oh! a lo-o-ng way from here,' another. It is difficult, for parties who have nothing in common, to drive a conversation, especially when each keeps jibbing to get upon a private subject of his own. Jawleyford was all for sounding Sponge as to where he came from, and the situation of his property; for as yet, it must be remembered, he knew nothing of our friend, save what he had gleaned at Laverick Wells, where certainly all parties concurred in placing him high on the list of 'desirables,' while Sponge wanted to talk about hunting, the meets of the hounds, and hear what sort of a man Lord Scamperdale was. So they kept playing at cross-purposes, without either getting much out of the other. Jawleyford's intimacy with Lord Scamperdale seemed to have diminished with propinquity, for he now no longer talked of him--'Scamperdale this, and Scamperdale that--Scamperdale, with whom he could do anything he liked'; but he called him 'My Lord Scamperdale,' and spoke of him in a reverent and becoming way. Distance often lends boldness to the tongue, as the poet Campbell says it: Lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. There are few great men who haven't a dozen people, at least, who 'keep them right,' as they call it. To hear some of the creatures talk, one would fancy a lord was a lunatic as a matter of course. Spigot at last put an end to their efforts by announcing that 'tea and coffee were ready!' just as Mr. Sponge buzzed his bottle of port. They then adjourned from the gloom of the large oak-wainscoted dining-room, to the effulgent radiance of the well-lit, highly gilt, drawing-room, where our fair friends had commenced talking Mr. Sponge over as soon as they retired from the dining-room. CHAPTER XVII THE TEA 'And what do you think of _him_?' asked mamma. 'Oh, I think he's very well,' replied Emily gaily. 'I should say he was very _toor_-lerable,' drawled Miss Jawleyford, who reckoned herself rather a judge, and indeed had had some experience of gentlemen. '_Tolerable_, my dear!' rejoined Mrs. Jawleyford, 'I should say he's very well--rather _distingué_, indeed.' 'I shouldn't say _that_,' replied Miss Jawleyford; 'his height and figure are certainly in his favour, but he isn't quite my idea of a gentleman. He is evidently on good terms with himself; but I should say, if it wasn't for his forwardness, he'd be awkward and uneasy.' 'He's a fox-hunter, you know,' observed Emily. 'Well, but I don't know that that should make him different to other people,' rejoined her sister. 'Captain Curzon, and Mr. Lancaster, and Mr. Preston, were all fox-hunters; but they didn't stare, and blurt, and kick their legs about, as this man does.' 'Oh, you are so fastidious!' rejoined her mamma; 'you must take men as you find them.' 'I wonder where he lives?' observed Emily, who was quite ready to take our friend as he was. 'I wonder where he _does_ live?' chimed in Mrs. Jawleyford, for the suddenness of the descent had given them no time for inquiry. 'Somebody said Manchester,' observed Miss Jawleyford drily. 'So much the better,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford, 'for then he is sure to have plenty of money.' 'Law, ma! but you don't s'pose pa would ever allow such a thing,' retorted Miss, recollecting her papa's frequent exhortations to them to look high. 'If he's a landowner,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford 'we'll soon find him out in _Burke_. Emily, my dear,' added she, 'just go into your pa's room, and bring me the _Commoners_--you'll find it on the large table between the _Peerage_ and the _Wellington Despatches_.' Emily tripped away to do as she was bid. The fair messenger presently returned, bearing both volumes, richly bound and lettered, with the Jawleyford crests studded down the backs, and an immense coat of arms on the side. A careful search among the S's produced nothing in the shape of Sponge. 'Not likely, I should think,' observed Miss Jawleyford, with a toss of her head, as her mamma announced the fact. 'Well, never mind,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford, seeing that only one of the girls could have him, and that one was quite ready; 'never mind, I dare say I shall be able to find out something from himself,' and so they dropped the subject. In due time in swaggered our hero, himself, kicking his legs about as men in tights or tops generally do. 'May I give you tea or coffee?' asked Emily, in the sweetest tone possible, as she raised her finely turned gloveless arm towards where the glittering appendages stood on the large silver tray. 'Neither, thank you,' said Sponge, throwing himself into an easy-chair beside Mrs. Jawleyford. He then crossed his legs, and cocking up a toe for admiration, began to yawn. 'You feel tired after your journey?' observed Mrs. Jawleyford. 'No, I'm not,' said Sponge, yawning again--a good yawn this time. Miss Jawleyford looked significantly at her sister--a long pause ensued. 'I knew a family of your name,' at length observed Mrs. Jawleyford, in the simple sort of way women begin pumping men. 'I knew a family of your name,' repeated she, seeing Sponge was half asleep--'the Sponges of Toadey Hall. Pray are they any relation of yours?' 'Oh--ah--yes,' blurted Sponge: 'I suppose they are. The fact is--the--haw--Sponges--haw--are a rather large family--haw. Meet them almost everywhere.' 'You don't live in the same county, perhaps?' observed Mrs. Jawleyford. 'No, we don't,' replied he, with a yawn. 'Is yours a good hunting country?' asked Jawleyford, thinking to sound him in another way. 'No; a devilish bad 'un,' replied Sponge, adding with a grunt, 'or I wouldn't be here.' 'Who hunts it?' asked Mr. Jawleyford. 'Why, as to that--haw,'--replied Sponge, stretching out his arms and legs to their fullest extent, and yawning most vigorously--'why, as to that, I can hardly say which you would call my country, for I have to do with so many; but I should say, of all the countries I am--haw--connected with--haw--Tom Scratch's is the worst.' Mr. Jawleyford looked at Mrs. Jawleyford as a counsel who thinks he has made a grand hit looks at a jury before he sits down, and said no more. Mrs. Jawleyford looked as innocent as most jurymen do after one of these forensic exploits.--Mr. Sponge beginning his nasal recreations, Mrs. Jawleyford motioned the ladies off to bed--Mr. Sponge and his host presently followed. CHAPTER XVIII THE EVENING'S REFLECTIONS 'Well, I think he'll do,' said our friend to himself, as having reached his bedroom, in accordance with modern fashion, he applied a cedar match to the now somewhat better burnt-up fire, for the purpose of lighting a cigar--a cigar! in the state-bedroom of Jawleyford Court. Having divested himself of his smart blue coat and white waistcoat, and arrayed himself in a grey dressing-gown, he adjusted the loose cushions of a recumbent chair, and soused himself into its luxurious depths for a 'think over.' 'He has money,' mused Sponge, between the copious whiffs of the cigar, 'splendid style he lives in, to be sure' (puff), continued he, after another long draw, as he adjusted the ash at the end of the cigar. 'Two men in livery' (puff), 'one out, can't be done for nothing' (puff). 'What a profusion of plate, too!' (whiff)--'declare I never' (puff) 'saw such' (whiff, puff) 'magnificence in the whole course of my' (whiff, puff) 'life.' The cigar being then well under way, he sucked and puffed and whiffed in an apparently vacant stupor, his legs crossed, and his eyes fixed on a projecting coal between the lower bars, as if intent on watching the alternations of flame and gas; though in reality he was running all the circumstances through his mind, comparing them with his past experience, and speculating on the probable result of the present adventure. He had seen a good deal of service in the matrimonial wars, and was entitled to as many bars as the most distinguished peninsular veteran. No woman with money, or the reputation of it, ever wanted an offer while he was in the way, for he would accommodate her at the second or third interview: and always pressed for an immediate fulfilment, lest the 'cursed lawyers' should interfere and interrupt their felicity. Somehow or other, the 'cursed lawyers' always had interfered; and as sure as they walked in, Mr. Sponge walked out. He couldn't bear the idea of their coarse, inquisitive inquiries. He was too much of a gentleman! Love, light as air, at sight of human ties Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies. So Mr. Sponge fled, consoling himself with the reflection that there was no harm done, and hoping for 'better luck next time.' He roved from flower to flower like a butterfly, touching here, alighting there, but always passing away with apparent indifference. He knew if he couldn't square matters at short notice, he would have no better chance with an extension of time; so, if he saw things taking the direction of inquiry he would just laugh the offer off, pretend he was only feeling his way--saw he was not acceptable--sorry for it--and away he would go to somebody else. He looked upon a woman much in the light of a horse; if she didn't suit one man, she would another, and there was no harm in trying. So he puffed and smoked, and smoked and puffed--gliding gradually into wealth and prosperity. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE AS HE APPEARED IN THE BEST BEDROOM] A second cigar assisted his comprehension considerably--just as a second bottle of wine not only helps men through their difficulties, but shows them the way to unbounded wealth. Many of the bright railway schemes of former days, we make no doubt, were concocted under the inspiring influence of the bottle. Sponge now saw everything as he wished. All the errors of his former days were apparent to him. He saw how indiscreet it was confiding in Miss Trickery's cousin, the major; why the rich widow at Chesterfield had _chasséed_ him; and how he was done out of the beautiful Miss Rainbow, with her beautiful estate, with its lake, its heronry, and its perpetual advowson. Other mishaps he also considered. Having disposed of the past, he then turned his attention to the future. Here were two beautiful girls apparently full of money, between whom there wasn't the toss-up of a halfpenny for choice. Most exemplary parents, too, who didn't seem to care a farthing about money. He then began speculating on what the girls would have. 'Great house--great establishment--great estate, doubtless. Why, confound it,' continued he, casting his heavy eye lazily around, 'here's a room as big as a field in a cramped country! Can't have less than fifty thousand a-piece, I should say, at the least. Jawleyford, to be sure, is young,' thought he; 'may live a long time' (puff). 'If Mrs. J. were to die (Curse--the cigar's burnt my lips'), added he, throwing the remnant into the fire, and rolling out of the chair to prepare for turning into bed. If any one had told Sponge that there was a rich papa and mamma on the look-out merely for amiable young men to bestow their fair daughters upon, he would have laughed them to scorn, and said, 'Why, you fool, they are only laughing at you'; or 'Don't you see they are playing you off against somebody else?' But our hero, like other men, was blind where he himself was concerned, and concluded that he was the exception to the general rule. Mr. and Mrs. Jawleyford had their consultation too. 'Well,' said Mr. Jawleyford, seating himself on the high wire fender immediately below a marble bust of himself on the mantelpiece; 'I think he'll do.' 'Oh, no doubt,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford, who never saw any difficulty in the way of a match; 'I should say he is a very nice young man,' continued she. 'Rather brusque in his manner, perhaps,' observed Jawleyford, who was quite the 'lady' himself. 'I wonder what he was?' added he, fingering away at his whiskers. 'He's rich, I've no doubt,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford. 'What makes you think so?' asked her loving spouse. 'I don't know,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford; 'somehow I feel certain he is--but I can't tell why--all fox-hunters are.' 'I don't know that,' replied Jawleyford, who knew some very poor ones. 'I should like to know what he has,' continued Jawleyford musingly, looking up at the deeply corniced ceiling as if he were calculating the chances among the filagree ornaments of the centre. 'A hundred thousand, perhaps,' suggested Mrs. Jawleyford, who only knew two sums--fifty and a hundred thousand. 'That's a vast of money,' replied Jawleyford, with a slight shake of the head. 'Fifty at least, then,' suggested Mrs. Jawleyford, coming down half-way at once. 'Well, if he has that, he'll do,' rejoined Jawleyford, who also had come down considerably in his expectations since the vision of his railway days, at whose bright light he had burnt his fingers. 'He was said to have an immense fortune--I forget how much--at Laverick Wells,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford. 'Well, we'll see,' said Jawleyford, adding, 'I suppose either of the girls will be glad enough to take him?' 'Trust them for that,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford, with a knowing smile and nod of the head: 'trust them for that,' repeated she. 'Though Amelia does turn up her nose and pretend to be fine, rely upon it she only wants to be sure that he's worth having.' 'Emily seems ready enough, at all events,' observed Jawleyford. 'She'll never get the chance,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford. 'Amelia is a very prudent girl, and won't commit herself, but she knows how to manage the men.' 'Well, then,' said Jawleyford, with a hearty yawn, 'I suppose we may as well go to bed.' So saying, he took his candle and retired. CHAPTER XIX THE WET DAY When the dirty slip-shod housemaid came in the morning with her blacksmith's-looking tool-box to light Mr. Sponge's fire, a riotous winter's day was in the full swing of its gloomy, deluging power. The wind howled, and roared, and whistled, and shrieked, playing a sort of æolian harp amongst the towers, pinnacles, and irregular castleisations of the house; while the old casements rattled and shook, as though some one were trying to knock them in. 'Hang the day!' muttered Sponge from beneath the bedclothes. 'What the deuce is a man to do with himself on such a day as this, in the country?' thinking how much better he would be flattening his nose against the coffee-room window of the Bantam, or strolling through the horse-dealers' stables in Piccadilly or Oxford Street. Presently the over-night chair before the fire, with the picture of Jawleyford in the Bumperkin yeomanry, as seen through the parted curtains of the spacious bed, recalled his over-night speculations, and he began to think that perhaps he was just as well where he was. He then 'backed' his ideas to where he had left off, and again began speculating on the chances of his position. 'Deuced fine girls,' said he, 'both of 'em: wonder what he'll give 'em down?'--recurring to his over-night speculations, and hitting upon the point at which he had burnt his lips with the end of the cigar--namely, Jawleyford's youth, and the possibility of his marrying again if Mrs. Jawleyford were to die. 'It won't do to raise up difficulties for one's self, however,' mused he; so, kicking off the bedclothes, he raised himself instead, and making for a window, began to gaze upon his expectant territory. It was a terrible day; the ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along, and the lowering gloom was only enlivened by the occasional driving rush of the tempest. Earth and sky were pretty much the same grey, damp, disagreeable hue. 'Well,' said Sponge to himself, having gazed sufficiently on the uninviting landscape, 'it's just as well it's not a hunting day--should have got terribly soused. Must get through the time as well as I can--girls to talk to--house to see. Hope I've brought my _Mogg_,' added he, turning to his portmanteau, and diving for his _Ten Thousand Cab Fares_. Having found the invaluable volume, his almost constant study, he then proceeded to array himself in what he considered the most captivating apparel; a new wide-sleeved dock-tail coatee, with outside pockets placed very low, faultless drab trousers, a buff waistcoat, with a cream-coloured once-round silk tie, secured by red cornelian cross-bars set in gold, for a pin. Thus attired, with _Mogg_ in his pocket, he swaggered down to the breakfast-room, which he hit off by means of listening at the doors till he heard the sound of voices within. Mrs. Jawleyford and the young ladies were all smiles and smirks, and there were no symptoms of Miss Jawleyford's _hauteur_ perceptible. They all came forward and shook hands with our friend most cordially. Mr. Jawleyford, too, was all flourish and compliment; now tilting at the weather, now congratulating himself upon having secured Mr. Sponge's society in the house. That leisurely meal of protracted ease, a country-house breakfast, being at length accomplished, and the ladies having taken their departure, Mr. Jawleyford looked out on the terrace, upon which the angry rain was beating the standing water into bubbles, and observing that there was no chance of getting out, asked Mr. Sponge if he could amuse himself in the house. 'Oh yes,' replied he, 'got a book in my pocket.' 'Ah, I suppose--the _New Monthly_, perhaps?' observed Mr. Jawleyford. 'No,' replied Sponge. 'Dizzey's _Life of Bentinck_, then, I dare say,' suggested Jawleyford; adding, 'I'm reading it myself.' 'No, nor that either,' replied Sponge, with a knowing look; 'a much more useful work, I assure you,' added he, pulling the little purple-backed volume out of his pocket, and reading the gilt letters on the back: '_Mogg's Ten Thousand Cab Fares_. Price one shilling!' 'Indeed,' exclaimed Mr. Jawleyford, 'well, I should never have guessed that.' 'I dare say not,' replied Sponge, 'I dare say not, it's a book I never travel without. It's invaluable in town, and you may study it to great advantage in the country. With _Mogg_ in my hand, I can almost fancy myself in both places at once. Omnibus guide,' added he, turning over the leaves, and reading, 'Acton five, from the end of Oxford Street and the Edger Road--see Ealing; Edmonton seven, from Shoreditch Church--"Green Man and Still" Oxford Street--Shepherd's Bush and Starch Green, Bank, and Whitechapel--Tooting--Totteridge--Wandsworth; in short, every place near town. Then the cab fares are truly invaluable; you have ten thousand of them here,' said he, tapping the book, 'and you may calculate as many more for yourself as ever you like. Nothing to do but sit in an arm-chair on a wet day like this, and say, If from the Mile End turnpike to the "Castle" on the Kingsland Road is so much, how much should it be to the "Yorkshire Stingo," or Pine-Apple-Place, Maida Vale? And you measure by other fares till you get as near the place you want as you can, if it isn't set down in black and white to your hand in the book.' 'Just so,' said Jawleyford, 'just so. It must be a very useful work indeed, very useful work. I'll get one--I'll get one. How much did you say it was--a guinea? a guinea?' 'A shilling,' replied Sponge, adding, 'you may have mine for a guinea if you like.' 'By Jove, what a day it is!' observed Jawleyford, turning the conversation, as the wind dashed the hard sleet against the window like a shower of pebbles. 'Lucky to have a good house over one's head, such weather; and, by the way, that reminds me, I'll show you my new gallery and collection of curiosities--pictures, busts, marbles, antiques, and so on; there'll be fires on, and we shall be just as well there as here.' So saying, Jawleyford led the way through a dark, intricate, shabby passage, to where a much gilded white door, with a handsome crimson curtain over it announced the entrance to something better. 'Now,' said Mr. Jawleyford, bowing as he threw open the door, and motioned, or rather flourished, his guest to enter--'now,' said he, 'you shall see what you shall see.' Mr. Sponge entered accordingly, and found himself at the end of a gallery fifty feet by twenty, and fourteen high, lighted by skylights and small windows round the top. There were fires in handsome Caen-stone chimney-pieced fireplaces on either side, a large timepiece and an organ at the far end, and sundry white basins scattered about, catching the drops from the skylights. 'Hang the rain!' exclaimed Jawleyford, as he saw it trickling over a river scene of Van Goyen's (gentlemen in a yacht, and figures in boats), and drip, drip, dripping on to the head of an infant Bacchus below. 'He wants an umbrella, that young gentleman,' observed Sponge, as Jawleyford proceeded to dry him with his handkerchief. 'Fine thing,' observed Jawleyford, starting off to a side, and pointing to it; 'fine thing--Italian marble--by Frère--cost a vast of money--was offered three hundred for it. Are you a judge of these things?' asked Jawleyford; 'are you a judge of these things?' 'A little,' replied Sponge, 'a little'; thinking he might as well see what his intended father-in-law's personal property was like. 'There's a beautiful thing!' observed Jawleyford, pointing to another group. 'I picked that up for a mere nothing--twenty guineas--worth two hundred at least. Lipsalve, the great picture-dealer in Gammon Passage, offered me Murillo's "Adoration of the Virgin and Shepherds," for which he showed me a receipt for a hundred and eighty-five, for it.' 'Indeed!' replied Sponge, 'what is it?' 'It's a Bacchanal group, after Poussin, sculptured by Marin. I bought it at Lord Breakdown's sale; it happened to be a wet day--much such a day as this--and things went for nothing. This you'll know, I presume?' observed Jawleyford, laying his hand on a life-size bust of Diana, in Italian marble. 'No, I don't,' replied Sponge. 'No!' exclaimed Jawleyford; 'I thought everybody had known this: this is my celebrated "Diana," by Noindon--one of the finest things in the world. Louis Philippe sent an agent over to this country expressly to buy it.' 'Why didn't you sell it him?' asked Sponge. 'Didn't want the money,' replied Jawleyford, 'didn't want the money. In addition to which, though a king, he was a bit of a screw, and we couldn't agree upon terms. This,' observed Jawleyford, 'is a vase of the Cinque Cento period--a very fine thing; and this,' laying his hand on the crown of a much frizzed, barber's-window-looking bust, 'of course you know?' 'No, I don't,' replied Sponge. 'No!' exclaimed Jawleyford, in astonishment. 'No,' repeated Sponge. 'Look again, my dear fellow; you _must_ know it,' observed Jawleyford. 'I suppose it's meant for you,' at last replied Sponge, seeing his host's anxiety. '_Meant!_ my dear fellow; why, don't you think it like?' 'Why, there's a resemblance, certainly,' said Sponge, 'now that one knows. But I shouldn't have guessed it was you.' 'Oh, my dear Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed Jawleyford, in a tone of mortification, 'Do you _really_ mean to say you don't think it like?' 'Why, yes, it's like,' replied Sponge, seeing which way his host wanted it; 'it's like, certainly; the want of expression in the eye makes such a difference between a bust and a picture.' 'True,' replied Jawleyford, comforted--'true,' repeated he, looking affectionately at it; 'I should say it was very like--like as anything can be. You are rather too much above it there, you see; sit down here,' continued he, leading Sponge to an ottoman surrounding a huge model of the column in the Place Vendôme, that stood in the middle of the room--'sit down here now, and look, and say if you don't think it like?' [Illustration: 'THIS, OF COURSE, YOU KNOW?'] 'Oh, _very_ like,' replied Sponge, as soon as he had seated himself. 'I see it now, directly; the mouth is yours to a T.' 'And the chin. It's my chin, isn't it?' asked Jawleyford. 'Yes; and the nose, and the forehead, and the whiskers, and the hair, and the shape of the head, and everything. Oh! I see it now as plain as a pikestaff,' observed Sponge. 'I thought you would,' rejoined Jawleyford comforted--'I thought you would; it's generally considered an excellent likeness--so it should, indeed, for it cost a vast of money--fifty guineas! to say nothing of the lotus-leafed pedestal it's on. That's another of me,' continued Jawleyford, pointing to a bust above the fireplace, on the opposite side of the gallery; 'done some years since--ten or twelve, at least--not so like as this, but still like. That portrait up there, just above the "Finding of Moses," by Poussin,' pointing to a portrait of himself attitudinizing, with his hand on his hip, and frock-coat well thrown back, so as to show his figure and the silk lining to advantage, 'was done the other day, by a very rising young artist; though he has hardly done me justice, perhaps--particularly in the nose, which he's made far too thick and heavy; and the right hand, if anything, is rather clumsy; otherwise the colouring is good, and there is a considerable deal of taste in the arrangement of the background, and so on.' 'What book is it you are pointing to?' asked Sponge. 'It's not a book,' replied Mr. Jawleyford, 'it's a plan--a plan of this gallery, in fact. I am supposed to be giving the final order for the erection of the very edifice we are now in.' 'And a very handsome building it is,' observed Sponge, thinking he would make it a shooting-gallery when he got it. 'Yes, it's a handsome thing in its way,' assented Jawleyford; 'better if it had been water-tight, perhaps,' added he, as a big drop splashed upon the crown of his head. 'The contents must be very valuable,' observed Sponge. 'Very valuable,' replied Jawleyford. 'There's a thing I gave two hundred and fifty guineas for--that vase. It's of Parian marble, of the Cinque Cento period, beautifully sculptured in a dance of Bacchanals, arabesques, and chimera figures; it was considered cheap. Those fine monkeys in Dresden china, playing on musical instruments, were forty; those bronzes of scaramouches on ormolu plinths were seventy; that ormolu clock, of the style of Louis Quinze, by Le Roy, was eighty; those Sèvres vases were a hundred--mounted, you see, in ormolu, with lily candelabra for ten lights. The handles,' continued he, drawing Sponge's attention to them, 'are very handsome--composed of satyrs holding festoons of grapes and flowers, which surround the neck of the vase; on the sides are pastoral subjects, painted in the highest style--nothing can be more beautiful or more chaste.' 'Nothing,' assented Sponge. 'The pictures I should think are most valuable,' observed Jawleyford. 'My friend Lord Sparklebury said to me the last time he was here--he's now in Italy, increasing his collection--"Jawleyford, old boy," said he, for we are very intimate--just like brothers, in fact; "Jawleyford, old boy, I wonder whether your collection or mine would fetch most money, if they were Christie-&-Manson'd." "Oh, your lordship," said I, "your Guidos, and Ostades, and Poussins, and Velasquez, are not to be surpassed." "True," replied his lordship, "they are fine--very fine; but you have the Murillos. I'd like to give you a good round sum," added he, "to pick out half-a-dozen pictures out of your gallery." Do you understand pictures?' continued Jawleyford, turning short on his friend Sponge. 'A little,' replied Sponge, in a tone that might mean either yes or no--a great deal or nothing at all. Jawleyford then took him and worked him through his collection--talked of light and shade, and tone, and depth of colouring, tints, and pencillings; and put Sponge here and there and everywhere to catch the light (or rain, as the case might be); made him convert his hand into an opera-glass, and occasionally put his head between his legs to get an upside-down view--a feat that Sponge's equestrian experience made him pretty well up to. So they looked, and admired, and criticized, till Spigot's all-important figure came looming up the gallery and announced that luncheon was ready. 'Bless me!' exclaimed Jawleyford, pulling a most diminutive Geneva watch, hung with pencils, pistol-keys, and other curiosities, out of his pocket; 'Bless me, who'd have thought it? One o'clock, I declare! Well, if this doesn't prove the value of a gallery on a wet day. I don't know what does. However,' said he, 'we must tear ourselves away for the present, and go and see what the ladies are about.' If ever a man may be excused for indulging in luncheon, it certainly is on a pouring wet day (when he eats for occupation), or when he is making love; both which excuses Mr. Sponge had to offer, so he just sat down and ate as heartily as the best of the party, not excepting his host himself, who was an excellent hand at luncheon. Jawleyford tried to get him back to the gallery after luncheon, but a look from his wife intimated that Sponge was wanted elsewhere, so he quietly saw him carried off to the music-room; and presently the notes of the 'grand piano,' and full clear voices of his daughters, echoing along the passage, intimated that they were trying what effect music would have upon him. When Mrs. Jawleyford looked in about an hour after, she found Mr. Sponge sitting over the fire with his _Mogg_ in his hand, and the young ladies with their laps full of company-work, keeping up a sort of crossfire of conversation in the shape of question and answer. Mrs. Jawleyford's company making matters worse, they soon became tediously agreeable. In course of time, Jawleyford entered the room, with: 'My dear Mr. Sponge, your groom has come up to know about your horse to-morrow. I told him it was utterly impossible to think of hunting, but he says he must have his orders from you. I should say,' added Jawleyford, 'it is _quite_ out of the question--madness to think of it; much better in the house, such weather.' 'I don't know that,' replied Sponge, 'the rain's come down, and though the country will ride heavy, I don't see why we shouldn't have sport after it.' 'But the glass is falling, and the wind's gone round the wrong way; the moon changed this morning--everything, in short, indicates continued wet,' replied Jawleyford. 'The rivers are all swollen, and the low grounds under water; besides, my dear fellow, consider the distance--consider the distance; sixteen miles, if it's a yard.' 'What, Dundleton Tower!' exclaimed Sponge, recollecting that Jawleyford had said it was only ten the night before. 'Sixteen miles, and bad road,' replied Jawleyford. 'The deuce it is!' muttered Sponge; adding, 'Well, I'll go and see my groom, at all events.' So saying, he rang the bell as if the house was his own, and desired Spigot to show him the way to his servant. Leather, of course, was in the servants' hall, refreshing himself with cold meat and ale, after his ride up from Lucksford. Finding that he had ridden the hack up, he desired Leather to leave him there. 'Tell the groom I _must_ have him put up,' said Sponge; 'and you ride the chestnut on in the morning. How far is it to Dundleton Tower?' asked he. 'Twelve or thirteen miles, they say, from here,' replied Leather; 'nine or ten from Lucksford.' 'Well, that'll do,' said Sponge; 'you tell the groom here to have the hack saddled for me at nine o'clock, and you ride Multum in Parvo quietly on, either to the meet or till I overtake you.' 'But how am I to get back to Lucksford?' asked Leather, cocking up a foot to show how thinly he was shod. 'Oh, just as you can,' replied Sponge; 'get the groom here to set you down with his master's hacks. I dare say they haven't been out to-day, and it'll do them good.' So saying, Mr. Sponge left his valuable servant to do the best he could for himself. Having returned to the music-room, with the aid of an old county map Mr. Sponge proceeded to trace his way to Dundleton Tower; aided, or rather retarded, by Mr. Jawleyford, who kept pointing out all sorts of difficulties, till, if Mr. Sponge had followed his advice, he would have made eighteen or twenty miles of the distance. Sponge, however, being used to scramble about strange countries, saw the place was to be accomplished in ten or eleven. Jawleyford was sure he would lose himself, and Sponge was equally confident that he wouldn't. At length the glad sound of the gong put an end to all further argument; and the inmates of Jawleyford Court retired, candle in hand, to their respective apartments, to adorn for a repetition of the yesterday's spread, with the addition of the Rev. Mr. Hobanob's company, to say grace, and praise the 'Wintle.' An appetiteless dinner was succeeded by tea and music, as before. The three elegant French clocks in the drawing-room being at variance, one being three-quarters of an hour before the slowest, and twenty minutes before the next, Mr. Hobanob (much to the horror of Jawleyford) having nearly fallen asleep with his Sèvres coffee-cup in his hand, at last drew up his great silver watch by its jack-chain, and finding it was a quarter past ten, prepared to decamp--taking as affectionate a leave of the ladies as if he had been going to China. He was followed by Mr. Jawleyford, to see him pocket his pumps, and also by Mr. Sponge, to see what sort of a night it was. The sky was clear, stars sparkled in the firmament, and a young crescent moon shone with silvery brightness o'er the scene. 'That'll do,' said Sponge, as he eyed it; 'no haze there. Come,' added he to his papa-in-law, as Hobanob's steps died out on the terrace, 'you'd better go to-morrow.' 'Can't,' replied Jawleyford; 'go next day, perhaps--Scrambleford Green--better place--much. You may lock up,' said he, turning to Spigot, who, with both footmen, was in attendance to see Mr. Hobanob off; 'you may lock up, and tell the cook to have breakfast ready at nine precisely.' 'Oh, never mind about breakfast for me,' interposed Sponge, 'I'll have some tea or coffee and chops, or boiled ham and eggs, or whatever's going, in my bedroom,' said he; 'so never mind altering your hour for me.' 'Oh, but my dear fellow, we'll all breakfast together' (Jawleyford had no notion of standing two breakfasts), 'we'll all breakfast together,' said he; 'no trouble, I assure you--rather the contrary. Say half-past eight--half-past eight. Spigot! to a minute, mind.' And Sponge, seeing there was no help for it, bid the ladies good night, and tumbled off to bed with little expectation of punctuality. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE'S RAPID BREAKFAST] CHAPTER XX THE F.H.H. Nor was Sponge wrong in his conjecture, for it was a quarter to nine ere Spigot appeared with the massive silver urn, followed by the train-band bold, bearing the heavy implements of breakfast. Then, though the young ladies were punctual, smiling, and affable as usual, Mrs. Jawleyford was absent, and she had the keys; so it was nearly nine before Mr. Sponge got his fork into his first mutton chop. Jawleyford was not exactly pleased; he thought it didn't look well for a young man to prefer hunting to the society of his lovely and accomplished daughters. Hunting was all very well occasionally, but it did not do to make a business of it. This, however, he kept to himself. 'You'll have a fine day, my dear Mr. Sponge,' said he, extending a hand, as he found our friend brown-booted and red-coated, working away at the breakfast. 'Yes,' said Sponge, munching away for hard life. In less than ten minutes, he managed to get as much down as, with the aid of a knotch of bread that he pocketed, he thought would last him through the day; and, with a hasty adieu, he hurried off to find the stables, to get his hack. The piebald was saddled, bridled, and turned round in the stall; for all servants that are worth anything like to further hunting operations. With the aid of the groom's instructions, who accompanied him out of the courtyard, Sponge was enabled to set off at a hard canter, cheered by the groom's observation, that 'he thought he would be there in time.' On, on he went; now speculating on a turn; now pulling a scratch map he had made on a bit of paper out of his waistcoat-pocket; now inquiring the name of any place he saw of any person he met. So he proceeded for five or six miles without much difficulty; the road, though not all turnpike, being mainly over good sound township ones. It was at the village of Swineley, with its chubby-towered church and miserable hut-like cottages, that his troubles were to begin. He had two sharp turns to make--to ride through a straw-yard, and leap over a broken-down wall at the corner of a cottage--to get into Swaithing Green Lane, and so cut off an angle of two miles. The road then became a bridle one, and was, like all bridle ones, very plain to those who know them, and very puzzling to those who don't. It was evidently a little-frequented road; and what with looking out for footmarks (now nearly obliterated by the recent rains) and speculating on what queer corners of the fields the gates would be in, Mr. Sponge found it necessary to reduce his pace to a very moderate trot. Still he had made good way; and supposing they gave a quarter-of-an-hour's law, and he had not been deceived as to distance, he thought he should get to the meet about the time. His horse, too, would be there, and perhaps Lord Scamperdale might give a little extra law on that account. He then began speculating on what sort of a man his lordship was, and the probable nature of his reception. He began to wish that Jawleyford had accompanied him, to introduce him. Not that Sponge was shy, but still he thought that Jawleyford's presence would do him good. Lord Scamperdale's hunt was not the most polished in the world. The hounds and the horses were a good deal better bred than the men. Of course his lordship gave the _tone_ to the whole; and being a coarse, broad, barge-built sort of man, he had his clothes to correspond, and looked like a drayman in scarlet. He wore a great round flat-brimmed hat, which being adopted by the hunt generally, procured it the name of the 'F.H.H.,' or 'Flat Hat Hunt.' Our readers, we dare say, have noticed it figuring away, in the list of hounds during the winter, along with the 'H.H.s,' 'V.W.H.s,' and other initialized packs. His lordship's clothes were of the large, roomy, baggy, abundant order, with great pockets, great buttons, and lots of strings flying out. Instead of tops, he sported leather leggings, which at a distance gave him the appearance of riding with his trousers up to his knees. These the hunt too adopted; and his 'particular,' Jack (Jack Spraggon), the man whom he mounted, and who was made much in his own mould, sported, like his patron, a pair of great broad-rimmed, tortoise-shell spectacles of considerable power. Jack was always at his lordship's elbow; and it was 'Jack' this, 'Jack' that, 'Jack' something, all day long. But we must return to Mr. Sponge, whom we left working his way through the intricate fields. At last he got through them, and into Red Pool Common, which, by leaving the windmill to the right, he cleared pretty cleverly, and entered upon a district still wilder and drearier than any he had traversed. Peewits screamed and hovered over land that seemed to grow little but rushes and water-grasses, with occasional heather. The ground poached and splashed as he went; worst of all, time was nearly up. In vain Sponge strained his eyes in search of Dundleton Tower. In vain he fancied every high, sky-line-breaking place in the distance was the much-wished-for spot. Dundleton Tower was no more a tower than it was a town, and would seem to have been christened by the rule of contrary, for it was nothing but a great flat open space, without object or incident to note it. Sponge, however, was not destined to see it. As he went floundering along through an apparently interminable and almost bottomless lane, whose sunken places and deep ruts were filled with clayey water, which played the very deuce with the cords and brown boots, the light note of a hound fell on his ear, and almost at the same instant, a something that he would have taken for a dog had it not been for the note of the hound, turned, as it were, from him, and went in a contrary direction. Sponge reined in the piebald, and stood transfixed. It was, indeed, the fox!--a magnificent full-brushed fellow, with a slight tendency to grey along the back, and going with the light spiry ease of an animal full of strength and running. 'I wish I mayn't ketch it,' said Sponge to himself, shuddering at the idea of having headed him. It was, however, no time for thinking. The cry of hounds became more distinct--nearer and nearer they came, fuller and more melodious; but, alas! it was no music to Sponge. Presently the cheering of hunters was heard--'FOR--_rard_! FOR--_rard_!' and anon the rate of a whip farther back. Another second, and hounds, horses, and men were in view, streaming away over the large pasture on the left. There was a high, straggling fence between Sponge and the field, thick enough to prevent their identifying him, but not sufficiently high to screen him altogether. Sponge pulled round the piebald, and gathered himself together like a man going to be shot. The hounds came tearing full cry to where he was; there was a breast-high scent, and every one seemed to have it. They charged the fence at a wattled pace a few yards below where he sat, and flying across the deep dirty lane, dashed full cry into the pasture beyond. 'Hie back!' cried Sponge. 'Hie back!' trying to turn them; but instead of the piebald carrying him in front of the pack, as Sponge wanted, he took to rearing, and plunging, and pawing the air. The hounds meanwhile dashed jealously on without a scent, till first one and then another feeling ashamed, gave in; and at last a general lull succeeded the recent joyous cry. Awful period! terrible to any one, but dreadful to a stranger! Though Sponge was in the road, he well knew that no one has any business anywhere but with hounds, when a fox is astir. 'Hold hard!' was now the cry, and the perspiring riders and lathered steeds came to a standstill. 'Twang--twang--twang,' went a shrill horn; and a couple of whips, singling themselves out from the field, flew over the fence to where the hounds were casting. 'Twang--twang--twang,' went the horn again. Meanwhile Sponge sat enjoying the following observations, which a westerly wind wafted into his ear. 'Oh, d--n me! that man in the lane's headed the fox,' puffed one. 'Who is it?' gasped another. 'Tom Washball!' exclaimed a third. 'Heads more foxes than any man in the country,' puffed a fourth. 'Always nicking and skirting,' exclaimed a fifth. 'Never comes to the meet,' added a sixth. 'Come on a cow to-day,' observed another. 'Always chopping and changing,' added another; 'he'll come on a giraffe next.' Having commenced his career with the 'F.H.H.' so inauspiciously and yet escaped detection, Mr. Sponge thought of letting Tom Washball enjoy the honours of his _faux-pas_, and of sneaking quietly home as soon as the hounds hit off the scent; but unluckily, just as they were crossing the lane, what should heave in sight, cantering along at his leisure, but the redoubtable Multum in Parvo, who, having got rid of old Leather by bumping and thumping his leg against a gate-post, was enjoying a line of his own. 'Whoay!' cried Sponge, as he saw the horse quickening his pace to have a shy at the hounds as they crossed. 'Who--o--a--y!' roared he, brandishing his whip, and trying to turn the piebald round; but no, the brute wouldn't answer the bit, and dreading lest, in addition to heading the fox, he should kill 'the best hound in the pack,' Mr. Sponge threw himself off, regardless of the mud-bath in which he lit, and caught the runaway as he tried to dart past. 'For-rard!--for-rard!--for-rard!' was again the cry, as the hounds hit off the scent; while the late pausing, panting sportsmen tackled vigorously with their steeds, and swept onward like the careering wind. Mr. Sponge, albeit somewhat perplexed, had still sufficient presence of mind to see the necessity of immediate action; and though he had so lately contemplated beating a retreat, the unexpected appearance of Parvo altered the state of affairs. 'Now or never,' said he, looking first at the disappearing field, and then for the non-appearing Leather. 'Hang it! I may as well see the run,' added he; so hooking the piebald on to an old stone gate-post that stood in the ragged fence, and lengthening a stirrup-leather, he vaulted into the saddle, and began lengthening the other as he went. It was one of Parvo's going days; indeed, it was that that old Leather and he had quarrelled about--Parvo wanting to follow the hounds, while Leather wanted to wait for his master. And Parvo had the knack of going, as well as the occasional inclination. Although such a drayhorse-looking animal, he could throw the ground behind him amazingly; and the deep-holding clay in which he now found himself was admirably suited to his short, powerful legs and enormous stride. The consequence was, that he was very soon up with the hindmost horsemen. These he soon passed, and was presently among those who ride hard when there is nothing to stop them. Such time as these sportsmen could now spare from looking out ahead was devoted to Sponge, whom they eyed with the utmost astonishment, as if he had dropped from the clouds. A stranger--a real out-and-out stranger--had not visited their remote regions since the days of poor Nimrod. 'Who could it be?' But 'the pace,' as Nimrod used to say, 'was too good to inquire.' A little farther on, and Sponge drew upon the great guns of the hunt--the men who ride _to_ hounds, and not _after_ them; the same who had criticized him through the fence--Mr. Wake, Mr. Fossick, Parson Blossomnose, Mr. Fyle, Lord Scamperdale, Jack himself, and others. Great was their astonishment at the apparition, and incoherent the observations they dropped as they galloped on. 'It isn't Wash, after all,' whispered Fyle into Blossomnose's ear, as they rode through a gate together. 'No-o-o,' replied the nose, eyeing Sponge intently. 'What a coat!' whispered one. 'Jacket,' replied the other. 'Lost his brush,' observed a third, winking at Sponge's docked tail. 'He's going to ride over us all,' snapped Mr. Fossick, whom Sponge passed at a hand-canter, as the former was blobbing and floundering about the deep ruts leading out of a turnip-field. 'He'll catch it just now,' said Mr. Wake, eyeing Sponge drawing upon his lordship and Jack, as they led the field as usual. Jack being at a respectful distance behind his great patron, espied Sponge first; and having taken a good stare at him through his formidable spectacles, to satisfy himself that it was nobody he knew--a stare that Sponge returned as well as a man without spectacles can return the stare of one with--Jack spurred his horse up to his lordship, and rising in his stirrups, shot into his ear-- 'Why, here's the man on the cow!' adding, 'it isn't Washey.' 'Who the deuce is it then?' asked his lordship, looking over his left shoulder, as he kept galloping on in the wake of his huntsman. 'Don't know,' replied Jack; 'never saw him before.' 'Nor I,' said his lordship, with an air as much as to say, 'It makes no matter.' His lordship, though well mounted, was not exactly on the sort of horse for the country they were in; while Mr. Sponge, in addition to being on the very animal for it, had the advantage of the horse having gone the first part of the run without a rider: so Multum in Parvo, whether Mr. Sponge wished it or not, insisted on being as far forward as he could get. The more Sponge pulled and hauled, the more determined the horse was; till, having thrown both Jack and his lordship in the rear, he made for old Frostyface, the huntsman, who was riding well up to the still-flying pack. 'HOLD HARD, sir! For God's sake, hold hard!' screamed Frosty, who knew by intuition there was a horse behind, as well as he knew there was a man shooting in front, who, in all probability, had headed the fox. 'HOLD HARD, sir!' roared he, as, yawning and boring and shaking his head, Parvo dashed through the now yelping scattered pack, making straight for a stiff new gate, which he smashed through, just as a circus pony smashes through a paper hoop. 'Hoo-ray!' shouted Jack Spraggon, on seeing the hounds were safe. 'Hoo-ray for the tailor!' 'Billy Button, himself!' exclaimed his lordship, adding, 'never saw such a thing in my life!' 'Who the deuce is he?' asked Blossomnose, in the full glow of pulling-five-year-old exertion. 'Don't know,' replied Jack, adding, 'he's a shaver, whoever he is.' Meanwhile the frightened hounds were scattered right and left. 'I'll lay a guinea he's one of those confounded waiting chaps,' observed Fyle, who had been handled rather roughly by one of the tribe, who had dropped 'quite promiscuously' upon a field where he was, just as Sponge had done with Lord Scamperdale's. 'Shouldn't wonder,' replied his lordship, eyeing Sponge's vain endeavours to turn the chestnut, and thinking how he would 'pitch into him' when he came up. 'By Jove,' added his lordship, 'if the fellow had taken the whole country round, he couldn't have chosen a worse spot for such an exploit; for there never _is_ any scent over here. See! not a hound can own it. Old Harmony herself throws up. The whips again are in their places, turning the astonished pack to Frostyface, who sets off on a casting expedition. The field, as usual, sit looking on; some blessing Sponge; some wondering who he was; others looking what o'clock it is; some dismounting and looking at their horses' feet. 'Thank you, Mr. Brown Boots!' exclaimed his lordship, as, by dint of bitting and spurring, Sponge at length worked the beast round, and came sneaking back in the face of the whole field. 'Thank you, Mr. Brown Boots,' repeated he, taking off his hat and bowing very low. 'Very much obl_e_ged to you, Mr. Brown Boots. Most particklarly obl_e_ged to you, Mr. Brown Boots,' with another low bow. 'Hang'd obl_e_ged to you, Mr. Brown Boots! D--n you, Mr. Brown Boots!' continued his lordship, looking at Sponge as if he would eat him. 'Beg pardon, sir,' blurted Sponge; 'my horse--' 'Hang your horse!' screamed his lordship; 'it wasn't your horse that headed the fox, was it?' 'Beg pardon--couldn't help it; I--' 'Couldn't help it. Hang your helps--you're _always_ doing it, sir. You could stay at home, sir--I s'pose, sir--couldn't you, sir? eh, sir?' Sponge was silent. 'See, sir!' continued his lordship, pointing to the mute pack now following the huntsman, 'you've lost us our fox, sir--yes, sir, lost us our fox, sir. D'ye call that nothin', sir? If you don't, _I_ do, you perpendicular-looking Puseyite pig-jobber! By Jove! you think because I'm a lord, and can't swear, or use coarse language, that you may do what you like--but I'll take my hounds home, sir--yes, sir, I'll take my hounds home, sir.' So saying, his lordship roared HOME to Frostyface; adding, in an undertone to the first whip, 'bid him go to Furzing-field gorse.' CHAPTER XXI A COUNTRY DINNER-PARTY [Illustration] 'Well, what sport?' asked Jawleyford, as he encountered his exceedingly dirty friend crossing the entrance hall to his bedroom on his return from his day, or rather his non-day, with the 'Flat Hat Hunt.' 'Why, not much--that's to say, nothing particular--I mean, I've not had any,' blurted Sponge. 'But you've had a run?' observed Jawleyford, pointing to his boots and breeches, stained with the variation of each soil. 'Ah, I got most of that going to cover,' replied Sponge; 'country's awfully deep, roads abominably dirty!' adding, 'I wish I'd taken your advice, and stayed at home.' 'I wish you had,' replied Jawleyford, 'you'd have had a most excellent rabbit-pie for luncheon. However, get changed, and we will hear all about it after.' So saying, Jawleyford waved an adieu, and Sponge stamped away in his dirty water-logged boots. 'I'm afraid you are very wet, Mr. Sponge,' observed Amelia in the sweetest tone, with the most loving smile possible, as our friend, with three steps at a time, bounded upstairs, and nearly butted her on the landing, as she was on the point of coming down. 'I am that,' exclaimed Sponge, delighted at the greeting; 'I am that,' repeated he, slapping his much-stained cords; 'dirty, too,' added he, looking down at his nether man. 'Hadn't you better get changed as quick as possible?' asked Amelia, still keeping her position before him. 'Oh! all in good time,' replied Sponge, 'all in good time. The sight of you warms me more than a fire would do'; adding, 'I declare you look quite bewitching, after all the roughings and tumblings about out of doors.' 'Oh! you've not had a fall, have you?' exclaimed Amelia, looking the picture of despair; 'you've not had a fall, have you? Do send for the doctor, and be bled.' Just then a door along the passage to the left opened; and Amelia, knowing pretty well who it was, smiled and tripped away, leaving Sponge to be bled or not as he thought proper. Our hero then made for his bedroom, where, having sucked off his adhesive boots, and divested himself of the rest of his hunting attire, he wrapped himself up in his grey flannel dressing-gown, and prepared for parboiling his legs and feet, amid agreeable anticipations arising out of the recent interview, and occasional references to his old friend _Mogg_, whenever he did not see his way on the matrimonial road as clearly as he could wish. 'She'll have me, that's certain,' observed he. 'Curse the water! how hot it is!' exclaimed he, catching his foot up out of the bath, into which he had incautiously plunged it without ascertaining the temperature of the water. He then sluiced it with cold, and next had to add a little more hot; at last he got it to his mind, and lighting a cigar, prepared for uninterrupted enjoyment. 'Gad!' said he, 'she's by no means a bad-looking girl' (whiff). 'Devilish good-looking girl' (puff); 'good head and neck, and carries it well too' (puff)--'capital eye' (whiff), 'bright and clear' (puff); 'no cataracts there. She's all good together' (whiff, puff, whiff). 'Nice size too,' continued he, 'and well set up (whiff, puff, whiff); 'straight as a dairy maid' (puff); 'plenty of substance--grand thing substance' (puff). 'Hate a weedy woman--fifteen two and a half--that's to say, five feet four's plenty of height for a woman' (puff). 'Height of a woman has nothing to do with her size' (whiff). 'Wish she hadn't run off (puff); 'would like to have had a little more talk with her' (whiff, puff). 'Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting' (puff). He then sank silently back in the easy-chair and whiffed and puffed all sorts of fantastic clouds and columns and corkscrews at his leisure. The cigar being finished, and the water in the foot-bath beginning to get cool, he emptied the remainder of the hot into it, and lighting a fresh cigar, began speculating on how the match was to be accomplished. The lady was safe, that was clear; he had nothing to do but 'pop.' That he would do in the evening, or in the morning, or any time--a man living in the house with a girl need never be in want of an opportunity. That preliminary over, and the usual answer 'Ask papa' obtained, then came the question, how was the old boy to be managed?--for men with marriageable daughters are to all intents and purposes 'old boys,' be their ages what they may. He became lost in reflection. He sat with his eyes fixed on the Jawleyford portrait above the mantelpiece, wondering whether he was the amiable, liberal, hearty, disinterested sort of man he appeared to be, indifferent about money, and only wanting unexceptionable young men for his daughters; or if he was a worldly minded man, like some he had met, who, after giving him every possible encouragement, sent him to the right-about like a servant. So Sponge smoked and thought, and thought and smoked, till the water in the foot-bath again getting cold, and the shades of night drawing on, he at last started up like a man determined to awake himself, and poking a match into the fire, lighted the candles on the toilet-table, and proceeded to adorn himself. Having again got himself into the killing tights and buckled pumps, with a fine flower-fronted shirt, ere he embarked on the delicacies and difficulties of the starcher, he stirred the little pittance of a fire, and, folding himself in his dressing-gown, endeavoured to prepare his mind for the calm consideration of all the minute bearings of the question by a little more _Mogg_. In idea he transferred himself to London, now fancying himself standing at the end of Burlington Arcade, hailing a Fulham or Turnham Green 'bus; now wrangling with a conductor for charging him sixpence when there was a pennant flapping at his nose with the words "ALL THE WAY 3D." upon it; now folding the wooden doors of a hansom cab in Oxford Street, calculating the extreme distance he could go for an eightpenny fare: until at last he fell into a downright vacant sort of reading, without rhyme or reason, just as one sometimes takes a read of a directory or a dictionary--"Conduit Street, George Street, to or from the Adelphi Terrace, Astley's Amphitheatre, Baker Street, King Street, Bryanston Square any part, Covent Garden Theatre, Foundling Hospital, Hatton Garden," and so on, till the thunder of the gong aroused him to a recollection of his duties. He then up and at his neckcloth. "Ah, well," said he, reverting to his lady love, as he eyed himself intently in the glass while performing the critical operation, "I'll just sound the old gentleman after dinner--one can do that sort of thing better over one's wine, perhaps, than at any other time: looks less formal too," added he, giving the cravat a knowing crease at the side; "and if it doesn't seem to take, one can just pass it off as if it was done for somebody else--some young gentleman at Laverick Wells, for instance." So saying, he on with his white waistcoat, and crowned the conquering suit with a blue coat and metal buttons. Returning his _Mogg_ to his dressing-gown pocket, he blew out the candles and groped his way downstairs in the dark. In passing the dining-room he looked in (to see if there were any champaign-glasses set, we believe), when he saw that he should not have an opportunity of sounding his intended papa-in-law after dinner, for he found the table laid for twelve, and a great display of plate, linen, and china. He then swaggered on to the drawing-room, which was in a blaze of light. The lively Emily had stolen a march on her sister, and had just entered, attired in a fine new pale yellow silk dress with a point-lace berthe and other adornments. High words had ensued between the sisters as to the meanness of Amelia in trying to take her beau from her, especially after the airs Amelia had given herself respecting Sponge; and a minute observer might have seen the slight tinge of red on Emily's eyelids denoting the usual issue of such scenes. The result was, that each determined to do the best she could for herself; and free trade being proclaimed, Emily proceeded to dress with all expedition, calculating that, as Mr. Sponge had come in wet, he would, very likely dress at once and appear in the drawing-room in good time. Nor was she out in her reckoning, for she had hardly enjoyed an approving glance in the mirror ere our hero came swaggering in, twitching his arms as if he hadn't got his wristbands adjusted, and working his legs as if they didn't belong to him. "Ah, my dear Miss Emley!" exclaimed he, advancing gaily towards her with extended hand, which she took with all the pleasure in the world; adding, "and how have you been?" "Oh, pretty well, thank you," replied she, looking as though she would have said, "As well as I can be without you." Sponge, though a consummate judge of a horse, and all the minutiae connected with them, was still rather green in the matter of woman; and having settled in his own mind that Amelia should be his choice, he concluded that Emily knew all about it, and was working on her sister's account, instead of doing the agreeable for herself. And there it is where elder sisters have such an advantage over younger ones. They are always shown, or contrive to show themselves, first; and if a man once makes up his mind that the elder one will do, there is an end of the matter; and it is neither a deeper shade or two of blue, nor a brighter tinge of brown, nor a little smaller foot, nor a more elegant waist, that will make him change for a younger sister. The younger ones immediately become sisters in the men's minds, and retire, or are retired, from the field--"scratched," as Sponge would say. Amelia, however, was not going to give Emily a chance; for, having dressed with all the expedition compatible with an attractive toilet--a lavender-coloured satin with broad black lace flounces, and some heavy jewellery on her well-turned arms, she came sidling in so gently as almost to catch Emily in the act of playing the agreeable. Turning the sidle into a stately sail, with a haughty sort of sneer and toss of the head to her sister, as much as to say, 'What are you doing with my man?'--a sneer that suddenly changed into a sweet smile as her eye encountered Sponge's--she just motioned him off to a sofa, where she commenced a _sotto voce_ conversation in the engaged-couple style. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE AND THE MISSES JAWLEYFORD] The plot then began to thicken. First came Jawleyford, in a terrible stew. 'Well, this is too bad!' exclaimed he, stamping and flourishing a scented note, with a crest and initials at the top. 'This is too bad,' repeated he; 'people accepting invitations, and then crying off at the last moment.' 'Who is it can't come, papa--the Foozles?' asked Emily. 'No--Foozles be hanged,' sneered Jawleyford; 'they always come--_the Blossomnoses!_' replied he, with an emphasis. 'The Blossomnoses!' exclaimed both girls, clasping their hands and looking up at the ceiling. 'What, all of them?' asked Emily. 'All of them,' rejoined Jawleyford. 'Why, that's four,' observed Emily. 'To be sure it is,' replied Jawleyford; 'five, if you count them by appetites; for old Blossom always eats and drinks as much as two people.' 'What excuse do they give?' asked Amelia. 'Carriage-horse taken suddenly ill,' replied Jawleyford; 'as if that's any excuse when there are post-horses within half a dozen miles.' 'He wouldn't have been stopped hunting for want of a horse, I dare say,' observed Amelia. 'I dare say it's all a lie,' observed Jawleyford; adding, 'however, the invitation shall go for a dinner, all the same.' The denunciation was interrupted by the appearance of Spigot, who came looming up the spacious drawing-room in the full magnificence of black shorts, silk stockings, and buckled pumps, followed by a sheepish-looking, straight-haired, red apple-faced young gentleman, whom he announced as Mr. Robert Foozle. Robert was the hope of the house of Foozle; and it was fortunate his parents were satisfied with him, for few other people were. He was a young gentleman who shook hands with everybody, assented to anything that anybody said, and in answering a question, wherein indeed his conversation chiefly consisted, he always followed the words of the interrogation as much as he could. For instance: 'Well, Robert, have you been at Dulverton to-day?' Answer, 'No, I've not been at Dulverton to-day.' Question, 'Are you going to Dulverton to-morrow?' Answer, 'No, I'm not going to Dulverton to-morrow.' Having shaken hands with the party all round, and turned to the fire to warm his red fists, Jawleyford having stood at 'attention' for such time as he thought Mrs. Foozle would be occupied before the glass in his study arranging her head-gear, and seeing no symptoms of any further announcement, at last asked Foozle if his papa and mamma were not coming. 'No, my papa and mamma are not coming,' replied he. 'Are you sure?' asked Jawleyford, in a tone of excitement. 'Quite sure,' replied Foozle, in the most matter-of-course voice. [Illustration: MR. ROBERT FOOZLE] 'The deuce!' exclaimed Jawleyford, stamping his foot upon the soft rug, adding, 'it never rains but it pours!' 'Have you any note, or anything?' asked Mrs. Jawleyford, who had followed Robert Foozle into the room. 'Yes, I have a note,' replied he, diving into the inner pocket of his coat, and producing one. The note was a letter--a letter from Mrs. Foozle to Mrs. Jawleyford, three sides and crossed; and seeing the magnitude thereof, Mrs. Jawleyford quietly put it into her reticule, observing, 'that she hoped Mr. and Mrs. Foozle were well?' 'Yes, they are well,' replied Robert, notwithstanding he had express orders to say that his papa had the toothache, and his mamma the earache. Jawleyford then gave a furious ring at the bell for dinner, and in due course of time the party of six proceeded to a table for twelve. Sponge pawned Mrs. Jawleyford off upon Robert Foozle, which gave Sponge the right to the fair Amelia, who walked off on his arm with a toss of her head at Emily, as though she thought him the finest, sprightliest man under the sun. Emily followed, and Jawleyford came sulking in alone, sore put out at the failure of what he meant for _the_ grand entertainment. Lights blazed in profusion; lamps more accustomed had now become better behaved; and the whole strength of the plate was called in requisition, sadly puzzling the unfortunate cook to find something to put upon the dishes. She, however, was a real magnanimous-minded woman, who would undertake to cook a lord mayor's feast--soups, sweets, joints, entrées, and all. Jawleyford was nearly silent during the dinner; indeed, he was too far off for conversation, had there been any for him to join in; which was not the case, for Amelia and Sponge kept up a hum of words, while Emily worked Robert Foozle with question and answer, such as: "Were your sisters out to-day?" "Yes, my sisters were out to-day." "Are your sisters going to the Christmas ball?" "Yes, my sisters are going to the Christmas ball," &c. &c. Still, nearly daft as Robert was, he was generally asked where there was anything going on; and more than one young la--but we will not tell about that, as he has nothing to do with our story. By the time the ladies took their departure, Mr. Jawleyford had somewhat recovered from the annoyance of his disappointment; and as they retired he rang the bell, and desired Spigot to set in the horse-shoe table, and bring a bottle of the "green seal," being the colour affixed on the bottles of a four-dozen hamper of port ("curious old port at 48_s_.") that had arrived from "Wintle & Co." by rail (goods train of course) that morning. "There!" exclaimed Jawleyford, as Spigot placed the richly cut decanter on the horse-shoe table. "There!" repeated he, drawing the green curtain as if to shade it from the fire, but in reality to hide the dulness the recent shaking had given it; "that wine," said he, "is a quarter of a century in bottle, at the very least." 'Indeed,' observed Sponge: 'time it was drunk.' 'A quarter of a century?' gaped Robert Foozle. 'Quarter of a century if it's a day,' replied Jawleyford, smacking his lips as he set down his glass after imbibing the precious beverage. 'Very fine,' observed Sponge; adding, as he sipped off his glass, 'it's odd to find such old wine so full-bodied.' 'Well, now tell us all about your day's proceedings,' said Jawleyford, thinking it advisable to change the conversation at once. 'What sport had you with my lord?' 'Oh, why, I really can't tell you much,' drawled Sponge, with an air of bewilderment. 'Strange country--strange faces--nobody I knew, and--' 'Ah, true,' replied Jawleyford, 'true. It occurred to me after you were gone, that perhaps you might not know any one. Ours, you see, is rather an out-of-the-way country; few of our people go to town, or indeed anywhere else; they are all tarry-at-home birds. But they'd receive you with great politeness, I'm sure--if they knew you came from here, at least,' added he. Sponge was silent, and took a great gulp of the dull 'Wintle,' to save himself from answering. 'Was my Lord Scamperdale out?' asked Jawleyford, seeing he was not going to get a reply. 'Why, I can really hardly tell you that,' replied Sponge. 'There were two men out, either of whom might be him; at least, they both seemed to take the lead, and--and--' he was going to say 'blow up the people,' but he thought he might as well keep that to himself. 'Stout, hale-looking men, dressed much alike, with great broad tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on?' asked Jawleyford. 'Just so,' replied Sponge. 'Ah, you are right, then,' rejoined Jawleyford; 'it would be my lord.' 'And who was the other?' inquired our friend. 'Oh, that Jack Spraggon,' replied Jawleyford, curling up his nose, as if he was going to be sick; 'one of the most odious wretches under the sun. I really don't know any man that I have so great a dislike to, so utter a contempt for, as that Jack, as they call him.' 'What is he?' asked Sponge. 'Oh, just a hanger-on of his lordship's; the creature has nothing--nothing whatever; he lives on my lord--eats his venison, drinks his claret, rides his horses, bullies those his lordship doesn't like to tackle with, and makes himself generally useful.' 'He seems a man of that sort,' observed Sponge, as he thought over the compliment he had received. 'Well, who else had you out, then?' asked Jawleyford. 'Was Tom Washball there?' 'No,' replied Sponge: '_he_ wasn't out, I know.' 'Ah, that's unfortunate,' observed Jawleyford, helping himself and passing the bottle. 'Tom's a capital fellow--a perfect gentleman--great friend of mine. If he'd been out you'd have had nothing to do but mention my name, and he'd have put you all right in a minute. Who else was there, then?' continued he. 'There was a tall man in black, on a good-looking young brown horse, rather rash at his fences, but a fine style of goer.' 'What!' exclaimed Jawleyford, 'man in drab cords and jack-boots, with the brim of his hat rather turning upwards?' 'Just so,' replied Sponge; 'and a double ribbon for a hat-string.' 'That's Master Blossomnose,' observed Jawleyford, scarcely able to contain his indignation. 'That's Master Blossomnose,' repeated he, taking a back hand at the port in the excitement of the moment. 'More to his credit if he were to stay at home and attend to his parish,' added Jawleyford; meaning, it would have been more to his credit if he had fulfilled his engagement to him that evening, instead of going out hunting in the morning. The two then sat silent for a time, Sponge seeing where the sore place was, and Robert Foozle, as usual, seeing nothing. 'Ah, well,' observed Jawleyford, at length breaking silence, 'it was unfortunate you went this morning. I did my best to prevent you--told you what a long way it was, and so on. However, never mind, we will put all right to-morrow. His lordship, I'm sure, will be most happy to see you. So help yourself,' continued he, passing the 'Wintle,' 'and we will drink his health and success to fox-hunting.' Sponge filled a bumper and drank his lordship's health, with the accompaniment as desired; and turning to Robert Foozle, who was doing likewise, said, 'Are you fond of hunting?' 'Yes, I'm fond of hunting,' replied Foozle. 'But you _don't_ hunt, you know, Robert,' observed Jawleyford. 'No, I don't hunt,' replied Robert. The 'green seal' being demolished, Jawleyford ordered a bottle of the 'other,' attributing the slight discoloration (which he did not discover until they had nearly finished the bottle) to change of atmosphere in the outer cellar. Sponge tackled vigorously with the new-comer, which was better than the first; and Robert Foozle, drinking as he spoke, by pattern, kept filling away, much to Jawleyford's dissatisfaction, who was compelled to order a third. During the progress of its demolition, the host's tongue became considerably loosened. He talked of hunting and the charms of the chase--of the good fellowship it produced: and expatiated on the advantages it was of to the country in a national point of view, promoting as it did a spirit of manly enterprise, and encouraging our unrivalled breed of horses; both of which he looked upon as national objects, well worthy the attention of enlightened men like himself. Jawleyford was a great patron of the chase; and his keeper, Watson, always had a bag-fox ready to turn down when my lord's hounds met there. Jawleyford's covers were never known to be drawn blank. Though they had been shot in the day before, they always held a fox the next--if a fox was wanted. Sponge being quite at home on the subjects of horses and hunting, lauded all his papa-in-law's observations up to the skies; occasionally considering whether it would be advisable to sell him a horse, and thinking, if he did, whether he should let him have one of the three he had down, or should get old Buckram to buy some quiet screw that would stand a little work and yield him (Sponge) a little profit, and yet not demolish the great patron of English sports. The more Jawleyford drank, the more energetic he became, and the greater pleasure he anticipated from the meet of the morrow. He docked the lord, and spoke of 'Scamperdale' as an excellent fellow--a real, good, hearty, honest Englishman--a man that 'the more you knew the more you liked'; all of which was very encouraging to Sponge. Spigot at length appeared to read the tea and coffee riot-act, when Jawleyford determined not to be done out of another bottle, pointing to the nearly emptied decanter, said to Robert Foozle, 'I suppose you'll not take any more wine?' To which Robert replied, 'No, I'll not take any more wine.' Whereupon, pushing out his chair and throwing away his napkin, Jawleyford arose and led the way to the drawing-room, followed by Sponge and this entertaining young gentleman. A round game followed tea; which, in its turn, was succeeded by a massive silver tray, chiefly decorated with cold water and tumblers; and as the various independent clocks in the drawing-room began chiming and striking eleven, Mr. Jawleyford thought he would try to get rid of Foozle by asking him if he hadn't better stay all night. 'Yes, I think I'd better stay all night,' replied Foozle. 'But won't they be expecting you at home, Robert?' asked Jawleyford, not feeling disposed to be caught in his own trap. 'Yes, they'll be expecting me at home,' replied Foozle. 'Then, perhaps you had better not alarm them by staying,' suggested Jawleyford. 'No, perhaps I'd better not alarm them by staying,' repeated Foozle. Whereupon they all rose, and wishing him a very good night, Jawleyford handed him over to Spigot, who transferred him to one footman, who passed him to another, to button into his leather-headed shandridan. After talking Robert over, and expatiating on the misfortune it would be to have such a boy, Jawleyford rang the bell for the banquet of water to be taken away; and ordering breakfast half-an-hour earlier than usual, our friends went to bed. CHAPTER XXII THE F.H.H. AGAIN Gentlemen unaccustomed to public hunting often make queer figures of themselves when they go out. We have seen them in all sorts of odd dresses, half fox-hunters half fishermen, half fox-hunters half sailors, with now and then a good sturdy cross of the farmer. Mr. Jawleyford was a cross between a military dandy and a squire. The green-and-gold Bumperkin foraging-cap, with the letters 'B.Y.C.' in front, was cocked jauntily on one side of his badger-pyed head, while he played sportively with the patent leather strap--now, toying with it on his lip, now dropping it below his chin, now hitching it up on to the peak. He had a tremendously stiff stock on--so hard that no pressure made it wrinkle, and so high that his pointed gills could hardly peer above it. His coat was a bright green cut-away--made when collars were worn very high and very hollow, and when waists were supposed to be about the middle of a man's back, Jawleyford's back buttons occupying that remarkable position. These, which were of dead gold with a bright rim, represented a hare full stretch for her life, and were the buttons of the old Muggeridge hunt--a hunt that had died many years ago from want of the necessary funds (80_l_.) to carry it on. The coat, which was single-breasted and velvet-collared, was extremely swallow-tailed, presenting a remarkable contrast to the barge-built, roomy roundabouts of the members of the Flat Hat Hunt; the collar rising behind, in the shape of a Gothic arch, exhibited all the stitchings and threadings incident to that department of the garment. But if Mr. Jawleyford's coat went to 'hare,' his waistcoat was fox and all 'fox.' On a bright blue ground he sported such an infinity of 'heads,' that there is no saying that he would have been safe in a kennel of unsteady hounds. One thing, to be sure, was in his favour--namely, that they were just as much like cats' heads as foxes'. The coat and waistcoat were old stagers, but his nether man was encased in rhubarb-coloured tweed pantaloons of the newest make--a species of material extremely soft and comfortable to wear, but not so well adapted for roughing it across country. These had a broad brown stripe down the sides, and were shaped out over the foot of his fine French-polished paper boots, the heels of which were decorated with long-necked, ringing spurs. Thus attired, with a little silver-mounted whip which he kept flourishing about, he encountered Mr. Sponge in the entrance-hall, after breakfast. Mr. Sponge, like all men who are 'extremely natty' themselves, men who wouldn't have a button out of place if it was ever so, hardly knew what to think of Jawleyford's costume. It was clear he was no sportsman; and then came the question, whether he was of the privileged few who may do what they like, and who can carry off any kind of absurdity. Whatever uneasiness Sponge felt on that score, Jawleyford, however, was quite at his ease, and swaggered about like an aide-de-camp at a review. 'Well, we should be going, I suppose,' said he, drawing on a pair of half-dirty, lemon-coloured kid gloves, and sabreing the air with his whip. 'Is Lord Scamperdale punctual?' asked Sponge. 'Tol-lol,' replied Jawleyford, 'tol-lol.' 'He'll wait for _you_, I suppose?' observed Sponge, thinking to try Jawleyford on that infallible criterion of favour. 'Why, if he knew I was coming, I dare say he would,' replied Jawleyford slowly and deliberately, feeling it was now no time for flashing. 'If he knew I was coming I dare say he would,' repeated he; 'indeed, I make no doubt he would: but one doesn't like putting great men out of their way; besides which, it's just as easy to be punctual as otherwise. When I was in the Bumperkin--' 'But your horse is on, isn't it?' interrupted Sponge; 'he'll see your horse there, you know.' 'Horse on, my dear fellow!' exclaimed Jawleyford, 'horse on? No, certainly not. How should I get there myself, if my horse was on?' 'Hack, to be sure,' replied Sponge, striking a light for his cigar. 'Ah, but then I should have no groom to go with me,' observed Jawleyford, adding, 'one must make a certain appearance, you know. But come, my dear Mr. Sponge,' continued he, laying hold of our hero's arm, 'let us get to the door, for that cigar of yours will fumigate the whole house; and Mrs. Jawleyford hates the smell of tobacco.' Spigot, with his attendants in livery, here put a stop to the confab by hurrying past, drawing the bolts, and throwing back the spacious folding doors, as if royalty or Daniel Lambert himself were 'coming out.' The noise they made was heard outside; and on reaching the top of the spacious flight of steps, Sponge's piebald in charge of a dirty village lad, and Jawleyford's steeds with a sky-blue groom, were seen scuttling under the portoco, for the owners to mount. The Jawleyford cavalry was none of the best; but Jawleyford was pleased with it, and that is a great thing. Indeed, a thing had only to be Jawleyford's, to make Jawleyford excessively fond of it. 'There!' exclaimed he, as they reached the third step from the bottom. 'There!' repeated he, seizing Sponge by the arm, 'that's what I call shape. You don't see such an animal as that every day,' pointing to a not badly formed, but evidently worn-out, over-knee'd bay, that stood knuckling and trembling for Jawleyford to mount. 'One of the "has beens," I should say,' replied Sponge, puffing a cloud of smoke right past Jawleyford's nose; adding, 'It's a pity but you could get him four new legs.' 'Faith, I don't see that he wants anything of the sort,' retorted Jawleyford, nettled as well at the smoke as the observation. 'Well, where "ignorance is bliss," &c.,' replied Sponge, with another great puff, which nearly blinded Jawleyford. 'Get on, and let's see how he goes,' added he, passing on to the piebald as he spoke. Mr. Jawleyford then mounted; and having settled himself into a military seat, touched the old screw with the spur, and set off at a canter. The piebald, perhaps mistaking the portico for a booth, and thinking it was a good place to exhibit it, proceeded to die in the most approved form; and not all Sponge's 'Come-up's' or kicks could induce him to rise before he had gone through the whole ceremony. At length, with a mane full of gravel, a side well smeared, and a 'Wilkinson & Kidd' sadly scratched, the _ci-devant_ actor arose, much to the relief of the village lad, who having indulged in a gallop as he brought him from Lucksford, expected his death would be laid at his door. No sooner was he up, than, without waiting for him to shake himself, Mr. Soapey vaulted into the saddle, and seizing him by the head, let in the Latchfords in a style that satisfied the hack he was not going to canter in a circle. Away he went, best pace; for like all Mr. Sponge's horses, he had the knack of going, the general difficulty being to get them to go the way they were wanted. Sponge presently overtook Mr. Jawleyford, who had been brought up by a gate, which he was making sundry ineffectual Briggs-like passes and efforts to open; the gate and his horse seeming to have combined to prevent his getting through. Though an expert swordsman, he had never been able to accomplish, the art of opening a gate, especially one of those gingerly balanced spring-snecked things that require to be taken at the nick of time, or else they drop just as the horse gets his nose to them. 'Why aren't you here to open the gate?' asked Jawleyford, snappishly, as the blue boy bustled up as his master's efforts became more hopeless at each attempt. The lad, like a wise fellow, dropped from his horse, and opening it with his hands, ran it back on foot. Jawleyford and Sponge then rode through. Canter, canter, canter, went Jawleyford, with an arm akimbo, head well up, legs well down, toes well pointed, as if he were going to a race, where his work would end on arriving, instead of to a fox-hunt, where it would only begin. [Illustration: JAWLEYFORD GOING TO THE HUNT] 'You are rather hard on the old nag, aren't you?' at length asked Sponge, as, having cleared the rushy, swampy park, they came upon the macadamized turnpike, and Jawleyford selected the middle of it as the scene of his further progression. 'Oh no!' replied Jawleyford, tit-tup-ing along with a loose rein, as if he was on the soundest, freshest-legged horse in the world; 'oh no! my horses are used to it.' 'Well, but if you mean to hunt him,' observed Sponge, 'he'll be blown before he gets to cover.' 'Get him in wind, my dear fellow,' replied Jawleyford, 'get him in wind,' touching the horse with the spur as he spoke. 'Faith, but if he was as well on his legs as he is in his wind, he'd not be amiss,' rejoined Sponge. So they cantered and trotted, and trotted and cantered away, Sponge thinking he could afford pace as well as Jawleyford. Indeed, a horse has only to become a hack, to be able to do double the work he was ever supposed to be capable of. But to the meet. 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. It seemed as if there had been a sudden rising of sportsmen. What brought them all out? What brought Mr. Puffington, the master of the Hanby hounds, out? What brought Blossomnose again? What Mr. Wake, Mr. Fossick, Mr. Fyle, who had all been out the day before? Reader, the news had spread throughout the country that there was a great writer down; and they wanted to see what he would say of them--they had come to sit for their portraits, in fact. There was a great gathering, at least for the Flat Hat Hunt, who seldom mustered above a dozen. Tom Washball came, in a fine new coat and new flat-fliped hat with a broad binding; also Mr. Sparks, of Spark Hall; Major Mark; Mr. Archer, of Cheam Lodge; Mr. Reeves, of Coxwell Green; Mr. Bliss, of Boltonshaw; Mr. Joyce, of Ebstone; Dr. Capon, of Calcot; Mr. Dribble, of Hook; Mr. Slade, of Three-Burrow Hill; and several others. Great was the astonishment of each as the other cast up. 'Why, here's Joe Reeves!' exclaimed Blossomnose. 'Who'd have thought of seeing you?' 'And who'd have thought of seeing _you_?' rejoined Reeves, shaking hands with the jolly old nose. 'Here's Tom Washball in time for once, I declare!' exclaimed Mr. Fyle, as Mr. Washball cantered up in apple-pie order. 'Wonders will never cease!' observed Fossick, looking Washy over. So the field sat in a ring about the hounds in the centre of which, as usual, were Jack and Lord Scamperdale, looking with their great tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and short grey whiskers trimmed in a curve up to their noses, like a couple of horned owls in hats. 'Here's the man on the cow!' exclaimed Jack, as he espied Sponge and Jawleyford rising the hill together, easing their horses by standing in their stirrups and holding on by their manes. 'You don't say so!' exclaimed Lord Scamperdale, turning his horse in the direction Jack was looking, and staring for hard life too. 'So there is, I declare!' observed he.' And who the deuce is this with him?' 'That ass Jawleyford, as I live!' exclaimed Jack, as the blue-coated servant now hove in sight. 'So it is!' said Lord Scamperdale; 'the confounded humbug!' 'This boy'll be after one of the young ladies,' observed Jack; 'not one of the writing chaps we thought he was.' 'Shouldn't wonder,' replied Lord Scamperdale; adding, in an undertone, 'I vote we have a rise out of old Jaw. I'll let you in for a good thing--you shall dine with him.' 'Not I,' replied Jack. 'You _shall_, though,' replied his lordship firmly. 'Pray don't!' entreated Jack. 'By the powers, if you don't,' rejoined his lordship, 'you shall not have a mount out of me for a month.' While this conversation was going on, Jawleyford and Sponge, having risen the hill, had resumed their seats in the saddle, and Jawleyford, setting himself in attitude, tickled his horse with his spur, and proceeded to canter becomingly up to the pack; Sponge and the groom following a little behind. 'Ah, Jawleyford, my dear fellow!' exclaimed Lord Scamperdale, putting his horse on a few steps to meet him as he came flourishing up. 'Ah, Jawleyford, my dear fellow, I'm delighted to see you,' extending a hand as he spoke. 'Jack, here, told me that he saw your flag flying as he passed, and I said what a pity it was but I'd known before; for Jawleyford, said I, is a real good fellow, one of the best fellows I know, and has asked me to dine so often that I'm almost ashamed to meet him; and it would have been such a nice opportunity to have volunteered a visit, the hounds being here, you see.' 'Oh, that's so kind of your lordship!' exclaimed Jawleyford, quite delighted--'that's so kind of your lordship--that's just what I like!--that's just what Mrs. Jawleyford likes!--that's just what we all like!--coming without fuss or ceremony, just as my friend Mr. Sponge, here, does. By the way, will your lordship give me leave to introduce my friend Mr. Sponge--my Lord Scamperdale.' Jawleyford suiting the action to the word, and manoeuvring the ceremony. 'Ah, I made Mr. Sponge's acquaintance yesterday,' observed his lordship drily, giving a sort of servants' touch of his hat as he scrutinized our friend through his formidable glasses, adding, 'To tell you the truth,' addressing himself in an underone to Sponge, 'I took you for one of those nasty writing chaps, who I 'bominate. But,' continued his lordship, returning to Jawleyford. 'I'll tell you what I said about the dinner. Jack, here, told me the flag was flying; and I said I only wished I'd known before, and I would certainly have proposed that Jack and I should dine with you, either to-day or to-morrow; but unfortunately I'd engaged myself to my Lord Barker's not five minutes before.' 'Ah, my lord!' exclaimed Jawleyford, throwing out his hand and shrugging his shoulders as if in despair, 'you tantalize me--you do indeed. You should have come, or said nothing about it. You distress me--you do indeed.' 'Well, I'm wrong, perhaps,' replied his lordship, patting Jawleyford encouragingly on the shoulder; 'but, however, I'll tell you what,' said he, 'Jack here's not engaged, and he shall come to you.' 'Most happy to see Mr.--ha--hum--haw--Jack--that's to say, Mr. Spraggon,' replied Jawleyford, bowing very low, and laying his hand on his heart, as if quite overpowered at the idea of the honour. 'Then, that's a bargain, Jack,' said his lordship, looking knowingly round at his much disconcerted friend; 'you dine and stay all night at Jawleyford Court to-morrow! and mind,' added he, 'make yourself 'greeable to the girls--ladies, that's to say.' 'Couldn't your lordship arrange it so that we might have the pleasure of seeing you both on some future day?' asked Jawleyford, anxious to avert the Jack calamity. 'Say next week,' continued he; 'or suppose you meet at the Court?' 'Ha--he--hum. Meet at the Court,' mumbled his lordship--'meet at the Court--ha--he--ha--hum--no;--got no foxes.' 'Plenty of foxes, I assure you, my lord!' exclaimed Jawleyford. 'Plenty of foxes!' repeated he. 'We never find them, then, somehow,' observed his lordship, drily; 'at least, none but those three-legged beggars in the laurels at the back of the stables.' 'Ah! that will be the fault of the hounds,' replied Jawleyford; 'they don't take sufficient time to draw--run through the covers too quickly.' 'Fault of the hounds be hanged!' exclaimed Jack, who was the champion of the pack generally. 'There's not a more patient, painstaking pack in the world than his lordship's.' 'Ah--well--ah--never mind that,' replied his lordship, 'Jaw and you can settle that point over your wine to-morrow; meanwhile, if your friend Mr. What's-his-name here, 'll get his horse,' continued his lordship, addressing himself to Jawleyford, but looking at Sponge, who was still on the piebald, 'we'll throw off.' 'Thank you, my lord,' replied Sponge; 'but I'll mount at the cover side. Sponge not being inclined to let the Flat Hat Hunt field see the difference of opinion that occasionally existed between the gallant brown and himself. 'As you please,' rejoined his lordship, 'as you please,' jerking his head at Frostyface, who forthwith gave the office to the hounds; whereupon all was commotion. Away the cavalcade went, and in less than five minutes the late bustling village resumed its wonted quiet; the old man on sticks, two crones gossiping at a door, a rag-or-anything-else-gatherer going about with a donkey, and a parcel of dirty children tumbling about on the green, being all that remained on the scene. All the able-bodied men had followed the hounds. Why the hounds had ever climbed the long hill seemed a mystery, seeing that they returned the way they came. Jawleyford, though sore disconcerted at having 'Jack' pawned upon him, stuck to my lord, and rode on his right with the air of a general. He felt he was doing his duty as an Englishman in thus patronizing the hounds--encouraging a manly spirit of independence, and promoting our unrivalled breed of horses. The post-boy trot at which hounds travel, to be sure, is not well adapted for dignity; but Jawleyford nourished and vapoured as well as he could under the circumstances, and considering they were going down hill. Lord Scamperdale rode along, laughing in his sleeve at the idea of the pleasant evening Jack and Jawleyford would have together, occasionally complimenting Jawleyford on the cut and condition of his horse, and advising him to be careful of the switching raspers with which the country abounded, and which might be fatal to his nice nutmeg--coloured trousers. The rest of the 'field' followed, the fall of the ground enabling them to see 'how thick Jawleyford was with my lord.' Old Blossomnose, who, we should observe, had slipped away unperceived on Jawleyford's arrival, took a bird's-eye view from the rear. Naughty Blossom was riding the horse that ought to have gone in the 'chay' to Jawleyford Court. CHAPTER XXIII THE GREAT RUN Our hero having inveigled the brown under lee of an out-house as the field moved along, was fortunate enough to achieve the saddle without disclosing the secrets of the stable; and as he rejoined the throng in all the pride of shape, action, and condition, even the top-sawyers, Fossick, Fyle, Bliss, and others, admitted that Hercules was not a bad-like horse; while the humbler-minded ones eyed Sponge with a mixture of awe and envy, thinking what a fine trade literature must be to stand such a horse. 'Is your friend What's-his-name, a workman?' asked Lord Scamperdale, nodding towards Sponge as he trotted Hercules gently past on the turf by the side of the road along which they were riding. 'Oh no,' replied Jawleyford tartly. 'Oh no--gentleman, man of property--' 'I did not mean was he a mechanic,' explained his lordship drily, 'but a workman; a good 'un across country, in fact.' His lordship working his arms as if he was going to set-to himself. 'Oh, a first-rate man!--first-rate man!' replied Jawleyford; 'beat them all at Laverick Wells.' 'I thought so,' observed his lordship; adding to himself, 'then Jack shall take the conceit out of him.' 'Jack!' halloaed he over his shoulder to his friend, who was jogging a little behind; 'Jack!' repeated he, 'that Mr. Something--' '_Sponge_!' observed Jawleyford, with an emphasis. 'That Mr. Sponge,' continued his lordship, 'is a stranger in the country: have the kindness to take _care_ of him. You know what I mean?' 'Just so,' replied Jack; 'I'll take care of him.' 'Most polite of your lordship, I'm sure,' said Jawleyford, with a low bow, and laying his hand on his breast. 'I can assure you I shall never forget the marked attention I have received from your lordship this day.' 'Thank you for nothing,' grunted his lordship to himself. Bump, bump; trot, trot; jabber, jabber, on they went as before. They had now got to the cover, Tickler Gorse, and ere the last horsemen had reached the last angle of the long hill, Frostyface was rolling about on foot in the luxuriant evergreen; now wholly visible, now all but overhead, like a man buffeting among the waves of the sea. Save Frosty's cheery voice encouraging the invisible pack to 'wind him!' and 'rout him out!' an injunction that the shaking of the gorse showed they willingly obeyed, and an occasional exclamation from Jawleyford, of 'Beautiful! beautiful!--never saw better hounds!--can't be a finer pack!' not a sound disturbed the stillness of the scene. The waggoners on the road stopped their wains, the late noisy ploughmen leaned vacantly on their stilts, the turnip-pullers stood erect in air, and the shepherds' boys deserted the bleating flocks;--all was life and joy and liberty--'Liberty, equality, and foxhunt-ity!' 'Yo--i--cks, wind him! Y--o--o--icks! rout him out!' went Frosty; occasionally varying the entertainment with a loud crack of his heavy whip, when he could get upon a piece of rising ground to clear the thong. 'Tally-ho!' screamed Jawleyford, hoisting the Bumperkin Yeomanry cap in the air. 'Tally-ho!' repeated he, looking triumphantly round, as much as to say, 'What a clever boy am I!' 'Hold your noise!' roared Jack, who was posted a little below. 'Don't you see it's a hare?' added he, amidst the uproarious mirth of the company. 'I haven't your great staring specs on, or I should have seen he hadn't a tail,' retorted Jawleyford, nettled at the tone in which Jack had addressed him. 'Tail be--!' replied Jack, with a sneer; 'who but a tailor would call it a tail?' Just then a light low squeak of a whimper was heard in the thickest part of the gorse, and Frostyface cheered the hound to the echo. 'Hoick to, Pillager! H--o--o--ick!' screamed he, in a long-drawn note, that thrilled through every frame, and set the horses a-capering. Ere Frosty's prolonged screech was fairly finished, there was such an outburst of melody, and such a shaking of the gorse-bushes, as plainly showed there was no safety for Reynard in cover; and great was the bustle and commotion among the horsemen. Mr. Fossick lowered his hat-string and ran the fox's tooth through the buttonhole; Fyle drew his girths; Washball took a long swig at his hunting-horn-shaped monkey; Major Mark and Mr. Archer threw away their cigar ends; Mr. Bliss drew on his dogskin gloves; Mr. Wake rolled the thong of his whip round the stick, to be better able to encounter his puller; Mr. Sparks got a yokel to take up a link of his curb; George Smith and Joe Smith looked at their watches; Sandy McGregor, the factor, filled his great Scotch nose with Irish snuff, exclaiming, as he dismissed the balance from his fingers by a knock against his thigh, 'Oh, my mon, aw think this tod will gie us a ran!' while Blossomnose might be seen stealing gently forward, on the far side of a thick fence, for the double purpose of shirking Jawleyford and getting a good start. In the midst of these and similar preparations for the fray, up went a whip's cap at the low end of the cover; and a volley of 'Tallyhos' burst from our friends, as the fox, whisking his white-tipped brush in the air, was seen stealing away over the grassy hill beyond. What a commotion was there! How pale some looked! How happy others! 'Sing out, Jack! for heaven's sake, sing out!' exclaimed Lord Scamperdale; an enthusiastic sportsman, always as eager for a run as if he had never seen one. 'Sing out, Jack; or, by Jove, they'll override 'em at starting!' 'HOLD HARD, gentlemen,' roared Jack, clapping spurs into his grey, or rather, into his lordship's grey, dashing in front, and drawing the horse across the road to stop the progression of the field. 'HOLD HARD, _one minute_!' repeated Jack, standing erect in his stirrups, and menacing them with his whip (a most formidable one). 'Whatever you do, _pray_ let them get away! _Pray_ don't spoil your own sport! Pray remember they're his lordship's hounds!--that they cost him five-and-twenty under'd--two thousand five under'd a year! And where, let me ax, with wheat down to nothing, would you get another, if he was to throw up?' As Jack made this inquiry, he took a hurried glance at the now pouring-out pack; and seeing they were safe away, he wiped the foam from his mouth on his sleeve, dropped into his saddle, and, catching his horse short round by the head, clapped spurs into his sides, and galloped away, exclaiming: 'Now, ye tinkers, we'll all start fair!' Then there was such a scrimmage! such jostling and elbowing among the jealous ones; such ramming and cramming among the eager ones; such pardon-begging among the polite ones; such spurting of ponies, such clambering of cart-horses. All were bent on going as far as they could--all except Jawleyford, who sat curvetting and prancing in the patronizing sort of way gentlemen do who encourage hounds for the sake of the manly spirit the sport engenders, and the advantage hunting is of in promoting our unrivalled breed of horses. His lordship having slipped away, horn in hand, under pretence of blowing the hounds out of cover, as soon as he set Jack at the field, had now got a good start, and, horse well in hand, was sailing away in their wake. 'F-o-o-r-r-ard!' screamed Frostyface, coming up alongside of him, holding his horse--a magnificent thoroughbred bay--well by the head, and settling himself into his saddle as he went. 'F-o-r-rard!' screeched his lordship, thrusting his spectacles on to his nose. 'Twang--twang--twang,' went the huntsman's deep-sounding horn. 'T'weet--t'weet--t'weet,' went his lordship's shriller one. 'In for a stinger, my lurd,' observed Jack, returning his horn to the case. 'Hope so,' replied his lordship, pocketing his. They then flew the first fence together. 'F-o-r-r-ard!' screamed Jack in the air, as he saw the hounds packing well together, and racing with a breast-high scent. 'F-o-r-rard!' screamed his lordship, who was a sort of echo to his huntsman, just as Jack Spraggon was echo to his lordship. 'He's away for Gunnersby Craigs,' observed Jack, pointing that way, for they were a good ten miles off. 'Hope so,' replied his lordship, for whom the distance could never be too great, provided the pace corresponded. 'F-o-o-r-rard!' screamed Jack. 'F-o-r-rard!' screeched his lordship. So they went flying and 'forrarding' together; none of the field--thanks to Jack Spraggon--being able to overtake them. 'Y-o-o-nder he goes!' at last cried Frosty, taking off his cap as he viewed the fox, some half-mile ahead, stealing away round the side of Newington Hill. 'Tallyho!' screeched his lordship, riding with his flat hat in the air, by way of exciting the striving field to still further exertion. 'He's a good 'un!' exclaimed Frosty, eyeing the fox's going. 'He is that!' replied his lordship, staring at him with all his might. Then they rode on, and were presently rounding Newington Hill themselves, the hounds packing well together, and carrying a famous head. His lordship now looked to see what was going on behind. Scrambleford Hill was far in the rear. Jawleyford and the boy in blue were altogether lost in the distance. A quarter of a mile or so this way were a couple of dots of horsemen, one on a white, the other on a dark colour--most likely Jones, the keeper, and Farmer Stubble, on the foaly mare. Then, a little nearer, was a man in a hedge, trying to coax his horse after him, stopping the way of two boys in white trousers, whose ponies looked like rats. Again, a little nearer, were some of the persevering ones--men who still hold on in the forlorn hopes of a check--all dark-coated, and mostly trousered. Then came the last of the red-coats--Tom Washball, Charley Joyce, and Sam Sloman, riding well in the first flight of second horsemen--his lordship's pad-groom, Mr. Fossick's man in drab with a green collar, Mr. Wake's in blue, also a lad in scarlet and a flat hat, with a second horse for the huntsman. Drawing still nearer came the ruck--men in red, men in brown, men in livery, a farmer or two in fustian, all mingled together; and a few hundred yards before these, and close upon his lordship, were the _élite_ of the field--five men in scarlet and one in black. Let us see who they are. By the powers, Mr. Sponge is first!--Sponge sailing away at his ease, followed by Jack, who is staring at him through his great lamps, longing to launch out at him, but as yet wanting an excuse; Sponge having ridden with judgement--judgement, at least, in everything except in having taken the lead of Jack. After Jack comes old black-booted Blossomnose; and Messrs. Wake, Fossick, and Fyle, complete our complement of five. They are all riding steadily and well; all very irate, however, at the stranger for going before them, and ready to back Jack in anything he may say or do. On, on they go; the hounds still pressing forward, though not carrying quite so good a head as before. In truth, they have run four miles in twenty minutes; pretty good going anywhere except upon paper, where they always go unnaturally fast. However, there they are, still pressing on, though with considerably less music than before. After rounding Newington Hill, they got into a wilder and worse sort of country, among moorish, ill-cultivated land, with cold unwholesome-looking fallows. The day, too, seemed changing for the worse; a heavy black cloud hanging overhead. The hounds were at length brought to their noses. His lordship, who had been riding all eyes, ears, and fears, foresaw the probability of this; and pulling-to his horse, held up his hand, the usual signal for Jack to 'sing out' and stop the field. Sponge saw the signal, but, unfortunately, Hercules didn't; and tearing along with his head to the ground, resolutely bore our friend not only past his lordship, but right on to where the now stooping pack were barely feathering on the line. Then Jack and his lordship sang out together. '_Hold hard!_' screeched his lordship, in a dreadful state of excitement. 'HOLD HARD!' thundered Jack. Sponge _was_ holding hard--hard enough to split the horse's jaws, but the beast would go on, notwithstanding. 'By the powers, he's among 'em again!' shouted his lordship, as the resolute beast, with his upturned head almost pulled round to Sponge's knee, went star-gazing on like the blind man in Regent Street. 'Sing out Jack! sing out! for heaven's sake sing out,' shrieked his lordship, shutting his eyes, as he added, 'or he'll kill every man jack of them.' 'NOW, SUR!' roared Jack, 'can't you steer that 'ere aggravatin' quadruped of yours?' 'Oh, you pestilential son of a pontry-maid!' screeched his lordship, as Brilliant ran yelping away from under Sponge's horse's feet. 'Sing out, Jack! sing out!' gasped his lordship again. 'Oh, you scandalous, hypocritical, rusty-booted, numb-handed son of a puffing corn-cutter, why don't you turn your attention to feeding hens, cultivating cabbages, or making pantaloons for small folk, instead of killing hounds in this wholesale way?' roared Jack; an inquiry that set him foaming again. 'Oh, you unsightly, sanctified, idolatrous, Bagnigge-Wells coppersmith, you think because I'm a lord, and can't swear or use coarse language, that you may do what you like; rot you, sir, I'll present you with a testimonial! I'll settle a hundred a year upon you if you'll quit the country. By the powers, they're away again!' added his lordship, who, with one eye on Sponge and the other on the pack, had been watching Frosty lifting them over the bad scenting-ground, till, holding them on to a hedgerow beyond, they struck the scent on good sound pasture, and went away at score, every hound throwing his tongue, and filling the air with joyful melody. Away they swept like a hurricane. 'F-o-o-rard!' was again the cry. 'Hang it, Jack,' exclaimed Lord Scamperdale, laying his hand on his _double's_ shoulder, as they galloped alongside of each other, 'Hang it, Jack, see if you can't sarve out this unrighteous, mahogany-booted, rattle-snake. _Do_ if you die for it!--I'll bury your remainders genteelly--patent coffin with brass nails, all to yourself--put Frosty and all the fellows in black, and raise a white marble monument to your memory, declaring you were the most spotless virtuous man under the sun.' 'Let me off dining with Jaw, and I'll do my best,' replied Jack. 'Done!' screamed his lordship, flourishing his right arm in the air, as he flew over a great stone wall. A good many of the horses and sportsmen too had had enough before the hounds checked; and the quick way Frosty lifted them and hit off the scent, did not give them much time to recruit. Many of them now sat hat in hand, mopping, and puffing, and turning their red perspiring faces to the wind. 'Poough,' gasped one, as if he was going to be sick; 'Puff,' went another; 'Oh! but it's 'ot!' exclaimed a third, pulling off his limp neckcloth; 'Wonder if there's any ale hereabouts,' cried a fourth; 'Terrible run!' observed a fifth; 'Ten miles at least,' gasped another. Meanwhile the hounds went streaming on; and it is wonderful how soon those who don't follow are left hopelessly in the rear. Of the few that did follow, Mr. Sponge, however, was one. Nothing daunted by the compliments that had been paid him, he got Hercules well in hand; and the horse dropping again on the bit, resumed his place in front, going as strong and steadily as ever. Thus he went, throwing the mud in the faces of those behind, regardless of the oaths and imprecations that followed; Sponge knowing full well they would do the same by him if they could. 'All jealousy,' said Sponge, spurring his horse. 'Never saw such a jealous set of dogs in my life.' An accommodating lane soon presented itself, along which they all pounded, with the hounds running parallel through the enclosures on the left; Sponge sending such volleys of pebbles and mud in his rear as made it advisable to keep a good way behind him. The line was now apparently for Firlingham Woods; but on nearing the thatched cottage on Gasper Heath, the fox, most likely being headed, had turned short to the right; and the chase now lay over Sheeplow Water meadows, and so on to Bolsover brick-fields, when the pack again changed from hunting to racing, and the pace for a time was severe. His lordship having got his second horse at the turn, was ready for the tussle, and plied away vigorously, riding, as usual, with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with all his strength; while Jack, still on the grey, came plodding diligently along in the rear, saving his horse as much as he could. His lordship charged a stiff flight of rails in the brick-fields; while Jack, thinking to save his, rode at a weak place in the fence, a little higher up, and in an instant was soused overhead in a clay-hole. 'Duck under, Jack! duck under!' screamed his lordship, as Jack's head rose to the surface. 'Duck under! you'll have it full directly!' added he, eyeing Sponge and the rest coming up. Sponge, however, saw the splash, and turning a little lower down, landed safe on sound ground; while poor Blossomnose, who was next, went floundering overhead also. But the pace was too good to stop to fish them out. 'Dash it,' said Sponge, looking at them splashing about, 'but that was a near go for me!' Jack being thus disposed of, Sponge, with increased confidence, rose in his stirrups, easing the redoubtable Hercules; and patting him on the shoulder, at the same time that he gave him the gentlest possible touch of the spur, exclaimed, 'By the powers, we'll show these old Flat Hats the trick!' He then commenced humming: Mister Sponge, the raspers taking, Sets the junkers' nerves a shaking; and riding cheerfully on, he at length found himself on the confines of a wild rough-looking moor, with an undulating range of hills in the distance. Frostyface and Lord Scamperdale here for the first time diverged from the line the hounds were running, and made for the neck of a smooth, flat, rather inviting-looking piece of ground, instead of crossing it, Sponge, thinking to get a niche, rode to it; and the 'deeper and deeper still' sort of flounder his horse made soon let him know that he was in a bog. The impetuous Hercules rushed and reared onwards as if to clear the wide expanse; and alighting still lower, shot Sponge right overhead in the middle. [Illustration] '_That's_ cooked _your_ goose!' exclaimed his lordship, eyeing Sponge and his horse floundering about in the black porridge-like mess. 'Catch my horse!' hallooed Sponge to the first whip, who came galloping up as Hercules was breasting his way out again. 'Catch him yourself,' grunted the man, galloping on. A peat-cutter, more humane, received the horse as he emerged from the black sea, exclaiming, as the now-piebald Sponge came lobbing after on foot, 'A, sir! but ye should niver set tee to ride through sic a place as that!' Sponge, having generously rewarded the man with a fourpenny piece, for catching his horse and scraping the thick of the mud off him, again mounted, and cantered round the point he should at first have gone; but his chance was out--the farther he went, the farther he was left behind; till at last, pulling up, he stood watching the diminishing pack, rolling like marbles over the top of Rotherjade Hill, followed by his lordship hugging his horse round the neck as he went, and the huntsman and whips leading and driving theirs up before them. 'Nasty jealous old beggar!' said Sponge, eyeing his lessening lordship disappearing over the hill too. Sponge then performed the sickening ceremony of turning away from hounds running; not but that he might have plodded on on the line, and perhaps seen or heard what became of the fox, but Sponge didn't hunt on those terms. Like a good many other gentlemen, he would be first, or nowhere. If it was any consolation to him, he had plenty of companions in misfortune. The line was dotted with horsemen back to the brick-fields. The first person he overtook wending his way home in the discontented, moody humour of a thrown-out man, was Mr. Puffington master of the Hanby hounds; at whose appearance at the meet we expressed our surprise. Neighbouring masters of hounds are often more or less jealous of each other. No man in the master-of-hound world is too insignificant for censure. Lord Scamperdale _was_ an undoubted sportsman; while poor Mr. Puffington thought of nothing but how to be thought one. Hearing the mistaken rumour that a great writer was down, he thought that his chance of immortality was arrived; and, ordering his best horse, and putting on his best apparel, had braved the jibes and sneers of Jack and his lordship for the purpose of scraping acquaintance with the stranger. In that he had been foiled: there was no time at the meet to get introduced, neither could he get jostled beside Sponge in going down to the cover; while the quick find, the quick get away, followed by the quick thing we have described, were equally unfavourable to the undertaking. Nevertheless, Mr. Puffington had held on beyond the brick-fields; and had he but persevered a little farther, he would have had the satisfaction of helping Mr. Sponge out of the bog. Sponge now, seeing a red coat a little before, trotted on, and quickly overtook a fine nippy, satin-stocked, dandified looking gentleman, with marvellously smart leathers and boots--a great contrast to the large, roomy, bargemanlike costume of the members of the Flat Hat Hunt. 'You're not hurt, I hope?' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, with well-feigned anxiety, as he looked at Mr. Sponge's black-daubed clothes. 'Oh no!' replied Sponge. 'Oh no!--fell soft--fell soft. More dirt, less hurt--more dirt, less hurt.' 'Why, you've been in a bog!' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, eyeing the much-stained Hercules. 'Almost over head,' replied Sponge. 'Scamperdale saw me going, and hadn't the grace to halloa.' 'Ah, that's like him,' replied Mr. Puffington, 'that's like him: there's nothing pleases him so much as getting fellows into grief.' 'Not very polite to a stranger,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'No, it isn't,' replied Mr. Puffington, 'no, it isn't; far from it indeed--far from it; but, low be it spoken,' added he, 'his lordship is only a roughish sort of customer.' 'So he is,' replied Mr. Sponge, who thought it fine to abuse a nobleman. 'The fact is,' said Mr. Puffington, 'these Flat Hat chaps are all snobs. They think there are no such fine fellows as themselves under the sun; and if ever a stranger looks near them, they make a point of being as rude and disagreeable to him as they possibly can. This is what they call keeping the hunt select.' 'Indeed,' observed Mr. Sponge, recollecting how they had complimented him, adding, 'they seem a queer set.' 'There's a fellow they call "Jack,"' observed Mr. Puffington, 'who acts as a sort of bulldog to his lordship, and worries whoever his lordship sets him upon. He got into a clay-hole a little farther back, and a precious splashing he was making, along with the chaplain, old Blossomnose.' 'Ah, I saw him,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'You should come and see _my_ hounds,' observed Mr. Puffington. 'What are they?' asked Sponge. 'The Hanby,' replied Mr. Puffington. 'Oh! then you are Mr. Puffington,' observed Sponge, who had a sort of general acquaintance with all the hounds and masters--indeed, with all the meets of all the hounds in the kingdom--which he read in the weekly lists in _Bell's Life_, just as he read _Mogg's Cab Fares_. 'Then you are Mr. Puffington?' observed Sponge. 'The same,' replied the stranger. 'I'll have a look at you,' observed Sponge, adding, 'do you take in horses?' 'Yours, of course,' replied Mr. Puffington, bowing; adding something about great public characters, which Sponge didn't understand. 'I'll be down upon you, as the extinguisher said to the rushlight,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'Do,' said Mr. Puffington; 'come before the frost. Where are you staying now?' 'I'm at Jawleyford's,' replied our friend. 'Indeed!--Jawleyford's, are you?' repeated Mr. Puffington. 'Good fellow, Jawleyford--gentleman, Jawleyford. How long do you stay?' 'Why, I haven't made up my mind,' replied Sponge. 'Have no thoughts of budging at present.' 'Ah, well--good quarters,' said Mr. Puffington, who now smelt a rat; 'good quarters--nice girls--fine fortune--fine place, Jawleyford Court. Well, book me for the next visit,' added he. 'I will,' said Sponge, 'and no mistake. What do they call your shop?' 'Hanby House,' replied Mr. Puffington; 'Hanby House--anybody can tell you where Hanby House is.' 'I'll not forget,' said Mr. Sponge, booking it in his mind, and eyeing his victim. 'I'll show you a fine pack of hounds,' said Mr. Puffington; 'far finer animals than those of old Scamperdale's--steady, true hunting hounds, that won't go a yard without a scent--none of your jealous, flashy, frantic devils, that will tear over half a township without one, and are always looking out for "halloas" and assistance--' Mr. Puffington was interrupted in the comparison he was about to draw between his lordship's hounds and his, by arriving at the Bolsover brick-fields, and seeing Jack and Blossomnose, horse in hand, running to and fro, while sundry countrymen blobbed about in the clay-hole they had so recently occupied. Tom Washball, Mr. Wake, Mr. Fyle, Mr. Fossick, and several dark-coated horsemen and boys were congregated around. Jack had lost his spectacles, and Blossomnose his whip, and the countrymen were diving for them. 'Not hurt, I hope?' said Mr. Puffington, in the most dandified tone of indifference, as he rode up to where Jack and Blossomnose were churning the water in their boots, stamping up and down, trying to get themselves warm. 'Hurt be hanged!' replied Jack, who had a frightful squint, that turned his eyes inside out when he was in a passion: 'hurt be hanged!' said he; 'might have been drownded, for anything you'd have cared.' 'I should have been sorry for that,' replied Mr. Puffington, adding, 'the Flat Hat Hunt could ill afford to lose so useful and ornamental a member.' 'I don't know what the Flat Hat Hunt can afford to lose,' spluttered Jack, who hadn't got all the clay out of his mouth; 'but I know they can afford to do without the company of certain gentlemen who shall be nameless,' said he, looking at Sponge and Puffington as he thought, but in reality showing nothing but the whites of his eyes. 'I told you so,' said Puffington, jerking his head towards Jack, as Sponge and he turned their horses' heads to ride away; 'I told you so,' repeated he; 'that's a specimen of their style'; adding, 'they are the greatest set of ruffians under the sun.' The new acquaintances then jogged on together as far as the cross-roads at Stewley, when Puffington, having bound Sponge in his own recognizance to come to him when he left Jawleyford Court, pointed him out his way, and with a most hearty shake of the hands the new-made friends parted. CHAPTER XXIV LORD SCAMPERDALE AT HOME [Illustration] We fear our fair friends will expect something gay from the above heading--lamps and flambeaux outside, fiddlers, feathers, and flirters in. Nothing of the sort, fair ladies--nothing of the sort. Lord Scamperdale 'at home' simply means that his lordship was not out hunting, that he had got his dirty boots and breeches off, and dry tweeds and tartans on. Lord Scamperdale was the eighth earl; and, according to the usual alternating course of great English families--one generation living and the next starving--it was his lordship's turn to live; but the seventh earl having been rather unreasonable in the length of his lease, the present earl, who during the lifetime of his father was Lord Hardup, had contracted such parsimonious habits, that when he came into possession he could not shake them off; and but for the fortunate friendship of Abraham Brown, the village blacksmith, who had given his young idea a sporting turn, entering him with ferrets and rabbits, and so training him on with terriers and rat-catching, badger-baiting and otter-hunting, up to the noble sport of fox-hunting itself, in all probability his lordship would have been a regular miser. As it was, he did not spend a halfpenny upon anything but hunting; and his hunting, though well, was still economically done, costing him some couple of thousand a year, to which, for the sake of euphony, Jack used to add an extra five hundred; 'two thousand five under'd a year, five-and-twenty under'd a year,' sounding better, as Jack thought, and more imposing, than a couple of thousand, or two thousand, a year. There were few days on which Jack didn't inform the field what the hounds cost his lordship, or rather what they didn't cost him. Woodmansterne, his lordship's principal residence, was a fine place. It stood in an undulating park of 800 acres, with its church, and its lakes, and its heronry, and its decoy, and its racecourse, and its varied grasses of the choicest kinds, for feeding the numerous herds of deer, so well known at Temple Bar and Charing Cross as the Woodmansterne venison. The house was a modern edifice, built by the sixth earl, who, having been a 'liver,' had run himself aground by his enormous outlay on this Italian structure, which was just finished when he died. The fourth earl, who, we should have stated, was a 'liver' too, was a man of _vertù_--a great traveller and collector of coins, pictures, statues, marbles, and curiosities generally--things that are very dear to buy, but oftentimes extremely cheap when sold; and, having collected a vast quantity from all parts of the world (no easy feat in those days), he made them heirlooms, and departed this life, leaving the next earl the pleasure of contemplating them. The fifth earl having duly starved through life, then made way for the sixth; who, finding such a quantity of valuables stowed away, as he thought, in rather a confined way, sent to London for a first-rate architect. Sir Thomas Squareall (who always posted with four horses), who forthwith pulled down the old brick-and-stone Elizabethan mansion, and built the present splendid Italian structure, of the finest polished stone, at an expense of--furniture and all--say 120,000_l._; Sir Thomas's estimates being 30,000_l._ The seventh earl of course they starved; and the present lord, at the age of forty-three, found himself in possession of house, and coins, and curiosities; and, best of all, of some 90,000_l._ in the funds, which had quietly rolled up during the latter part of his venerable parent's existence. His lordship then took counsel with himself--first, whether he should marry or remain single; secondly, whether he should live or starve. Having considered the subject with all the attention a limited allowance of brains permitted, he came to the resolution that the second proposition depended a good deal upon the first; 'for,' said he to himself, 'if I marry, my lady, perhaps, may _make_ me live; and therefore,' said he, 'perhaps I'd better remain single.' At all events, he came to the determination not to marry in a hurry; and until he did, he felt there was no occasion for him to inconvenience himself by living. So he had the house put away in brown holland, the carpets rolled up, the pictures covered, the statues shrouded in muslin, the cabinets of curiosities locked, the plate secured, the china closeted, and everything arranged with the greatest care against the time, which he put before him in the distance like a target, when he should marry and begin to live. At first he gave two or three great dinners a year, about the height of the fruit season, and when it was getting too ripe for carriage to London by the old coaches--when a grand airing of the state-rooms used to take place, and ladies from all parts of the county used to sit shivering with their bare shoulders, all anxious for the honours of the head of the table. His lordship always held out that he was a marrying man; but even if he hadn't they would have come all the same, an unmarried man being always clearly on the cards; and though he was stumpy, and clumsy, and ugly, with as little to say for himself as could well be conceived, they all agreed that he was a most engaging, attractive man--quite a pattern of a man. Even on horseback, and in his hunting clothes, in which he looked far the best, he was only a coarse, square, bull-headed looking man, with hard, dry, round, matter-of-fact features, that never looked young, and yet somehow never get old. Indeed, barring the change from brown to grey of his short stubbly whiskers, which he trained with great care into a curve almost on to his cheek-bone, he looked very little older at the period of which we are writing than he did a dozen years before, when he was Lord Hardup. These dozen years, however, had brought him down in his doings. The dinners had gradually dwindled away altogether, and he had had all the large tablecloths and napkins rough dried and locked away against he got married; an event that he seemed more anxious to provide for the more unlikely it became. He had also abdicated the main body of the mansion, and taken up his quarters in what used to be the steward's room; into which he could creep quietly by a side door opening from the outer entrance, and so save frequent exposure to the cold and damp of the large cathedral-like hall beyond. Through the steward's room was what used to be the muniment room, which he converted into a bedroom for himself; and a little farther along the passage was another small chamber, made out of what used to be the plate-room, whereof Jack, or whoever was in office, had the possession. All three rooms were furnished in the roughest, coarsest, homeliest way--his lordship wishing to keep all the good furniture against he got married. The sitting-room, or parlour as his lordship called it, had an old grey drugget for a carpet, an old round black mahogany table on castors, that the last steward had ejected as too bad for him, four semi-circular wooden-bottomed walnut smoking-chairs; an old spindle-shanked sideboard, with very little middle, over which swung a few bookshelves, with the termination of their green strings surmounted by a couple of foxes' brushes. Small as the shelves were, they were larger than his lordship wanted--two books, one for Jack and one for himself, being all they contained; while the other shelves were filled with hunting-horns, odd spurs, knots of whipcord, piles of halfpence, lucifer-match boxes, gun-charges, and such-like miscellaneous articles. His lordship's fare was as rough as his furniture. He was a great admirer of tripe, cow-heel, and delicacies of that kind; he had tripe twice a week--boiled one day, fried another. He was also a great patron of beefsteaks, which he ate half-raw, with slices of cold onion served in a saucer with water. It was a beefsteak-and-batter-pudding day on which the foregoing run took place; and his lordship and Jack having satisfied nature off their respective dishes--for they only had vegetables in common--and having finished off with some very strong Cheshire cheese, wheeled their chairs to the fire, while Bags the butler cleared the table and placed it between them. They were dressed in full suits of flaming large-check red-and-yellow tartans, the tartan of that noble clan the 'Stunners,' with black-and-white Shetland hose and red slippers. His lordship and Jack had related their mutual adventures by cross visits to each other's bedrooms while dressing: and, dinner being announced by the time they were ready, they had fallen to, and applied themselves diligently to the victuals, and now very considerately unbuttoned their many-pocketed waistcoats and stuck out their legs, to give it a fair chance of digesting. They seldom spoke much until his lordship had had his nap, which he generally took immediately after dinner; but on this particular night he sat bending forward in his chair, picking his teeth and looking at his toes, evidently ill at ease in his mind. Jack guessed the cause, but didn't say anything. Sponge, he thought, had beat him. At length his lordship threw himself back in his chair, and stretching his little queer legs out before him, began to breathe thicker and thicker, till at last he got the melody up to a grunt. It was not the fine generous snore of a sleep that he usually enjoyed, but short, fitful, broken naps, that generally terminated in spasmodic jerks of the arms or legs. These grew worse, till at last all four went at once, like the limbs of a Peter Waggey, when, throwing himself forward with a violent effort, he awoke; and finding his horse was not a-top of him, as he thought, he gave vent to his feelings in the following ejaculations: 'Oh, Jack, I'm onhappy!' exclaimed he. 'I'm distressed!' continued he. 'I'm wretched!' added he, slapping his knees. 'I'm perfectly _miserable_!' he concluded, with a strong emphasis on the 'miserable.' 'What's the matter?' asked Jack, who was half-asleep himself. [Illustration: HIS LORDSHIP AND JACK] 'Oh, that Mister Something!--he'll be the death of me!' observed his lordship. 'I thought so,' replied Jack; 'what's the chap been after now?' 'I dreamt he'd killed old Lablache--best hound I have,' replied his lordship. 'He be ----,' grunted Jack. 'Ah, it's all very well for you to say "he be this" and "he be that," but I can tell you what, that fellow is going to be a very awkward customer--a terrible thorn in my side.' 'Humph!' grunted Jack, who didn't see how. 'There's mischief about that fellow,' continued his lordship, pouring himself out half a tumbler of gin, and filling it up with water. 'There's mischief about the fellow. I don't like his looks--I don't like his coat--I don't like his boots--I don't like anything about him. I'd rather see the back of him than the front. He must be got rid of,' added his lordship. 'Well, I did my best to-day, I'm sure,' replied Jack. 'I was deuced near wanting the patent coffin you were so good as to promise me.' 'You did your work well,' replied his lordship; 'you did your work well; and you shall have my other specs till I can get you a new pair from town; and if you'll serve me again, I'll remember you in my will--I'll leave you something handsome.' 'I'm your man,' replied Jack. 'I never was so bothered with a fellow in my life,' observed his lordship. 'Captain Topsawyer was bad enough, and always pressed far too close on the hounds, but he would pull up at a check; but this rusty-booted 'bomination seems to think the hounds are kept for him to ride over. He must be got rid of somehow,' repeated his lordship; 'for we shall have no peace while he's here.' 'If he's after either of the Jawley girls, he'll be bad to shake off,' observed Jack. 'That's just the point,' replied his lordship, quaffing off his gin with the air of a man most thoroughly thirsty; 'that's just the point,' repeated he, setting down his tumbler. 'I think if he is, I could cook his goose for him.' 'How so?' asked Jack, drinking off his glass. 'Why, I'll tell you,' replied his lordship, replenishing his tumbler, and passing the old gilt-labelled blue bottle over to Jack; 'you see, Frosty's a cunning old file, picks up all the news and gossip of the country when he's out at exercise with the hounds, or in going to cover--knows everything!--who licks his wife, and whose wife licks him--who's after such a girl, and so on--and he's found out somehow that this Mr. What's-his-name isn't the man of metal he's passing for.' 'Indeed,' exclaimed Jack, raising his eyebrows, and squinting his eyes inside out; Jack's opinion of a man being entirely regulated by his purse. 'It's a fact,' said his lordship, with a knowing shake of his head. 'As we were toddling home with the hounds, I said to Frosty, "I hope that Mr. Something's comfortable in his bath"--meaning Gobblecow Bog, which he rode into. "Why," said Frosty, "it's no great odds what comes of such rubbage as that." Now, Frosty, you know, in a general way, is a most polite, fair-spoken man, specially before Christmas, when he begins to look for the tips; and as we are not much troubled with strangers, thanks to your sensible way of handling them, I thought Frosty would have made the most of this natural son of Dives, and been as polite to him as possible. However, he was evidently no favourite of Frosty's. So I just asked--not that one likes to be familiar with servants, you know, but still this brown-booted beggar is enough to excite one's curiosity and make any one go out of one's way a little--so I just asked Frosty what he knew about him. "All over the left," said Frosty, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder, and looking as knowing as a goose with one eye; "all over the left," repeated he. "What's over the left?" said I. "Why, this Mr. Sponge," said he. "How so?" asked I. "Why," said Frosty, "he's come gammonin' down here that he's a great man--full of money, and horses, and so on; but it's all my eye, he's no more a great man than I am."' 'The deuce!' exclaimed Jack, who had sat squinting and listening intently as his lordship proceeded. 'Well, now, hang me, I thought he was a snob the moment I saw him,' continued he; Jack being one of those clever gentlemen who know everything after they are told. '"Well, how do you know, Jack?" said I to Frosty. "Oh, I knows," replied he, as if he was certain about it. However, I wasn't satisfied without knowing too; and, as we kept jogging on, we came to the old Coach and Horses, and I said to Jack, "We may as well have a drop of something to warm us." So we halted, and had glasses of brandy apiece, whips and all; and then, as we jogged on again, I just said to Jack casually, "Did you say it was Mr. Blossomnose told you about old Brown Boots?" "No--Blossomnose--no," replied he, as if Blossom never had anything half so good to tell; "it was a young woman," said he, in an undertone, "who told me, and she had it from old Brown Boots's groom."' 'Well, that's good,' observed Jack, diving his hands into the very bottom of his great tartan trouser pockets, and shooting his legs out before him; 'well, that's good,' repeated he, falling into a sort of reverie. 'Well, but what can we make of it?' at length inquired he, after a long pause, during which he ran the facts through his mind, and thought they could not be much ruder to Sponge than they had been. 'What can we make of it?' said he. 'The fellow can ride, and we can't prevent him hunting; and his having nothing only makes him less careful of his neck.' 'Why, that was just what I thought,' replied Lord Scamperdale, taking another tumbler of gin; 'that was just what I thought--the fellow can ride, and we can't prevent him; and just as I settled that in my sleep, I thought I saw him come staring along, with his great brown horse's head in the air, and crash right a-top of old Lablache. But I see my way clearer with him now. But help yourself,' continued his lordship, passing the gin-bottle over to Jack, feeling that what he had to say required a little recommendation. 'I think I can turn Frosty's information to some account.' 'I don't see how,' observed Jack, replenishing his glass. '_I_ do, though,' replied his lordship, adding, 'but I must have your assistance.' 'Well, anything in moderation,' replied Jack, who had had to turn his hand to some very queer jobs occasionally. 'I'll tell you what _I_ think,' observed his lordship. 'I think there are two ways of getting rid of this haughty Philistine--this unclean spirit--this 'bomination of a man. I think, in the first place, if old Chatterbox knew that he had nothing, he would very soon bow him out of Jawleyford Court; and in the second, that we might get rid of him by buying his horses.' 'Well,' replied Jack, 'I don't know but you're right. Chatterbox would soon wash his hands of him, as he has done of many promising young gentlemen before, if he has nothing; but people differ so in their ideas of what nothing consists of.' Jack spoke feelingly, for he was a gentleman who was generally spoken of as having nothing a year, paid quarterly; and yet he was in the enjoyment of an annuity of sixty pounds. 'Oh, why, when I say he has nothing,' replied Lord Scamperdale, 'I mean that he has not what Jawleyford, who is a bumptious sort of an ass, would consider sufficient to make him a fit match for one of his daughters. He may have a few hundreds a year, but Jaw, I'm sure, will look at nothing under thousands.' 'Oh, certainly not,' said Jack, 'there's no doubt about that.' 'Well, then, you see, I was thinking,' observed Lord Scamperdale, eyeing Jack's countenance, 'that if you would dine there to-morrow, as we fixed--' 'Oh, dash it! I couldn't do that,' interrupted Jack, drawing himself together in his chair like a horse refusing a leap; 'I couldn't do that--I couldn't dine with Jaw, not at no price.' 'Why not?' asked Lord Scamperdale; 'he'll give you a good dinner--fricassees, and all sorts of good things; far finer fare than you have here.' 'That may all be,' replied Jack, 'but I don't want none of his food. I hate the sight of the fellow, and detest him fresh every time I see him. Consider, too, you said you'd let me off if I sarved out Sponge; and I'm sure I did my best. I led him over some awful places, and then what a ducking I got! My ears are full of water still,' added he, laying his head on one side to try to run it out. 'You did well,' observed Lord Scamperdale--'you did well, and I fully intended to let you off, but then I didn't know what a beggar I had to deal with. Come, say you'll go, that's a good fellow.' 'Couldn't,' replied Jack, squinting frightfully. 'You'll _oblige_ me,' observed Lord Scamperdale. 'Ah, well, I'd do anything to oblige your lordship,' replied Jack, thinking of the corner in the will. 'I'd do anything to oblige your lordship: but the fact is, sir, I'm not prepared to go. I've lost my specs--I've got no swell clothes--I can't go in the Stunner tartan,' added he, eyeing his backgammon-board-looking chest, and diving his hands into the capacious pockets of his shooting-jacket. [Illustration] 'I'll manage all that,' replied his lordship; 'I've got a pair of splendid silver-mounted spectacles in the Indian cabinet in the drawing-room, that I've kept to be married in. I'll lend them to you, and there's no saying but you may captivate Miss Jawleyford in them. Then as to clothes, there's my new damson-coloured velvet waistcoat with the steel buttons, and my fine blue coat with the velvet collar, silk facings, and our button on it; altogether I'll rig you out and make you such a swell as there's no saying but Miss Jawleyford'll offer to you, by way of consoling herself for the loss of Sponge.' 'I'm afraid you'll have to make a settlement for me, then,' observed our friend. 'Well, you are a good fellow. Jack,' said his lordship, 'and I'd as soon make one on you as on any one.' 'I s'pose you'll send me on wheels?' observed Jack. 'In course,' replied his lordship. 'Dog-cart--name behind--Right Honourable the Earl of Scamperdale--lad with cockade--everything genteel'; adding, 'by Jove, they'll take you for me!' Having settled all these matters, and arranged how the information was to be communicated to Jawleyford, the friends at length took their block-tin candlesticks, with their cauliflower-headed candles, and retired to bed. CHAPTER XXV MR. SPRAGGON'S EMBASSY TO JAWLEYFORD COURT [Illustration] When Mr. Sponge returned, all dirtied and stained, from the chase, he found his host sitting in an arm-chair over the study fire, dressing-gowned and slippered, with a pocket-handkerchief tied about his head, shamming illness, preparatory to putting off Mr. Spraggon. To be sure, he played rather a better knife and fork at dinner than is usual with persons with that peculiar ailment; but Mr. Sponge, being very hungry, and well attended to by the fair--moreover, not suspecting any ulterior design--just ate and jabbered away as usual, with the exception of omitting his sick papa-in-law in the round of his observations. So the dinner passed over. 'Bring me a tumbler and some hot water and sugar,' said Mr. Jawleyford, pressing his head against his hand, as Spigot, having placed some bottle ends on the table, and reduced the glare of light, was preparing to retire. 'Bring me some hot water and sugar,' said he; 'and tell Harry he will have to go over to Lord Scamperdale's, with a note, the first thing in the morning.' The young ladies looked at each other, and then at mamma, who, seeing what was wanted, looked at papa, and asked, 'if he was going to ask Lord Scamperdale over?' Amelia, among her many 'presentiments,' had long enjoyed one that she was destined to be Lady Scamperdale. 'No--_over_--no,' snapped Jawleyford; 'what should put that in your head?' 'Oh, I thought as Mr. Sponge was here, you might think it a good time to ask him.' 'His lordship knows he can come when he likes,' replied Jawleyford, adding, 'it's to put that Mr. John Spraggon off, who thinks he may do the same.' 'Mr. Spraggon!' exclaimed both the young ladies. 'Mr. Spraggon!--what should set him here?' 'What, indeed?' asked Jawleyford. 'Poor man! I dare say there's no harm in him,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford, who was always ready for anybody. 'No good either,' replied Jawleyford--'at all events, we'll be just as well without him. You know him, don't you?' added he, turning to Sponge--'great coarse man in spectacles.' 'Oh yes, I know him,' replied Sponge; 'a great ruffian he is, too,' added he. 'One ought to be in robust health to encounter such a man,' observed Jawleyford, 'and have time to get a man or two of the same sort to meet him. _We_ can do nothing with such a man. I can't understand how his lordship puts up with such a fellow.' 'Finds him useful, I suppose,' observed Mr. Sponge. Spigot presently appeared with a massive silver salver, bearing tumblers, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and other implements of negus. 'Will you join me in a little wine-and-water?' asked Jawleyford, pointing to the apparatus and bottle ends, 'or will you have a fresh bottle?--plenty in the cellar,' added he, with a flourish of his hand, though he kept looking steadfastly at the negus-tray. 'Oh--why--I'm afraid--I doubt--I think I should hardly be able to do justice to a bottle single-handed,' replied Sponge. 'Then have negus,' said Jawleyford; 'you'll find it very refreshing; medical men recommend it after violent exercise in preference to wine. But pray have wine if you prefer it.' 'Ah--well, I'll finish off with a little negus, perhaps,' replied Sponge, adding, 'meanwhile the ladies, I dare say, would like a little wine.' 'The ladies drink white wine--sherry,' rejoined Jawleyford, determined to make a last effort to save his port. 'However, you can have a bottle of port to yourself, you know.' 'Very well,' said Sponge. 'One condition I must attach,' said Mr. Jawleyford, 'which is, that you _finish_ the bottle. Don't let us have any waste, you know.' 'I'll do my best,' said Sponge, determined to have it; whereupon Mr. Jawleyford growled the word 'Port' to the butler, who had been witnessing his master's efforts to direct attention to the negus. Thwarted in his endeavour, Jawleyford's headache became worse, and the ladies, seeing how things were going, beat a precipitate retreat, leaving our hero to his fate. 'I'll leave a note on my writing-table when I go to bed,' observed Jawleyford to Spigot, as the latter was retiring after depositing the bottle; 'and tell Harry to start with it early in the morning, so as to get to Woodmansterne about breakfast--nine o'clock, or so, at latest,' added he. 'Yes, sir,' replied Spigot, withdrawing with an air. Sponge then wanted to narrate the adventures of the day; but, independently of Jawleyford's natural indifference for hunting, he was too much out of humour at being done out of his wine to lend a willing ear; and after sundry 'hums,' 'indeeds,' 'sos,' &c., Sponge thought he might as well think the run over to himself as trouble to put it into words, whereupon a long silence ensued, interrupted only by the tinkling of Jawleyford's spoon against his glass, and the bumps of the decanter as Sponge helped himself to his wine. At length Jawleyford, having had as much negus as he wanted, excused himself from further attendence, under the plea of increasing illness, and retired to his study to concoct his letter to Jack. At first he was puzzled how to address him. If he had been Jack Spraggon, living in old Mother Nipcheese's lodgings at Starfield, as he was when Lord Scamperdale took him by the hand, he would have addressed him as 'Dear Sir,' or perhaps in the third person, 'Mr. Jawleyford presents his compliments to Mr. Spraggon,' &c.; but, as my lord's right-hand man, Jack carried a certain weight, and commanded a certain influence, that he would never have acquired of himself. Jawleyford spoilt three sheets of cream-laid satin-wove note-paper (crested and ciphered) before he pleased himself with a beginning. First he had it 'Dear Sir,' which he thought looked too stiff; then he had it 'My dear Sir,' which he thought looked too loving; next he had it 'Dear Spraggon,' which he considered as too familiar; and then he tried 'Dear Mr. Spraggon,' which he thought would do. Thus he wrote: 'DEAR MR. SPRAGGON,-- 'I am sorry to be obliged to put you off; but since I came in from hunting I have been attacked with influenza, which will incapacitate me from the enjoyment of society at least for two or three days. I therefore think the kindest thing I can do is to write to put you off; and, in the hopes of seeing both you and my lord at no distant day. 'I remain, dear sir, yours sincerely, 'CHARLES JAMES JAWLEYFORD, '_Jawleyford Court._ 'TO JOHN SPRAGGON, ESQ., &c. &c. &c.' This he sealed with the great seal of Jawleyford Court--a coat of arms containing innumerable quarterings and heraldic devices. Having then refreshed his memory by looking through a bundle of bills, and selected the most threatening of the lawyers' letters to answer the next day, he proceeded to keep up the delusion of sickness, by retiring to sleep in his dressing-room. Our readers will now have the kindness to accompany us to Lord Scamperdale's: time, the morning after the foregoing. 'Love me, love my dog,' being a favourite saying of his lordship's, he fed himself, his friends, and his hounds, on the same meal. Jack and he were busy with two great basins full of porridge, which his lordship diluted with milk, while Jack stirred his up with hot dripping, when the put-off note arrived. His lordship was still in a complete suit of the great backgammon-board-looking red-and-yellow Stunner tartan: but as Jack was going from home, he had got himself into a pair of his lordship's yellow-ochre leathers and new top-boots, while he wore the Stunner jacket and waistcoat to save his lordship's Sunday green cutaway with metal buttons, and canary-coloured waistcoat. His lordship did not eat his porridge with his usual appetite, for he had had a disturbed night, Sponge having appeared to him in his dreams in all sorts of forms and predicaments; now jumping a-top of him--now upsetting Jack--now riding over Frostyface--now crashing among his hounds; and he awoke, fully determined to get rid of him by fair means or foul. Buying his horses did not seem so good a speculation as blowing his credit at Jawleyford Court, for, independently of disliking to part with his cash, his lordship remembered that there were other horses to get, and he should only be giving Sponge the means of purchasing them. The more, however, he thought of the Jawleyford project, the more satisfied he was that it would do; and Jack and he were in a sort of rehearsal, wherein his lordship personated Jawleyford, and was showing Jack (who was only a clumsy diplomatist) how to draw up to the subject of Sponge's pecuniary deficiencies, when the dirty old butler came with Jawleyford's note. 'What's here?' exclaimed his lordship, fearing from its smartness, that it was from a lady. 'What's here?' repeated he, as he inspected the direction. 'Oh, it's for _you_!' exclaimed he, chucking it over to Jack, considerably relieved by the discovery. '_Me!_' replied Jack. 'Who can be writing to me?' said he, squinting his eyes inside out at the seal. He opened it: 'Jawleyford Court,' read he. 'Who the deuce can be writing to me from Jawleyford Court when I'm going there?' 'A put-off, for a guinea!' exclaimed his lordship. 'Hope so,' muttered Jack. 'Hope _not_,' replied his lordship. 'It is!' exclaimed Jack, reading, 'Dear Mr. Spraggon,' and so on. 'The humbug!' muttered Lord Scamperdale, adding, 'I'll be bound he's got no more influenza than I have.' 'Well,' observed Jack, sweeping a red cotton handkerchief, with which he had been protecting his leathers, off into his pocket, 'there's an end of that.' 'Don't go so quick,' replied his lordship, ladling in the porridge. 'Quick!' retorted Jack; 'why, what can you do?' '_Do!_ why, _go_ to be sure,' replied his lordship. 'How can I go,' asked Jack, 'when the sinner's written to put me off?' 'Nicely,' replied his lordship, 'nicely. I'll just send word back by the servant that you had started before the note arrived, but that you shall have it as soon as you return; and you just cast up there as if nothing had happened.' So saying, his lordship took hold of the whipcord-pull and gave the bell a peal. 'There's no beating you,' observed Jack. Bags now made his appearance again. 'Is the servant here that brought this note?' asked his lordship, holding it up. 'Yes, _me_ lord,' replied Bags. 'Then tell him to tell his master, with my compliments, that Mr. Spraggon had set off for Jawleyford Court before it came, but that he shall have it as soon as he returns--you understand?' 'Yes, _me_ lord,' replied Bags, looking at Jack supping up the fat porridge, and wondering how the lie would go down with Harry, who was then discussing his master's merits and a horn of small beer with the lad who was going to drive Jack. Jawleyford Court was twenty miles from Woodmansterne as the crow flies, and any distance anybody liked to call it by the road. The road, indeed, would seem to have been set out with a view of getting as many hills and as little level ground over which a traveller could make play as possible; and where it did not lead over the tops of the highest hills, it wound round their bases, in such little, vexatious, up-and-down, wavy dips as completely to do away with all chance of expedition. The route was not along one continuous trust, but here over a bit of turnpike and there over a bit of turnpike, with ever and anon long interregnums of township roads, repaired in the usual primitive style with mud and soft field-stones, that turned up like flitches of bacon. A man would travel from London to Exeter by rail in as short a time, and with far greater ease, than he would drive from Lord Scamperdale's to Jawleyford Court. His lordship being aware of this fact, and thinking, moreover, it was no use trashing a good horse over such roads, had desired Frostyface to put an old spavined grey mare, that he had bought for the kennel, into the dog-cart, and out of which, his lordship thought, if he could get a day's work or two, she would come all the cheaper to the boiler. 'That's a good-shaped beast,' observed his lordship, as she now came hitching round to the door; 'I really think she would make a cover hack.' 'Sooner you ride her than me,' replied Jack, seeing his lordship was coming the dealer over him--praising the shape when he could say nothing for the action. 'Well, but she'll take you to Jawleyford Court as quick as the best of them,' rejoined his lordship, adding, 'the roads are wretched, and Jaw's stables are a disgrace to humanity--might as well put a horse in a cellar.' 'Well,' observed Jack, retiring from the parlour window to his little den along the passage, to put the finishing touch to his toilet--the green cutaway and buff waistcoat, which he further set off with a black satin stock--'Well,' said he, 'needs must when a certain gentleman drives.' He presently reappeared full fig, rubbing a fine new eight-and-sixpenny flat-brimmed hat round and round with a substantial puce-coloured bandana. 'Now for the specs!' exclaimed he, with the gaiety of a man in his Sunday's best, bound on a holiday trip. 'Now for the silver specs!' repeated he. 'Ah, true,' replied his lordship; 'I'd forgot the specs.' (He hadn't, only he thought his silver-mounted ones would be safer in his keeping than in Jack's.) 'I'd forgot the specs. However, never mind, you shall have these,' said he, taking his tortoise-shell-rimmed ones off his nose and handing them to Jack. [Illustration: MR. SPRAGGON'S EMBASSY TO JAWLEYFORD COURT] 'You promised me the silver ones,' observed our friend Jack, who wanted to be smart. 'Did I?' replied his lordship; 'I declare I'd forgot. Ah yes, I believe I did,' added he, with an air of sudden enlightenment--'the pair upstairs; but how the deuce to get at them I don't know, for the key of the Indian cabinet is locked in the old oak press in the still-room, and the key of the still-room is locked away in the linen-press in the green lumber-room at the top of the house, and the key of the green lumber-room is in a drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe in the Star-Chamber, and the--' 'Ah, well; never mind,' grunted Jack, interrupting the labyrinth of lies. 'I dare say these will do--I dare say these will do,' putting them on; adding, 'Now, if you'll lend me a shawl for my neck, and a mackintosh, my name shall be _Walker_.' 'Better make it _Trotter_,' replied his lordship, 'considering the distance you have to go.' 'Good,' said Jack, mounting and driving away. 'It will be a blessing if we get there,' observed Jack to the liveried stable-lad, as the old bag of bones of a mare went hitching and limping away. 'Oh, she can go when she's warm,' replied the lad, taking her across the ears with the point of the whip. The wheels followed merrily over the sound, hard road through the park, and the gentle though almost imperceptible fall of the ground giving an impetus to the vehicle, they bowled away as if they had four of the soundest, freshest legs in the world before them, instead of nothing but a belly-band between them and eternity. When, however, they cleared the noble lodge and got upon the unscraped mud of the Deepdebt turnpike, the pace soon slackened, and, instead of the gig running away with the old mare, she was fairly brought to her collar. Being a game one, however, she struggled on with a trot, till at length, turning up the deeply spurlinged, clayey bottomed cross-road between Rookgate and Clamley, it was all she could do to drag the gig through the holding mire. Bump, bump, jolt, jolt, creak, creak, went the vehicle. Jack now diving his elbow into the lad's ribs, the lad now diving his into Jack's; both now threatening to go over on the same side, and again both nearly chucked on to the old mare's quarters. A sharp, cutting sleet, driving pins and needles directly in their faces, further disconcerted our travellers. Jack felt acutely for his new eight-and-sixpenny hat, it being the only article of dress he had on of his own. Long and tedious as was the road, weak and jaded as was the mare, and long as Jack stopped at Starfield, he yet reached Jawleyford Court before the messenger Harry. As our friend Jawleyford was stamping about his study anathematizing a letter he had received from the solicitor to the directors of the Doembrown and Sinkall Railway, informing him that they were going to indulge in the winding-up act, he chanced to look out of his window just as the contracted limits of a winter's day were drawing the first folds of night's muslin curtain over the landscape, when he espied a gig drawn by a white horse, with a dot-and-go-one sort of action, hopping its way up the slumpey avenue. 'That's Buggins the bailiff,' exclaimed he to himself, as the recollection of an unanswered lawyer's letter flashed across his mind; and he was just darting off to the bell to warn Spigot not to admit any one, when the lad's cockade, standing in relief against the sky-line, caused him to pause and gaze again at the unwonted apparition. 'Who the deuce can it be?' asked he of himself, looking at his watch, and seeing it was a quarter-past four. 'It surely can't be my lord, or that Jack Spraggon coming after all?' added he, drawing out a telescope and opening a lancet-window. 'Spraggon, as I live!' exclaimed he, as he caught Jack's harsh, spectacled features, and saw him titivating his hair and arranging his collar and stock as he approached. 'Well, that beats everything!' exclaimed Jawleyford, burning with rage as he fastened the window again. He stood for a few seconds transfixed to the spot, not knowing what on earth to do. At last resolution came to his aid, and, rushing upstairs to his dressing-room, he quickly divested himself of his coat and waistcoat, and slipped on a dressing-gown and night-cap. He then stood, door in hand, listening for the arrival. He could just hear the gig grinding under the portico, and distinguish Jack's gruff voice saying to the servant from the top of the steps, 'We'll start _directly_ after breakfast, mind.' A tremendous peal of the bell immediately followed, convulsing the whole house, for nobody had seen the vehicle approaching, and the establishment had fallen into the usual state of undress torpor that intervenes between calling hours and dinner-time. The bell not being answered as quickly as Jack expected, he just opened the door himself; and when Spigot arrived, with such a force as he could raise at the moment, Jack was in the act of 'peeling' himself, as he called it. 'What time do we dine?' asked he, with the air of a man with the entrée. 'Seven o'clock, my lord--that's to say, sir--that's to say, my lord,' for Spigot really didn't know whether it was Jack or his master. 'Seven o'clock!' muttered Jack. 'What the deuce is the use of dinin' at such an hour as that in winter?' Jack and my lord always dined as soon as they got home from hunting. Jack, having got himself out of his wraps, and run his bristles backwards with a pocket-comb, was ready for presentation. 'What name shall I _e_nounce?' asked Mr. Spigot, fearful of committing himself before the ladies. 'MISTER SPRAGGON, to be sure,' exclaimed Jack, thinking, because he knew who he was, that everybody else ought to know too. Spigot then led the way to the music-room. The peal at the bell had caused a suppressed commotion in the apartment. Buried in the luxurious depths of a well-cushioned low chair, Mr. Sponge sat, _Mogg_ in hand, with a toe cocked up, now dipping leisurely into his work--now whispering something sweet into Amelia's ear, who sat with her crochet-work at his side; while Emily played the piano, and Mrs. Jawleyford kept in the background, in the discreet way mothers do when there is a little business going on. The room was in that happy state of misty light that usually precedes the entrance of candles--a light that no one likes to call darkness, lest their eyes might be supposed to be failing. It is a convenient light, however, for a timid stranger, especially where there are not many footstools set to trip him up--an exemption, we grieve to say, not accorded to every one. Though Mr. Spraggon was such a cool, impudent fellow with men, he was the most awkward, frightened wretch among ladies that ever was seen. His conversation consisted principally of coughing. 'Hem!'--cough--'yes, mum,'--hem--cough, cough--'the day,'--hem--cough--'mum, is'--hem--cough--'very,'--hem--cough--'mum, cold.' But we will introduce him to our family circle. 'MR. SPRAGGON!' exclaimed Spigot in a tone equal to the one in which Jack had announced himself in the entrance; and forthwith there was such a stir in the twilit apartment--such suppressed exclamations of: 'Mr. Spraggon!--Mr. Spraggon! What can bring him here?' Our traveller's creaking boots and radiant leathers eclipsing the sombre habiliments of Mr. Spigot, Mrs. Jawleyford quickly rose from her Pembroke writing-desk, and proceeded to greet him. 'My daughters I think you know, Mr. Spraggon; also Mr. Sponge? Mr. Spraggon,' continued she, with a wave of her hand to where our hero was ensconced in his form, in case they should not have made each other's speaking acquaintance. The young ladies rose, and curtsied prettily; while Mr. Sponge gave a sort of backward hitch of his head as he sat in his chair, as much as to say, 'I know as much of Mr. Spraggon as I want.' 'Tell your master Mr. Spraggon is here,' added Mrs. Jawleyford to Spigot, as that worthy was leaving the room. 'It's a cold day, Mr. Spraggon; won't you come near the fire?' continued Mrs. Jawleyford, addressing our friend, who had come to a full stop just under the chandelier in the centre of the room. 'Hem--cough--hem--thank ye, mum,' muttered Jack. 'I'm not--hem--cough--cold, thank ye, mum.' His face and hands were purple notwithstanding. 'How is my Lord Scamperdale?' asked Amelia, who had a strong inclination to keep in with all parties. 'Hem--cough--hem--my lord--that's to say, my lady--hem--cough--I mean to say, my lord's pretty well, thank ye,' stuttered Jack. 'Is he coming?' asked Amelia. 'Hem--cough--hem--my lord's--hem--not well--cough--no--hem--I mean to say--hem--cough--my lord's gone--hem--to dine--cough--hem--with his--cough--friend Lord Bubbley Jock--hem--cough--I mean Barker--cough.' Jack and Lord Scamperdale were so in the habit of calling his lordship by this nickname, that Jack let it slip, or rather cough out, inadvertently. In due time Spigot returned, with 'Master's compliments, and he was very sorry, but he was so unwell that he was quite unable to see any one.' 'Oh, dear!' exclaimed Mrs. Jawleyford. 'Poor pa!' lisped Amelia. 'What a pity!' observed Mr. Sponge. 'I must go and see him,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford, hurrying off. 'Hem--cough--hem--hope he's not much--hem--damaged?' observed Jack. The old lady being thus got rid of, and Jawleyford disposed of--apparently for the night--Mr. Spraggon felt more comfortable, and presently yielded to Amelia's entreaties to come near the fire and thaw himself. Spigot brought candles, and Mr. Sponge sat moodily in his chair, alternately studying _Mogg's Cab Fares_--'Old Bailey, Newgate Street, to or from the Adelphi, the Terrace, 1_s._ 6_d._; Admiralty, 2_s._'; and so on; and hazarding promiscuous sidelong sort of observations, that might be taken up by Jack or not, as he liked. He seemed determined to pay Mr. Jack off for his out-of-door impudence. Amelia, on the other hand, seemed desirous of making up for her suitor's rudeness, and kept talking to Jack with an assiduity that perfectly astonished her sister, who had always heard her speak of him with the utmost abhorrence. Mrs. Jawleyford found her husband in a desperate state of excitement, his influenza being greatly aggravated by Harry having returned very drunk, with the mare's knees desperately broken 'by a fall,' as Harry hiccuped out, or by his 'throwing her down,' as Jawleyford declared. Horses _fall_ with their masters, servants _throw_ them down. What a happiness it is when people can send their servants on errands by coaches or railways, instead of being kept on the fidget all day, lest a fifty-pound horse should be the price of a bodkin or a basket of fish! Amelia's condescension quite turned Jack's head; and when he went upstairs to dress, he squinted at his lordship's best clothes, all neatly laid out for him on the bed, with inward satisfaction at having brought them. 'Dash me!' said he, 'I really think that girl has a fancy for me.' Then he examined himself minutely in the glass, brushed his whiskers up into a curve on his cheeks, the curves almost corresponding with the curve of his spectacles above; then he gave his bristly, porcupine-shaped head a backward rub with a sort of thing like a scrubbing-brush. 'If I'd only had the silver specs,' thought he, 'I should have done.' He then began to dress; an operation that, ever and anon was interrupted by the outburst of volleys of smoke from the little spluttering, smouldering fire in the little shabby room Jawleyford insisted on having him put into. Jack tried all things--opening the window and shutting the door, shutting the window and opening the door; but finding that, instead of curing it, he only produced the different degrees of comparison--bad, worse, worst--he at length shut both, and applied himself vigorously to dressing. He soon got into his stockings and pumps, also his black Saxony trousers; then came a fine black laced fringe cravat, and the damson-coloured velvet waistcoat with the cut-steel buttons. 'Dash me, but I look pretty well in this!' said he, eyeing first one side and then the other as he buttoned it. He then stuck a chased and figured fine gold brooch, with two pendant tassel-drops, set with turquoise and agates, that he had abstracted from his lordship's dressing-case, into his, or rather his lordship's finely worked shirt-front, and crowned the toilet with his lordship's best new blue coat with velvet collar, silk facings, and the Flat Hat Hunt button--'a striding fox,' with the letters 'F.H.H.' below. 'Who shall say Mr. Spraggon's not a gentleman?' said he, as he perfumed one of his lordship's fine coronetted cambric handkerchiefs with lavender-water. Scent, in Jack's opinion, was one of the criterions of a gentleman. Somehow Jack felt quite differently towards the house of Jawleyford; and though he did not expect much pleasure in Mr. Sponge's company, he thought, nevertheless, that the ladies and he--Amelia and he at least--would get on very well. Forgetting that he had come to eject Sponge on the score of insufficiency, he really began to think he might be a very desirable match for one of them himself. 'The Spraggons are a most respectable family,' said he, eyeing himself in the glass. 'If not very handsome, at all events, very genteel,' added he, speaking of himself in particular. So saying, he adorned himself with his spectacles and set off to explore his way downstairs. After divers mistakes he at length found himself in the drawing-room, where the rest of the party being assembled, they presently proceeded to dinner. Jack's amended costume did not produce any difference in Mr. Sponge's behaviour, who treated him with the utmost indifference. In truth, Sponge had rather a large balance against Jack for his impudence to him in the field. Nevertheless, the fair Amelia continued her attentions, and talked of hunting, occasionally diverging into observations on Lord Scamperdale's fine riding and manly character and appearance, in the roundabout way ladies send their messages and compliments to their friends. The dinner was flat. Jawleyford had stopped the champagne tap, though the needle-case glasses stood to tantalize the party till about the time that the beverage ought to have been flowing, when Spigot took them off. The flatness then became flatter. Nevertheless, Jack worked away in his usual carnivorous style, and finished by paying his respects to all the sweets, jellies, and things in succession. He never got any of these, he said, at 'home,' meaning at Lord Scamperdale's--Amelia thought, if she was 'my lady,' he would not get any meat there either. [Illustration: ENTER MR. JACK SPRAGGON, FULL DRESS] At length Jack finished; and having discussed cheese, porter, and red herrings, the cloth was drawn, and a hard-featured dessert, consisting principally of apples, followed. The wine having made a couple of melancholy circuits, the strained conversation about came to a full stop, and Spigot having considerately placed the little round table, as if to keep the peace between them, the ladies left the male worthies to discuss their port and sherry together. Jack, according to Woodmansterne fashion, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and stuck his legs out before him--an example that Mr. Sponge quickly followed, and each assumed an attitude that as good as said 'I don't care twopence for you.' A dead silence then prevailed, interrupted only by the snap, snap, snapping of Jack's toothpick against his chair-edge, when he was not busy exploring his mouth with it. It seemed to be a match which should keep silence longest. Jack sat squinting his eyes inside out at Sponge, while Sponge pretended to be occupied with the fire. The wine being with Sponge, and at length wanting some, he was constrained to make the first move, by passing it over to Jack, who helped himself to port and sherry simultaneously--a glass of sherry after dinner (in Jack's opinion) denoting a gentleman. Having smacked his lips over that, he presently turned to the glass of port. He checked his hand in passing it to his mouth, and bore the glass up to his nose. 'Corked, by Jove!' exclaimed he, setting the glass down on the table with a thump of disgust. It is curious what unexpected turns things sometimes take in the world, and how completely whole trains of well-preconcerted plans are often turned aside by mere accidents such as this. If it hadn't been for the corked bottle of port, there is no saying but these two worthies would have held a Quakers' meeting without the 'spirit' moving either of them. 'Corked, by Jove!' exclaimed Jack. 'It is!' rejoined Sponge, smelling at his half-emptied glass. 'Better have another bottle,' observed Jack. 'Certainly,' replied Sponge, ringing the bell. 'Spigot, this wine's corked,' observed Sponge, as old Pomposo entered the room. 'Is it?' said Spigot, with the most perfect innocence, though he knew it came out of the corked batch. 'I'll bring another bottle,' added he, carrying it off as if he had a whole pipe at command, though in reality he had but another out. This fortunately was less corked than the first; and Jack having given an approving smack of his great thick lips, Mr. Sponge took it on his judgement, and gave a nod to Spigot, who forthwith took his departure. 'Old trick that,' observed Jack, with a shake of the head, as Spigot shut the door. 'Is it?' observed Mr. Sponge, taking up the observation, though in reality it was addressed to the fire. 'Noted for it,' replied Jack, squinting at the sideboard, though he was staring intently at Sponge to see how he took it. 'Well, I thought we had a bottle with a queer smatch the other night,' observed Sponge. 'Old Blossomnose corked half a dozen in succession one night,' replied Jack. (He had corked three, but Jawleyford re-corked them, and Spigot was now reproducing them to our friends.) Although they had now got the ice broken, and entered into something like a conversation, it nevertheless went on very slowly, and they seemed to weigh each word before it was uttered. Jack, too, had time to run his peculiar situation through his mind, and ponder on his mission from Lord Scamperdale--on his lordship's detestation of Mr. Sponge, his anxiety to get rid of him, his promised corner in his will, and his lordship's hint about buying Sponge's horses if he could not get rid of him in any other way. Sponge, on his part, was thinking if there was any possibility of turning Jack to account. It may seem strange to the uninitiated that there should be prospect of gain to a middle-man in the matter of a horse-deal, save in the legitimate trade of auctioneers and commission stable-keepers; but we are sorry to say we have known men calling themselves gentlemen, who have not thought it derogatory to accept a 'trifle' for their good offices in the cause. 'I can buy cheaper than you,' they say, 'and we may as well divide the trifle between us.' That was Mr. Spraggon's principle, only that the word 'trifle' inadequately conveys his opinion on the point; Jack's notion being that a man was entitled to 5_l._ per cent. as of right, and as much more as he could get. It was not often that Jack got a 'bite' at my lord, which, perhaps, made him think it the more incumbent on him not to miss an opportunity. Having been told, of course he knew exactly the style of man he had to deal with in Mr. Sponge--a style of men of whom there is never any difficulty in asking if they will sell their horses, price being the only consideration. They are, indeed, a sort of unlicensed horse-dealers, from whose presence few hunts are wholly free. Mr. Spraggon thought if he could get Sponge to make it worth his while to get my lord to buy his horses, the--whatever he might get--would come in very comfortably to pay his Christmas bills. By the time the bottle drew to a close, our friends were rather better friends, and seemed more inclined to fraternize. Jack had the advantage of Sponge, for he could stare, or rather squint, at him without Sponge knowing it. The pint of wine apiece--at least, as near a pint apiece as Spigot could afford to let them have--somewhat strung Jack's nerves as well as his eyes, and he began to show more of the pupils and less of the whites than he did. He buzzed the bottle with such a hearty good will as settled the fate of another, which Sponge rang for as a matter of course. There was but the rejected one, which, however, Spigot put into a different decanter, and brought in with such an air as precluded either of them saying a word in disparagement of it. 'Where are the hounds next week?' asked Sponge, sipping away at it. 'Monday, Larkhall Hill; Tuesday, the cross-roads by Dallington Burn; Thursday, the Toll-bar at Whitburrow Green; Saturday, the kennels,' replied Jack. 'Good places?' asked Sponge. 'Monday's good,' replied Jack; 'draw Thorney Gorse--sure find; second draw, Barnlow Woods, and home by Loxley, Padmore, and so on.' 'What sort of a place is Tuesday?' 'Tuesday?' repeated Jack. 'Tuesday! Oh, that's the cross-roads. Capital place, unless the fox takes to Rumborrow Craigs, or gets into Seedywood Forest, when there's an end of it--at least, an end of everything except pulling one's horse's legs off in the stiff clayey rides. It's a long way from here, though,' observed Jack. 'How far?' asked Sponge. 'Good twenty miles,' replied Jack. 'It's sixteen from us; it'll be a good deal more from here.' 'His lordship will lay out overnight, then?' observed Sponge. 'Not he,' replied Jack. 'Takes better care of his sixpences than that. Up in the dark, breakfast by candlelight, grope our ways to the stable, and blunder along the deep lanes, and through all the by-roads in the country--get there somehow or another.' 'Keen hand!' observed Sponge. 'Mad!' replied Jack. They then paid their mutual respects to the port. 'He hunts there on Tuesdays,' observed Jack, setting down his glass, 'so that he may have all Wednesday to get home in, and be sure of appearing on Thursday. There's no saying where he may finish with a cross-roads' meet.' By the time the worthies had finished the bottle, they had got a certain way into each other's confidence. The hint Lord Scamperdale had given about buying Sponge's horses still occupied Jack's mind; and the more he considered the subject, and the worth of a corner in his lordship's will, the more sensible he became of the truth of the old adage, that 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.' 'My lord,' thought Jack, 'promises fair, but it is _but_ a chance, and a remote one. He may live many years--as long, perhaps longer, than me. Indeed, he puts me on horses that are anything but calculated to promote longevity. Then he may marry a wife who may eject me, as some wives do eject their husbands' agreeable friends; or he may change his mind, and leave me nothing after all.' All things considered, Jack came to the conclusion that he should not be doing himself justice if he did not take advantage of such fair opportunities as chance placed in his way, and therefore he thought he might as well be picking up a penny during his lordship's life, as be waiting for a contingency that might never occur. Mr. Jawleyford's indisposition preventing Jack making the announcement he was sent to do, made it incumbent on him, as he argued, to see what could be done with the alternative his lordship had proposed--namely, buying Sponge's horses. At least, Jack salved his conscience over with the old plea of duty; and had come to that conclusion as he again helped himself to the last glass in the bottle. 'Would you like a little claret?' asked Sponge, with all the hospitality of a host. 'No, hang your claret!' replied Jack. 'A little brandy, perhaps?' suggested Sponge. 'I shouldn't mind a glass of brandy,' replied Jack, 'by way of a nightcap.' Spigot, at this moment entering to announce tea and coffee, was interrupted in his oration by Sponge demanding some brandy. 'Sorry,' replied Spigot, pretending to be quite taken by surprise, 'very sorry, sir--but, sir--master, sir--bed, sir--disturb him, sir.' 'Oh, dash it, never mind that!' exclaimed Jack; 'tell him Mr. Sprag--Sprag--Spraggon' (the bottle of port beginning to make Jack rather inarticulate)--'tell him Mr. Spraggon wants a little.' 'Dursn't disturb him, sir,' responded Spigot, with a shake of his head; 'much as my place, sir, is worth, sir.' 'Haven't you a little drop in your pantry, think you?' asked Sponge. 'The _cook_ perhaps has,' replied Mr. Spigot, as if it was quite out of his line. 'Well, go and ask her,' said Sponge; 'and bring some hot water and things, the same as we had last night, you know.' Mr. Spigot retired, and presently returned, bearing a tray with three-quarters of a bottle of brandy, which he impressed upon their minds was the 'cook's _own_.' 'I dare say,' hiccuped Jack, holding the bottle up to the light. 'Hope she wasn't using it herself,' observed Sponge. 'Tell her we'll (hiccup) her health,' hiccuped Jack, pouring a liberal potation into his tumbler. 'That'll be all you'll _do_, I dare say,' muttered Spigot to himself, as he sauntered back to his pantry. 'Does Jaw stand smoking?' asked Jack, as Spigot disappeared. 'Oh, I should think so,' replied Sponge; 'a friend like you, I'm sure, would be welcome'--Sponge thinking to indulge in a cigar, and lay the blame on Jack. 'Well, if you think so,' said Jack, pulling out his cigar-case, or rather his lordship's, and staggering to the chimney-piece for a match, though there was a candle at his elbow, 'I'll have a pipe.' 'So'll I,' said Sponge, 'if you'll give me a cigar.' 'Much yours as mine,' replied Jack, handing him his lordship's richly embroidered case with coronets and ciphers on either side, the gift of one of the many would-be Lady Scamperdales. 'Want a light!' hiccuped Jack, who had now got a glow-worm end to his. 'Thanks,' said Sponge, availing himself of the friendly overture. Our friends now whiffed and puffed away together--whiffing and puffing where whiffing and puffing had never been known before. The brandy began to disappear pretty quickly; it was better than the wine. 'That's a n--n--nice--ish horse of yours,' stammered Jack, as he mixed himself a second tumbler. 'Which?' asked Sponge. 'The bur--bur--brown,' spluttered Jack. 'He is _that_,' replied Sponge; 'best horse in this country by far.' 'The che--che--chest--nut's not a ba--ba--bad un. I dare say,' observed Jack. 'No, he's not,' replied Sponge; 'a deuced good un.' 'I know a man who's rayther s--s--s--sweet on the b--b--br--brown,' observed Jack, squinting frightfully. Sponge sat silent for a few seconds, pretending to be wrapt up in his 'sublime tobacco.' 'Is he a buyer, or just a jawer?' he asked at last. 'Oh, a _buyer_,' replied Jack. 'I'll _sell_,' said Sponge, with a strong emphasis on the sell. 'How much?' asked Jack, sobering with the excitement. 'Which?' asked Sponge. 'The brown,' rejoined Jack. 'Three hundred,' said Sponge; adding, 'I gave two for him.' 'Indeed!' said Jack. A long pause then ensued. Jack thinking whether he should put the question boldly as to what Sponge would give him for effecting a sale, or should beat about the bush a little. At last he thought it would be most prudent to beat about the bush, and see if Sponge would make an offer. 'Well,' said Jack, 'I'll s--s--s--see what I can do.' 'That's a good fellow,' said Sponge; adding, 'I'll remember you if you do.' 'I dare say I can s--s--s--sell them both, for that matter,' observed Jack, encouraged by the promise. 'Well,' replied Sponge, 'I'll take the same for the chestnut; there isn't the toss-up of a halfpenny for choice between them.' 'Well,' said Jack,' we'll s--s--s--see them next week.' 'Just so,' said Sponge. 'You r--r--ride well up to the h--h--hounds,' continued Jack; 'and let his lordship s--s--see w--w--what they can do.' 'I will,' said Sponge, wishing he was at work. 'Never mind his rowing,' observed Jack; 'he c--c--can't help it.' 'Not I,' replied Sponge, puffing away at his cigar. When men once begin to drink brandy-and-water (after wine) there's an end of all note of time. Our friends--for we 'may now call them so,' sat sip, sip, sipping--mix, mix, mixing; now strengthening, now weakening, now warming, now flavouring, till they had not only finished the hot water but a large jug of cold, that graced the centre of the table between two frosted tumblers, and had nearly got through the brandy too. 'May as well fi--fi--fin--nish the bottle,' observed Jack, holding it up to the candle. 'Just a thi--thi--thim--bleful apiece,' added he, helping himself to about three-quarters of what there was. 'You've taken your share,' observed Sponge, as the bottle suspended payment before he got half the quantity that Jack had. 'Sque--ee--eze it,' replied Jack, suiting the action to the word, and working away at an exhausted lemon. At length they finished. 'Well, I s'pose we may as well go and have some tea,' observed Jack. 'It's not announced yet,' said Sponge, 'but I make no doubt it will be ready.' So saying, the worthies rose, and, after sundry bumps and certain irregularities of course, they each succeeded in reaching the door. The passage lamp had died out and filled the corridor with its fragrance. Sponge, however, knew the way, and the darkness favored the adjustment of cravats and the fingering of hair. Having got up a sort of drunken simper, Sponge opened the drawing-room door, expecting to find smiling ladies in a blaze of light. All, however, was darkness, save the expiring embers in the grate. The tick, tick, tick, ticking of the clocks sounded wonderfully clear. 'Gone to bed!' exclaimed Sponge. 'WHO-HOOP!' shrieked Jack, at the top of his voice. 'What's smatter, gentlemen?--What's smatter?' exclaimed Spigot rushing in, rubbing his eyes with one hand, and holding a block tin candlestick in the other. 'Nothin',' replied Jack, squinting his eyes inside out; adding, 'get me a devilled--' (hiccup). 'Don't know how to do them here, sir,' snapped Spigot. 'Devilled turkey's leg though you do, you rascal!' rejoined Jack, doubling his fists and putting himself in posture. 'Beg pardon, sir,' replied Spigot, 'but the cook, sir, is gone to bed, sir. Do you know, sir, what o'clock it is, sir?' 'No,' replied Jack. 'What time is it?' asked Sponge. 'Twenty minutes to two,' replied Spigot, holding up a sort of pocket warming-pan, which he called a watch. 'The deuce!' exclaimed Sponge. 'Who'd ha' thought it?' muttered Jack. 'Well, then, I suppose we may as well go to bed,' observed Sponge. 'S'pose so,' replied Jack; 'nothin' more to get.' 'Do you know your room?' asked Sponge. 'To be sure I do,' replied Jack; 'don't think I'm d--d--dr--drunk, do you?' 'Not likely,' rejoined Sponge. Jack then commenced a very crab-like ascent of the stairs, which fortunately were easy, or he would never have got up. Mr. Sponge, who still occupied the state apartments, took leave of Jack at his own door, and Jack went bumping and blundering on in search of the branch passage leading to his piggery. He found the green baize door that usually distinguishes the entrance to these secondary suites, and was presently lurching along its contracted passage. As luck would have it, however, he got into his host's dressing-room, where that worthy slept; and when Jawleyford jumped up in the morning, as was his wont, to see what sort of a day it was, he trod on Jack's face, who had fallen down in his clothes alongside of the bed, and Jawleyford broke Jack's spectacles across the bridge of his nose. 'Rot it!' roared Jack, jumping up, 'don't ride over a fellow that way!' When, shaking himself to try whether any limbs were broken, he found he was in his dress clothes instead of in the roomy garments of the Flat Hat Hunt. 'Who are you? where am I? what the deuce do you mean by breaking my specs?' he exclaimed, squinting frightfully at his host. 'My dear sir,' exclaimed Mr. Jawleyford, from the top of his night-shirt, 'I'm very sorry, but--' 'Hang your _buts_! you shouldn't ride so near a man!' exclaimed Jack, gathering up the fragments of his spectacles; when, recollecting himself, he finished by saying, 'Perhaps I'd better go to my own room.' 'Perhaps you had,' replied Mr. Jawleyford, advancing towards the door to show him the way. 'Let me have a candle,' said Jack, preparing to follow. 'Candle, my dear fellow! why, it's broad daylight,' replied his host. 'Is it?' said Jack, apparently unconscious of the fact. 'What's the hour?' 'Five minutes to eight,' replied Jawleyford, looking at a timepiece. When Jack got into his own den he threw himself into an old invalid chair, and sat rubbing the fractured spectacles together as if he thought they would unite by friction, though in reality he was endeavouring to run the overnight's proceedings through his mind. The more he thought of Amelia's winning ways, the more satisfied he was that he had made an impression, and then the more vexed he was at having his spectacles broken: for though he considered himself very presentable without them, still he could not but feel that they were a desirable addition. Then, too, he had a splitting headache; and finding that breakfast was not till ten and might be a good deal later, all things considered, he determined to be off and follow up his success under more favourable auspices. Considering that all the clothes he had with him were his lordship's, he thought it immaterial which he went home in, so to save trouble he just wrapped himself up in his mackintosh and travelled in the dress ones he had on. [Illustration] It was fortunate for Mr. Sponge that he went, for, when Jawleyford smelt the indignity that had been offered to his dining-room, he broke out in such a torrent of indignation as would have been extremely unpleasant if there had not been some one to lay the blame on. Indeed, he was not particularly gracious to Mr. Sponge as it was; but that arose as much from certain dark hints that had worked their way from the servants' hall into 'my lady's chamber' as to our friend's pecuniary resources and prospects. Jawleyford began to suspect that Sponge might not be quite the great 'catch' he was represented. Beyond, however, putting a few searching questions--which Mr. Sponge skilfully parried--advising his daughters to be cautious, lessening the number of lights, and lowering the scale of his entertainments generally, Mr. Jawleyford did not take any decided step in the matter. Mr. Spraggon comforted Lord Scamperdale with the assurance that Amelia had no idea of Sponge, who he made no doubt would very soon be out of the country--and his lordship went to church and prayed most devoutly for him to go. CHAPTER XXVI MR. AND MRS. SPRINGWHEAT 'Lord Scamperdale's foxhounds meet on Monday at Larkhall Hill,' &c. &c.--_County Paper_. The Flat Hat Hunt had relapsed into its wonted quiet, and 'Larkhall Hill' saw none but the regular attendants, men without the slightest particle of curve in their hats--hats, indeed, that looked as if the owners sat upon them when they hadn't them on their heads. There was Fyle, and Fossick, and Blossomnose, and Sparks, and Joyce, and Capon, and Dribble, and a few others, but neither Washball nor Puffington, nor any of the holiday birds. [Illustration: HIS LORDSHIP HAS IT ALL TO HIMSELF] Precisely at ten, my lord, and his hounds, and his huntsman, and his whips, and his Jack, trotted round Farmer Springwheat's spacious back premises, and appeared in due form before the green rails in front. 'Pride attends us all,' as the poet says; and if his lordship had ridden into the yard, and halloaed out for a glass of home-brewed, Springwheat would have trapped every fox on his farm, and the blooming Mrs. Springwheat would have had an interminable poultry-bill against the hunt; whereas, simply by 'making things pleasant'--that is to say, coming to breakfast--Springwheat saw his corn trampled on, nay, led the way over it himself, and Mrs. Springwheat saw her Dorkings disappear without a murmur--unless, indeed, an inquiry when his lordship would be coming could be considered in that light. Larkhall Hill stood in the centre of a circle, on a gentle eminence, commanding a view over a farm whose fertile fields and well-trimmed fences sufficiently indicated its boundaries, and looked indeed as if all the good of the country had come up to it. It was green and luxuriant even in winter, while the strong cane-coloured stubbles showed what a crop there had been. Turnips as big as cheeses swelled above the ground. In a little narrow dell, whose existence was more plainly indicated from the house by several healthy spindling larches shooting up from among the green gorse, was the cover--an almost certain find, with the almost equal certainty of a run from it. It occupied both sides of the sandy, rabbit-frequented dell, through which ran a sparkling stream, and it possessed the great advantage to foot-people of letting them see the fox found. Larkhall Hill was, therefore, a favourite both with horse and foot. So much good--at all events, so much well-farmed land would seem to justify a better or more imposing-looking house, the present one consisting, exclusive of the projecting garret ones in the Dutch tile roof, of the usual four windows and a door, that so well tell their own tale; passage in the middle, staircase in front, parlour on the right, best ditto on the left, with rooms to correspond above. To be sure, there was a great depth of house to the back; but this in no way contributed to the importance of the front, from which point alone the Springwheats chose to have it contemplated. If the back arrangements could have been divided, and added to the sides, they would have made two very good wings to the old red brick rose-entwined mansion. Having mentioned that its colour was red, it is almost superfluous to add that the door and rails were green. This was a busy morning at Larkhall Hill. It was the first day of the season of my lord's hounds meeting there, and the handsome Mrs. Springwheat had had as much trouble in overhauling the china and linen, and in dressing the children, preparatory to breakfast, as Springwheat had had in collecting knives and forks, and wine-glasses and tumblers for his department of the entertainment, to say nothing of looking after his new tops and cords. 'The Hill,' as the country people call it, was 'full fig'; and a bright, balmy winter's day softened the atmosphere, and felt as though a summer's day had been shaken out of its place into winter. It is not often that the English climate is accommodating enough to lend its aid to set off a place to advantage. Be that, however, as it may, things looked smiling both without and within. Mrs. Springwheat, by dint of early rising and superintendence, had got things into such a state of forwardness as to be able to adorn herself with a little jaunty cap--curious in microscopic punctures and cherry-coloured ribbon interlardments--placed so far back on her finely-shaped head as to proclaim beyond all possibility of cavil that it was there for ornament, and not for the purpose of concealing the liberties of time with her well-kept, clearly parted, raven-black hair. Liberties of time, forsooth! Mrs. Springwheat was in the heighday of womanhood; and though she had presented Springwheat with twins three times in succession, besides an eldest son, she was as young, fresh-looking, and finely figured as she was the day she was married. She was now dressed in a very fine French grey merino, with a very small crochet-work collar, and, of course, capacious muslin sleeves. The high flounces to her dress set off her smart waist to great advantage. Mrs. Springwheat had got everything ready, and herself too, by the time Lord Scamperdale's second horseman rode into the yard and demanded a stall for his horse. Knowing how soon the balloon follows the pilot, she immediately ranged the Stunner-tartan-clad children in the breakfast-room; and as the first whip's rate sounded as he rode round the corner, she sank into an easy-chair by the fire, with a lace-fringed kerchief in the one hand and the _Mark Lane Express_ in the other. 'Halloa! Springey!' followed by the heavy crack of a whip, announced the arrival of his lordship before the green palings; and a loud view halloa burst from Jack, as the object of inquiry was seen dancing about the open-windowed room above, with his face all flushed with the exertion of pulling on a very tight boot. 'Come in, my lord! pray, come in! The missis is below!' exclaimed Springwheat, from the window; and just at the moment the pad-groom emerged from the house, and ran to his lordship's horse's head. His lordship and Jack then dismounted, and gave their hacks in charge of the servant; while Wake, and Fyle, and Archer, who were also of the party, scanned the countenances of the surrounding idlers, to see in whose hands they had best confide their nags. In Lord Scamperdale stamped, followed by his train-band bold, and Maria, the maid, being duly stationed in the passage, threw open the parlour door on the left, and discovered Mrs. Springwheat sitting in attitude. 'Well, my lady, and how are you?' exclaimed his lordship, advancing gaily, and seizing both her pretty hands as she rose to receive him. 'I declare, you look younger and prettier every time I see you.' 'Oh! my lord,' simpered Mrs. Springwheat, 'you gentlemen are always so complimentary.' 'Not a bit of it!' exclaimed his lordship, eyeing her intently through his silver spectacles, for he had been obliged to let Jack have the other pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed ones. 'Not a bit of it,' repeated his lordship. 'I always tell Jack you are the handsomest woman in Christendom; don't I, Jack?' inquired his lordship, appealing to his factotum. 'Yes, my lord,' replied Jack, who always swore to whatever his lordship said. 'By Jove!' continued his lordship, with a stamp of his foot, 'if I could find such a woman I'd marry her to-morrow. Not such women as you to pick up every day. And what a lot of pretty pups!' exclaimed his lordship, starting back, pretending to be struck with the row of staring, black-haired, black-eyed, half-frightened children. 'Now, that's what I call a good entry,' continued his lordship, scrutinizing them attentively, and pointing them out to Jack; 'all dogs--all boys I mean!' added he. 'No, my lord,' replied Mrs. Springwheat, laughing, 'these are girls,' laying her hand on the heads of two of them, who were now full giggle at the idea of being taken for boys. 'Well, they're devilish handsome, anyhow,' replied his lordship, thinking he might as well be done with the inspection. Springwheat himself now made his appearance, as fine a sample of a man as his wife was of a woman. His face was flushed with the exertion of pulling on his tight boots, and his lordship felt the creases the hooks had left as he shook him by the hand. 'Well, Springey,' said he, 'I was just asking your wife after the new babby.' 'Oh, thank you, my lord,' replied Springey, with a shake of his curly head; 'thank you, my lord; no new babbies, my lord, with wheat below forty, my lord.' 'Well, but you've got a pair of new boots, at all events,' observed his lordship, eyeing Springwheat's refractory calves bagging over the tops of them. ''Deed have I!' replied Springwheat; 'and a pair of uncommon awkward tight customers they are,' added he, trying to move his feet about in them. 'Ah! you should always have a chap to wear your boots a few times before you put them on yourself,' observed his lordship. 'I never have a pair of tight uns,' added he; 'Jack here always does the needful by mine.' 'That's all very well for lords,' replied Mr. Springwheat; 'but us farmers wear out our boots fast enough ourselves, without anybody to help us.' 'Well, but I s'pose we may as well fall to,' observed his lordship, casting his eye upon the well-garnished table. 'All these good things are meant to eat, I s'pose,' added he: 'cakes, and sweets, and jellies without end: and as to your sideboard,' said he, turning round and looking at it, 'it's a match for any Lord Mayor's. A round of beef, a ham, a tongue, and is that a goose or a turkey?' 'A turkey, my lord,' replied Springwheat; 'home-fed, my lord.' 'Ah, home-fed, indeed!' ejaculated his lordship, with a shake of the head: 'home-fed: wish I could feed at home. The man who said that E'en from the peasant to the lord, The turkey smokes on every board, told a big un, for I'm sure none ever smokes on mine.' 'Take a little here to-day, then,' observed Mr. Springwheat, cutting deep into the white breast. 'I will,' replied his lordship, 'I will: and a slice of tongue, too,' added he. 'There are some hot sausingers comin',' observed Mr. Springwheat. 'You _don't_ say so,' replied his lordship, apparently thunderstruck at the announcement. 'Well, I must have all three. By Jove, Jack!' said he, appealing to his friend, 'but you've lit on your legs coming here. Here's a breakfast fit to set before the Queen--muffins, and crumpets, and cakes. Let me advise you to make the best use of your time, for you have but twenty minutes,' continued his lordship, looking at his watch, 'and muffins and crumpets don't come in your way every day.' ''Deed they don't,' replied Jack, with a grin. 'Will your lordship take tea or coffee?' asked Mrs. Springwheat, who had now taken her seat at the top of the table, behind a richly chased equipage for the distribution of those beverages. ''Pon my word,' replied his lordship, apparently bewildered--''pon my word, I don't know what to say. Tea or coffee? To tell you the truth, I was going to take something out of my black friend yonder,' nodding to where a French bottle like a tall bully was lifting its head above an encircling stand of liqueur-glasses. 'Suppose you have a little of what we call laced tea, my lord--tea with a dash of brandy in it?' suggested Mr. Springwheat. 'Laced tea,' repeated his lordship; 'laced tea: so I will,' said he. 'Deuced good idea--deuced good idea,' continued he, bringing the bottle and seating himself on Mrs. Springwheat's right, while his host helped him to a most plentiful plate of turkey and tongue. The table was now about full, as was the room; the guests just rolling in as they would to a public-house, and helping themselves to whatever they liked. Great was the noise of eating. As his lordship was in the full enjoyment of his plateful of meat, he happened to look up, and, the space between him and the window being clear, he saw something that caused him to drop his knife and fork and fall back in his chair as if he was shot. 'My lord's ill!' exclaimed Mr. Springwheat, who, being the only man with his nose up, was the first to perceive it. 'Clap him on the back!' shrieked Mrs. Springwheat, who considered that an infallible recipe for the ailments of children. 'Oh, Mr. Spraggon!' exclaimed both, as they rushed to his assistance, 'what is the matter with my lord?' 'Oh, that Mister something!' gasped his lordship, bending forward in his chair, and venturing another glance through the window. Sure enough, there was Sponge, in the act of dismounting from the piebald, and resigning it with becoming dignity to his trusty groom, Mr. Leather, who stood most respectfully--Parvo in hand--waiting to receive it. Mr. Sponge, being of opinion that a red coat is a passport everywhere, having stamped the mud sparks off his boots at the door, swaggered in with the greatest coolness, exclaiming as he bobbed his head to the lady, and looked round at the company: 'What, grubbing away! grubbing away, eh?' 'Won't you take a little refreshment?' asked Mr. Springwheat, in the hearty way these hospitable fellows welcome everybody. 'Yes, I will,' replied Sponge, turning to the sideboard as though it were an inn. 'That's a monstrous fine ham,' observed he; 'why doesn't somebody cut it?' 'Let me help you to some, sir,' replied Mr. Springwheat, seizing the buck-handled knife and fork, and diving deep into the rich red meat with the knife. Mr. Sponge having got two bountiful slices, with a knotch of home-made brown bread, and some mustard on his plate, now made for the table, and elbowed himself into a place between Mr. Fossick and Sparks, immediately opposite Mr. Spraggon. 'Good morning,' said he to that worthy, as he saw the whites of his eyes showing through his spectacles. 'Mornin',' muttered Jack, as if his mouth was either too full to articulate, or he didn't want to have anything to say to Mr. Sponge. 'Here's a fine hunting morning, my lord,' observed Sponge, addressing himself to his lordship, who sat on Jack's left. 'Here's a very fine hunting morning, my lord,' repeated Sponge, not getting an answer to his first assertion. 'Is it?' blurted his lordship, pretending to be desperately busy with the contents of his plate, though in reality his appetite was gone. A dead pause now ensued, interrupted only by the clattering of knives and forks, and the occasional exclamations of parties in want of some particular article of food. A chill had come over the scene--a chill whose cause was apparent to every one, except the worthy host and hostess, who had not heard of Mr. Sponge's descent upon the country. They attributed it to his lordship's indisposition, and Mr. Springwheat endeavoured to cheer him up with the prospect of sport. 'There's a brace, if not a leash, of foxes in cover, my lord,' observed he, seeing his lordship was only playing with the contents of his plate. 'Is there?' exclaimed his lordship, brightening up: 'let's be at 'em!' added he, jumping up and diving under the side-table for his flat hat and heavy iron hammer-headed whip. 'Good morning, my dear Mrs. Springwheat,' exclaimed he, putting on his hat and seizing both her soft fat-fingered hands and squeezing them ardently. 'Good morning, my dear Mrs. Springwheat,' repeated he, adding, 'By Jove! if ever there was an angel in petticoats, you're her; I'd give a hundred pounds for such a wife as you! I'd give a thousand pounds for such a wife as you! By the powers! I'd give five thousand pounds for such a wife as you!' With which asseverations his lordship stamped away in his great clumsy boots, amidst the ill-suppressed laughter of the party. 'No hurry, gentlemen--no hurry,' observed Mr. Springwheat, as some of the keen ones were preparing to follow, and began sorting their hats, and making the mistakes incident to their being all the same shape. 'No hurry, sir--no hurry, sir,' repeated Springwheat, addressing Mr. Sponge specifically; 'his lordship will have a talk to his hounds yet, and his horse is still in the stable.' With this assurance Mr. Sponge resumed his seat at the table, where several of the hungry ones were plying their knives and forks as if they were indeed breaking their fasts. 'Well, old boy, and how are you?' asked Sponge, as the whites of Jack's eyes again settled upon him, on the latter's looking up from his plateful of sausages. 'Nicely. How are you?' asked Jack. 'Nicely too,' replied Sponge, in the laconic way men speak who have been engaged in some common enterprise--getting drunk, pelting people with rotten eggs, or anything of that sort. 'Jaw and the ladies well?' asked Jack, in the same strain. 'Oh, nicely,' said Sponge. 'Take a glass of cherry-brandy,' exclaimed the hospitable Mr. Springwheat: 'nothing like a drop of something for steadying the nerves.' 'Presently,' replied Sponge, 'presently; meanwhile I'll trouble the missis for a cup of coffee. Coffee without sugar,' said Sponge, addressing the lady. 'With pleasure,' replied Mrs. Springwheat, glad to get a little custom for her goods. Most of the gentlemen had been at the bottles and sideboard. Springwheat, seeing Mr. Sponge, the only person who, as a stranger, there was any occasion for him to attend to, in the care of his wife, now slipped out of the room, and mounting his five-year-old horse, whose tail stuck out like the long horn of a coach, as his ploughman groom said, rode off to join the hunt. 'By the powers, but those are capital sarsingers!' observed Jack, smacking his lips and eating away for hard life. 'Just look if my lord's on his horse yet,' added he to one of the children, who had begun to hover round the table and dive their fingers into the sweets. 'No,' replied the child; 'he's still on foot, playing with the dogs.' 'Here goes, then,' said Jack, 'for another plate,' suiting the action to the word, and running with his plate to the sausage-dish. 'Have a hot one,' exclaimed Mrs. Springwheat, adding, 'it will be done in a minute.' 'No, thank ye,' replied Jack, with a shake of the head, adding, 'I might be done in a minute too.' 'He'll wait for you, I suppose?' observed Sponge, addressing Jack. 'Not so clear about that,' replied Jack, gobbling away; 'time and my lord wait for no man. But it's hardly the half-hour yet,' added he, looking at his watch. He then fell to with the voracity of a hound after hunting. Sponge, too, made the most of his time, as did two or three others who still remained. 'Now for the jumping-powder!' at length exclaimed Sponge, looking round for the bottle. 'What shall it be, cherry or neat?' continued he, pointing to the two. 'Cherry for me,' replied Jack, squinting and eating away without looking up. 'I say _neat_,' rejoined Sponge, helping himself out of the French bottle. 'You'll be hard to hold after that,' observed Jack, as he eyed Sponge tossing it off. 'I hope my horse won't,' replied Sponge, remembering he was going to ride the resolute chestnut. [Illustration] 'You'll show us the way, I dare say,' observed Jack. 'Shouldn't wonder,' replied Sponge, helping himself to a second glass. 'What! at it again!' exclaimed Jack, adding, 'Take care you don't ride over my lord.' 'I'll take care of the old file,' said Sponge; 'it wouldn't do to kill the goose that lays the golden what-do-ye-call-'ems, you know--he, he, he!' 'No,' chuckled Jack;' 'deed it wouldn't--must make the most of him.' 'What sort of a humour is he in to-day?' asked Sponge. 'Middlin',' replied Jack, 'middlin'; he'll abuse you most likely, but that you mustn't mind.' 'Not I,' replied Sponge, who was used to that sort of thing. 'You mustn't mind me either,' observed Jack, sweeping the last piece of sausage into his mouth with his knife, and jumping up from the table. 'When his lordship rows I row,' added he, diving under the side-table for his flat hat. 'Hark! there's the horn!' exclaimed Sponge, rushing to the window. 'So there is,' responded Jack, standing transfixed on one leg to the spot. 'By the powers, they're away!' exclaimed Sponge, as his lordship was seen hat in hand careering over the meadow, beyond the cover, with the tail hounds straining to overtake their flying comrades. Twang--twang--twang went Frostyface's horn; crack--crack--crack went the ponderous thongs of the whips; shouts, and yells, and yelps, and whoops, and halloas, proclaimed the usual wild excitement of this privileged period of the chase. All was joy save among the gourmands assembled at the door--they looked blank indeed. 'What a sell!' exclaimed Sponge, in disgust, who, with Jack, saw the hopelessness of the case. 'Yonder he goes!' exclaimed a lad, who had run up from the cover to see the hunt from the rising ground. 'Where?' exclaimed Sponge, straining his eyeballs. 'There!' said the lad, pointing due south. 'D'ye see Tommy Claychop's pasture? Now he's through the hedge and into Mrs. Starveland's turnip field, making right for Bramblebrake Wood on the hill.' 'So he is,' said Sponge, who now caught sight of the fox emerging from the turnips on to a grass field beyond. Jack stood staring through his great spectacles, without deigning a word. 'What shall we do?' asked Sponge. 'Do?' replied Jack, with his chin still up; 'go home, I should think.' 'There's a man down!' exclaimed a groom, who formed one of the group, as a dark-coated rider and horse measured their length on a pasture. 'It's Mr. Sparks,' said another, adding, 'he's always rolling about.' 'Lor', look at the parson!' exclaimed a third, as Blossomnose was seen gathering his horse and setting up his shoulders preparatory to riding at a gate. 'Well done, old 'un!' roared a fourth, as the horse flew over it, apparently without an effort. 'Now for Tom!' cried several, as the second whip went galloping up on the line of the gate. 'Ah! he won't have it!' was the cry, as the horse suddenly stopped short, nearly shooting Tom over his head. 'Try him again--try him again--take a good run--that's him--there, he's over!' was the cry, as Tom flourished his arm in the air on landing. 'Look! there's old Tommy Baker, the rat-ketcher!' cried another, as a man went working his arms and legs on an old white pony across a fallow. 'Ah, Tommy! Tommy! you'd better shut up,' observed another: 'a pig could go as fast as that.' And so they criticized the laggers. 'How did my lord get his horse?' asked Spraggon of the groom who had brought them on, who now joined the eye-straining group at the door. 'It was taken down to him at the cover,' replied the man. 'My lord went in on foot, and the horse went round the back way. The horse wasn't there half a minute before he was wanted; for no sooner were the hounds in at one end than out popped the fox at t'other. Sich a whopper!--biggest fox that ever was seen.' 'They are all the biggest foxes that ever were seen,' snapped Mr. Sponge. 'I'll be bound he was not a bit bigger than common.' 'I'll be bound not, either,' growled Mr. Spraggon, squinting frightfully at the man, adding, 'go, get me my hack, and don't be talking nonsense there.' Our friends then remounted their hacks and parted company in very moderate humours, feeling fully satisfied that his lordship had done it on purpose. CHAPTER XXVII THE FINEST RUN THAT EVER WAS SEEN [Illustration] 'Hoo-ray, Jack! Hoo-ray!' exclaimed Lord Scamperdale, bursting into his sanctum where Mr. Spraggon sat in his hunting coat and slippers, spelling away at a second-hand copy of _Bell's Life_ by the light of a melancholy mould candle. 'Hooray, Jack! hooray!' repeated he, waving that proud trophy, a splendid fox's brush, over his grizzly head. His lordship was the picture of delight. He had had a tremendous run--the finest run that ever was seen! His hounds had behaved to perfection; his horse--though he had downed him three times--had carried him well, and his lordship stood with his crownless flat hat in his hand, and one coat lap in the pocket of the other--a grinning, exulting, self-satisfied specimen of a happy Englishman. 'Lor! what a sight you are!' observed Jack, turning the light of the candle upon his lordship's dirty person. 'Why, I declare you're an inch thick with mud,' he added, 'mud from head to foot,' he continued, working the light up and down. 'Never mind the mud, you old badger!' roared his lordship, still waving the brush over his head: 'never mind the mud, you old badger; the mud'll come off, or may stay on; but such a run as we've had does not come off every day.' 'Well, I'm glad you have had a run,' replied Jack. 'I'm glad you have had a run,' adding, 'I was afraid at one time that your day's sport was spoiled.' 'Well, do you know,' replied his lordship, 'when I saw that unrighteous snob, I was near sick. If it were possible for a man to faint, I should have thought I was going to do so. At first I thought of going home, taking the hounds away too; then I thought of going myself and leaving the hounds; then I thought if I left the hounds it would only make the sinful scaramouch more outrageous, and I should be sitting on pins and needles till they came home, thinking how he was crashing among them. Next I thought of drawing all the unlikely places in the country, and making a blank day of it. Then I thought that would only be like cutting off my nose to spite my face. Then I didn't know what on earth to do. At last, when I saw the critter's great pecker steadily down in his plate, I thought I would try and steal a march upon him, and get away with my fox while he was feeding; and, oh! how thankful I was when I looked back from Bramblebrake Hill, and saw no signs of him in the distance.' 'It wasn't likely you'd see him,' interrupted Jack, 'for he never got away from the front door. I twigged what you were after, and kept him up in talk about his horses and his ridin' till I saw you were fairly away.' 'You did well,' exclaimed Lord Scamperdale, patting Jack on the back; 'you did well, my old buck-o'-wax; and, by Jove! we'll have a bottle of port--a bottle of port, as I live,' repeated his lordship, as if he had made up his mind to do a most magnificent act. 'But what's happened you behind?--what's happened you behind?' asked Jack, as his lordship turned to the fire, and exhibited his docked tail. 'Oh, hang the coat!--it's neither here nor there,' replied his lordship; 'hat neither,' he added, exhibiting its crushed proportions. 'Old Blossomnose did the coat; and as to the hat, I did it myself--at least, old Daddy Longlegs and I did it between us. We got into a grass-field, of which they had cut a few roods of fence, just enough to tempt a man out of a very deep lane, and away we sailed, in the enjoyment of fine sound sward, with the rest of the field plunging and floundering, and holding and grinning, and thinking what fools they were for not following my example--when, lo and behold! I got to the bottom of the field, and found there was no way out--no chance of a bore through the great thick, high hedge, except at a branchy willow, where there was just enough room to squeeze a horse through, provided he didn't rise at the ditch on the far side. At first I was for getting off; indeed, had my right foot out of the stirrup, when the hounds dashed forrard with such energy--looking like running--and remembering the tremendous climb I should have to get on to old Daddy's back again, and seeing some of the nasty jealous chaps in the lane eyeing me through the fence, thinking how I was floored, I determined to stay where I was; and gathering the horse together, tried to squeeze through the hole. Well, he went shuffling and sliding down to it, as though he were conscious of the difficulty, and poked his head quietly past the tree, when, getting a sight of the ditch on the far side, he rose, and banged my head against the branch above, crushing my hat right over my eyes, and in that position he carried me through blindfold.' 'Indeed!' exclaimed Jack, turning his spectacles full upon his lordship, and adding, 'it's lucky he didn't crack your crown.' 'It is,' assented his lordship, feeling his head to satisfy himself that he had not done so. 'And how did you lose your tail?' asked Jack, having got the information about the hat. 'The tail! ah, the tail!' replied his lordship, feeling behind, where it wasn't;' I'll tell you how that was: you see we went away like blazes from Springwheat's gorse--nice gorse it is, and nice woman he has for a wife--but, however, that's neither here nor there; what I was going to tell you about was the run, and how I lost my tail. Well, we got away like winking; no sooner were the hounds in on one side than away went the fox on the other. Not a soul shouted till he was clean gone; hats in the air was all that told his departure. The fox thus had time to run matters through his mind--think whether he should go to Ravenscar Craigs, or make for the main earths at Painscastle Grove. He chose the latter, doubtless feeling himself strong and full of running; and if we had chosen his ground for him he could not have taken us a finer line. He went as straight as an arrow through Bramblebrake Wood, and then away down the hill over those great enormous pastures to Haselbury Park, which he skirted, leaving Evercreech Green on the left, pointing as if for Dormston Dean. Here he was chased by a cur, and the hounds were brought to a momentary check. Frosty, however, was well up, and a hat being held up on Hothersell Hill, he clapped forrard and laid the hounds on beyond. We then viewed the fox sailing away over Eddlethorp Downs, still pointing for Painscastle Grove, with the Hamerton Brook lighting up here and there in the distance. 'The field, I should tell you, were fairly taken by surprise. There wasn't a man ready for a start; my horse had only just come down. Fossick was on foot, drawing his girths; Fyle was striking a light to smoke a cigar on his hack; Blossomnose and Capon's grooms were fistling and wisping their horses; Dribble, as usual, was all behind; and altogether there was such a scene of hurry and confusion as never was seen. 'As they came to the brook they got somewhat into line, and one saw who was there. Five or six of us charged it together, and two went under. One was Springwheat on his bay, who was somewhat pumped out; the other was said to be Hook. Old Daddy Longlegs skimmed it like a swallow, and, getting his hind-legs well under him, shot over the pastures beyond, as if he was going upon turf. The hounds all this time had been running, or rather racing, nearly mute. They now, however, began to feel for the scent; and, as they got upon the cold, bleak grounds above Somerton Quarries, they were fairly brought to their noses. Uncommon glad I was to see them; for ten minutes more, at the pace they had been going, would have shaken off every man Jack of us. As it was, it was bellows to mend; and Calcott's roarer roared as surely roarer never roared before. You could hear him half a mile off. We had barely time, however, to turn our horses to the wind, and ease them for a few moments, before the pace began to mend, and from a catching to a holding scent they again poured across Wallingburn pastures, and away to Roughacres Court. It was between these places that I got my head duntled into my hat,' continued his lordship, knocking the crownless hat against his mud-stained knee. 'However, I didn't care a button, though I'd not worn it above two years, and it might have lasted me a long time about home; but misfortunes seldom come singly, and I was soon to have another. The few of us that were left were all for the lanes, and very accommodating the one between Newton Bushell and the Forty-foot Bank was, the hounds running parallel within a hundred yards on the left for nearly a mile. When, however, we got to the old water-mill in the fields below, the fox made a bend to the left, as if changing his mind, and making for Newtonbroome Woods, and we were obliged to try the fortunes of war in the fields. The first fence we came to looked like nothing, and there was a weak place right in my line that I rode at, expecting the horse would easily bore through a few twigs that crossed the upper part of it. These, however, happened to be twisted, to stop the gap, and not having put on enough steam, they checked him as he rose, and brought him right down on his head in the broad ditch, on the far side. Old Blossomnose, who was following close behind, not making any allowance for falls, was in the air before I was well down, and his horse came with a forefoot, into my pocket, and tore the lap clean off by the skirt'; his lordship exhibiting the lap as he spoke. 'It's your new coat, too,' observed Jack, examining it with concern as he spoke. ''Deed, is it!' replied his lordship, with a shake of the head. ''Deed, is it! That's the consequence of having gone out to breakfast. If it had been to-morrow, for instance, I should have had number two on, or maybe number three,' his lordship having coats of every shade and grade, from stainless scarlet down to tattered mulberry colour. 'It'll mend, however,' observed his lordship, taking it back from Jack; 'it'll mend, however,' he said, fitting it round to the skirt as he spoke. 'Oh, nicely!' replied Jack; 'it's come off clean by the skirt. But what said Old Blossom?' inquired Jack. 'Oh, he was full of apologies and couldn't helps it as usual,' replied his lordship; 'he was down, too, I should tell you, with his horse on his left leg; but there wasn't much time for apologies or explanation, for the hounds were running pretty sharp, considering how long they had been at work, and there was the chance of others jumping upon us if we didn't get out of the way, so we both scrambled up as quick as we could and got into our places again.' 'Which way did you go, then?' asked Jack, who had listened with the attention of a man who knows every yard of the country. 'Well,' continued his lordship, casting back to where he got his fall, 'the fox crossed the Coatenburn township, picking all the plough and bad-scenting ground as he went, but it was of no use, his fate was sealed; and though he began to run short, and dodge and thread the hedge-rows, they hunted him yard by yard till he again made an effort for his life, and took over Mossingburn Moor, pointing for Penrose Tower on the hill. Here Frosty's horse, Little Jumper, declined, and we left him standing in the middle of the moor with a stiff neck, kicking and staring and looking mournfully at his flanks. Daddy Longlegs, too, had begun to sob, and in vain I looked back in hopes of seeing Jack-a-Dandy coming up. "Well," said I to myself, "I've got a pair of good strong boots on, and I'll finish the run on foot but I'll see it"; when, just at the moment, the pack broke from scent to view and rolled the fox up like a hedgehog amongst them.' 'Well done!' exclaimed Jack, adding, 'that was a run with a vengeance!' 'Wasn't it?' replied his lordship, rubbing his hands and stamping; 'the finest run that ever was seen--the finest run that ever was seen!' 'Why, it couldn't be less than twelve miles from point to point,' observed Jack, thinking it over. 'Not a yard,' replied his lordship, 'not a yard, and from fourteen to fifteen as the hounds ran.' 'It would be all that,' assented Jack. 'How long were you in doing it?' he asked. 'An hour and forty minutes,' replied his lordship; 'an hour and forty minutes from the find to the finish'; adding, 'I'll stick the brush and present it to Mrs. Springwheat.' 'It's to be hoped Springy's out of the brook,' observed Jack. 'To be hoped so,' replied his lordship, thinking, if he wasn't whether he should marry Mrs. Springwheat or not. Well now, after all that, we fancy we hear our fair friends exclaim, 'Thank goodness, there's an end of Lord Scamperdale and his hunting; he has had a good run, and will rest quiet for a time; we shall now hear something of Amelia and Emily, and the doings at Jawleyford Court.' Mistaken lady! If you are lucky enough to marry an out-and-out fox-hunter, you will find that a good run is only adding fuel to the fire, only making him anxious for more. Lord Scamperdale's sporting fire was in full blaze. His bumps and his thumps, his rolls, and his scrambles, only brought out the beauties and perfections of the thing. He cared nothing for his hat-crown, no; nor for his coat-lap either. Nay, he wouldn't have cared if it had been made into a spencer. 'What's to-day? Monday,' said his lordship, answering himself. 'Monday,' he repeated; 'Monday--bubble-and-squeak, I guess--sooner it's ready the better, for I'm half-famished--didn't do half-justice to that nice breakfast at Springy's. That nasty brown-booted buffer completely threw me off my feed. By the way, what became of the chestnut-booted animal?' 'Went home,' replied Jack; 'fittest place for him.' 'Hope he'll stay there,' rejoined his lordship. 'No fear of his being at the roads to-morrow, is there?' 'None,' replied Jack. 'I told him it was quite an impossible distance from him, twenty miles at least.' 'That's grand!' exclaimed his lordship; 'that's grand! Then we'll have a rare, ding-dong hey--away pop. There'll be no end of those nasty, jealous, Puffington dogs out; and if we have half such a scent as we had to-day, we'll sew some of them up, we'll show 'em what hunting is. Now,' he added, 'if you'll go and get the bottle of port, I'll clean myself, and then we'll have dinner as quick as we can.' CHAPTER XXVIII THE FAITHFUL GROOM We left our friend Mr. Sponge wending his way home moodily, after having lost his day at Larkhall Hill. Some of our readers will, perhaps, say, why didn't he clap on, and try to catch up the hounds at a check, or at all events rejoin them for an afternoon fox? Gentle reader! Mr. Sponge did not hunt on those terms; he was a front-rank or a 'nowhere' man, and independently of catching hounds up being always a fatiguing and hazardous speculation, especially on a fine-scenting day, the exertion would have taken more out of his horse than would have been desirable for successful display in a second run. Mr. Sponge, therefore, determined to go home. As he sauntered along, musing on the mishaps of the chase, wondering how Miss Jawleyford would look, and playing himself an occasional tune with his spur against his stirrup, who should come trotting behind him but Mr. Leather on the redoubtable chestnut? Mr. Sponge beckoned him alongside. The horse looked blooming and bright; his eye was clear and cheerful, and there was a sort of springy graceful action that looked like easy going. One always fancies a horse most with another man on him. We see all his good points without feeling his imperfections--his trippings, or startings, or snatchings, or borings, or roughness of action, and Mr. Sponge proceeded to make a silent estimate of Multum in Parvo's qualities as he trotted gently along on the grassy side of the somewhat wide road. 'By Jove! it's a pity but his lordship had seen him,' thought Sponge, as the emulation of companionship made the horse gradually increase his pace, and steal forward with the lightest, freest action imaginable. 'If he was but all right,' continued Sponge, with a shake of the head, 'he would be worth any money, for he has the strength of a dray-horse, with the symmetry and action of a racer.' Then Sponge thought he shouldn't have an opportunity of showing the horse till Thursday, for Jack had satisfied him that the next day's meet was quite beyond distance from Jawleyford Court. 'It's a bore,' said he, rising in his stirrups, and tickling the piebald with his spurs, as if he were going to set-to for a race. He thought of having a trial of speed with the chestnut, up a slip of turf they were now approaching; but a sudden thought struck him, and he desisted. 'These horses have done nothing to-day,' he said; 'why shouldn't I send the chestnut on for to-morrow?' 'Do you know where the cross-roads are?' he asked his groom. 'Cross-roads, cross-roads--what cross-roads?' replied Leather. 'Where the hounds meet to-morrow.' 'Oh, the cross-roads at Somethin' Burn,' rejoined Leather thoughtfully--'no, 'deed, I don't,' he added. 'From all 'counts, they seem to be somewhere on the far side of the world.' That was not a very encouraging answer; and feeling it would require a good deal of persuasion to induce Mr. Leather to go in search of them without clothing and the necessary requirements for his horses, Mr. Sponge went trotting on, in hopes of seeing some place where he might get a sight of the map of the county. So they proceeded in silence, till a sudden turn of the road brought them to the spire and housetops of the little agricultural town of Barleyboll. It differed nothing from the ordinary run of small towns. It had a pond at one end, an inn in the middle, a church at one side, a fashionable milliner from London, a merchant tailor from the same place, and a hardware shop or two where they also sold treacle, Dartford gunpowder, pocket-handkerchiefs, sheep-nets, patent medicines, cheese, blacking, marbles, mole-traps, men's hats, and other miscellaneous articles. It was quite enough of a town, however, to raise a presumption that there would be a map of the county at the inn. 'We'll just put the horses up for a few minutes, I think,' said Sponge, turning into the stable-yard at the end of the Red Lion Hotel and Posting House, adding, 'I want to write a letter, and perhaps,' said he, looking at his watch, 'you may be wanting your dinner.' Having resigned his horse to his servant, Mr. Sponge walked in, receiving the marked attention usually paid to a red coat. Mine host left his bar, where he was engaged in the usual occupation of drinking with customers for the 'good of the house.' A map of the county, of such liberal dimensions, was speedily produced, as would have terrified any one unaccustomed to distances and scales on which maps are laid down. For instance, Jawleyford Court, as the crow flies, was the same distance from the cross-roads at Dallington Burn as York was from London, in a map of England hanging beside it. 'It's a goodish way,' said Sponge, getting a lighter off the chimney-piece, and measuring the distances. 'From Jawleyford Court to Billingsborough Rise, say seven miles; from Billingsborough Rise to Downington Wharf, other seven; from Downington Wharf to Shapcot, which seems the nearest point, will be--say five or six, perhaps--nineteen or twenty in all. Well, that's my work,' he observed, scratching his head, 'at least, my hack's; and from here, home,' he continued, measuring away as he spoke, 'will be twelve or thirteen. Well, that's nothing,' he said. 'Now for the horse,' he continued, again applying the lighter in a different direction. 'From here to Hardington will be, say, eight miles; from Hardington to Bewley, other five; eight and five are thirteen; and there, I should say, he might sleep. That would leave ten or twelve miles for the morning; nothing for a hack hunter; 'specially such a horse as that, and one that's done nothing for I don't know how long.' Altogether, Mr. Sponge determined to try it, especially considering that if he didn't get Tuesday, there would be nothing till Thursday; and he was not the man to keep a hack hunter standing idle. Accordingly he sought Mr. Leather, whom he found busily engaged in the servants' apartment, with a cold round of beef and a foaming flagon of ale before him. 'Leather,' he said, in a tone of authority, 'I'll hunt to-morrow--ride the horse I should have ridden to-day.' 'Where at?' asked Leather, diving his fork into a bottle of pickles, and fishing out an onion. 'The cross-roads,' replied Sponge. 'The cross-roads be fifty miles from here!' cried Leather. 'Nonsense!' rejoined Sponge; 'I've just measured the distance. It's nothing of the sort.' 'How far do you make it, then?' asked Leather, tucking in the beef. 'Why, from here to Hardington is about six, and from Hardington to Bewley, four--ten in all,' replied Sponge. 'You can stay at Bewley all night, and then it is but a few miles on in the morning.' 'And whativer am I to do for clothin'?' asked Leather, adding, 'I've nothin' with me--nothin' nouther for oss nor man.' 'Oh, the ostler'll lend you what you want,' replied Sponge, in a tone of determination, adding, 'you can make shift for one night surely?' 'One night surely!' retorted Leather. 'D'ye think an oss can't be ruined in one night?--humph!' 'I'll risk it,' said Sponge. 'But I won't,' replied Leather, blowing the foam from the tankard, and taking a long swig at the ale. 'I thinks I knows my duty to my gov'nor better nor that,' continued he, setting it down. 'I'll not see his waluable 'unters stowed away in pigsties--not I, indeed.' The fact was, Leather had an invitation to sup with the servants at Jawleyford Court that night, and he was not going to be done out of his engagement, especially as Mr. Sponge only allowed him two shillings a day for expenses wherever he was. [Illustration: MR. LEATHER AND SPONGE HAVE A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION] 'Well, you're a cool hand, anyhow,' observed Mr. Sponge, quite taken by surprise. 'Cool 'and, or not cool 'and,' replied Leather, munching away, 'I'll do my duty to my master. I'm not one o' your coatless, characterless scamps wot 'ang about livery-stables ready to do anything they're bid. No sir, no,' he continued, pronging another onion; '_I_ have some regard for the hinterest o' my master. I'll do my duty in the station o' life in which I'm placed, and won't be 'fraid to face no man.' So saying, Mr. Leather cut himself a grand circumference of beef. Mr. Sponge was taken aback, for he had never seen a conscientious livery-stable helper before, and did not believe in the existence of such articles. However, here was Mr. Leather assuming a virtue, whether he had it or not; and Mr. Sponge being in the man's power, of course durst not quarrel with him. It was clear that Leather would not go; and the question was, what should Mr. Sponge do? 'Why shouldn't I go myself?' he thought, shutting his eyes, as if to keep his faculties free from outward distraction. He ran the thing quickly over in his mind. 'What Leather can do, I can do,' he said, remembering that a groom never demeaned himself by working where there was an ostler. 'These things I have on will do quite well for to-morrow, at least among such rough-and-ready dogs as the Flat Hat men, who seem as if they had their clothes pitched on with a fork.' His mind was quickly made up, and calling for pen, ink, and paper, he wrote a hasty note to Jawleyford, explaining why he would not cast up till the morrow; he then got the chestnut out of the stable, and desiring the ostler to give the note to Leather, and tell him to go home with his hack, he just rode out of the yard without giving Leather the chance of saying 'nay.' He then jogged on at a pace suitable to the accurate measurement of the distance. The horse seemed to like having Sponge's red coat on better than Leather's brown, and champed his bit, and stepped away quite gaily. 'Confound it!' exclaimed Sponge, laying the rein on its neck, and leaning forward to pat him; 'it's a pity but you were always in this humour--you'd be worth a mint of money if you were.' He then resumed his seat in the saddle, and bethought him how he would show them the way on the morrow. 'If he doesn't beat every horse in the field, it shan't be my fault,' thought he; and thereupon he gave him the slightest possible touch with the spur, and the horse shot away up a strip of grass like an arrow. 'By Jove, but you _can_ go!' said he, pulling up as the grass ran out upon the hard road. Thus he reached the village of Hardington, which he quickly cleared, and took the well-defined road to Bewley--a road adorned with milestones and set out with a liberal horse-track at either side. Day had closed ere our friend reached Bewley, but the children returning from school, and the country folks leaving their work, kept assuring him that he was on the right line, till the lights of the town, bursting upon him as he rounded the hill above, showed him the end of his journey. The best stalls at the head inn--the Bull's Head--were all full, several trusty grooms having arrived with the usual head-stalls and rolls of clothing on their horses, denoting the object of their mission. Most of the horses had been in some hours, and were now standing well littered up with straw, while the grooms were in the tap talking over their masters, discussing the merits of their horses, or arguing whether Lord Scamperdale was mad or not. They had just come to the conclusion that his lordship was mad, but not incapable of taking care of his affairs, when the trampling of Sponge's horse's feet drew them out to see who was coming next. Sponge's red coat at once told his tale, and procured him the usual attention. Mr. Leather's fear of the want of clothing for the valuable hunter proved wholly groundless, for each groom having come with a plentiful supply for his own horse, all the inn stock was at the service of the stranger. The stable, to be sure, was not quite so good as might be desired, but it was warm and water-tight, and the corn was far from bad. Altogether, Mr. Sponge thought he would do very well, and, having seen to his horse, proceeded to choose between beef-steaks and mutton chops for his own entertainment, and with the aid of the old country paper and some very questionable port, he passed the evening in anticipation of the sports of the morrow. CHAPTER XXIX THE CROSS-ROADS AT DALLINGTON BURN [Illustration] When his lordship and Jack mounted their hacks in the morning to go to the cross-roads at Dallington Burn, it was so dark that they could not see whether they were on bays or browns. It was a dull, murky day, with heavy spongy clouds overhead. There had been a great deal of rain in the night, and the horses poached and squashed as they went. Our sportsmen, however, were prepared as well for what had fallen as for what might come; for they were encased in enormously thick boots, with baggy overalls, and coats and waistcoats of the stoutest and most abundant order. They had each a sack of a mackintosh strapped on to their saddle fronts. Thus they went blobbing and groping their way along, varying the monotony of the journey by an occasional spurt of muddy water up into their faces, or the more nerve-trying noise of a floundering stumble over a heap of stones by the roadside. The country people stared with astonishment as they passed, and the muggers and tinkers, who were withdrawing their horses from the farmers' fields, stood trembling, lest they might be the 'pollis' coming after them. 'I think it'll be a fine day,' observed his lordship, after they had bumped for some time in silence without its getting much lighter. 'I think it will be a fine day,' he said, taking his chin out of his great puddingy-spotted neckcloth, and turning his spectacled face up to the clouds. 'The want of light is its chief fault,' observed Jack, adding, 'it's deuced dark!' 'Ah, it'll get better of that,' observed his lordship. 'It's not much after eight yet,' he added, staring at his watch, and with difficulty making out that it was half-past. 'Days take off terribly about this time of year,' he observed; 'I've seen about Christmas when it has never been rightly light all day long.' They then floundered on again for some time further as before. 'Shouldn't wonder if we have a large field,' at length observed Jack, bringing his hack alongside his lordship's. 'Shouldn't wonder if Puff himself was to come--all over brooches and rings as usual,' replied his lordship. 'And Charley Slapp, I'll be bund to say,' observed Jack. 'He a regular hanger-on of Puff's.' 'Ass, that Slapp,' said his lordship; 'hate the sight of him!' 'So do I,' replied Jack, adding, 'hate a hanger-on!' 'There are the hounds,' said his lordship, as they now approached Culverton Dean, and a line of something white was discernible travelling the zig-zagging road on the opposite side. 'Are they, think you?' replied Jack, staring through his great spectacles; 'are they, think you? It looks to me more like a flock of sheep.' 'I believe you're right,' said his lordship, staring too; 'indeed, I hear the dog. The hounds, however, can't be far ahead.' They then drew into single file to take the broken horse-track through the steep woody dean. 'This is the longest sixteen miles I know,' observed Jack, as they emerged from it, and overtook the sheep. 'It is,' replied his lordship, spurring his hack, who was now beginning to lag: 'the fact is, it's eighteen,' he continued; 'only if I was to tell Frosty it was eighteen, he would want to lay overnight, and that wouldn't do. Besides the trouble and inconvenience, it would spoil the best part of a five-pund note; and five-pund notes don't grow upon gooseberry-bushes--at least, not in my garden.' 'Rather scarce in all gardens just now, I think,' observed Jack; 'at least, I never hear of anybody with one to spare.' 'Money's like snow,' said his lordship, 'a very meltable article; and talking of snow,' he said, looking up at the heavy clouds, 'I wish we mayn't be going to have some--I don't like the look of things overhead.' 'Heavy,' replied Jack; 'heavy: however, it's due about now.' 'Due or not due,' said his lordship, 'it's a thing one never wishes to come; anybody may have my share of snow that likes--frost too.' The road, or rather track, now passed over Blobbington Moor, and our friends had enough to do to keep their horses out of peat-holes and bogs, without indulging in conversation. At length they cleared the moor, and, pulling out a gap at the corner of the inclosures, cut across a few fields, and got on to the Stumpington turnpike. 'The hounds are here,' said Jack, after studying the muddy road for some time. 'They'll not be there long,' replied his lordship, 'for Grabtintoll Gate isn't far ahead, and we don't waste our substance on pikes.' His lordship was right. The imprints soon diverged up a muddy lane on the right, and our sportsmen now got into a road so deep and bottomless as to put the idea of stones quite out of the question. 'Hang the road!' exclaimed his lordship, as his hack nearly came on his nose, 'hang the road!' repeated he, adding, 'if Puff wasn't such an ass, I really think I'd give him up the cross-road country.' 'It's bad to get at from us,' observed Jack, who didn't like such trashing distances. 'Ah! but it's a rare good country when you get to it,' replied his lordship, shortening his rein and spurring his steed. The lane being at length cleared, the road became more practicable, passing over large pastures where a horseman could choose his own ground, instead of being bound by the narrow limits of the law. But though the road improved, the day did not; a thick fog coming drifting up from the south-east in aid of the general obscurity of the scene. 'The day's gettin' _wuss_,' observed Jack, snuffling and staring about. 'It'll blow over,' replied his lordship, who was not easily disheartened. 'It'll blow over,' repeated he, adding, 'often rare scents such days as these. But we must put on,' continued he, looking at his watch, 'for it's half-past, and we are a mile or more off yet.' So saying, he clapped spurs to his hack and shot away at a canter, followed by Jack at a long-drawn 'hammer and pincers' trot. A hunt is something like an Assize circuit, where certain great guns show everywhere, and smaller men drop in here and there, snatching a day or a brief, as the case may be. Sergeant Bluff and Sergeant Huff rustle and wrangle in every court, while Mr. Meeke and Mr. Sneeke enjoy their frights on the forensic arenas of their respective towns, on behalf of simple neighbours, who look upon them as thorough Solomons. So with hunts. Certain men who seem to have been sent into the world for the express purpose of hunting, arrive at every meet, far and near, with a punctuality that is truly surprising, and rarely associated with pleasure. If you listen to their conversation, it is generally a dissertation on the previous day's sport, with inquiries as to the nearest way to cover the next. Sometimes it is seasoned with censure of some other pack they have been seeing. These men are mounted and appointed in a manner that shows what a perfect profession hunting is with them. Of course, they come cantering to cover, lest any one should suppose they ride their horses on. The 'Cross-roads' was like two hunts or two circuits joining, for it generally drew the picked men from each, to say nothing of outriggers and chance customers. The regular attendants of either hunt were sufficiently distinguishable as well by the flat hats and baggy garments of the one, as by the dandified, Jemmy Jessamy air of the other. If a lord had not been at the head of the Flat Hats, the Puffington men would have considered them insufferable snobs. But to our day. As usual, where hounds have to travel a long distance, the field were assembled before they arrived. Almost all the cantering gentlemen had cast up. One cross-road meet being so much like another, it will not be worth while describing the one at Dallington Burn. The reader will have the kindness to imagine a couple of roads crossing an open common, with an armless sign-post on one side, and a rubble-stone bridge, with several of the coping-stones lying in the shallow stream below, on the other. The country round about, if any country could have been seen, would have shown wild, open, and cheerless. Here a patch of wood, there a patch of heath, but its general aspect bare and unfruitful. The commanding outline of Beechwood Forest was not visible for the weather. Time now, let us suppose, half-past ten, with a full muster of horsemen and a fog making unwonted dulness of the scene--the old sign-pole being the most conspicuous object of the whole. Hark! what a clamour there is about it. It's like a betting-post at Newmarket. How loud the people talk! What's the news? Queen Anne dead, or is there another French Revolution, or a fixed duty on corn? Reader, Mr. Puffington's hounds have had a run, and the Flat Hat men are disputing it. 'Nothing of the sort! nothing of the sort!' exclaims Fossick, 'I know every yard of the country, and you can't make more nor eight of it anyhow, if eight.' 'Well, but I've measured it on the map,' replied the speaker (Charley Slapp himself), 'and it's thirteen, if it's a yard.' 'Then the country's grown bigger since my day,' rejoins Fossick, 'for I was dropped at Stubgrove, which is within a mile of where you found, and I've walked, and I've ridden, and I've driven every yard of the distance, and you can't make it more than eight, if it's as much. Can you, Capon?' exclaimed Fossick, appealing to another of the 'flat brims,' whose luminous face now shone through the fog. 'No,' replied Capon, adding, 'not so much, I should say.' Just then up trotted Frostyface with the hounds. 'Good morning, Frosty! good morning!' exclaim half-a-dozen voices, that it would be difficult to appropriate from the denseness of the fog. Frosty and the whips make a general salute with their caps. 'Well, Frosty, I suppose you've heard what a run we had yesterday?' exclaims Charley Slapp, as soon as Frosty and the hounds are settled. 'Had they, sir--had they?' replies Frosty, with a slight touch of his cap and a sneer. 'Glad to hear it, sir--glad to hear it. Hope they killed, sir--hope they killed!' with a still slighter touch of the cap. 'Killed, aye!--killed in the open just below Crabstone Green, in _your_ country,' adding, 'It was one of your foxes, I believe.' 'Glad of it, sir--glad of it, sir,' replies Frosty. 'They wanted blood sadly--they wanted blood sadly. Quite welcome to one of our foxes, sir--_quite_ welcome. That's a brace and a 'alf they've killed.' 'Brace and a ha-r-r-f!' drawls Slapp, in well-feigned disgust; 'brace and a ha-r-r-f!--why, it makes them ten brace, and six run to ground.' 'Oh, don't tell _me_,' retorts Frosty, with a shake of disgust; 'don't tell me. I knows better--I knows better. They'd only killed a brace since they began hunting up to yesterday. The rest were all cubs, poor things!--all cubs, poor things! Mr. Puffington's hounds are not the sort of animals to kill foxes: nasty, skirtin', flashy, jealous divils; always starin' about for holloas and assistance. I'll be d----d if I'd give eighteenpence for the 'ole lot on 'em.' A loud guffaw from the Flat Hat men greeted this wholesale condemnation. The Puffington men looked unutterable things, and there is no saying what disagreeable comparisons might have been instituted (for the Puffingtonians mustered strong) had not his lordship and Jack cast up at the moment. Hats off and politeness was then the order of the day. 'Mornin',' said his lordship, with a snatch of his hat in return, as he pulled up and stared into the cloud-enveloped crowd; 'Mornin', Fyle; mornin', Fossick,' he continued, as he distinguished those worthies, as much by their hats as anything else. 'Where are the horses?' he said to Frostyface. [Illustration: JACK FROSTY AND CHARLEY SLAPP] 'Just beyond there, my lord,' replied the huntsman, pointing with his whip to where a cockaded servant was 'to-and-froing' a couple of hunters--a brown and a chestnut. 'Let's be doing,' said his lordship, trotting up to them and throwing himself off his hack like a sack. Having divested himself of his muddy overalls, he mounted the brown, a splendid sixteen-hands horse in tip-top condition, and again made for the field in all the pride of masterly equestrianism. A momentary gleam of sunshine shot o'er the scene; a jerk of the head acted as a signal to throw off, and away they all moved from the meet. Thorneybush Gorse was a large eight-acre cover, formed partly of gorse and partly of stunted blackthorn, with here and there a sprinkling of Scotch firs. His lordship paid two pounds a year for it, having vainly tried to get it for thirty shillings, which was about the actual value of the land, but the proprietor claimed a little compensation for the trampling of horses about it; moreover, the Puffington men would have taken it at two pounds. It was a sure find, and the hounds dashed into it with a scent. The field ranged themselves at the accustomed corner, both hunts full of their previous day's run. Frostyface's 'Yoicks, wind him!' 'Yoicks, push him up!' was drowned in a medley of voices. A loud, clear, shrill 'TALLY-HO, AWAY!' from the far side of the cover caused all tongues to stop, and all hands to drop on the reins. Great was the excitement! Each hunt was determined to take the shine out of the other. 'Twang, twang, twang!' 'Tweet, tweet, tweet!' went his lordship's and Frostyface's horns, as they came bounding over the gorse to the spot, with the eager pack rushing at their horses' heels. Then as the hounds crossed the line of scent, there was such an outburst of melody in cover, and such gathering of reins and thrusting on of hats outside! The hounds dashed out of cover as if somebody was kicking them. A man in scarlet was seen flying through the fog, producing the usual hold-hardings. 'Hold hard, sir!' 'God bless you, hold hard, sir!' with inquiries as to 'who the chap was that was going to catch the fox.' 'It's Lumpleg!' exclaimed one of the Flat Hat men. 'No, it's not!' roared a Puffingtonite; 'Lumpleg's here.' 'Then it's Charley Slapp; he's always doing it,' rejoined the first speaker. 'Most jealous man in the world.' 'Is he!' exclaimed Slapp, cantering past at his ease on a thoroughbred grey, as if he could well afford to dispense with a start. Reader! it was neither Lumpleg nor Slapp, nor any of the Puffington snobs, or Flat Hat swells, or Puffington swells, or Flat Hat snobs. It was our old friend Sponge; Monsieur Tonson again! Having arrived late, he had posted himself, unseen, by the cover side, and the fox had broke close to him. Unfortunately, he had headed him back, and a pretty kettle of fish was the result. Not only had he headed him back, but the resolute chestnut, having taken it into his head to run away, had snatched the bit between his teeth; and carried him to the far side of a field ere Sponge managed to manoere him round on a very liberal semi-circle, and face the now flying sportsmen, who came hurrying on through the mist like a charge of yeomanry after a salute. All was excitement, hurry-scurry, and horse-hugging, with the usual spurring, elbowing, and exertion to get into places, Mr. Fossick considering he had as much right to be before Mr. Fyle as Mr. Fyle had to be before old Capon. It apparently being all the same to the chestnut which way he went so long as he had his run, he now bore Sponge back as quickly as he had carried him away, and with yawning mouth, and head in the air, he dashed right at the coming horsemen, charging Lord Scamperdale full tilt as he was in the act of returning his horn to its case. Great was the collision! His lordship flew one way, his horse another, his hat a third, his whip a fourth, his spectacles a fifth; in fact, he was scattered all over. In an instant he lay the centre of a circle, kicking on his back like a lively turtle. 'Oh! I'm kilt!' he roared, striking out as if he was swimming, or rather floating. 'I'm kilt!' he repeated. 'He's broken my back--he's broken my legs--he's broken my ribs--he's broken my collar-bone--he's knocked my right eye into the heel of my left boot. Oh! will nobody catch him and kill him? Will nobody do for him? Will you see an English nobleman knocked about like a ninepin?' added his lordship, scrambling up to go in pursuit of Mr. Sponge himself, exclaiming, as he stood shaking his fist at him, 'Rot ye, sir! hangin's too good for ye! you should be condemned to hunt in Berwickshire the rest of your life!' CHAPTER XXX BOLTING THE BADGER When a man and his horse differ seriously in public, and the man feels the horse has the best of it, it is wise for the man to appear to accommodate his views to those of the horse, rather than risk a defeat. It is best to let the horse go his way, and pretend it is yours. There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse. Mr. Sponge, having scattered Lord Scamperdale in the summary way described in our last chapter, let the chestnut gallop away, consoling himself with the idea that even if the hounds did hunt, it would be impossible for him to show his horse to advantage on so dark and unfavourable a day. He, therefore, just let the beast gallop till he began to flag, and then he spurred him and made him gallop on his account. He thus took his change out of him, and arrived at Jawleyford Court a little after luncheon time. Brief as had been his absence, things had undergone a great change. Certain dark hints respecting his ways and means had worked their way from the servants' hall to my lady's chamber, and into the upper regions generally. These had been augmented by Leather's, the trusty groom's, overnight visit, in fulfilment of his engagement to sup with the servants. Nor was Mr. Leather's anger abated by the unceremonious way Mr. Sponge rode off with the horse, leaving him to hear of his departure from the ostler. Having broken faith with him, he considered it his duty to be 'upsides' with him, and tell the servants all he knew about him. Accordingly he let out, in strict confidence of course, to Spigot, that so far from Mr. Sponge being a gentleman of 'fortin,' as he called it, with a dozen or two hunters planted here and there, he was nothing but the hirer of a couple of hacks, with himself as a job-groom, by the week. Spigot, who was on the best of terms with the 'cook-housekeeper,' and had his clothes washed on the sly in the laundry, could not do less than communicate the intelligence to her, from whom it went to the lady's-maid, and thence circulated in the upper regions. [Illustration] Juliana, the maid, finding Miss Amelia less indisposed to hear Mr. Sponge run down than she expected, proceeded to add her own observations to the information derived from Leather, the groom. 'Indeed, she couldn't say that she thought much of Mr. Sponge herself; his shirts were coarse, so were his pocket-handkerchiefs; and she never yet saw a real gent without a valet.' Amelia, without any positive intention of giving up Mr. Sponge, at least not until she saw further, had nevertheless got an idea that she was destined for a much higher sphere. Having duly considered all the circumstances of Mr. Spraggon's visit to Jawleyford Court, conned over several mysterious coughs and half-finished sentences he had indulged in, she had about come to the conclusion that the real object of his mission was to negotiate a matrimonial alliance on behalf of Lord Scamperdale. His lordship's constantly expressed intention of getting married was well calculated to mislead one whose experience of the world was not sufficiently great to know that those men who are always talking about it are the least likely to get married, just as men who are always talking about buying horses are the men who never do buy them. Be that, however, as it may, Amelia was tolerably easy about Mr. Sponge. If he had money she could take him; if he hadn't, she could let him alone. Jawleyford, too, who was more hospitable at a distance, and in imagination than in reality, had had about enough of our friend. Indeed, a man whose talk was of hunting, and his reading _Mogg_ was not likely to have much in common with a gentleman of taste and elegance, as our friend set up to be. The delicate inquiry that Mrs. Jawleyford now made, as to 'whether he knew Mr. Sponge to be a man of fortune,' set him off at a tangent. 'ME know he's a man of fortune! _I_ know nothing of his fortune. You asked him here, not ME,' exclaimed Jawleyford, stamping furiously. 'No, my dear,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford mildly; 'he asked himself, you know; but I thought, perhaps, you might have said something that--' 'ME say anything!' interrupted Jawleyford. '_I_ never said anything--at least, nothing that any man with a particle of sense would think anything of,' continued he, remembering the scene in the billiard-room. 'It's one thing to tell a man, if he comes your way, you'll be glad to see him, and another to ask him to come bag and baggage, as this impudent Mr. Sponge has done,' added he. 'Certainly,' replied Mrs. Jawleyford, who saw where the shoe was pinching her bear. 'I wish he was off,' observed Jawleyford, after a pause. 'He bothers me excessively--I'll try and get rid of him by saying we are going from home.' 'Where can you say we are going to?' asked Mrs. Jawleyford. 'Oh, anywhere,' replied Jawleyford; 'he doesn't know the people about here: the Tewkesbury's, the Woolerton's, the Brown's--anybody.' Before they had got any definite plan of proceeding arranged, Mr. Sponge returned from the chase. 'Ah, my dear sir!' exclaimed Jawleyford, half-gaily, half-moodily, extending a couple of fingers as Sponge entered his study: 'we thought you had taken French leave of us, and were off.' Mr. Sponge asked if his groom had not delivered his note. 'No,' replied Jawleyford boldly, though he had it in his pocket; 'at least, not that I've seen. Mrs. Jawleyford, perhaps, may have got it,' added he. 'Indeed!' exclaimed Sponge; 'it was very idle of him.' He then proceeded to detail to Jawleyford what the reader already knows, how he had lost his day at Larkhall Hill, and had tried to make up for it by going to the cross-roads. 'Ah!' exclaimed Jawleyford, when he was done; 'that's a pity--great pity--monstrous pity--never knew anything so unlucky in my life.' 'Misfortunes will happen,' replied Sponge, in a tone of unconcern. 'Ah, it wasn't so much the loss of the hunt I was thinking of,' replied Jawleyford, 'as the arrangements we have made in consequence of thinking you were gone.' 'What are they?' asked Sponge. 'Why, my Lord Barker, a great friend of ours--known him from a boy--just like brothers, in short--sent over this morning to ask us all there--shooting party, charades, that sort of thing--and we accepted.' 'But that need make no difference,' replied Sponge; 'I'll go too.' Jawleyford was taken aback. He had not calculated upon so much coolness. 'Well,' stammered he, 'that might do, to be sure; but--if--I'm not quite sure that I could take any one--' 'But if you're as thick as you say, you can have no difficulty,' replied our friend. 'True,' replied Jawleyford; 'but then we go a large party ourselves--two and two's four,' said he, 'to say nothing of servants; besides, his lordship mayn't have room--house will most likely be full.' 'Oh, a single man can always be put up; shake-down--anything does for him,' replied Sponge. 'But you would lose your hunting,' replied Jawleyford. 'Barkington Tower is quite out of Lord Scamperdale's country.' 'That doesn't matter,' replied Sponge, adding, 'I don't think I'll trouble his lordship much more. These Flat Hat gentlemen are not over and above civil, in my opinion.' 'Well,' replied Jawleyford, nettled at this thwarting of his attempt, 'that's for your consideration. However, as you've come, I'll talk to Mrs. Jawleyford, and see if we can get off the Barkington expedition.' 'But don't get off on my account,' replied Sponge. 'I can stay here quite well. I dare say you'll not be away long.' This was worse still; it held out no hope of getting rid of him. Jawleyford therefore resolved to try and smoke and starve him out. When our friend went to dress, he found his old apartment, the state-room, put away, the heavy brocade curtains brown-hollanded, the jugs turned upside down, the bed stripped of its clothes and the looking-glass laid a-top of it. The smirking housemaid, who was just rolling the fire-irons up in the hearth-rug, greeted him with a 'Please, sir, we've shifted you into the brown room, east,' leading the way to the condemned cell that 'Jack' had occupied, where a newly lit fire was puffing out dense clouds of brown smoke, obscuring even the gilt letters on the back of _Mogg's Cab Fares_, as the little volume lay on the toilet-table. 'What's happened now?' asked our friend of the maid, putting his arm round her waist, and giving her a hearty squeeze. 'What's happened now, that you've put me into this dog-hole?' asked he. 'Oh! I don't know,' replied she, laughing; 'I s'pose they're afraid you'll bring the old rotten curtains down in the other room with smokin'. Master's a sad old wife,' added she. A great change had come over everything. The fare, the lights, the footmen, the everything, underwent grievous diminution. The lamps were extinguished, and the transparent wax gave way to Palmer's composites, under the mild influence of whose unsearching light the young ladies sported their dashed dresses with impunity. Competition between them, indeed, was about an end. Amelia claimed Mr. Sponge, should he be worth having, and should the Scamperdale scheme fail; while Emily, having her mamma's assurance that he would not do for either of them, resigned herself complacently to what she could not help. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE DEMANDING AN EXPLANATION] Mr. Sponge, on his part, saw that all things portended a close. He cared nothing about the old willow-pattern set usurping the place of the Jawleyford-armed china; but the contents of the dishes were bad, and the wine, if possible, worse. Most palpable Marsala did duty for sherry, and the corked port was again in requisition. Jawleyford was no longer the brisk, cheery-hearted Jawleyford of Laverick Wells, but a crusty, fidgety, fire-stirring sort of fellow, desperately given to his _Morning Post_. Worst of all, when Mr. Sponge retired to his den to smoke a cigar and study his dear cab fares, he was so suffocated with smoke that he was obliged to put out the fire, notwithstanding the weather was cold, indeed inclining to frost. He lit his cigar notwithstanding; and, as he indulged in it, he ran all the circumstances of his situation through his mind. His pressing invitation--his magnificent reception--the attention of the ladies--and now the sudden change everything had taken. He couldn't make it out, somehow; but the consequences were plain enough. 'The fellow's a humbug,' at length said he, throwing the cigar-end away, and turning into bed, when the information Watson the keeper gave him on arriving recurred to his mind, and he was satisfied that Jawleyford was a humbug. It was clear Mr. Sponge had made a mistake in coming; the best thing he could do now was to back out, and see if the fair Amelia would take it to heart. In the midst of his cogitations Mr. Puffington's pressing invitation occurred to his mind, and it appeared to be the very thing for him, affording him an immediate asylum within reach of the fair lady, should she be likely to die. Next day he wrote to volunteer a visit. Mr. Puffington, who was still in ignorance of our friend's real character, and still believed him to be a second 'Nimrod' out on a 'tour,' was overjoyed at his letter; and, strange to relate, the same post that brought his answer jumping at the proposal, brought a letter from Lord Scamperdale to Jawleyford, saying that, 'as soon as Jawleyford was _quite alone_ (scored under) he would like to pay him a visit.' His lordship, we should inform the reader, notwithstanding his recent mishap, still held out against Jack Spraggon's recommendation to get rid of Mr. Sponge by buying his horses, and he determined to try this experiment first. His lordship thought at one time of entering into an explanation, telling Mr. Jawleyford the damage Sponge had done him, and the nuisance he was entailing upon him by harbouring him; but not being a great scholar, and several hard words turning up that his lordship could not well clear in the spelling, he just confined himself to a laconic, which, as it turned out, was a most fortunate course. Indeed, he had another difficulty besides the spelling, for the hounds having as usual had a great run after Mr. Sponge had floored him--knocked his right eye into the heel of his left boot, as he said--in the course of which run his lordship's horse had rolled over him on a road, he was like the railway people--unable to distinguish between capital and income--unable to say which were Sponge's bangs and which his own; so, like a hard cricket-ball sort of a man as he was, he just pocketed all, and wrote as we have described. His lordship's and Mr. Puffington's letters diffused joy into a house that seemed likely to be distracted with trouble. So then endeth our thirtieth chapter, and a very pleasant ending it is, for we leave everyone in perfect good humour and spirits, Sponge pleased at having got a fresh billet, Jawleyford delighted at the coming of the lord, and each fair lady practising in private how to sign her Christian name in conjunction with 'Scamperdale.' CHAPTER XXXI MR. PUFFINGTON; OR THE YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN Mr. Puffington took the Mangeysterne, now the Hanby hounds, because he thought they would give him consequence. Not that he was particularly deficient in that article; but being a new man in the county, he thought that taking them would make him popular, and give him standing. He had no natural inclination for hunting, but seeing friends who had no taste for the turf take upon themselves the responsibility of stewardships, he saw no reason why he should not make a similar sacrifice at the shrine of Diana. Indeed, Puff was not bred for a sportsman. His father, a most estimable man, and one with whom we have spent many a convivial evening, was a great starch-maker at Stepney; and his mother was the daughter of an eminent Worcestershire stone-china maker. Save such ludicrous hunts as they might have seen on their brown jugs, we do not believe either of them had any acquaintance whatever with the chase. Old Puffington was, however, what a wise heir esteems a great deal more--an excellent man of business, and amassed mountains of money. To see his establishment at Stepney, one would think the whole world was going to be starched. Enormous dock-tailed dray-horses emerged with ponderous waggons heaped up to the very skies, while others would come rumbling in, laden with wheat, potatoes, and other starch-making ingredients. Puffington's blue roans were well known about town, and were considered the handsomest horses of the day; quite equal to Barclay and Perkin's piebalds. Old Puffington was not like a sportsman. He was a little, soft, rosy, roundabout man, with stiff resolute legs that did not look as if they could be bent to a saddle. He was great, however, in a gig, and slouched like a sack. Mrs. Puffington, _née_ Smith, was a tall handsome woman, who thought a good deal of herself. When she and her spouse married, they lived close to the manufactory, in a sweet little villa replete with every elegance and convenience--a pond, which they called a lake--laburnums without end; a yew, clipped into a dock-tailed waggon-horse; standing for three horses and gigs, with an acre and half of land for a cow. Old Puffington, however, being unable to keep those dearest documents of the British merchant, his balance-sheets, to himself, and Mrs. Puffington finding a considerable sum going to the 'good' every year, insisted, on the birth of their only child, our friend, upon migrating to the 'west,' as she called it, and at one bold stroke they established themselves in Heathcote Street, Mecklenburgh Square. Novelists had not then written this part down as 'Mesopotamia,' and it was quite as genteel as Harley or Wimpole Street are now. Their chief object then was to increase their wealth and make their only son 'a gentleman.' They sent him to Eton, and in due time to Christ Church, where, of course, he established a red coat to persecute Sir Thomas Mostyn's and the Duke of Beaufort's hounds, much to the annoyance of their respective huntsmen, Stephen Goodall and Philip Payne, and the aggravation of poor old Griff. Lloyd. What between the field and college, young Puffington made the acquaintance of several very dashing young sparks--Lord Firebrand, Lord Mudlark, Lord Deuceace, Sir Harry Blueun, and others, whom he always spoke of as 'Deuceace,' 'Blueun,' etc., in the easy style that marks the perfect gentleman.[1] How proud the old people were of him! How they would sit listening to him, flashing, and telling how Deuceace and he floored a Charley, or Blueun and he pitched a snob out of the boxes into the pit. This was in the old Tom-and-Jerry days, when fisticuffs were the fashion. One evening, after he had indulged us with a more than usual dose, and was leaving the room to dress for an eight o'clock dinner at Long's, 'Buzzer!' exclaimed the old man, clutching our arm, as the tears started to his eyes, 'Buzzer! that's an am_aa_zin' instance of a pop'lar man!' And certainly, if a large acquaintance is a criterion of popularity, young Puffington, as he was then called, had his fair share. He once did us the honour--an honour we shall never forget--of walking down Bond Street with us, in the spring-tide of fashion, of a glorious summer's day, when you could not cross Conduit Street under a lapse of a quarter of an hour, and carriages seemed to have come to an interminable lock at the Piccadilly end of the street. In those days great people went about like great people, in handsome hammer-clothed, arms-emblazoned coaches, with plethoric three-corner-hatted coachmen, and gigantic, lace-bedizened, quivering-calved Johnnies, instead of rumbling along like apothecaries in pill-boxes, with a handle inside to let themselves out. Young men, too, dressed as if they were dressed--as if they were got up with some care and attention--instead of wearing the loose, careless, flowing, sack-like garments they do now. We remember the day as if it were but yesterday; Puffington overtook us in Oxford Street, where we were taking our usual sauntering stare into the shop windows, and instead of shirking or slipping behind our back, he actually ran his arm up to the hilt in ours, and turned us into the middle of the flags, with an 'Ah, Buzzer, old boy, what are you doing in this debauched part of the town? Come along with me, and I'll show you Life!' So saying he linked arms, and pursuing our course at a proper kill-time sort of pace, we were at length brought up at the end of Vere Street, along which there was a regular rush of carriages, cutting away as if they were going to a fire instead of to a finery shop. Many were the smiles, and bows, and nods, and finger kisses, and bright eyes, and sweet glances, that the fair flyers shot at our friend as they darted past. We were lost in astonishment at the sight. 'Verily,' said we, 'but the old man was right. This _is_ an am_aa_zin' instance of a pop'lar man.' Young Puffington was then in the heyday of youth, about one-and-twenty or so, fair-haired, fresh-complexioned, slim, and standing, with the aid of high-heeled boots, little under six feet high. He had taken after his mother, not after old Tom Trodgers, as they called his papa. At length we crossed over Oxford Street, and taking the shady side of Bond Street, were quickly among the real swells of the world--men who crawled along as if life was a perfect burden to them--men with eye-glasses fixed and tasselled canes in their hands, scarcely less ponderous than those borne by the footmen. Great Heavens! but they were tight, and smart, and shiny; and Puffington was just as tight, and smart, and shiny as any of them. He was as much in his element here as he appeared to be out of it in Oxford Street. It might be prejudice, or want of penetration on our part, but we thought he looked as high-bred as any of them. They all seemed to know each other, and the nodding, and winking, and jerking, began as soon as we got across. Puff kindly acted as cicerone, or we should not have been aware of the consequence we were encountering. 'Well, Jemmy!' exclaimed a debauched-looking youth to our friend, 'how are you?--breakfasted yet?' 'Going to,' replied Puffington, whom they called Jemmy because his name was Tommy. 'That,' said he, in an undertone, 'is a _capital_ fellow--Lord Legbail, eldest son of the Marquis of Loosefish--will be Lord Loosefish. We were at the Finish together till six this morning--such fun!--bonneted a Charley, stole his rattle, and broke an early breakfast-man's stall all to shivers.' Just then up came a broad-brimmed hat, above a confused mass of greatcoats and coloured shawls. 'Holloa, Jack!' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, laying hold of a mother-of-pearl button nearly as large as a tart-plate, 'not off yet?' 'Just going,' replied Jack, with a touch of his hat, as he rolled on, adding, 'want aught down the road?' 'What coachman is that?' asked we. '_Coachman!_' replied Puff, with a snort. 'That's Jack Linchpin--Honourable Jack Linchpin--son of Lord Splinterbars--best gentleman coachman in England.' So Puffington sauntered along, good morninging 'Sir Harrys' and 'Sir Jameses,' and 'Lord Johns' and 'Lord Toms,' till, seeing a batch of irreproachable dandies flattening their noses against the windows of the Sailors' Old Club, in whose eyes, he perhaps thought, our city coat and country gaiters would not find much favour, he gave us a hasty parting squeeze of the arm and bolted into Long's just as a mountainous hackney-coach was rumbling between us and them. But to the old man. Time rolled on, and at length old Puffington paid the debt of nature--the only debt, by the way, that he was slow in discharging--and our friend found himself in possession, not only of the starch manufactory, but of a very great accumulation of consols--so great that, though starch is as inoffensive a thing as a man can well deal in, a thing that never obtrudes itself, or, indeed appears in a shop unless it is asked for--notwithstanding all this, and though it was bringing him in lots of money, our friend determined to 'cut the shop' and be done with trade altogether. Accordingly, he sold the premises and good-will, with all the stock of potatoes and wheat, to the foreman, old Soapsuds, at something below what they were really worth, rather than make any row in the way of advertising; and the name of 'Soapsuds, Brothers & Co.' reigns on the blue-and-whitey-brown parcel-ends, where formerly that of Puffington stood supreme. It is a melancholy fact, which those best acquainted with London society can vouch for, that her 'swells' are a very ephemeral race. Take the last five-and-twenty years--say from the days of the Golden Ball and Pea-green Hayne down to those of Molly C----l and Mr. D-l-f-ld--and see what a succession of joyous--no, not joyous, but rattling, careless, dashing, sixty-percenting youths we have had. And where are they all now? Some dead, some at Boulogne-sur-Mer, some in Denman Lodge, some perhaps undergoing the polite attentions of Mr. Commissioner Phillips, or figuring in Mr. Hemp's periodical publication of gentlemen 'who are wanted.' In speaking of 'swells,' of course we are not alluding to men with reference to their clothes alone, but to men whose dashing, and perhaps eccentric, exteriors are but indicative of their general system of extravagance. The man who rests his claims to distinction solely on his clothes will very soon find himself in want of society. Many things contribute to thin the ranks of our swells. Many, as we said before, outrun the constable. Some get fat, some get married, some get tired, and a few get wiser. There is, however, always a fine pushing crop coming on. A man like Puffington, who starts a dandy (in contradistinction to a swell), and adheres steadily to clothes--talking eternally of the cuts of coats or the ties of cravats--up to the sober age of forty, must be always falling back on the rising generation for society. Puffington was not what the old ladies call a profligate young man. On the contrary, he was naturally a nice, steady young man; and only indulged in the vagaries we have described because they were indulged in by the high-born and gay. Tom and Jerry had a great deal to answer for in the way of leading soft-headed young men astray; and old Puffington having had the misfortune to christen our friend 'Thomas,' of course his companions dubbed him 'Corinthian Tom'; by which name he has been known ever since. A man of such undoubted wealth could not be otherwise than a great favourite with the fair, and innumerable were the invitations that poured into his chambers in the Albany--dinner parties, evening parties, balls, concerts, boxes for the opera; and as each succeeding season drew to a close, invitations to those last efforts of the desperate, boating and whitebait parties. Corinthian Tom went to them all--at least, to as many as he could manage--always dressing in the most exemplary way, as though he had been asked to show his fine clothes instead of to make love to the ladies. Manifold were the hopes and expectations that he raised. Puff could not understand that, though it is all very well to be 'an am_aa_zin' instance of a pop'lar man' with the men, that the same sort of thing does not do with the ladies. We have heard that there were six mammas, bowling about in their barouches, at the close of his second season, innuendoing, nodding, and hinting to their friends, 'that, &c.,' when there wasn't one of their daughters who had penetrated the rhinoceros-like hide of his own conceit. The consequence was that all these ladies, all their daughters, all the relations and connexions of this life, thought it incumbent upon them to 'blow' our friend Puff--proclaim how infamously he had behaved--all because he had danced three supper dances with one girl, brought another a fine bouquet from Covent Garden, walked a third away from her party at a picnic at Erith, begged the mamma of a fourth to take her to a Woolwich ball, sent a fifth a ticket for a Toxophilite meeting, and dangled about the carriage of the sixth at a review at the Scrubbs. Poor Puff never thought of being more than an am_aa_zin' instance of a pop'lar man! Not that the ladies' denunciations did the Corinthian any harm at first--old ladies know each other better than that; and each new mamma had no doubt but Mrs. Depecarde or Mrs. Mainchance, as the case might be, had been deceiving herself--'was always doing so, indeed; her ugly girls were not likely to attract any one--certainly not such an elegant man as Corinthian Tom.' But as season after season passed away, and the Corinthian still played the old game--still went the old rounds--the dinner and ball invitations gradually dwindled away, till he became a mere stop-gap at the one, and a landing-place appendage at the other. [Illustration: MR. PUFFINGTON, FROM THE ORIGINAL PICTURE] CHAPTER XXXII THE MAN OF P-R-O-R-PERTY And now behold Mr. Puffington, fat, fair, and rather more than forty--Puffington, no longer the light limber lad who patronized us in Bond Street, but Puffington a plump, portly sort of personage, filling his smart clothes uncommonly full. Men no longer hailing him heartily from bay windows, or greeting him cheerily in short but familiar terms, but bowing ceremoniously as they passed with their wives, or perhaps turning down streets or into shops to avoid him. What is the last rose of summer to do under such circumstances? What, indeed, but retire into the country? A man may shine there long after he is voted a bore in town, provided none of his old friends are there to proclaim him. Country people are tolerant of twaddle, and slow of finding things out for themselves. Puff now turned his attention to the country, or rather to the advertisements of estates for sale, and immortal George Robins soon fitted him with one of his earthly paradises; a mansion replete with every modern elegance, luxury, and convenience, situated in the heart of the most lovely scenery in the world, with eight hundred acres of land of the finest quality, capable of growing forty bushels of wheat after turnips. In addition to the estate there was a lordship or reputed lordship to shoot over, a river to fish in, a pack of fox-hounds to hunt with, and the advertisements gave a sly hint as to the possibility of the property influencing the representation of the neighbouring borough of Swillingford, if not of returning the member itself. This was Hanby House, and though the description undoubtedly partook of George's usual high-flown _couleur-de-rose_ style, the manor being only a manor provided the owner sacrificed his interest in Swillingford by driving off its poachers, and the river being only a river when the tiny Swill was swollen into one, still Hanby House was a very nice attractive sort of place, and seen in the rich foliage of its summer dress, with all its roses and flowering shrubs in full blow, the description was not so wide of the mark as Robins's descriptions usually were. Puff bought it, and became what he called 'a man of p-r-o-r-perty.' To be sure, after he got possession he found that it was only an acre here and there that would grow forty bushels of wheat after turnips, and that there was a good deal more to do at the house than he expected, the furniture of the late occupants having hidden many defects, added to which they had walked off with almost everything they could wrench down, under the name of fixtures; indeed, there was not a peg to hang up his hat when he entered. This, however, was nothing, and Puff very soon made it into one of the most perfect bachelor residences that ever was seen. Not but that it was a family house, with good nurseries and offices of every description; but Puff used to take a sort of wicked pleasure in telling the ladies who came trooping over with their daughters, pretending they thought he was from home, and wishing to see the elegant furniture, that there was nothing in the nurseries, which he was going to convert into billiard and smoking-rooms. This, and a few similar sallies, earned our friend the reputation of a wit in the country. There was great rush of gentlemen to call upon him; many of the mammas seemed to think that first come would be first served, and sent their husbands over before he was fairly squatted. Various and contradictory were the accounts they brought home. Men are so stupid at seeing and remembering things. Old Mr. Muddle came back bemused with sherry, declaring that he thought Mr. Puffington was as old as he was (sixty-two), while Mrs. Mousetrap thought he wasn't more than thirty at the outside. She described him as 'painfully handsome.' Mr. Slowan couldn't tell whether the drawing-room furniture was chintz, or damask, or what it was; indeed, he wasn't sure that he was in the drawing-room at all; while Mr. Gapes insisted that the carpet was a Turkey carpet, whereas it was a royal cut pile. It might be that the smartness and freshness of everything confused the bucolic minds, little accustomed to wholesale grandeur. Mr. Puffington quite eclipsed all the old country families with their 'company rooms' and put-away furniture. Then, when he began to grind about the country in his lofty mail-phaeton, with a pair of spanking, high-stepping bays, and a couple of arm-folded, lolling grooms, shedding his cards in return for their calls, there was such a talk, such a commotion, as had never been known before. Then, indeed, he was appreciated at his true worth. [Illustration: AN 'AMA-A-ZIN' POP'LAR' MAN] 'Mr. Puffington was here the other day,' said Mrs. Smirk to Mrs. Smooth, in the well-known 'great-deal-more-meant-than-said' style. 'Oh such a charming man! Such ease! such manners! such knowledge of high life!' Puff had been at his old tricks. He had resuscitated Lord Legbail, now Earl of Loosefish; imported Sir Harry Blueun from somewhere near Geneva, whither he had retired on marrying his mistress; and resuscitated Lord Mudlark, who had broken his neck many years before from his tandem in Piccadilly. Whatever was said, Puff always had a duplicate or illustration involving a nobleman. The great names might be rather far-fetched at times, to be sure, but when people are inclined to be pleased they don't keep putting that and that together to see how they fit, and whether they come naturally or are lugged in neck and heels. Puff's talk was very telling. One great man to a house is the usual country allowance, and many are not very long in letting out who theirs are; but Puffington seemed to have the whole peerage, baronetage, and knightage at command. Old Mrs. Slyboots, indeed, thought that he must be connected with the peerage some way; his mother, perhaps, had been the daughter of a peer, and she gave herself an infinity of trouble in hunting through the 'matches'--with what success it is not necessary to say. The old ladies unanimously agreed that he was a most agreeable, interesting young man; and though the young ones did pretend to run him down among themselves, calling him ugly, and so on, it was only in the vain hope of dissuading each other from thinking of him. Mr. Puffington still stuck to the 'am_aa_zin' pop'lar man' character; a character that is not so convenient to support in the country as it is in town. The borough of Swillingford, as we have already intimated, was not the best conducted borough in the world; indeed, when we say that the principal trade of the place was poaching, our country readers will be able to form a very accurate opinion on that head. When Puff took possession of Hanby there was a fair show of pheasants about the house, and a good sprinkling of hares and partridges over the estate and manor generally; but refusing to prosecute the first poachers that were caught, the rest took the hint, and cleared everything off in a week, dividing the plunder among them. They also burnt his river and bagged his fine Dorking fowls, and all these feats being accomplished with impunity, they turned their attention to his fat sheep. 'Poacher' is only a mild term for 'thief.' Puff was a perfect milch-cow in the way of generosity. He gave to everything and everybody, and did not seem to be acquainted with any smaller sum than a five-pound note; a five-pound note to replace Giles Jolter's cart-horse (that used to carry his own game for the poachers to the poulterers at Plunderstone)--five pounds to buy Dame Doubletongue another pig, though she had only just given three pounds for the one that died--five pounds towards the fire at farmer Scratchley's, though it had taken place two years before Puff came into the country, and Scratchley had been living upon it ever since--and sundry other five pounds to other equally deserving and amiable people. He put his name down for fifty to the Mangeysterne hounds without ever being asked; which reminds us that we ought to be directing our attention to that noble establishment. It is hard to have to go behind the scenes of an ill-supported hunt, and we will be as brief and tender with the cripples as we can. The Mangeysterne hounds wanted that great ingredient of prosperity, a large nest-egg subscriber, to whom all others could be tributary--paying or not as might be convenient. The consequence was they were always up the spout. They were neither a scratch pack nor a regular pack, but something betwixt and between. They were hunted by a saddler, who found his own horses, and sometimes he had a whip and sometimes he hadn't. The establishment died as often as old Mantalini himself. Every season that came to a close was proclaimed to be their last, but somehow or other they always managed to scramble into existence on the approach of another. It is a way, indeed, that delicate packs have of recruiting their finances. Nevertheless, the Mangeysternes did look very like coming to an end about the time that Mr. Puffington bought Hanby House. The saddler huntsman had failed; John Doe had taken one of his screws, and Richard Roe the other, and anybody might have the hounds that liked: Puffington then turned up. Great was the joy diffused throughout the Mangeysterne country when it transpired, through the medium of his valet, Louis Bergamotte, that 'his lor' had _beaucoup habit rouge_' in his wardrobe. Not only habit rouge, but habit blue and buff, that he used to sport with 'Old Beaufort' and the Badminton Hunt--coats that he certainly had no chance of ever getting into again, but still which he kept as memorials of the past--souvenirs of the days when he was young and slim. The bottle-conjurer could just as soon have got into his quart bottle as Puff could into the Beaufort coat at the time of which we are writing. The intelligence of their existence was quickly followed by the aforesaid fifty-pound cheque. A meeting of the Mangeysterne hunt was called at the sign of the Thirsty Freeman in Swillingford--Sir Charles Figgs, Knight--a large-promising but badly paying subscriber--in the chair, when it was proposed and carried unanimously that Mr. Puffington was eminently qualified for the mastership of the hunt, and that it be offered to him accordingly. Puff 'bit.' He recalled his early exploits with 'Mostyn and old Beaufort,' and resolved that the hunt had taken a right view of his abilities. In coming to this decision he, perhaps, was not altogether uninfluenced by a plausible subscription list, which seemed about equal to the ordinary expenses, supposing that any reliance could be placed on the figures and calculations of Sir Charles. All those, however, who have had anything to do with subscription lists--and in these days of universal testimonializing who has not?--well know that pounds upon paper and pounds in the pocket are very different things. Above all Puff felt that he was a new man in the country, and that taking the hounds would give him weight. The 'Mangeysterne dogs' then began to 'look up'; Mr. Puffington took to them in earnest; bought a 'Beckford,' and shortened his military stirrups to a hunting seat. CHAPTER XXXIII A SWELL HUNTSMAN One evening the rattle of Puff's pole-chains brought, in addition to the usual rush of shirt-sleeved helpers, an extremely smart, dapper little man, who might be either a jockey or a gentleman, or both, or neither. He was a clean-shaved, close-trimmed, spruce little fellow; remarkably natty about the legs--indeed, all over. His close-napped hat was carefully brushed, and what little hair appeared below its slightly curved brim was of the pepper-and-salt mixture of--say, fifty years. His face, though somewhat wrinkled and weather-beaten, was bright and healthy; and there was a twinkle about his little grey eyes that spoke of quickness and watchful observation. Altogether, he was a very quick-looking little man--a sort of man that would know what you were going to say before you had well broke ground. He wore no gills; and his neatly tied starcher had a white ground with small black spots, about the size of currants. The slight interregnum between it and his step-collared striped vest (blue stripe on a canary-coloured ground) showed three golden foxes' heads, acting as studs to his well-washed, neatly plaited shirt; while a sort of careless turn back of the right cuff showed similar ornaments at his wrists. His single-breasted, cutaway coat was Oxford mixture, with a thin cord binding, and very natty light kerseymere mother-o'-pearl buttoned breeches, met a pair of bright, beautifully fitting, rose-tinted tops, that wrinkled most elegantly down to the Jersey-patterned spur. He was a remarkably well got up little man, and looked the horseman all over. As he emerged from the stable, where he had been mastering the ins and outs of the establishment, learning what was allowed and what was not, what had not been found fault with and, therefore, might be presumed upon, and so on, he carried the smart dogskin leather glove of one hand in the other, while the fox's head of a massive silver-mounted jockey-whip peered from under his arm. On a ring round the fox's neck was the following inscription: 'FROM JACK BRAGG TO HIS COUSIN DICK.' Mr. Puffington having drawn up his mail-phaeton, and thrown the ribbons to the active grooms at the horses' heads in the true coaching style, proceeded to descend from his throne, and had reached the ground ere he was aware of the presence of a stranger. Seeing him then, he made the sort of half-obeisance of a man that does not know whether he is addressing a gentleman or a servant, or, maybe, a scamp, going about with a prospectus. Puff had been bit in the matter of some maps in London, and was wary, as all people ought to be, of these birds. The stranger came sidling up with a half-bow, half-touch of the hat, drawling out: ''Sceuuse me, sir--'sceuuse me, sir,' with another half-bow and another half-touch of the hat. 'I'm Mister Bragg, sir--Mister Richard Bragg, sir; of whom you have most likely heard.' 'Bragg--Richard Bragg,' repeated our friend, thoughtfully, while he scanned the man's features, and ran his sporting acquaintance through his mind's eye. 'Bragg, Bragg,' repeated he, without hitting him off. 'I was huntsman, sir, to my Lord Reynard, sir,' observed the stranger, with a touch of the hat to each 'sir.' 'Thought p'r'aps you might have known his ludship, sir. Before him, sir, I held office, sir, under the Duke of Downeybird, sir, of Downeybird Castle, sir, in Downeybirdshire, sir.' 'Indeed!' replied Mr. Puffington, with a half-bow and a smile of politeness. 'Hearing, sir, you had taken these Mangeysterne _dogs_, sir,' continued the stranger, with rather a significant emphasis on the word '_dogs_'--'hearing, sir, you had taken these Mangeysterne _dogs_, sir, it occurred to me that possibly I might be useful to you, sir, in your new calling, sir; and if you were of the same opinion, sir, why, sir, I should be glad to negotiate a connexion, sir.' 'Hem!--hem!--hem!' coughed Mr. Puffington. 'In the way of a huntsman do you mean?' afraid to talk of servitude to so fine a gentleman. 'Just so,' said Mr. Bragg, with a chuck of his head, 'just so. The fact is, though I'm used to the grass countries, sir, and could go to the Marquis of Maneylies, sir, to-morrow, sir, I should prefer a quiet place in a somewhat inferior country, sir, to a five-days-a-week one in the best. Five and six days a week, sir, is a terrible tax, sir, on the constitution, sir; and though, sir, I'm thankful to say, sir, I've pretty good 'ealth, sir, yet, sir, you know, sir, it don't do, sir, to take too great liberties with oneself, sir'; Mr. Bragg sawing away at his hat as he spoke, measuring off a touch, as it were, to each 'sir,' the action becoming quick towards the end. 'Why, to tell you the truth,' said Puff, looking rather sheepish, 'to tell you the truth--I intended--I thought at least of--of--of--hunting them myself.' 'Ah! that's another pair of shoes altogether, as we say in France,' replied Bragg, with a low bow and a copious round of the hand to the hat. 'That's _another_ pair of shoes altogether,' repeated he, tapping his boot with his whip. 'Why, I _thought_ of it,' rejoined Puff, not feeling quite sure whether he could or not. 'Well,' said Mr. Bragg, drawing on his dogskin glove as if to be off. 'My friend Swellcove does it,' observed Puff. 'True,' replied Bragg, 'true; but my Lord Swellcove is one of a thousand. See how many have failed for one that has succeeded. Why, even my Lord Scamperdale was 'bliged to give it up, and no man rides harder than my Lord Scamperdale--always goes as if he had a spare neck in his pocket. But he couldn't 'unt a pack of 'ounds. Your gen'l'men 'untsmen are all very well on fine scentin' days when everything goes smoothly and well, and the 'ounds are tied to their fox, as it were; but see them in difficulties--a failing scent, 'ounds pressed upon by the field, fox chased by a dog, storm in the air, big brook to get over to make a cast. Oh, sir, sir, it makes even me, with all my acknowledged science and experience, shudder to think of the ordeal one undergoes!' 'Indeed,' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, staring, and beginning to think it mightn't be quite so easy as it looked. 'I don't wish, sir, to dissuade you, sir, from the attempt, sir,' continued Mr. Bragg; 'far from it, sir--for he, sir, who never makes an effort, sir, never risks a failure, sir, and in great attempts, sir, 'tis glorious to fail, sir'; Mr. Bragg sawing away at his hat as he spoke, and then sticking the fox-head handle of his whip under his chin. Puff stood mute for some seconds. 'My Lord Scamperdale,' continued Mr. Bragg, scrutinizing our friend attentively, 'was as likely a man, sir, as ever I see'd, sir, to make an 'untsman, for he had a deal of ret (rat) ketchin' cunnin' about him, and, as I said before, didn't care one dim for his neck, but a more signal disastrous failure was never recognized. It was quite lamentable to witness his proceeding.' 'How?' asked Mr. Puffington. 'How, sir?' repeated Mr. Bragg; 'why, sir, in all wayses. He had no dog language, to begin with--he had little idea of making a cast--no science, no judgement, no manner--no nothin'--I'm dim'd if ever I see'd sich a mess as he made.' Puff looked unutterable things. 'He never did no good, in fact, till I fit him with Frostyface. _I_ taught Frosty,' continued Mr. Bragg. 'He whipped in to me when I 'unted the Duke of Downeybird's 'ounds--nice, 'cute, civil chap he was--of all my pupils--and I've made some first-rate 'untsmen, I'm dim'd if I don't think Frostyface does me about as much credit as any on 'em. Ah, sir,' continued Mr. Bragg, with a shake of his head, 'take my word for it, sir, there's nothin' like a professional. S-c-e-u-s-e me, sir,' added he, with a low bow and a sort of military salute of his hat; 'but dim all gen'l'men 'untsmen, say I.' Mr. Bragg had talked himself into several good places. Lord Reynard's and the Duke of Downeybird's among others. He had never been able to keep any beyond his third season, his sauce or his science being always greater than the sport he showed. Still he kept up appearances, and was nothing daunted, it being a maxim of his that 'as one door closed another opened.' Mr. Puffington's was the door that now opened for him. What greater humiliation can a free-born Briton be subjected to than paying a man eighty or a hundred pounds a year, and finding him house, coals, and candles, and perhaps a cow, to be his master? Such was the case with poor Mr. Puffington, and such, we grieve to say, is the case with nine-tenths of the men who keep hounds; with all, indeed, save those who can hunt themselves, or who are blest with an aspiring whip, ready to step into the huntsman's boots if he seems inclined to put them off in the field. How many portly butlers are kept in subjection by having a footman ready to supplant them. Of all cards in the servitude pack, however, the huntsman's is the most difficult one to play. A man may say, 'I'm dim'd if I won't clean my own boots or my own horse, before I'll put up with such a fellow's impudence'; but when it comes to hunting his own hounds, it is quite another pair of shoes, as Mr. Bragg would say. Mr. Bragg regularly took possession of poor Puff; as regularly as a policeman takes possession of a prisoner. The reader knows the sort of feeling one has when a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, or any one whom we have called in to assist, takes the initiative, and treats one as a nonentity, pooh-poohing all one's pet ideas, and upsetting all one's well-considered arrangements. Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated Puff accordingly. If a 'perfect servant' is only to be got out of the establishments of the great, Mr. Bragg might be looked upon as a paragon of perfection, and now combined in his own person all the bad practices of all the places he had been in. Having 'accepted Mr. Puffington's situation,' as the elegant phraseology of servitude goes, he considered that Mr. Puffington had nothing more to do with the hounds, and that any interference in 'his department' was a piece of impertinence. Puffington felt like a man who has bought a good horse, but which he finds on riding is rather more of a horse than he likes. He had no doubt that Bragg was a good man, but he thought he was rather more of a gentleman than he required. On the other hand, Mr. Bragg's opinion of his master may be gleaned from the following letter which he wrote to his successor, Mr. Brick, at Lord Reynard's: 'HANBY HOUSE, SWILLINGFORD. 'DEAR BRICK, 'If your old man is done daffling with your draft, I should like to have the pick of it. I'm with one Mr. Puffington, a city gent. His father was a great confectioner in the Poultry, just by the Mansion House, and made his money out of Lord Mares. I shall only stay with him till I can get myself suited in the rank of life in which I have been accustomed to move; but in the meantime I consider it necessary for my own credit to do things as they should be. You know my sort of hound; good shoulders, deep chests, strong loins, straight legs, round feet, with plenty of bone all over. I hate a weedy animal; a small hound, light of bone, is only fit to hunt a kat in a kitchen. 'I shall also want a couple of whips--not fellows like waiters from _Crawley's_ hotel, but light, active _men_, not boys. I'll have nothin' to do with boys; every boy requires a man to look arter him. No; a couple of short, light, active men--say from five-and-twenty to thirty, with bow-legs and good cheery voices, as nearly of the same make as you can find them. I shall not give them large wage, you know; but they will have opportunities of improving themselves under me, and qualifying themselves for high places. But mind, they _must be steady_--I'll keep no unsteady servants; the first act of drunkenness, with me, is the last. 'I shall also want a second horseman; and here I wouldn't mind a mute boy who could keep his elbows down and never touch the curb; but he must be bred in the line; a huntsman's second horseman is a critical article, and the sporting world must not be put in mourning for Dick Bragg. The lad will have to clean my boots, and wait at table when I have company--yourself, for instance. 'This is only a poor, rough, ungentlemanly sort of shire, as far as I have seen it; and however they got on with the things I found that they called hounds I can't for the life of me imagine. I understand they went stringing over the country like a flock of wild geese. However, I have rectified that in a manner by knocking all the fast 'uns and slow 'uns on the head; and I shall require at least twenty couple before I can take the field. In your official report of what your old file puts back, you'll have the kindness to cobble us up good long pedigrees, and carry half of them at least back to the Beaufort Justice. My man has got a crochet into his head about that hound, and I'm dimmed if he doesn't think half the hounds in England are descended from the Beaufort Justice. These hounds are at present called the Mangeysternes, a very proper title, I should say, from all I've seen and heard. That, however, must be changed; and we must have a button struck, instead of the plain pewter plates the men have been in the habit of hunting in. 'As to horses, I'm sure I don't know what we are to do in that line. Our pastrycook seems to think that a hunter, like one of his pa's pies, can be made and baked in a day. He talks of going over to Rowdedow Fair, and picking some up himself; but I should say a gentleman demeans himself sadly who interferes with the just prerogative of the groom. It has never been allowed I know in any place I have lived; nor do I think servants do justice to themselves or their order who submit to it. Howsomever the crittur has what Mr. Cobden would call the "raw material" for sport--that is to say, plenty of money--and I must see and apply it in such a way as will produce it. I'll do the thing as it should be, or not at all. 'I hope your good lady is well--also all the little Bricks. I purpose making a little tower of some of the best kennels as soon as the drafts are arranged, and will spend a day or two with you, and see how you get on without me. Dear Brick,' 'Yours to the far end, 'RICHARD BRAGG. 'To BENJAMIN BRICK, Esq., 'Huntsman to the Right Hon. the Earl of Reynard, 'Turkeypout Park. 'P.S.--I hope your old man keeps a cleaner tongue in his head than he did when I was premier. I always say there was a good bargeman spoiled when they made him a lord. 'R.B.' CHAPTER XXXIV THE BEAUFORT JUSTICE There is nothing more indicative of real fine people than the easy indifferent sort of way they take leave of their friends. They never seem to care a farthing for parting. Our friend Jawleyford was quite a man of fashion in this respect. He saw Sponge's preparations for departure with an unconcerned air, and a--'sorry you're going,' was all that accompanied an imitation shake, or rather touch of the hand, on leaving. There was no 'I hope we shall see you again soon,' or 'Pray look in if you are passing our way,' or 'Now that you've found your way here we hope you'll not be long in being back,' or any of those blarneyments that fools take for earnest and wise men for nothing. Jawleyford had been bit once, and he was not going to give Mr. Sponge a second chance. Amelia too, we are sorry to say, did not seem particularly distressed, though she gave him just as much of a sweet look as he squeezed her hand, as said, 'Now, if you _should_ be a man of money, and my Lord Scamperdale does not make me my lady, you may,' &c. There is an old saying, that it is well to be 'off with the old love before one is on with the new,' and Amelia thought it was well to be on with the new love before she was off with the old. Sponge, therefore, was to be in abeyance. We mentioned the delight infused into Jawleyford Court by the receipt of Lord Scamperdale's letter, volunteering a visit, nor was his lordship less gratified at hearing in reply that Mr. Sponge was on the eve of departure, leaving the coast clear for his reception. His lordship was not only delighted at getting rid of his horror, but at proving the superiority of his judgement over that of Jack, who had always stoutly maintained that the only way to get rid of Mr. Sponge was by buying his horses. 'Well, that's _good_,' said his lordship, as he read the letter; 'that's _good_,' repeated he, with a hearty slap of his thigh. 'Jaw's not such a bad chap after all; worse chaps in the world than Jaw.' And his lordship worked away at the point till he very nearly got him up to be a good chap. They say it never rains but it pours, and letters seldom come singly; at least, if they do they are quickly followed by others. As Jack and his lordship were discussing their gin, after a repast of cow-heel and batter-pudding, Baggs entered with the old brown weather-bleached letter-bag, containing a county paper, the second-hand copy of _Bell's Life_, that his lordship and Frostyface took in between them, and a very natty 'thick cream-laid' paper note. 'That must be from a woman,' observed Jack, squinting ardently at the writing, as his lordship inspected the fine seal. 'Not far wrong,' replied his lordship. 'From a bitch of a fellow, at all events,' said he, reading the words 'Hanby House' in the wax. 'What can old Puffey be wanting now?' inquired Jack. 'Some bother about hounds, most likely,' replied his lordship, breaking the seal, adding, 'the thing's always amusing itself with playing at sportsman. Hang his impudence!' exclaimed his lordship, as he opened the note. 'What's happened now?' asked Jack. 'How d'ye think he begins?' asked his lordship, looking at his friend. 'Can't tell, I'm sure,' said Jack, squinting his eyes inside out. 'Dear Scamp!' exclaimed his lordship, throwing out his arms. 'Dear Scamp!' repeated Jack in astonishment. 'It must be a mistake. It must be dear Frost, not dear Scamp.' 'Dear Scamp is the word,' replied his lordship, again applying himself to the letter. 'Dear Scamp,' repeated he, with a snort, adding, 'the impudent button-maker! I'll dear Scamp him! "Dear Scamp, our friend Sponge!" Bo-o-y the powers, just fancy that! 'exclaimed his lordship, throwing himself back in his chair, as if thoroughly overcome with disgust. '_Our friend Sponge!_ the man who nearly knocked me into the middle of the week after next--the man who, first and last, has broken every bone in my skin--the man who I hate the sight of, and detest afresh every time I see--the 'bomination of all 'bominations; and then to call him our friend Sponge! "Our friend Sponge,"' continued his lordship, reading, '"is coming on a visit of inspection to my hounds, and I should be glad if you would meet him."' 'Shouldn't wonder!' exclaimed Jack. '_Meet him!_' snapped his lordship; 'I'd go ten miles to avoid him.' '"Glad if you would meet him,"' repeated his lordship, returning to the letter, and reading as follows: '"If you bring a couple of nags or so we can put them up, and you may get a wrinkle or two from Bragg." A wrinkle or two from Bragg! 'exclaimed his lordship, dropping the letter and rolling in his chair with laughter. 'A wrinkle or two from Bragg!--he--he--he--he! The idea of a wrinkle or two from Bragg!--haw--haw--haw--haw! 'That beats cockfightin',' observed Jack, squinting frightfully. 'Doesn't it?' replied his lordship. 'The man who's so brimful of science that he doesn't kill above three brace of foxes in a season.' 'Which Puff calls thirty,' observed Jack. 'Th-i-r-ty!' exclaimed his lordship, adding, 'I'll lay he'll not kill thirty in ten years.' His lordship then picked the letter from the floor, and resumed where he had left off. '"I expect you will meet Tom Washball, Lumpleg, and Charley Slapp."' 'A very pretty party,' observed Jack, adding, 'Wouldn't be seen goin' to a bull-bait with any on 'em.' 'Nor I,' replied his lordship. 'Birds of a feather,' observed Jack. 'Just so,' said his lordship, resuming his reading. '"I think I have a hound that may be useful to you--" The devil you have!' exclaimed his lordship, grinding his teeth with disgust. 'Useful to _me_, you confounded haberdasher!--you hav'n't a hound in your pack that I'd take. "I think I have a hound that may be useful to you--"' repeated his lordship. 'A Beaufort Justice one, for a guinea!' interrupted Jack, adding, 'He got the name into his head at Oxford, and has been harping upon it ever since.' '"I think I have a hound that may be useful to you--"' resumed his lordship, for the third time. '"It is Old Merriman, a remarkably stout, true line hunting hound; but who is getting slow for me--" Slow for you, you beggar!' exclaimed his lordship; 'I should have thought nothin' short of a wooden 'un would have been too slow for you. "He's a six-season hunter, and is by Fitzwilliam's Singwell out of his Darling. Singwell was by the Rutland Rallywood out of Tavistock's Rhapsody. Rallywood was by Old Lonsdale's--" Old Lonsdale's!--the snob!' sneered Lord Scamperdale--'"Old Lonsdale's Palafox, out of Anson's--" Anson's!--curse the fellow,' again muttered his lordship--'"out of Anson's Madrigal. Darling was by old Grafton's Bolivar, out of Blowzy. Bolivar was by the Brocklesby; that's Yarborough's--" That's Yarborough's!' sneered his lordship, 'as if one didn't know that as well as him--"by the Brocklesby; that's Yarborough's Marmion out of Petre's Matchless; and Marmion was by that undeniable hound, the--" the--what?' asked his lordship. 'Beaufort Justice, to be sure!' replied Jack. '"The Beaufort Justice!"' read his lordship, with due emphasis. 'Hurrah!' exclaimed Jack, waving the dirty, egg-stained, mustardy copy of _Bell's Life_ over his head. 'Hurrah! I told you so.' 'But hark to Justice!' exclaimed his lordship, resuming his reading. '"I've always been a great admirer of the Beaufort Justice blood--"' 'No doubt,' said Jack; 'it's the only blood you know.' '"It was in great repute in the Badminton country in old Beaufort's time, with whom I hunted a great deal many years ago, I'm sorry to say. The late Mr. Warde, who, of course, was very justly partial to his own sort, had never any objection to breeding from this _Beaufort_ Justice. He was of Lord Egremont's blood, by the New Forest Justice; Justice by Mr. Gilbert's Jasper; and Jasper bred by Egremont--" Oh, the hosier!' exclaimed his lordship; 'he'll be the death of me.' 'Is that all?' asked Jack, as his lordship seemed lost in meditation. 'All?--no!' replied he, starting up, adding, 'here's something about you.' 'Me!' exclaimed Jack. '"If Mr. Spraggon is with you, and you like to bring him, I can manage to put him up too,"' read his lordship. 'What think you of that?' asked his lordship, turning to our friend, who was now squinting his eyes inside out with anger. 'Think of it!' retorted Jack, kicking out his legs--'think of it!--why, I think he's a dim'd impittant feller, as Bragg would say.' 'So he is,' replied his lordship; 'treating my friend Jack so.' 'I've a good mind to go,' observed Jack, after a pause, thinking he might punish Puff, and try to do a little business with Sponge. 'I've a good mind to go,' repeated he; 'just by way of paying Master Puff off. He's a consequential jackass, and wants taking down a peg or two.' 'I think you may as well go and do it,' replied his lordship, after thinking the matter over; 'I think you may as well go and do it. Not that he'll be good to take the conceit out of, but you may vex him a bit; and also learn something of the movements of his friend Sponge. If he sarves Puff out as he's sarved me,' continued his lordship, rubbing his ribs with his elbows, 'he'll very soon have enough of him.' 'Well,' said Jack, 'I really think it will be worth doing. I've never been at the beggar's shop, and they say he lives well.' '_Well_, aye!' exclaimed his lordship; 'fat o' the land--dare say that man has fish and soup every day.' 'And wax-candles to read by, most likely,' observed Jack, squinting at the dim mutton-fats that Baggs now brought in. 'Not so grand as that,' observed his lordship, doubting whether any man could be guilty of such extravagance; 'composites, p'raps.' It being decided that Jack should answer Mr. Puffington's invitation as well and saucily as he could, and a sheet of very inferior paper being at length discovered in the sideboard drawer, our friends forthwith proceeded to concoct it. Jack having at length got all square, and the black-ink lines introduced below, dipped his pen in the little stone ink-bottle, and, squinting up at his lordship, said: 'How shall I begin?' 'Begin?' replied he. 'Begin--oh, let's see--begin--begin, "Dear Puff," to be sure.' 'That'll do,' said Jack, writing away. ('Dear Puff!' sneered our friend, when he read it; 'the idea of a fellow like that writing to a man of my p-r-o-r-perty that way.') 'Say "Scamp,"' continued his lordship, dictating again, '"is engaged, but I'll be with you at feeding-time."' ('Scamp's engaged,' read Puffington, with a contemptuous curl of the lip, 'Scamp's engaged: I like the impudence of a fellow like that calling noblemen nicknames.') The letter concluded by advising Puffington to stick to the Beaufort Justice blood, for there was nothing in the world like it. And now, having got both our friends booked for visits, we must yield precedence to the nobleman, and accompany him to Jawleyford Court. [Illustration: LORD SCAMPERDALE AS HE APPEARED IN HIS 'SWELL' CLOTHES] CHAPTER XXXV LORD SCAMPERDALE AT JAWLEYFORD COURT Although we have hitherto depicted Lord Scamperdale either in his great uncouth hunting-clothes or in the flare-up red and yellow Stunner tartan, it must not be supposed that he had not fine clothes when he chose to wear them, only he wanted to save them, as he said, to be married in. That he had fine ones, indeed, was evident from the rig-out he lent Jack when that worthy went to Jawleyford Court, and, in addition to those which were of the evening order, he had an uncommonly smart Stultz frock-coat, with a velvet collar, facings, and cuffs, and a silk lining. Though so rough and ready among the men, he was quite the dandy among the ladies, and was as anxious about his appearance as a girl of sixteen. He got himself clipped and trimmed, and shaved with the greatest care, curving his whiskers high on to the cheekbones, leaving a great breadth of bare fallow below. Baggs the butler was despatched betimes to Jawleyford Court with the dog-cart freighted with clothes, driven by a groom to attend to the horses, while his lordship mounted his galloping grey hack towards noon, and dashed through the country like a comet. The people, who were only accustomed to see him in his short, country-cut hunting-coats, baggy breeches, and shapeless boots, could hardly recognize the frock-coated, fancy-vested, military-trousered swell, as Lord Scamperdale. Even Titus Grabbington, the superintendent of police, declared that he wouldn't have known him but for his hat and specs. The latter, we need hardly say, were the silver ones--the pair that he would not let Jack have when he went to Jawleyford Court. So his lordship went capering and careering along, avoiding, of course, all the turnpike-gates, of which he had a mortal aversion. Jawleyford Court was in full dress to receive him--everything was full fig. Spigot appeared in buckled shorts and black silk stockings; while vases of evergreens and winter flowers mounted sentry on passage tables and landing-places. Everything bespoke the elegant presence of the fair. To the credit of Dame Fortune let us record that everything went smoothly and well. Even the kitchen fire behaved as it ought. Neither did Lord Scamperdale arrive before he was wanted, a very common custom with people unused to public visiting. He cast up just when he was wanted. His ring of the door-bell acted like the little tinkling bell at a theatre, sending all parties to their places, for the curtain to rise. Spigot and his two footmen answered the summons, while his lordship's groom rushed out of a side-door, with his mouth full of cold meat, to take his hack. Having given his flat hat to Spigot, his whip-stick to one footman, and his gloves to the other, he proceeded to the family tableau in the drawing-room. Though his lordship lived so much by himself he was neither _gauche_ nor stupid when he went into society. Unlike Mr. Spraggon, he had a tremendous determination of words to the mouth, and went best pace with his tongue instead of coughing and hemming, and stammering and stuttering--wishing himself 'well out of it,' as the saying is. His seclusion only seemed to sharpen his faculties and make him enjoy society more. He gushed forth like a pent-up fountain. He was not a bit afraid of the ladies--rather the contrary; indeed, he would make love to them all--all that were good-looking, at least, for he always candidly said that he 'wouldn't have anything to do with the ugly 'uns.' If anything, he was rather too vehement, and talked to the ladies in such an earnest, interested sort of way, as made even bystanders think there was 'something in it,' whereas, in point of fact, it was mere manner. He began as soon as ever he got to Jawleyford Court--at least, as soon as he had paid his respects all round and got himself partially thawed at the fire; for the cold had struck through his person, his fine clothes being a poor substitute for his thick double-milled red coat, blankety waistcoat, and Jersey shirt. There are some good-natured, well-meaning people in this world who think that fox-hunters can talk of nothing but hunting, and who put themselves to very serious inconvenience in endeavouring to get up a little conversation for them. We knew a bulky old boy of this sort, who invariably, after the cloth was drawn, and he had given each leg a kick out to see if they were on, commenced with, 'Well, I suppose, Mr. Harkington has a fine set of dogs this season?' 'A fine set of dogs this season! 'What an observation! How on earth could any one hope to drive a conversation on the subject with such a commencement? Some ladies are equally obliging in this respect. They can stoop to almost any subject that they think will procure them husbands. Music!--if a man is fond of music, they will sing themselves into his good graces in no time. Painting!--oh, they adore painting--though in general they don't profess to be great hands at it themselves. Balls, boating, archery, racing--all these they can take a lively interest in; or, if occasion requires, can go on the serious tack and hunt a parson with penny subscriptions for a clothing-club or soup-kitchen. Fox-hunting!--we do not know that fox-hunting is so safe a speculation for young ladies as any of the foregoing. There are many pros and cons in the matter of the chase. A man may think--especially in these hard times, with 'wheat below forty,' as Mr. Springwheat would say--that it will be as much as he can do to mount himself. Again, he may not think a lady looks any better for running down with perspiration, and being daubed with mud. Above all, if he belongs to the worshipful company of Craners, he may not like for his wife to be seen beating him across country. Still, there are many ways that young ladies may insinuate themselves into the good graces of sportsmen without following them into the hunting-field. Talking about their horses, above all admiring them, taking an interest in their sport, seeing that they have nice papers of sandwiches to take out with them, or recommending them to be bled when they come home with dirty faces after falls. Miss Amelia Jawleyford, who was most elegantly attired in a sea-green silk dress with large imitation pearl buttons, claiming the usual privilege of seniority of birth, very soon led the charge against Lord Scamperdale. 'Oh, what a lovely horse that is you were riding,' observed she, as his lordship kept stooping with both his little red fists close into the bars of the grate. 'Isn't it!' exclaimed he, rubbing his hands heartily together. 'Isn't it!' repeated he, adding, 'that's what I call a clipper.' 'Why do you call it so?' asked she. 'Oh, I don't mean that clipper is its name,' replied he; 'indeed, we call her Cherry Bounce in the stable--but she's what they call a clipper--a good 'un to go, you know,' continued he, staring at the fair speaker through his great, formidable spectacles. We believe there is nothing frightens a woman so much as staring at her through spectacles. A barrister in barnacles is a far more formidable cross-examiner than one without. But, to his lordship's back. 'Will he eat bread out of your hand?' asked Amelia, adding, 'I _should_ so like a horse that would eat bread out of my hand.' 'Oh yes; or cheese either,' replied his lordship, who was a bit of a wag, and as likely to try a horse with one as the other. 'Oh, how delightful! what a charming horse!' exclaimed Amelia, turning her fine eyes up to the ceiling. 'Are you fond of horses?' asked his lordship, smacking one hand against the other, making a noise like the report of a pistol. 'Oh, so fond!' exclaimed Amelia, with a start; for she hadn't got through her favourite, and, as she thought, most attractive attitude. 'Well, now, that's nice,' said his lordship, giving his other hand a similar bang, adding, 'I like a woman that's fond of horses.' 'Then 'Melia and you'll 'gree nicely,' observed Mrs. Jawleyford, who was always ready to give a helping hand to her own daughters, at least. 'I don't doubt it!' replied his lordship, with emphasis, and a third bang of his hand, louder if possible than before. 'And do _you_ like horses?' asked his lordship, darting sharply round on Emily, who had been yielding, or rather submitting, to the precedence of her sister. 'Oh yes; and hounds, too!' replied she eagerly. 'And hounds, too!' exclaimed his lordship, with a start, and another hearty bang of the fist, adding, 'well, now, I like a woman that likes hounds.' Amelia frowned at the unhandsome march her sister had stolen upon her. Just then in came Jawleyford, much to the annoyance of all parties. A host should never show before the dressing-bell rings. When that glad sound was at length heard, the ladies, as usual, immediately withdrew; and of course the first thing Amelia did when she got to her room was to run to the glass to see how she had been looking: when, grievous to relate, she found an angry hot spot in the act of breaking out on her nose. What a distressing situation for a young lady, especially one with a spectacled suitor. 'Oh, dear!' she thought, as she eyed it in the glass, 'it will look like Vesuvius itself through his formidable inquisitors.' Worst of all, it was on the side she would have next him at dinner, should he choose to sit with his back to the fire. However, there was no help for it, and the maid kindly assuring her, as she worked away at her hair, that it 'would never be seen,' she ceased to watch it, and turned her attention to her toilette. The fine, new broad-lace flounced, light-blue satin dress--a dress so much like a ball dress as to be only appreciable as a dinner one by female eyes--was again in requisition; while her fine arms were encircled with chains and armlets of various brilliance and devices. Thus attired, with a parting inspection of the spot, she swept downstairs, with as smart a bouquet as the season would afford. As luck would have it, she encountered his lordship himself wandering about the passage in search of the drawing-room, of whose door he had not made a sufficient observation on leaving. He too, was uncommonly smart, with the identical dress-coat Mr. Spraggon wore, a white waistcoat with turquoise buttons, a lace-frilled shirt, and a most extensive once-round Joinville. He had been eminently successful in accomplishing a tie that would almost rival the sticks farmers put upon truant geese to prevent their getting through gaps or under gates. Well, Miss Amelia having come to his lordship's assistance, and eased him of his candle, now showed him into the drawing-room; and his hands being disengaged, like a true Englishman, he must be doing, and accordingly he commenced an attack on her bouquet. 'That's a fine nosegay!' exclaimed he, staring and rubbing his snub nose into the midst of it. 'Let me give you a piece,' replied Amelia, proceeding to detach some of the best. 'Do,' replied his lordship, banging one hand against the other, adding, 'I'll wear it next my heart of hearts.' In sidled Miss Emily just as his lordship was adjusting it in his button-hole, and the inconstant man immediately chopped over to her. 'Well, now, that _is_ a beautiful nosegay!' exclaimed he, turning upon her in precisely the same way, with a bang of the hand and a dive of his nose into Emily's. She did not offer him any, and his lordship continued his attentions to her until Mrs. Jawleyford entered. Dinner was presently announced; but his lordship, instead of choosing to sit with his back to the fire, took the single chair opposite, which gave him a commanding view of the young ladies. He did not, however, take any advantage of his position during the repast, neither did he talk much, his maxim being to let his meat stop his mouth. The preponderance of his observations, perhaps, were addressed to Amelia, though a watchful observer might have seen that the spectacles were oftener turned upon Emily. Up to the withdrawal of the cloth, however, there was no perceptible advantage on either side. [Illustration] As his lordship settled to the sweets, at which he was a great hand at dessert, Amelia essayed to try her influence with the popular subject of a ball. 'I wish the members of your hunt would give us a ball, my lord,' observed she. 'Ah, hay, hum--ball,' replied he, ladling up the syrup of some preserved peaches that he had been eating; 'ball, ball, ball. No place to give it--no place to give it,' repeated he. 'Oh, give it in the town-hall, or the long room at the Angel,' replied she. 'Town-hall--long room at the Angel--Angel at the long room of the town-hall--oh, certainly, certainly, certainly,' muttered he, scraping away at the contents of his plate. 'Then that's a bargain, mind,' observed Amelia significantly. 'Bargain, bargain, bargain--certainly,' replied he; 'and I'll lead off with you, or you'll lead off with me--whichever way it is--meanwhile, I'll trouble you for a piece of that gingerbread.' Having supplied him with a most liberal slice, she resumed the subject of the ball. 'Then we'll fix it so,' observed she. 'Oh, fix it so, certainly--certainly fix it so,' replied his lordship, filling his mouth full of gingerbread. 'Suppose we have it on the day of the races?' continued Amelia. 'Couldn't be better,' replied his lordship; 'couldn't be better,' repeated he, eyeing her intently through his formidable specs. His lordship was quite in the assenting humour, and would have agreed to anything--anything short of lending one a five-pound note. Amelia was charmed with her success. Despite the spot on her nose, she felt she was winning. His lordship sat like a target, shot at by all, but making the most of his time, both in the way of eating and staring between questions. At length the ladies withdrew, and his lordship having waddled to the door to assist their egress, now availed himself of Jawleyford's invitation to occupy an arm-chair during the enjoyment of his 'Wintle.' Whether it was the excellence of the beverage, or that his lordship was unaccustomed to wine-drinking, or that Jawleyford's conversation was unusually agreeable, we know not, but the summons to tea and coffee was disregarded, and when at length they did make their appearance, his lordship was what the ladies call rather elevated, and talked thicker than there was any occasion for. He was very voluble at first--told all how Sponge had knocked him about, how he detested him, and wouldn't allow him to come to the hunt ball, &c.; but he gradually died out, and at last fell asleep beside Mrs. Jawleyford on the sofa, with his little legs crossed, and a half-emptied coffee-cup in his hand, which Mr. Jawleyford and she kept anxiously watching, expecting the contents to be over the fine satin furniture every moment. In this pleasant position they remained till he awoke himself with a hearty snore, and turned the coffee over on to the carpet. Fortunately there was little damage done, and, it being nearly twelve o'clock, his lordship waddled off to bed. Amelia, when she came to think matters over in the retirement of her own room, was well satisfied with the progress she had made. She thought she only wanted opportunity to capture him. Though she was most anxious for a good night in order that she might appear to advantage in the morning, sleep forsook her eyelids, and she lay awake long thinking what she would do when she was my lady--how she would warm Woodmansterne, and what a dashing equipage she would keep. At length she dropped off, just as she thought she was getting into her well-appointed chariot, showing a becoming portion of her elegantly turned ankles. In the morning she attired herself in her new light blue satin robe, corsage Albanaise, with a sort of three-quarter sleeves, and muslin under ones--something, we believe, out of the last book of fashion. She also had her hair uncommonly well arranged, and sported a pair of clean primrose-coloured gloves. 'Now for victory,' said she, as she took a parting glance at herself in general, and the hot spot in particular. Judge of her disgust on meeting her mamma on the staircase at learning that his lordship had got up at six o'clock, and had gone to meet his hounds on the other side of the county. That Baggs had boiled his oatmeal porridge in his bedroom, and his lordship had eaten it as he was dressing. It may be asked, what was the maid about not to tell her. The fact is, that ladies'-maids are only numb hands in all that relates to hunting, and though Juliana knew that his lordship was up, she thought he had gone to have his hunt before breakfast, just as the young gentlemen in the last place she lived in used to go and have a bathe. [Illustration] Baggs, we may add, was a married man, and Juliana and he had not had much conversation. CHAPTER XXXVI MR. BRAGG'S KENNEL MANAGEMENT The reader will now have the kindness to consider that Mr. Puffington has undergone his swell huntsman, Dick Bragg, for three whole years, during which time it was difficult to say whether his winter's service or his summer's impudence was most oppressive. Either way, Mr. Puffington had had enough both of him and the honours of hound-keeping. Mr. Bragg was not a judicious tyrant. He lorded it too much over Mr. Puffington; was too fond of showing himself off, and exposing his master's ignorance before the servants, and field. A stranger would have thought that Mr. Bragg, and not 'Mr. Puff,' as Bragg called him, kept the hounds. Mr. Puffington took it pretty quietly at first, Bragg inundating him with what they did at the Duke of Downeybird's, Lord Reynard's, and the other great places in which he had lived, till he almost made Puff believe that such treatment was a necessary consequence of hound-keeping. Moreover, the cost was heavy, and the promised subscriptions were almost wholly imaginary; even if they had been paid, they would not have covered a quarter of the expense Mr. Bragg ran him to; and worst of all, there was an increasing instead of a diminishing expenditure. Trust a servant for keeping things up to the mark. All things, however, have an end, and Mr. Bragg began to get to the end of Mr. Puff's patience. As Puff got older he got fonder of his five-pound notes, and began to scrutinize bills and ask questions; to be, as Mr. Bragg said, 'very little of the gentleman'; Bragg, however, being quite one of your 'make-hay-while-the-sun-shines' sort, and knowing too well the style of man to calculate on a lengthened duration of office, just put on the steam of extravagance, and seemed inclined to try how much he could spend for his master. His bills for draft hounds were enormous; he was continually chopping and changing his horses, often almost without consulting his master; he had a perfect museum of saddles and bridles, in which every invention and variety of bit was exhibited; and he had paid as much as twenty pounds to different 'valets' and grooms for invaluable recipes for cleaning leather breeches and gloves. Altogether, Bragg overdid the thing; and when Mr. Puffington, in the solitude of a winter's day, took pen, ink, and paper, and drew out a 'balance sheet,' he found that on the average of six brace of foxes to the season, they had cost him about three hundred pounds a head killing. It was true that Bragg always returned five or six and twenty brace; but that was as between Bragg and the public, as between Bragg and his master the smaller figure was the amount. Mr. Puffington had had enough of it, and he now thought if he could get Mr. Sponge (who he still believed to be a sporting author on his travels) to immortalize him, he might retire into privacy, and talk of 'when _I_ kept hounds,' 'when _I_ hunted the country,' 'when _I_ was master of hounds _I_ did this, and _I_ did that,' and fuss, and be important as we often see ex-masters of hounds when they go out with other packs. It was this erroneous impression with regard to Mr. Sponge that took our friend to the meet of Lord Scamperdale's hounds at Scrambleford Green, when he gave Mr. Sponge a general invitation to visit him before he left the country, an invitation that was as acceptable to Mr. Sponge on his expulsion from Jawleyford Court, as it was agreeable to Mr. Puffington--by opening a route by which he might escape from the penalty of hound-keeping, and the persecution of his huntsman. The reader will therefore now have the kindness to consider Mr. Puffington in receipt of Mr. Sponge's note, volunteering a visit. With gay and cheerful steps our friend hurried off to the kennel, to communicate the intelligence to Mr. Bragg of an intended honour that he inwardly hoped would have the effect of extinguishing that great sporting luminary. Arriving at the kennel, he learned from the old feeder, Jack Horsehide, who, as usual, was sluicing the flags with water, though the weather was wet, that Mr. Bragg was in the house (a house that had been the steward's in the days of the former owner of Hanby House). Thither Mr. Puffington proceeded; and the front door being open he entered, and made for the little parlour on the right. Opening the door without knocking, what should he find but the swell huntsman, Mr. Bragg, full fig, in his cap, best scarlet and leathers, astride a saddle-stand, sitting for his portrait! '_O, dim it!_' exclaimed Bragg, clasping the front of the stand as if it was a horse, and throwing himself off, an operation that had the effect of bringing the new saddle on which he was seated bang on the floor. 'O, sc-e-e-use me, sir,' seeing it was his master, 'I thought it was my servant; this, sir,' continued he, blushing and looking as foolish as men do when caught getting their hair curled or sitting for their portraits, 'this, sir, is my friend, Mr. Ruddle, the painter, sir--yes, sir--very talented young man, sir--asked me to sit for my portrait, sir--is going to publish a series of portraits of all the best huntsmen in England, sir.' 'And masters of hounds,' interposed Mr. Ruddle, casting a sheep's eye at Mr. Puffington. 'And masters of hounds, sir,' repeated Mr. Bragg; 'yes, sir, and masters of hounds, sir'; Mr. Bragg being still somewhat flurried at the unexpected intrusion. 'Ah, well,' interrupted Mr. Puffington, who was still eager about his mission, 'we'll talk about that after. At present I'm come to tell you,' continued he, holding up Mr. Sponge's note, 'that we must brush up a little--going to have a visit of inspection from the great Mr. Sponge.' 'Indeed, sir!' replied Mr. Bragg, with the slightest possible touch of his cap, which he still kept on. 'Mr. Sponge, sir!--indeed, sir--Mr. Sponge, sir--pray who may _he_ be, sir?' 'Oh--why--hay--hum--haw--he's Mr. Sponge, you know--been hunting with Lord Scamperdale, you know--great sportsman, in fact--great authority, you know.' 'Indeed--great authority is he--indeed--oh--yes--thinks so p'raps--sc-e-e-use me, sir, but des-say, sir, I've forgot more, sir, than Mr. Sponge ever knew, sir.' 'Well, but you mustn't tell him so,' observed Mr. Puffington, fearful that Bragg might spoil sport. 'Oh, tell him--no,' sneered Bragg, with a jerk of the head; 'tell him--no; I'm not exactly such a donkey as that; on the contrary, I'll make things pleasant, sir--sugar his milk for him, sir, in short, sir.' 'Sugar his milk!' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, who was only a matter-of-fact man; 'sugar his milk! I dare say he takes tea.' 'Well, then, sugar his tea,' replied Bragg, with a smile, adding, 'can 'commodate myself, sir, to circumstances, sir,' at the same time taking off his cap and setting a chair for his master. 'Thank you, but I'm not going to stay,' replied Mr. Puffington; 'I only came up to let you know who you had to expect, so that you might prepare, you know--have all on the square, you know--best horses--best hounds--best appearance in general, you know.' 'That I'll attend to,' replied Mr. Bragg, with a toss of the head--'that _I'll_ attend to,' repeated he, with an emphasis on the _I'll_, as much as to say, 'Don't you meddle with what doesn't concern you.' Mr. Puffington would fain have rebuked him for his impertinence, as indeed he often would fain have rebuked him; but Mr. Bragg had so overpowered him with science, and impressed him with the necessity of keeping him--albeit Mr. Puffington was sensible that he killed very few foxes--that, having put up with him so long, he thought it would never do to risk a quarrel, which might lose him the chance of getting rid of him and hounds altogether; therefore, Mr. Puffington, instead of saying, 'You conceited humbug, get out of this,' or indulging in any observations that might lead to controversy, said, with a satisfied, confidential nod of the head: 'I'm sure you will--I'm sure you will,' and took his departure, leaving Mr. Bragg, to remount the saddle-stand and take the remainder of his sitting. CHAPTER XXXVII MR. PUFFINGTON'S DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS Perhaps it was fortunate that Mr. Bragg did take the kennel management upon himself, or there is no saying but what with that and the house department, coupled with the usual fussiness of a bachelor, the Sponge visit might have proved too much for our master. The notice of the intended visit was short; and there were invitations to send out, and answers to get, bedrooms to prepare, and culinary arrangements to make--arrangements that people in town, with all their tradespeople at their elbows, can have no idea of the difficulty of effecting in the country. Mr. Puffington was fully employed. In addition to the parties mentioned as asked in his note to Lord Scamperdale, viz. Washball, Charley Slapp, and Lumpleg, were Parson Blossomnose; Mr. Fossick of the Flat Hat Hunt, who declined--Mr. Crane of Crane Hall; Captain Guano, late of that noble corps the Spotted Horse Marines; and others who accepted. Mr. Spraggon was a sort of volunteer, at all events an undesired guest, unless his lordship accompanied him. It so happened that the least wanted guest was the first to arrive on the all-important day. Lord Scamperdale, knowing our friend Jack was not over affluent, had no idea of spoiling him by too much luxury, and as the railway would serve a certain distance in the line of Hanby House, he despatched Jack to the Over-shoes-over-boots station with the dog-cart, and told him he would be sure to find a 'bus, or to get some sort of conveyance at the Squandercash station to take him up to Puffington's; at all events, his lordship added to himself, 'If he doesn't, it'll do him no harm to walk, and he can easily get a boy to carry his bag.' The latter was the case; for though the station-master assured Jack, on his arrival at Squandercash, that there was a 'bus, or a mail gig, or a something to every other train, there was nothing in connexion with the one that brought him, nor would he undertake to leave his carpet-bag at Hanby House before breakfast-time the next morning. [Illustration: JACK PROTESTS AGAINST ALL RAILWAYS] Jack was highly enraged, and proceeded to squint his eyes inside out, and abuse all railways, and chairmen, and directors, and secretaries, and clerks, and porters, vowing that railways were the greatest nuisances under the sun--that they were a perfect impediment instead of a facility to travelling--and declared that formerly a gentleman had nothing to do but order his four horses, and have them turned out at every stage as he came up, instead of being stopped in the _ridicklous_ manner he then was; and he strutted and stamped about the station as if he would put a stop to the whole line. His vehemence and big talk operated favourably on the Cockney station-master, who, thinking he must be a duke, or some great man, began to consider how to get him forwarded. It being only a thinly populated district--though there was a station equal to any mercantile emergency, indeed to the requirements of the whole county--he ran the resources of the immediate neighbourhood through his mind, and at length was obliged to admit--humbly and respectfully--that he really was afraid Martha Muggins's donkey was the only available article. Jack fumed and bounced at the very mention of such a thing, vowing that it was a downright insult to propose it; and he was so bumptious that the station-master, who had nothing to gain by the transaction, sought the privacy of the electric telegraph office, and left him to vent the balance of his wrath upon the porters. Of course they could do nothing more than the king of their little colony had suggested; and finding there was no help for it, Mr. Spraggon at last submitted to the humiliation, and set off to follow young Muggins with his bag on the donkey, in his best top-boots, worn under his trousers--an unpleasant operation to any one, but especially to a man like Jack, who preferred wearing his tops out against the flaps of his friends' saddles, rather than his soles by walking upon them. However, necessity said yes; and cocking his flat hat jauntily on his head, he stuck a cheroot in his mouth, and went smoking and swaggering on, looking--or rather squinting--bumptiously at everybody he met, as much as to say, 'Don't suppose I'm walking from necessity! I've plenty of tin.' The third cheroot brought Jack and his suite within sight of Hanby House. Mr. Puffington had about got through all the fuss of his preparations, arranged the billets of the guests and of those scarcely less important personages--their servants, allotted the stables, and rehearsed the wines, when a chance glance through the gaily furnished drawing-room window discovered Jack trudging up the trimly kept avenue. 'Here's that nasty Spraggon,' exclaimed he, eyeing Jack dragging his legs along, adding, 'I'll be bound to say he'll never think of wiping his filthy feet if I don't go to meet him.' So saying, Puffington rushed to the entrance, and crowning himself with a white wide-awake, advanced cheerily to do so. Jack, who was more used to 'cold shoulder' than cordial reception, squinted and stared with surprise at the unwonted warmth, so different to their last interview, when Jack was fresh out of his clay-hole in the Brick Fields; but not being easily put out of his way, he just took Puff as Puff took him. They talked of Scamperdale, and they talked of Frostyface, and the number of foxes he had killed, the price of corn, and the difference its price made in the keep of hounds and horses. Altogether they were very 'thick.' 'And how's our friend Sponge?' asked Puffington, as the conversation at length began to flag. 'Oh, he's nicely,' replied Jack, adding, 'hasn't he come yet?' 'Not that I've seen,' answered Puffington, adding, 'I thought, perhaps, you might come together.' 'No,' grunted Jack; 'he comes from Jawleyford's, you know; I'm from Woodmansterne.' 'We'll go and see if he's come,' observed Puffington, opening a door in the garden-wall, into which he had manoeuvred Jack, communicating with the courtyard of the stable. 'Here are his horses,' observed Puffington, as Mr. Leather rode through the great gates on the opposite side, with the renowned hunters in full marching order. 'Monstrous fine animals they are,' said Jack, squinting intently at them. 'They are that,' replied Puffington. 'Mr. Sponge seems a very pleasant, gentlemanly man,' observed Mr. Puffington. 'Oh, he is,' replied Jack. 'Can you tell me--can you inform me--that's to say, can you give me any idea,' hesitated Puffington, 'what is the usual practice--the usual course--the usual understanding as to the treatment of those sort of gentlemen?' 'Oh, the best of everything's good enough for them,' replied Jack, adding, 'just as it is with me.' 'Ah, I don't mean in the way of eating and drinking, but in the way of encouragement--in the way of a present, you know?' adding--'What did my lord do?' seeing Jack was slow at comprehension. 'Oh, my lord bad-worded him well,' replied Jack, adding, 'he didn't get much encouragement from him.' 'Ah, that's the worst of my lord,' observed Puffington; 'he's rather coarse--rather too indifferent to public opinion. In a case of this sort, you know, that doesn't happen every day, or, perhaps, more than once in a man's life, it's just as well to be favourably spoken of as not, you know'; adding, as he looked intently at Jack--'Do you understand me?' Jack, who was tolerably quick at a chance, now began to see how things were, and to fathom Mr. Puffington's mistake. His ready imagination immediately saw there might be something made of it, so he prepared to keep up the delusion. 'Wh-o-o-y!' said he, straddling out his legs, clasping his hands together, and squinting steadily through his spectacles, to try and see, by Puffington's countenance, how much he would stand. 'W-h-o-o-y!' repeated he, 'I shouldn't think--though, mind, it's mere conjectur' on my part--that you couldn't offer him less than--twenty or five-and-twenty punds; or, say, from that to thirty,' continued Jack, seeing that Puff's countenance remained complacent under the rise. 'And that you think would be sufficient?' asked Puff, adding--'If one does the thing at all, you know, it's as well to do it handsomely.' 'True,' replied Jack, sticking out his great thick lips, 'true. I'm a great advocate for doing things handsomely. Many a row I have with my lord for thanking fellows, and saying he'll _remember_ them instead of giving them sixpence or a shilling; but really I should say, if you were to give him forty or fifty pund--say a fifty--pund note, he'd be--' The rest of the sentence was lost by the appearance of Mr. Sponge, cantering up the avenue on the conspicuous piebald. Mr. Puffington and Mr. Spraggon greeted him as he alighted at the door. Sponge was quickly followed by Tom Washball; then came Charley Slapp and Lumpleg, and Captain Guano came in a gig. Mutual bows and bobs and shakes of the hand being exchanged, amid offers of 'anything before dinner' from the host, the guests were at length shown to their respective apartments, from which in due time they emerged, looking like so many bridegrooms. First came the worthy master of the hounds himself, in his scarlet dress-coat, lined with white satin; Tom Washball, and Charley Slapp also sported Puff's uniform; while Captain Guano, who was proud of his leg, sported the uniform of the Muffington Hunt--a pea-green coat lined with yellow, and a yellow collar, white shorts with gold garters, and black silk stockings. Spraggon had been obliged to put up with Lord Scamperdale's second best coat, his lordship having taken the best one himself; but it was passable enough by candle light, and the seediness of the blue cloth was relieved by a velvet collar and a new set of the Flat Hat Hunt buttons. Mr. Sponge wore a plain scarlet with a crimson velvet collar, and a bright fox on the frosted ground of a gilt button, with tights as before; and when Mr. Crane arrived he was found to be attired in a dress composed partly of Mr. Puffington's and partly of the Muggeridge Hunt uniform--the red coat of the former surmounting the white shorts and black stockings of the other. Altogether, however, they were uncommonly smart, and it is to be hoped that they appreciated each other. The dinner was sumptuous. Puff, of course, was in the chair; and Captain Guano coming last into the room, and being very fond of office, was vice. When men run to the 'noble science' of gastronomy, they generally outstrip the ladies in the art of dinner-giving, for they admit of no makeweight, or merely ornamental dishes, but concentrate the cook's energies on sterling and approved dishes. Everything men set on is meant to be eaten. Above all, men are not too fine to have the plate-warmer in the room, the deficiency of hot plates proving fatal to many a fine feast. It was evident that Puff prided himself on his table. His linen was the finest and whitest, his glass the most elegant and transparent, his plate the brightest, and his wines the most costly and _recherché_. Like many people, however, who are not much in the habit of dinner-giving, he was anxious and fussy, too intent upon making people comfortable to allow of their being so, and too anxious to get victuals and drink down their throats to allow of their enjoying either. He not only produced a tremendous assortment of wines--Hock, Sauterne, Champagne, Barsack, Burgundy, but descended into endless varieties of sherries and Madeiras. These he pressed upon people, always insisting that the last sample was the best. In these hospitable exertions Puffington was ably assisted by Captain Guano, who, being fond of wine, came in for a good quantity; first of all by asking everyone to take wine with him, and then in return every one asking him to do the same with them. The present absurd non-asking system was not then in vogue. The great captain, noisy and talkative at all times, began to be boisterous almost before the cloth was drawn. Puffington was equally promiscuous with his after-dinner wines. He had all sorts of clarets, and 'curious old ports.' The party did not seem to have any objection to spoil their digestions for the next day, and took whatever he produced with great alacrity. Lengthened were the candle examinations, solemn the sips, and sounding the smacks that preceded the delivery of their Campbell-like judgements. The conversation, which at first was altogether upon wine, gradually diverged upon sporting, and they presently brewed up a very considerable cry. Foremost among the noisy ones was Captain Guano. He seemed inclined to take the shine out of everybody. 'Oh! if they could but find a good fox that would give them a run of ten miles--say, ten miles--just ten miles would satisfy him--say, from Barnesley Wold to Chingforde Wood, or from Carleburg Clump to Wetherden Head. He was going to ride his famous horse Jack-a-Dandy--the finest horse that ever was foaled! No day too long for him--no pace too great for him--no fence too stiff for him--no brook too broad for him.' Tom Washball, too, talked as if wearing a red coat was not the only purpose for which he hunted; and altogether they seemed to be an amazing, sporting, hard-riding set. When at length they rose to go to bed, it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs that the one before him walked very crookedly. CHAPTER XXXVIII A DAY WITH PUFFINGTON'S HOUNDS Day dawned cheerfully. If there was rather more sun than the strict rules of Beckford prescribe, still sunshine is not a thing to quarrel with under any circumstances--certainly not for a gentleman to quarrel with who wants his place seen to advantage on the occasion of a meet of hounds. Everything at Hanby House was in apple-pie order. All the stray leaves that the capricious wintry winds still kept raising from unknown quarters, and whisking about the trim lawns, were hunted and caught, while a heavy roller passed over the Kensington gravel, pressing out the hoof and wheelmarks of the previous day. The servants were up betimes, preparing the house for those that were in it, and a _déjeûner à la fourchette_ for chance customers, from without. They were equally busy at the stable. Although Mr. Bragg did profess such indifference for Mr. Sponge's opinion, he nevertheless thought it might perhaps be as well to be condescending to the stranger. Accordingly, he ordered his whips to be on the alert, to tie their ties and put on their boots as they ought to be, and to hoist their caps becomingly on the appearance of our friend. Bragg, like a good many huntsmen, had a sort of tariff of politeness, that he indicated by the manner in which he saluted the field. To a lord, he made a sweep of his cap like the dome of St. Paul's; a baronet came in for about half as much; a knight, to a quarter. Bragg had also a sort of City or monetary tariff of politeness--a tariff that was oftener called in requisition than the 'Debrett' one, in Mr. Puffington's country. To a good 'tip' he vouchsafed as much cap as he gave to a lord; to a middling 'tip' he gave a sort of move that might either pass for a touch of the cap or a more comfortable adjustment of it to his head; a very small 'tip' had a forefinger to the peak; while he who gave nothing at all got a good stare or a good morning! or something of that sort. A man watching the arrival of the field could see who gave the fives, who the fours, who the threes, who the twos, who the ones, and who were the great 0's. But to our day with Mr. Puffington's hounds. Our over-night friends were not quite so brisk in the morning as the servants and parties outside. Puffington's 'mixture' told upon a good many of them. Washball had a headache, so had Lumpleg; Crane was seedy; and Captain Guano, sea-green. Soda-water was in great request. There was a splendid breakfast, table and sideboard looking as if Fortnum and Mason or Morel had opened a branch establishment at Hanby House. Though the staying guests could not do much for the good things set out, they were not wasted, for the place was fairly taken by storm shortly before the advertised hour of meeting; and what at one time looked like a most extravagant supply, at another seemed likely to prove a deficiency. Each man helped himself to whatever he fancied, without waiting for the ceremony of an invitation, in the usual style of fox-hunting hospitality. A few minutes before eleven, a 'gently, Rantaway,' accompanied by a slight crack of a whip, drew the seedy and satisfied parties to the oriel window, to see Mr. Bragg pass along with his hounds. They were just gliding noiselessly over the green sward, Mr. Bragg rising in his stirrups, as spruce as a game-cock, with his thoroughbred bay gambolling and pawing with delight at the frolic of the hounds, some clustering around him, others shooting forward a little, as if to show how obediently they would return at his whistle. Mr. Bragg was known as the whistling huntsman, and was a great man for telegraphing and signalizing with his arms, boasting that he could make hounds so handy that they could do everything, except pay the turnpike-gates. At his appearance the men all began to shuffle to the passage and entrance-hall, to look for their hats and whips; and presently there was a great outpouring of red coats upon the lawn, all straddling and waddling of course. Then Mr. Bragg, seeing an audience, with a slight whistle and wave of his right arm, wheeled his forces round, and trotted gaily towards where our guests had grouped themselves, within the light iron railing that separated the smooth slope from the field. As he reined in his horse, he gave his cap an aerial sweep, taking off perpendicularly, and finishing at his horse's ears--an example that was immediately followed by the whips, and also by Mr. Bragg's second horseman, Tom Stot. 'Good morning, Mister Bragg! Good morning, Mister Bragg!--Good morning, Mister Bragg!' burst from the assembled spectators: for Mr. Bragg was one of those people that one occasionally meets whom everybody 'Misters.' Mister Bragg, rising in his stirrups with a gracious smile, passed a very polite bow along the line. 'Here's a fine morning, Mr. Bragg,' observed Tom Washball, who thought it knowing to talk to servants. 'Y_as_, sir,' replied Bragg, 'y_as_,' with a slight inclination to cap; '_r-a-y_-ther more s_a_n, p'raps, than desirable,' continued he, raising his face towards the heavens; 'but still by no means a bad day, sir--no, sir--by no means a bad day, sir.' 'Hounds looking well,' observed Charley Slapp between the whiffs of a cigar. 'Y_as_, sir,' said Bragg, 'y_as_,' looking around them with a self-satisfied smile; adding, 'so they ought, sir--so they ought; if _I_ can't bring a pack out as they should be, don't know who can.' 'Why, here's our old Rummager, I declare!' exclaimed Spraggon, who, having vaulted the iron hurdles, was now among the pack. 'Why, here's our old Rummager, I declare!' repeated he, laying his whip on the head of a solemn-looking black and white hound, somewhat down in the toes, and looking as if he was about done. 'Sc-e-e-use me, sir,' replied Bragg, leaning over his horse's shoulder, and whispering into Jack's ear; 'sc-e-e-use me, sir, but _drop_ that, sir, if you please, sir.' 'Drop what?' asked Jack, squinting through his great tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles up into Bragg's face. ''Bout knowing of that 'ound, sir,' whispered Bragg; 'the fact is, sir--we call him Merryman, sir; master don't know I got him from you, sir.' 'O-o-o,' replied Jack, squinting, if possible, more frightfully than before. 'Ah, that's the hound I offered to Scamperdale,' observed Puffington, seeing the movement, and coming up to where Jack stood; 'that's the hound I offered to Scamperdale,' repeated he, taking the old dog's head between his hands. 'There's no better hound in the world than this,' continued he, patting and smoothing him; 'and no better _bred_ hound either,' added he, rubbing the dog's sides with his whip. 'How is he bred?' asked Jack, who knew the hound's pedigree better than he did his own. 'Why, I got him from Reynard--no, I mean from Downeybird--the Duke, you know; but he was bred by Fitzwilliam--by his Singwell out of Darling. Singwell was by the Rutland Rallywood out of Tavistock Rhapsody; but to make a long story short, he's lineally descended from the Beaufort Justice.' 'Indeed!' exclaimed Jack hardly able to contain himself; 'that's undeniable blood.' 'Well, I'm glad to hear you say so,' replied Puffington. 'I'm glad to hear you say so, for you understand these things--no man better; and I confess I've a warm side to that Beaufort Justice blood.' 'Don't wonder at it,' replied Jack, laughing his waistcoat strings off. 'The great Mr. Warde,' continued Mr. Puffington, 'who was justly partial to his own sort, had never any objection to breeding from the Beaufort Justice.' 'No, nor nobody else that knew what he was about,' replied Jack, turning away to conceal his laughter. 'We should be moving, I think, sir,' observed Bragg, anxious to put an end to the conversation; 'we should be moving, I think, sir,' repeated he, with a rap of his forefinger against his cap peak. 'It's past eleven,' added he, looking at his gold watch, and shutting it against his cheek. 'What do you draw first?' asked Jack. 'Draw--draw--draw,' replied Puffington. 'Oh, we'll draw Rabbitborough Gorse--that's a new cover I've inclosed on my pro-o-r-perty.' 'Sc-e-e-use me, sir,' replied Bragg, with a smile, and another rap of the cap: 'sc-e-e-use me, sir, but I'm going to Hollyburn Hanger first.' 'Ah, well, Hollyburn Hanger,' replied Puffington, complacently; 'either will do very well.' If Puff had proposed Hollyburn Hanger, Bragg would have said Rabbitborough Gorse. The move of the hounds caused a rush of gentlemen to their horses, and there was the usual scramblings up, and fidgetings, and funkings, and who-o-hayings and drawing of girths, and taking up of curbs, and lengthening and shortening of stirrups. Captain Guano couldn't get his stirrups to his liking anyhow. ''Ord hang these leathers,' roared he, clutching up a stirrup-iron; 'who the devil would ever have sent one out a-huntin' with a pair of new stirrup-leathers?' 'Hang you and the stirrup leathers,' growled the groom, as his master rode away; 'you're always wantin' sumfin to find fault with. I'm blowed if it arn't a disgrace to an oss to carry such a man,' added he, eyeing the chestnut fidgeting and wincing as the captain worked away at the stirrups. Mr. Bragg trotted briskly on with the hounds, preceded by Joe Banks the first whip, and having Jack Swipes the second, and Tom Stot, riding together behind him, to keep off the crowd. Thus the cavalcade swept down the avenue, crossed the Swillingford turnpike, and took through a well-kept field road, which speedily brought them to the cover--rough, broomy, brushwood-covered banks, of about three acres in extent, lying on either side of the little Hollyburn Brook, one of the tiny streams that in angry times helped to swell the Swill into a river. 'Dim all these foot people!' exclaimed Mr. Bragg, in well-feigned disgust, as he came in view, and found all the Swillingford snobs, all the tinkers and tailors, and cobblers and poachers, and sheep-stealers, all the scowling, rotten-fustianed, baggy-pocketed scamps of the country ranged round the cover, some with dogs, some with guns, some with snares, and all with sticks or staffs. 'Well, I'm dimmed if ever I seed sich a--' The rest of the speech being lost amidst the exclamations of: 'Ah! the hunds! the hunds! hoop! tally-o the hunds!' and a general rush of the ruffians to meet them. [Illustration: CAPTAIN GUANO CAN'T GET HIS STIRRUPS THE RIGHT LENGTH] Captain Guano, who had now come up, joined in the denunciation, inwardly congratulating himself on the probability that the first cover, at least, would be drawn blank. Tom Washball, who was riding a very troublesome tail-foremost grey, also censured the proceeding. And Mr. Puffington, still an 'am_aa_izin' instance of a pop'lar man,' exclaimed, as he rode among them, 'Ah! my good fellows, I'd rather you'd come up and had some ale than disturbed the cover'; a hint that the wily ones immediately took, rushing up to the house, and availing themselves of the absence of the butler, who had followed the hounds, to take a couple of dozen of his best fiddle-handled forks while the footman was drawing them the ale. The whips being duly signalled by Bragg to their points--Brick to the north corner, Swipes to the south--and the field being at length drawn up to his liking, Mr. Bragg looked at Mr. Puffington for his signal (the only piece of interference he allowed him); at a nod Mr. Bragg gave a wave of his cap, and the pack dashed into cover with a cry. 'Yo-o-icks--wind him! Yo-o-icks--pash him up!' cheered Bragg, standing erect in his stirrups, eyeing the hounds spreading and sniffing about, now this way, now that--now pushing through a thicket, now threading and smelling along a meuse. 'Yo-o-icks--wind him! Yo-o-icks--pash him up!' repeated he, cracking his whip, and moving slowly on. He then varied the entertainment by whistling, in a sharp, shrill key, something like the chirp of a sparrow-hawk. Thus the hounds rummaged and scrimmaged for some minutes. 'No fox here,' observed Captain Guano, bringing his horse alongside of Mr. Bragg's. 'Not so sure o' _that_,' replied Mr. Bragg, with a sneer, for he had a great contempt for the captain. 'Not so sure o' that,' replied he, eyeing Thunderer and Galloper feathering up the brook. 'Hang these stirrups!' exclaimed the captain, again attempting to adjust them; adding, 'I declare I have no seat whatever in this saddle.' 'Nor in any other,' muttered Bragg. 'Yo-icks, Galloper! Yo-icks, Thunderer! Ge-e-ntly, Warrior!' continued he, cracking his whip, as Warrior pounced at a bunny. The hounds were evidently on a scent, hardly strong enough to own, but sufficiently indicated by their feathering, and the rush of their comrades to the spot. 'A fox for a thousand!' exclaimed Mr. Bragg, eyeing them, and looking at his watch. 'Oh, d--mn me! I've got one stirrup longer than another now!' roared Captain Guano, trying the fresh adjustment. 'I've got one stirrup longer than another!' added he in a terrible pucker. [Illustration] A low snatch of a whimper now proceeded from Galloper, and Bragg cheered him to the echo. In another second a great banging brown fox burst from among the broom, and dashed down the little dean. What noises, what exclamations rent the air! 'Talli-ho! talliho! talliho!' screamed a host of voices, in every variety of intonation, from the half-frantic yell of a party seeing him, down to the shout of a mere partaker of the epidemic. Shouting is very contagious. The horsemen gathered up their reins, pressed down their hats, and threw away their cigar-ends. ''Ord hang it!' roared Captain Guano, still fumbling at the leathers, 'I shall never be able to ride with stirrups in this state.' 'Hang your stirrups!' exclaimed Charley Slapp, shooting past him; adding, 'It was your _saddle_ last time.' Bragg's queer tootle of his horn, for he was full of strange blows, now sounded at the low end of the cover; and, having a pet line of gaps and other conveniences that he knew how to turn to on the minute, he soon shot so far ahead as to give him the appearance (to the slow 'uns) of having flown. Brick and Swipes quickly had all the hounds after him, and Stot, dropping his elbows, made for the road, to ride the second horse gently on the line. The field, as usual, divided into two parts, the soft riders and the hard ones--the soft riders going by the fields, the hard riders by the road. Messrs. Spraggon, Sponge, Slapp, Quilter, Rasper, Crasher, Smasher, and some half-dozen more, bustled after Bragg; while the worthy master Mr. Puffington, Lumpleg, Washball, Crane, Guano, Shirker, and very many others, came pounding along the lane. There was a good scent, and the hounds shot across the Fleecyhaughwater Meadows, over the hill, to the village of Berrington Roothings, where, the fox having been chased by a cur, the hounds were brought to a check on some very bad scenting-ground, on the common, a little to the left of the village, at the end of a quarter of an hour or so. The road having been handy, the hard riders were there almost as soon as the soft ones; and there being no impediments on the common, they all pushed boldly on among the now stooping hounds. 'Hold hard, gentlemen!' exclaimed Mr. Bragg, rising in his stirrups and telegraphing with his right arm. 'Hold hard!--pray do!' added he, with little better success. 'Dim it, gen'lemen, hold hard!' added he, as they still pressed upon the pack. 'Have a little regard for a huntsman's raputation,' continued he. 'Remember that it rises and falls with the sport he shows'--exhortations that seemed to be pretty well lost upon the field, who began comparing notes as to their respective achievements, enlarging the leaps and magnifying the distance into double what they had been. Puffington and some of the fat ones sat gasping and mopping their brows. Seeing there was not much chance of the hounds hitting off the scent by themselves, Mr. Bragg began telegraphing with his arm to the whippers-in, much in the manner of the captain of a Thames steamer to the lad at the engine, and forthwith they drove the pack on for our swell huntsman to make his cast. As good luck would have it, Bragg crossed the line of the fox before he had got half-through his circle, and away the hounds dashed, at a pace and with a cry that looked very like killing. Mr. Bragg was in ecstasies, and rode in a manner very contrary to his wont. All again was life, energy, and action; and even some who hoped there was an end of the thing, and that they might go home and say, as usual, 'that they had had a very good run, but not killed,' were induced to proceed. Away they all went as before. At the end of eighteen minutes more the hounds ran into their fox in the little green valley below Mountnessing Wood, and Mr. Bragg had him stretched on the green with the pack baying about him, and the horses of the field-riders getting led about by the country people, while the riders stood glorying in the splendour of the thing. All had a direct interest in making it out as good as possible, and Mr. Bragg was quite ready to appropriate as much praise as ever they liked to give. ''Ord dim him,' said he, turning up the fox's grim head with his foot, 'but Mr. Bragg's an awkward customer for gen'lemen of your description.' 'You hunted him well!' exclaimed Charley Slapp, who was trumpeter general of the establishment. 'Oh, sir,' replied Bragg, with a smirk and a condescending bow, 'if Richard Bragg can't kill foxes, I don't know who can.' Just then 'Puffington and Co.' hove in sight up the valley, their faces beaming with delight as the tableau before them told the tale. They hastened to the spot. 'How many brace is that?' asked Puffington, with the most matter-of-course air, as he trotted up, and reined in his horse outside the circle. 'Seventeen brace, your grace, I mean to say my lord, that's to say _sur_,' replied Bragg, with a strong emphasis on the _sur_, as if to say, 'I'm not used to you snobs of commoners.' 'Seventeen brace!' sneered Jack Spraggon to Sponge, adding, in a whisper, 'More like _seven_ foxes.' 'And how many run to ground?' asked Puffington, alighting. 'Four brace,' replied Bragg, stooping to cut off the brush. We were wrong in saying that Bragg only allowed Puff the privilege of nodding his head to say when he might throw off. He let him lead the 'lie gallop' in the kill department. Mr. Puffington then presented Mr. Sponge with the brush, and the usual solemnities being observed, the sherry flasks were produced and drained, the biscuits munched, and, amidst the smoke of cigars, the ring broke up in great good-will. CHAPTER XXXIX Writing A Run [Illustration: letter T] The first fumes of excitement over, after a run with a kill, the field begin to take things more coolly and veraciously, and ere long some of them begin to pick holes in the affair. The men of the hunt run it up, while those of the next hunt run it down. Added to this there are generally some cavilling, captious fellows in every field who extol a run to the master's face, and abuse it behind his back. So it was on the present occasion. The men of the hunt--Charley Slapp, Lumpleg, Guano, Crane, Washball, and others--lauded and magnified it into something magnificent; while Fossick, Fyle, Wake, Blossomnose, and others of the 'Flat Hat Hunt,' pronounced it a niceish thing--a pretty burst; and Mr. Vosper, who had hunted for five-and-twenty seasons without ever subscribing one farthing to hounds, always declaring that each season was 'his last,' or that he was going to confine himself entirely to some other pack, said it was nothing to make a row about, that he had seen fifty better things with the Tinglebury harriers, and never a word said. 'Well,' said Sponge to Spraggon, between the whiffs of a cigar, as they rode together; 'it wasn't so bad, was it?' 'Bad!--no,' squinted Jack, 'devilish good--for Puff, at least,' adding, 'I question he's had a better this season.' 'Well, we are in luck,' observed Tom Washball, riding up and joining them; 'we are in luck to have a satisfactory thing with you great connoisseurs out.' 'A pretty thing enough,' replied Jack, 'pretty thing enough.' 'Oh, I don't mean to say it's equal to many we've had this season,' replied Washball; 'nothing like the Boughton Hill day, nor yet the Hembury Forest one; but still, considering the meet and the state of the country--' 'Hout! the country's good enough,' growled Jack, who hated Washball; adding, 'a good fox makes any country good'; with which observation he sidled up to Sponge, leaving Washball in the middle of the road. 'That reminds me,' said Jack, _sotto voce_ to Sponge, 'that the crittur wants his run puffed, and he thinks you can do it.' 'Me!' exclaimed Sponge, 'what's put that in his head?' 'Why, you see,' exclaimed Jack, 'the first time you came out with our hounds at Dundleton Tower, you'll remember--or rather, the first time we saw you, when your horse ran away with you--somebody, Fyle, I think it was, said you were a literary cove; and Puff, catchin' at the idea, has never been able to get rid of it since: and the fact is, he'd like to be flattered--he'd be uncommonly pleased if you were to "soft sawder" him handsomely.' '_Me!_' exclaimed Sponge; 'bless your heart, man, I can't write anything--nothing fit to print, at least.' 'Hout, fiddle!' retorted Spraggon, 'you can write as well as any other man; see what lots of fellows write, and nobody ever finds fault.' 'But the spellin' bothers one,' replied Sponge, with a shake of his elbow and body, as if the idea was quite out of the question. 'Hang the spellin',' muttered Jack, 'one can always borrow a dictionary; or let the man of the paper--the editor, as they call him--smooth out the spellin'. You say at the end of your letter, that your hands are cold, or your hand aches with holdin' a pullin' horse, and you'll thank him to correct any inadvertencies--you needn't call them errors, you know.' 'But where's the use of it?' exclaimed Sponge; 'it'll do us no good, you know, praisin' Puff's pack, or himself, or anything about him.' 'That's just the point,' said Jack, 'that's just the point. I can make it answer both our purposes,' said he, with a nudge of the elbow, and an inside-out squint of his eyes. 'Oh, that's another matter,' replied our friend; 'if we can turn the thing to account, well and good--I'm your man for a shy.' 'We _can_ turn it to account,' rejoined Jack; 'we _can_ turn it to account--at least _I_ can; but then you must do it. He wouldn't take it as any compliment from me. It's the stranger that sees all things in their true lights. D'ye understand?' asked he eagerly. 'I twig,' replied Sponge. 'You write the account,' continued Jack, 'and I'll manage the rest.' 'You must help me,' observed Sponge. 'Certainly,' replied Jack; 'we'll do it together, and go halves in the plunder.' 'Humph,' mused Sponge: 'halves,' said he to himself. 'And what will you give me for my half?' asked he. 'Give you!' exclaimed Jack, brightening up. 'Give you! Let me see,' continued he, pretending to consider--'Puff's rich--Puff's a liberal fellow--Puff's a conceited beggar--mix it strong,' said Jack, 'and I'll give you ten pounds.' 'Make it twelve,' replied Sponge, after a pause. If Jack had said twelve. Sponge would have asked fourteen. 'Couldn't,' said Jack, with a shake of the head; 'it really isn't with (worth) the money.' The two then rode on in silence for some little distance. 'I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Jack, spurring his horse, and trotting up the space that the other had now shot ahead. 'I'll split the difference with you!' 'Well, give me the sov.,' said Sponge, holding out his hand for earnest. 'Why, I haven't a sov. upon me,' replied Jack; 'but, honour bright, I'll do what I say.' 'Give me eleven golden sovereigns for my chance,' repeated Sponge slowly, in order that there might be no mistake. 'Eleven golden sovereigns for your chance,' repeated Jack. 'Done!' replied Sponge. 'Done!' repeated Jack. 'Let's jog on and do it at once while the thing's fresh in our minds,' said Jack, working his horse into a trot. Sponge did the same; and the grass-siding of Orlantire Parkwall favouring their design, they increased the trot to a canter. They soon passed the park's bounds, and entering upon one of those rarities--an unenclosed common, angled its limits so as to escape the side-bar, and turning up Farningham Green lane, came out upon the Kingsworth and Swillingford turnpike within sight of Hanby House. 'We'd better pull up and walk the horses gently in, p'raps,' observed Sponge, reining his in. 'Ah! I was only wantin' to get home before the rest,' observed Jack, pulling up too. They then proceeded more leisurely together. 'We'd better get into one of our bedrooms to do it,' observed Jack, as they passed the lodge. 'Just so,' replied Sponge, adding, 'I dare say we shall want all the quiet we can get.' 'Oh no!' said Jack; 'the thing's simple enough--met at such a place--found at such another--killed at so and so.' 'Well, I hope it will,' said Sponge, riding into the stable-yard, and resigning his steed to the care of his groom. [Illustration] Jack did the same by Sponge's other horse, which he had been riding, and in reply to Leather's inquiry (who stood with his right hand ready, as if to shake hands with him), 'how the horse had carried him?' replied: 'Cursed ill,' and stamped away without giving him anything. 'Ah, _you're_ a gen'leman, you are,' muttered Leather, as he led the horse away. 'Now, come!' exclaimed Jack to Sponge, 'come! let's get in before any of those bothersome fellows come'; adding, as he dived into a passage, 'I'll show you the back way.' After passing a scullery, a root-house, and a spacious entrance-hall, upon a table in which stood the perpetual beer-jug and bread-basket, a green baize door let them into the regions of upper service, and passing the dashed carpets of the housekeeper's room and butler's pantry, a red baize door let them into the far-side of the front entrance. Having deposited their hats and whips, they bounded up the richly carpeted staircase to their rooms. Hanby House, as we have already said, was splendidly furnished. All the grandeur did not run to the entertaining rooms; but each particular apartment, from the state bedroom down to the smallest bachelor snuggery, was replete with elegance and comfort. Like many houses, however, the bedrooms possessed every imaginable luxury except boot-jacks and pens that would write. In Sponge's room for instance, there were hip-baths, and foot-baths, a shower-bath, and hot and cold baths adjoining, and mirrors innumerable; an eight-day mantel-clock, by Moline of Geneva, that struck the hours, half-hours, and quarters: cut-glass toilet candlesticks, with silver sconces; an elegant zebra-wood cabinet; also a beautiful davenport of zebra-wood, with a plate-glass back, containing a pen rug worked on silver ground, an ebony match box, a blue crystal, containing a sponge pen-wiper, a beautiful envelope-case, a white-cornelian seal, with 'Hanby House' upon it, wax of all colours, papers of all textures, envelopes without end--every imaginable requirement of correspondence except a pen that would write. There _were_ pens, indeed--there almost always are--but they were miserable apologies of things; some were mere crow-quills--sort of cover-hacks of pens, while others were great, clumsy, heavy-heeled, cart-horse sort of things, clotted up to the hocks with ink, or split all the way through--vexatious apologies, that throw a person over just at the critical moment, when he has got his sheet prepared and his ideas all ready to pour upon paper; then splut--splut--splutter goes the pen, and away goes the train of thought. Bold is the man who undertakes to write his letters in his bedroom with country-house pens. But, to our friends. Jack and Sponge slept next door to each other; Sponge, as we have already said, occupying the state-room, with its canopy-topped bedstead, carved and panelled sides, and elegant chintz curtains lined with pink, and massive silk-and-bullion tassels; while Jack occupied the dressing-room, which was the state bedroom in miniature, only a good deal more comfortable. The rooms communicated with double doors, and our friends very soon effected a passage. 'Have you any 'baccy?' asked Jack, waddling in in his slippers, after having sucked off his tops without the aid of a boot-jack. 'There's some in my jacket pocket,' replied Sponge, nodding to where it hung in the wardrobe; 'but it won't do to smoke here, will it?' asked he. 'Why not?' inquired Jack. 'Such a fine room,' replied Sponge, looking around. 'Oh, fine be hanged!' replied Jack, adding, as he made for the jacket, 'no place too fine for smokin' in.' Having helped himself to one of the best cigars, and lighted it, Jack composed himself cross-legged in an easy, spring, stuffed chair, while Sponge fussed about among the writing implements, watering and stirring up the clotted ink, and denouncing each pen in succession, as he gave it the initiatory trial in writing the word 'Sponge.' 'Curse the pens!' exclaimed he, throwing the last bright crisp yellow thing from him in disgust. 'There's not one among 'em that can go!--all reg'larly stumped up.' 'Haven't you a penknife?' asked Jack, taking the cigar out of his mouth. 'Not I,' replied Sponge. 'Take a razor, then,' said Jack, who was good at an expedient. 'I'll take one of yours,' said Sponge, going into the dressing-room for one. 'Hang it, but you're rather too sharp,' exclaimed Jack, with a shake of his head. 'It's more than your razor 'll be when I'm done with it,' replied Sponge. Having at length, with the aid of Jack's razor, succeeded in getting a pen that would write, Mr. Sponge selected a sheet of best cream-laid satin paper, and, taking a cane-bottomed chair, placed himself at the table in an attitude for writing. Dipping the fine yellow pen in the ink, he looked in Jack's face for an idea. Jack, who had now got well advanced in the cigar, sat squinting through his spectacles at our scribe, though apparently looking at the top of the bed. 'Well?' said Sponge, with a look of inquiry. 'Well,' replied Jack, in a tone of indifference. 'How shall I begin?' asked Sponge, twirling the pen between his fingers, and spluttering the ink over the paper. 'Begin!' replied Jack, 'begin, oh, begin, just as you usually begin.' 'As a letter?' asked Sponge. 'I 'spose so,' replied Jack; 'how would you think?' 'Oh, I don't know,' replied Sponge. 'Will _you_ try your hand?' added he, holding out the pen. 'Why, I'm busy just now, you see,' said he, pointing to his cigar, 'and that horse of yours' (Jack had ridden the redoubtable chestnut, Multum in Parvo, who had gone very well in the company of Hercules) pulled so confoundedly that I've almost lost the use of my fingers,' continued he, working away as if he had got the cramp in both hands; 'but I'll prompt you,' added he, 'I'll prompt you.' 'Why don't you begin then?' asked Sponge. 'Begin!' exclaimed Jack, taking the cigar from his lips; 'begin!' repeated he, 'oh, I'll begin directly--didn't know you were ready.' Jack then threw himself back in his chair, and sticking out his little bandy legs, turned the whites of his eyes up to the ceiling, as if lost in meditation. 'Begin,' said he, after a pause, 'begin, "This splendid pack had a stunning run."' 'But we must put _what_ pack first,' observed Sponge, writing the words 'Mr. Puffington's hounds' at the top of the paper. 'Well,' said he, writing on, 'this stunning pack had a splendid run.' 'No, not stunning _pack_,' growled Jack, '_splendid_ pack--"this splendid pack had a stunning run."' 'Stop!' exclaimed Sponge, writing it down; 'well,' said he looking up, 'I've got it.' 'This stunning pack had a splendid run,' repeated Jack, squinting away at the ceiling. 'I thought you said _splendid_ pack,' observed Sponge. 'So I did,' replied Jack. 'You said stunning just now,' rejoined he. 'Ah, that was a slip of the tongue,' said Jack. 'This splendid pack had a stunning run,' repeated Jack, appealing again to his cigar for inspiration; 'well, then,' said he, after a pause, 'you just go on as usual, you know,' continued he, with a flourish of his great red hand. 'As usual!' exclaimed Sponge, 'you don't s'pose one's pen goes of itself.' 'Why, no,' replied Jack, knocking the ashes off his cigar on to the arabesque-patterned tapestry carpet--'why, no, not exactly; but these things, you know, are a good deal matter of course; just describe what you saw, you know, and butter Puff well, that's the main point.' 'But you forget,' replied Sponge, 'I don't know the country, I don't know the people, I don't know anything at all about the run--I never once looked at the hounds.' 'That's nothin',' replied Jack, 'there'd be plenty like you in that respect. However,' continued he, gathering himself up in his chair as if for an effort, 'you can say--let me see what you can say--you can say, "this splendid pack had a stunning run from Hollyburn Hanger, the property of its truly popular master, Mr. Puffington," or--stop,' said Jack, checking himself, 'say, "the property of its truly popular and sporting master, Mr. Puffington." The cover's just as much mine as it's his,' observed Jack; 'it belongs to old Sir Timothy Tensthemain, who's vegetating at Boulogne-sur-Mer, but Puff says he'll buy it when it comes to the hammer, so we'll flatter him by considering it his already, just as we flatter him by calling him a sportsman--_sportsman_!' added Jack, with a sneer, 'he's just as much taste for the thing as a cow.' 'Well,' said Sponge, looking up, 'I've got "truly popular and sporting master, Mr. Puffington,"' adding, 'hadn't we better say something about the meet and the grand spread here before we begin with the run?' 'True,' replied Jack, after a long-drawn whiff and another adjustment of the end of his cigar; 'say that "a splendid field of well-appointed sportsmen"--' 'A splendid field of well-appointed sportsmen,' wrote Sponge. '"Among whom we recognized several distinguished strangers and members of Lord Scamperdale's hunt." That means you and I,' observed Jack. '"Of Lord Scamperdale's hunt--that means you and I"'--read Sponge, as he wrote it. 'But you're not to put in that; you're not to write "that means you and I," my man,' observed Jack. 'Oh, I thought that was part of the sentence,' replied Sponge. 'No, no,' said Jack; 'I meant to say that you and I were the distinguished strangers and members of Lord Scamperdale's hunt; but that's between ourselves, you know.' 'Good,' said Sponge; 'then I'll strike that out,' running his pen through the words 'that means you and I.' 'Now get on,' said he, appealing to Jack, adding, 'we've a deal to do yet.' 'Say,' said Jack, '"after partaking of the well-known profuse and splendid hospitality of Hanby House, they proceeded at once to Hollyburn Hanger, where a fine seasoned fox--though some said he was a bag one--"' 'Did they?' exclaimed Sponge, adding, 'well, I thought he went away rather queerly.' 'Oh, it was only old Bung the brewer, who runs down every run he doesn't ride.' 'Well, never mind,' replied Sponge, 'we'll make the best of it, whatever it was'; writing away as he spoke, and repeating the words 'bag one' as he penned them. '"Broke away,"' continued Jack: '"In view of the whole field,"' added Sponge. 'Just so,' assented Jack. '"Every hound scoring to cry, and making the "--the--the--what d'ye call the thing?' asked Jack. 'Country,' suggested Sponge. 'No,' replied Jack, with a shake of the head. 'Hill and dale?' tried Sponge again. 'Welkin!' exclaimed Jack, hitting it off himself--'"makin' the welkin ring with their melody!" makin' the welkin ring with their melody,' repeated he, with exultation. 'Capital!' observed Sponge, as he wrote it. 'Equal to Littlelegs,'[2] said Jack, squinting his eyes inside out. 'We'll make a grand thing of it,' observed Sponge. 'So we will,' replied Jack, adding, 'if we had but a book of po'try we'd weave in some lines here. You haven't a book o' no sort with you that we could prig a little po'try from?' asked he. 'No,' replied Sponge thoughtfully. 'I'm afraid not; indeed, I'm sure not. I've got nothin' but _Mogg's Cab Fares_.' 'Ah, that won't do,' observed Jack, with a shake of the head. 'But stay,' said he, 'there are some books over yonder,' pointing to the top of an Indian cabinet, and squinting in a totally different direction. 'Let's see what they are,' added he, rising, and stumping away to where they stood. _I Promessi Sposi_, read he off the back of one. 'What can that mean! Ah, it's Latin,' said he, opening the volume. _Contes à ma Fille_, read he off the back of another. 'That sounds like racin',' observed he, opening the volume, 'it's Latin too,' said he, returning it. 'However, never mind, we'll "sugar Puff's milk," as Mr. Bragg would say, without po'try.' So saying, Mr. Spraggon stumped back to his easy-chair. 'Well, now,' said he, seating himself comfortably in it, 'let's see where did we go first? "He broke at the lower end of the cover, and, crossing the brook, made straight for Fleecyhaugh Water Meadows, over which, you may say, "there's always a ravishing scent."' 'Have you got that?' asked Jack, after what he thought a sufficient lapse of time for writing it. '"Ravishing scent,"' repeated Sponge as he wrote the words. 'Very good,' said Jack, smoking and considering. '"From there,"' continued he, '"he made a bit of a bend, as if inclining for the plantations at Winstead, but, changing his mind, he faced the rising ground, and crossing over nearly the highest part of Shillington Hill, made direct for the little village of Berrington Roothings below."' 'Stop!' exclaimed Sponge, 'I haven't got half that; I've only got to "the plantations at Winstead."' Sponge made play with his pen, and presently held it up in token of being done. 'Well,' pondered Jack, 'there was a check there. Say,' continued he, addressing himself to Sponge, '"Here the hounds came to a check."' 'Here the hounds came to a check,' wrote Sponge. 'Shall we say anything about distance?' asked he. 'P'raps we may as well,' replied Jack. 'We shall have to stretch it though a bit.' 'Let's see,' continued he; 'from the cover to Berrington Roothings over by Shillington Hill and Fleecyhaugh Water Meadows will be--say, two miles and a half or three miles at the most--call it four, well, four miles--say four miles in twelve minutes, twenty miles an hour,--too quick--four miles in fifteen minutes, sixteen miles an hour; no--I think p'raps it'll be safer to lump the distance at the end, and put in a place or two that nobody knows the name of, for the convenience of those who were not out.' 'But those who _were_ out will blab, won't they?' asked Sponge. 'Only to each other,' replied Jack. 'They'll all stand up for the truth of it as against strangers. You need never be afraid of over-eggin' the puddin' for those that were out.' 'Well, then,' observed Sponge, looking at his paper to report progress, 'we've got the hounds to a check. "Here the hounds came to a check,"' read he. 'Ah! now, then,' said Jack, in a tone of disgust, 'we must say summut handsome of Bragg; and of all conceited animals under the sun, he certainly is the most conceited. I never saw such a man! How that unfortunate, infatuated master of his keeps him, I can't for the life of me imagine. _Master_! faith, Bragg's the _master_,' continued Jack, who now began to foam at the mouth. 'He laughs at old Puff to his face; yet it's wonderful the influence Bragg has over him. I really believe he has talked Puff into believing that there's not such another huntsman under the sun, and really he's as great a muff as ever walked. He can just dress the character, and that's all.' So saying Jack wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his red coat preparatory to displaying Mr. Bragg upon paper. 'Well, now we are at fault,' said Jack, motioning Sponge to resume; 'we are at fault; now say, "but Mr. Bragg, who had ridden gallantly on his favourite bay, as fine an animal as ever went, though somewhat past mark of mouth--" He _is_ a good horse, at least _was_,' observed Jack, adding, 'I sold Puff him, he was one of old Sugarlip's,' meaning Lord Scamperdale's. 'Sure to be a good 'un, then,' replied Sponge, with a wink, adding, 'I wonder if he'd like to buy any more?' 'We'll talk about that after,' replied Jack, 'at present let us get on with our run.' 'Well,' said Sponge, 'I've got it: "Mr. Bragg, who had ridden gallantly on his favourite bay, as fine an animal as ever went, though somewhat past mark of mouth--"' '"Was well up with his hounds,"' continued Jack, '"and with a gently, Rantipole! and a single wave of his arm, proceeded to make one of those scientific casts for which this eminent huntsman is so justly celebrated." Justly _celebrated_!' repeated Jack, spitting on the carpet with a hawk of disgust; 'the conceited self-sufficient bantam-cock never made a cast worth a copper, or rode a yard but when he thought somebody was looking at him.' 'I've got it,' said Sponge, who had plied his pen to good purpose. 'Justly celebrated,' repeated Jack, with a snort. 'Well, then, say, "Hitting off the scent like a workman"--big H, you know, for a fresh sentence--"they went away again at score, and passing by Moorlinch farm buildings, and threading the strip of plantation by Bexley Burn, he crossed Silverbury Green, leaving Longford Hutch to the right, and passing straight on by the gibbet at Harpen." Those are all bits of places, observed Jack, 'that none but the country folks know; indeed, I shouldn't have known them but for shootin' over them when old Bloss lived at the Green. Well, now, have you got all that?' asked he. '"Gibbet at Harpen,"' read Sponge, as he wrote it. '"Here, then, the gallant pack, breaking from scent to view,"' continued Jack, speaking slowly, '"ran into their fox in the open close upon Mountnessing Wood, evidently his point from the first, and into which a few more strides would have carried him. It was as fine a run as ever was seen, and the hunting of the hounds was the admiration of all who saw it. The distance couldn't have been less than"--than--what shall we say?' asked Jack. 'Ten, twelve miles, as the crow flies,' suggested Sponge. 'No,' said Jack,' that would be too much. Say ten'; adding, 'that will be four miles more than it was.' 'Never mind,' said Sponge, as he wrote it; 'folks like good measure with runs as well as ribbons.' 'Now we must butter old Puff,' observed Spraggon. 'What can we say for him?' asked Sponge; 'that he never went off the road?' 'No, by Jove!' said Jack; 'you'll spoil all if you do that: better leave it alone altogether than do that. Say, "the justly popular owner of this most celebrated pack, though riding good fourteen stone" (he rides far more,' observed Jack; 'at least sixteen; but it'll please him to make out that he _can_ ride fourteen), "led the welters, on his famous chestnut horse, Tappey Lappey."' 'What shall we say about the rest?' asked Sponge; 'Lumpleg, Slapp, Guano, and all those?' [Illustration: JACK AND MR. SPONGE WRITE AN ARTICLE FOR THE SWILLINGFORD PAPER] 'Oh, say nothin',' replied Jack; 'we've nothin' to do with nobody but Puff, and we couldn't mention them without bringin' in our Flat Hat men too--Blossomnose, Fyle, Fossick, and so on. Besides, it would spoil all to say that Guano was up--people would say directly it couldn't have been much of a run if Guano was there. You might finish off,' observed Jack, after a pause, 'by saying that "after this truly brilliant affair, Mr. Puffington, like a thorough sportsman, and one who never trashes his hounds unnecessarily--unlike some masters," you may say, "who never know when to leave off" (that will be a hit at Old Scamp,' observed Jack, with a frightful squint), '"returned to Hanby House, where a distinguished party of sportsmen--" or, say, "a distinguished party of noblemen and gentlemen"--that'll please the ass more--"a large party of noblemen and gentlemen were partaking of his"--his--what shall we call it?' 'Grub!' said Sponge. 'No, no--summut genteel--his--his--his--"splendid hospitality!"' concluded Jack, waving his arm triumphantly over his head. 'Hard work, authorship!' exclaimed Sponge, as he finished writing, and threw down the pen. 'Oh, I don't know,' replied Jack, adding, 'I could go on for an hour.' 'Ah, _you_!--that's all very well,' replied Sponge, 'for you, squatting comfortably in your arm-chair: but consider me, toiling with my pen, bothered with the writing, and craning at the spelling.' 'Never mind, we've done it,' replied Jack, adding, 'Puff'll be as pleased as Punch. We've polished him off uncommon. That's just the sort of account to tickle the beggar. He'll go riding about the country, showing it to everybody, and wondering who wrote it.' 'And what shall we send it to?--the _Sporting Magazine_, or what?' asked Sponge. '_Sporting Magazine!_--no,' replied Jack; 'wouldn't be out till next year--quick's the word in these railway times. Send it to a newspaper--_Bell's Life_, or one of the Swillingford papers. Either of them would be glad to put it in.' 'I hope they'll be able to read it,' observed Sponge, looking at the blotched and scrawled manuscript. 'Trust them for that,' replied Jack, adding, 'If there's any word that bothers them, they've nothing to do but look in the dictionary--these folks all have dictionaries, wonderful fellows for spellin'.' Just then a little buttony page, in green and gold, came in to ask if there were any letters for the post; and our friends hastily made up their packet, directing it to the editor of the Swillingford 'GUIDE TO GLORY AND FREEMAN'S FRIEND'; words that in the hurried style of Mr. Sponge's penmanship looked very like 'GUIDE TO GROG, AND FREEMAN'S FRIEND.' CHAPTER XL A LITERARY BLOOMER Time was when the independent borough of Swillingford supported two newspapers, or rather two editors, the editor of the _Swillingford Patriot_, and the editor of the _Swillingford Guide to Glory_; but those were stirring days, when politics ran high and votes and corn commanded good prices. The papers were never very prosperous concerns, as may be supposed when we say that the circulation of the former at its best time was barely seven hundred, while that of the latter never exceeded a thousand. They were both started at the reform times, when the reduction of the stamp-duty brought so many aspiring candidates for literary fame into the field, and for a time they were conducted with all the bitter hostility that a contracted neighbourhood, and a constant crossing by the editors of each other's path, could engender. The competition, too, for advertisements, was keen, and the editors were continually taunting each other with taking them for the duty alone. �neas M'Quirter was the editor of the _Patriot_, and Felix Grimes that of the _Guide to Glory_. M'Quirter, we need hardly say, was a Scotsman--a big, broad-shouldered Sawney--formidable in 'slacks,' as he called his trousers, and terrific in kilts; while Grimes was a native of Swillingford, an ex-schoolmaster and parish clerk, and now an auctioneer, a hatter, a dyer and bleacher, a paper-hanger, to which the wits said when he set up his paper, he added the trade of 'stainer.' At first the rival editors carried on a 'war to the knife' sort of contest with one another, each denouncing his adversary in terms of the most unmeasured severity. In this they were warmly supported by a select knot of admirers, to whom they read their weekly effusions at their respective 'houses of call' the evening before publication. Gradually the fire of bitterness began to pale, and the excitement of friends to die out; M'Quirter presently put forth a signal of distress. To accommodate 'a large and influential number of its subscribers and patrons,' he determined to publish on a Tuesday instead of on a Saturday as heretofore, whereupon Mr. Grimes, who had never been able to fill a single sheet properly, now doubled his paper, lowered his charge for advertisements, and hinted at his intention of publishing an occasional supplement. However exciting it may be for a time, parties soon tire of carrying on a losing game for the mere sake of abusing each other, and �neas M'Quirter not being behind the generality of his countrymen in 'canniness' and shrewdness of intellect, came to the conclusion that it was no use doing so in this case, especially as the few remaining friends who still applauded would be very sorry to subscribe anything towards his losses. He therefore very quietly negotiated the sale of his paper to the rival editor, and having concluded a satisfactory bargain, he placed the bulk of his property in the poke of his plaid, and walked out of Swillingford just as if bent on taking the air, leaving Mr. Grimes in undisputed possession of both papers, who forthwith commenced leading both Whig and Tory mind, the one on the Tuesday, the other on the Saturday. The pot and pipe companions of course saw how things were, but the majority of the readers living in the country just continued to pin their faith to the printed declarations of their oracles, while Grimes kept up the delusion of sincerity by every now and then fulminating a tremendous denunciation against his trimming, vacillating, inconsistent opponent on the Tuesday, and then retaliating with equal vigour upon himself on the Saturday. He wrote his own 'leaders,' both Whig and Tory, the arguments of one side pointing out answers for the other. Sometimes he led the way for a triumphant refutal, while the general tone of the articles was quite of the 'upset a ministry' style. Indeed, Grimes strutted and swaggered as if the fate of the nation rested with him. The papers themselves were not very flourishing-looking concerns, the wide-spread paragraphs, the staring type, the catching advertisements, forming a curious contrast to the close packing of _The Times_. The 'Gutta Percha Company,' 'Locock's Female Pills,' 'Keating's Cough Lozenges,' and the 'Triumphs of Medicine,' all with staring woodcuts and royal arms, occupied conspicuous places in every paper. A new advertisement was a novelty. However, the two papers answered a great deal better than either did singly, and any lack of matter was easily supplied from the magazines and new books. In this department, indeed, in the department of elegant light literature generally, Mr. Grimes was ably assisted by his eldest daughter, Lucy, a young lady of a certain age--say liberal thirty--an ardent Bloomer--with a considerable taste for sentimental poetry, with which she generally filled the poet's corner. This assistance enabled Grimes to look after his auctioneering, bleaching, and paper-hanging concerns, and it so happened that when the foregoing run arrived at the office he, having seen the next paper ready for press, had gone to Mr. Vosper's, some ten miles off, to paper his drawing-room, consequently the duties of deciding upon its publication devolved on the Bloomer. Now, she was a most refined, puritanical young woman, full of sentiment and elegance, with a strong objection to what she considered the inhumanities of the chase. At first she was for rejecting the article altogether, and had it been a run with the Tinglebury Harriers, or even, we believe, with Lord Scamperdale's hounds, she would have consigned it to the 'Balaam box,' but seeing it was with Mr. Puffington's hounds, whose house they had papered, and who advertised with them, she condescended to read it; and though her delicacy was shocked at encountering the word 'stunning' at the outset, and also at the term 'ravishing scent' farther on, she nevertheless sent the manuscript to the compositors, after making such alterations and corrections as she thought would fit it for eyes polite. The consequence was that the article appeared in the following form, though whether all the absurdities were owing to Miss Lucy's corrections, or the carelessness of the writer, or the printers, had anything to do with it, we are not able to say. The errors, some of them arising from the mere alteration or substitution of a letter, will strike a sporting more than a general reader. Thus it appeared in the middle of the third sheet of the _Swillingford Patriot_: SPLENDID RUN WITH MR. PUFFINGTON'S HOUNDS. This splendid pack had a superb run from Hollyburn Hanger, the property of its truly popular and sporting owner, Mr. Puffington. A splendid field of well-appointed sportsmen, among whom we recognized several distinguished strangers, and members of Lord Scamperdale's hunt, were present. After partaking of the well-known profuse and splendid hospitality of Hanby House, they proceeded at once to Hollyburn Hanger, where a fine seasonal fox, though some said he was a bay one, broke away in view of the whole pack, every hound scorning to cry, and making the welkin ring with their melody. He broke at the lower end of the cover, and crossing the brook, made straight for Fleecyhaugh Water Meadows, over which there is always an exquisite perfume; from there he made a slight bend, as if inclining for the plantations at Winstead, but changing his mind, he faced the rising ground, and crossing over nearly the highest point of Shillington Hill, made direct for the little village of Berrington Roothings below. Here the hounds came to a check, but Mr. Bragg, who had ridden gallantly on his favourite bay, as fine an animal as ever went, though somewhat past work of mouth, was well up with his hounds, and with a 'gentle rantipole!' and a single wave of his arm, proceeded to make one of those scientific rests for which this eminent huntsman is so justly celebrated. Hitting off the scent like a coachman, they went away again at score, and passing by Moorlinch Farm buildings, and threading the strip of plantation by Bexley Burn, he crossed Silverbury Green, leaving Longford Hutch to the right, and passing straight on by the gibbet at Harpen. Here, then, the gallant pack, breaking from scent to view, ran into their box in the open close upon Mountnessing Wood, evidently his point from the first, and into which a few more strides would have carried him. It was as fine a run as ever was seen, and the grunting of the hounds was the admiration of all who heard it. The distance could not have been less than ten miles as a cow goes. The justly popular owner of this most celebrated pack, though riding good fourteen stones, led the Walters on his famous chestnut horse Tappy Lappey. After this truly brilliant affair, Mr. Puffington, like a thorough sportsman, and one who never thrashes his hounds unnecessarily--unlike some masters who never know when to leave off--returned to Hanby House, where a distinguished party of noblemen and gentlemen partook of his splendid hospitality. And the considerate Bloomer added of her own accord, 'We hope we shall have to record many such runs in the imperishable columns of our paper.' [Illustration: MISS GRIMES GIVING THE 'CORRECTED' COPY TO THE PRINTER] CHAPTER XLI A DINNER AND A DEAL Another grand dinner, on a more extensive scale than its predecessor, marked the day of this glorious run. 'There's goin' to be a great blow-out,' observed Mr. Spraggon to Mr. Sponge, as, crossing his hands and resting them on the crown of his head, he threw himself back in his easy-chair, to recruit after the exertion of concocting the description of the run. 'How d'ye know?' asked Sponge. 'Saw by the dinner table as we passed,' replied Jack, adding, 'it reaches nearly to the door.' 'Indeed,' said Sponge, 'I wonder who's coming?' 'Most likely Guano again; indeed, I know he is, for I asked his groom if he was going home, and he said no; and Lumpleg, you may be sure, and possibly old Blossomnose, Slapp, and, very likely, young Pacey.' 'Are they chaps with any "go" in them?--shake their elbows, or anything of that sort?' asked Sponge, working away as if he had the dice-box in his hand. 'I hardly know,' replied Jack thoughtfully. 'I hardly know. Young Pacey, I think, might be made summut on; but his uncle, Major Screw, looks uncommon sharp after him, and he's a minor.' 'Would he _pay_?' asked Sponge, who, keeping as he said, 'no books,' was not inclined to do business on 'tick.' 'Don't know,' replied Jack, squinting at half-cock; 'don't know--would depend a good deal, I should say, upon how it was done. It's a deuced unhandsome world this. If one wins a trifle of a youngster at cards, let it be ever so openly done, it's sure to say one's cheated him, just because one happens to be a little older, as if age had anything to do with making the cards come right.' 'It's an ungenerous world,' observed Sponge, 'and it's no use being abused for nothing. What sort of a genius is Pacey? Is he inclined to go the pace?' 'Oh, quite,' replied Jack; 'his great desire is to be thought a sportsman.' 'A sportsman or a sporting man?' asked Sponge. 'W-h-o-y! I should say p'raps a sportin' man more than the sportsman,' replied Jack. 'He's a great lumberin' lad, buttons his great stomach into a Newmarket cutaway, and carries a betting-book in his breast pocket.' 'Oh, he's a bettor, is he!' exclaimed Sponge, brightening up. 'He's a raw poult of a chap,' replied Jack; 'just ready for anything--in a small way, at least--a chap that's always offering two to one in half-crowns. He'll have money, though, and can't be far off age. His father was a great spectacle-maker. You have heard of Pacey's spectacles?' 'Can't say as how I have,' replied Sponge, adding, 'they are more in your line than mine.' The further consideration of the youth was interrupted by the entrance of a footman with hot water, who announced that dinner would be ready in half an hour. 'Who's there coming?' asked Jack. 'Don't know 'xactly, sir,' replied the man; 'believe much the same party as yesterday, with the addition of Mr. Pacey; Mr. Miller, of Newton; Mr. Fogo, of Bellevue; Mr. Brown, of the Hill; and some others whose names I forget.' 'Is Major Screw coming?' asked Sponge. 'I rayther think not, sir. I think I heard Mr. Plummey, the butler, say he declined.' 'So much the better,' growled Jack, throwing off his purple-lapped coat in commencement of his toilette. As the two dressed they discussed the point how Pacey might be done. When our friends got downstairs it was evident there was a great spread. Two red-plushed footmen stood on guard in the entrance, helping the arrivers out of their wraps, while a buzz of conversation sounded through the partially opened drawing-room door, as Mr. Plummey stood, handle in hand, to announce the names of the guests. Our friends, having the entrée, of course passed in as at home, and mingled with the comers and stayers. Guest after guest quickly followed, almost all making the same observation, namely, that it was a fine day for the time of year, and then each sidled off, rubbing his hands, to the fire. Captain Guano monopolized about one-half of it, like a Colossus of Rhodes, with a coat-lap under each arm. He seemed to think that, being a stayer, he had more right to the fire than the mere diners. Mr. Puffington moved briskly among the motley throng, now expatiating on the splendour of the run, now hoping a friend was hungry, asking a third after his wife, and apologizing to a fourth for not having called on his sister. Still his real thoughts were in the kitchen, and he kept counting noses and looking anxiously at the timepiece. After the door had had a longer rest than usual, Blossomnose at last cast up: 'Now we're all here surely!' thought he, counting about; 'one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, thirteen, fourteen, myself fifteen--fifteen, fifteen, must be another--sixteen, eight couple asked. Oh, that Pacey's wanting; always comes late, won't wait'--so saying, or rather thinking, Mr. Puffington rang the bell and ordered dinner. Pacey then cast up. He was just the sort of swaggering youth that Jack had described; a youth who thought money would do everything in the world--make him a gentleman, in short. He came rolling into the room, grinning as if he had done something fine in being late. He had both his great red hands in his tight trouser pockets, and drew the right one out to favour his friends with it 'all hot.' 'I'm late, I guess,' said he, grinning round at the assembled guests, now dispersed in the various attitudes of expectant eaters, some standing ready for a start, some half-sitting on tables and sofa ends, others resigning themselves complacently to their chairs, abusing Mr. Pacey and all dinner delayers. 'I'm late, I guess,' repeated he, as he now got navigated up to his host and held out his hand. 'Oh, never mind,' replied Puffington, accepting as little of the proffered paw as he could; 'never mind,' repeated he, adding, as he looked at the French clock on the mantelpiece now chiming a quarter past six, 'I dare say I told you we dined at half-past five.' 'Dare say you did, old boy,' replied Pacey, kicking out his legs, and giving Puffington what he meant for a friendly poke in the stomach, but which in reality nearly knocked his wind out; 'dare say you did, old boy, but so you did last time, if you remember, and deuce a bite did I get before six; so I thought I'd be quits with you this--_he--he--he--haw--haw--haw_,' grinning and staring about as if he had done something very clever. [Illustration: MR. PACEY] Pacey was one of those deplorable beings--a country swell. Tomkins and Hopkins, the haberdashers of Swillingford, never exhibited an ugly out-of-the-way neckcloth or waistcoat with the words 'patronized by the Prince,' 'very fashionable,' or 'quite the go,' upon them, but he immediately adorned himself in one. On the present occasion he was attired in a wide-stretching, lace-tipped, black Joinville, with recumbent gills, showing the heavy amplitude of his enormous jaws, while the extreme scooping out of a collarless, flashy-buttoned, chain-daubed, black silk waistcoat, with broad blue stripes, afforded an uninterrupted view of a costly embroidered shirt, the view extending, indeed, up to a portion of his white satin 'forget-me-not' embroidered braces. His coat was a broad-sterned, brass-buttoned blue, with pockets outside, and of course he wore a pair of creaking highly varnished boots. He was apparently, about twenty; just about the age when a youth thinks it fine to associate with men, and an age at which some men are not above taking advantage of a youth. Perhaps he looked rather older than he was, for he was stiff built and strong, with an ample crop of whiskers extending from his great red docken ears round his harvest moon of a face. He was lumpy, and clumsy, and heavy all over. Having now got inducted, he began to stare round the party, and first addressed our worthy friend Mr. Spraggon. 'Well, Sprag, how are you?' asked he. 'Well, Specs' (alluding to his father's trade), 'how are you?' replied Jack, with a growl, to the evident satisfaction of the party, who seemed to regard Pacey as the common enemy. Fortunately just at the moment Mr. Plummey restored harmony by announcing dinner; and after the usual backing and retiring of mock modesty, Mr. Puffington said he would 'show them the way,' when there was as great a rush to get in, to avoid the bugbear of sitting with their backs to the fire, as there had been apparent disposition not to go at all. Notwithstanding the unfavourable aspect of affairs, Mr. Spraggon placed himself next Mr. Pacey, who sat a good way down the table, while Mr. Sponge occupied the post of honour by our host. In accordance with the usual tactics of these sort of gentlemen, Spraggon and Sponge essayed to be two--if not exactly strangers, at all events gentlemen with very little acquaintance. Spraggon took advantage of a dead silence to call up the table to _Mister_ Sponge to take wine; a compliment that Sponge acknowledged the accordance of by a very low bow into his plate, and by-and-by Mister Sponge 'Mistered' Mr. Spraggon to return the compliment. 'Do you know much of that--that--that--_chap_?' (he would have said snob if he'd thought it would be safe) asked Pacey, as Sponge returned to still life after the first wine ceremony. 'No,' replied Spraggon, 'nor do I wish.' 'Great snob,' observed Pacey. 'Shocking,' assented Spraggon. 'He's got a good horse or two, though,' observed Pacey; 'I saw them on the road coming here the other day.' Pacey, like many youngsters, professed to be a judge of horses, and thought himself rather sharp at a deal. 'They are _good_ horses,' replied Jack, with an emphasis on the good, adding, 'I'd be very glad to have one of them.' Mr. Spraggon then asked Mr. Pacey to take champagne, as the commencement of a better understanding. The wine flowed freely, and the guests, particularly the fresh infusion, did ample justice to it. The guests of the day before, having indulged somewhat freely, were more moderate at first, though they seemed well inclined to do their best after they got their stomachs a little restored. Spraggon could drink any given quantity at any time. The conversation got brisker and brisker: and before the cloth was drawn there was a very general clamour, in which all sorts of subjects seemed to be mixed--each man addressing himself to his immediate neighbour; one talking of taxes--another of tares--a third, of hunting and the system of kennel--a fourth, of the corn-laws--old Blossomnose, about tithes--Slapp, about timber and water-jumping--Miller, about Collison's pills; and Guano, about anything that he could get a word edged in about. Great, indeed, was the hubbub. Gradually, however, as the evening advanced Pacey and Guano out-talked the rest, and at length Pacey got the noise pretty well to himself. When anything definite could be extracted from the mass of confusion, he was expatiating on steeple-chasing, hurdle-racing, weights for age, ons and offs clever--a sort of mixture of hunting, racing, and 'Alken.' Sponge cocked his ear, and sat on the watch, occasionally hazarding an observation, while Jack, who was next Pacey, on the left, pretended to decry Sponge's judgement, asking _sotto voce_, with a whiff through his nose, what such a Cockney as that could know about horses? What between Jack's encouragement, and the inspiring influence of the bottle, aided by his own self-sufficiency, Pacey began to look upon Sponge with anything but admiration; and at last it occurred to him that he would be a very proper subject to, what he called, 'take the shine out of.' 'That isn't a bad-like nag, that chestnut of yours, for the wheeler of a coach, Mr. Sponge,' exclaimed he, at the instigation of Spraggon, to our friend, producing, of course, a loud guffaw from the party. 'No, he isn't,' replied Sponge coolly, adding, 'very like one, I should say.' 'Devilish _good_ horse,' growled Jack in Pacey's ear. 'Oh, I dare say,' whispered Pacey, pretending to be scraping up the orange syrup in his plate, adding, 'I'm only chaffing the beggar.' 'He looks solitary without the coach at his tail,' continued Pacey, looking up, and again addressing Sponge up the table. 'He does,' affirmed Sponge, amidst the laughter of the party. Pacey didn't know how to take this; whether as a 'sell' or a compliment to his own wit. He sat for a few seconds grinning and staring like a fool; at last after gulping down a bumper of claret, he again fixed his unmeaning green eyes upon Sponge, and exclaimed: 'I'll challenge your horse, Mr. Sponge.' A burst of applause followed the announcement; for it was evident that amusement was in store. 'You'll w-h-a-w-t?' replied Sponge, staring, and pretending ignorance. 'I'll challenge your horse,' repeated Pacey with confidence, and in a tone that stopped the lingering murmur of conversation, and fixed the attention of the company on himself. 'I don't understand you,' replied Sponge, pretending astonishment. 'Lor bless us! why, where have you lived all your life?' asked Pacey. 'Oh, partly in one place, and partly in another,' was the answer. 'I should think so,' replied Pacey, with a look of compassion, adding, in an undertone, 'a good deal with your mother, I should think.' 'If you could get that horse at a moderate figure,' whispered Jack to his neighbour, and squinting his eyes inside out as he spoke, 'he's well worth having.' 'The beggar won't sell him,' muttered Pacey, who was fonder of talking about buying horses than of buying them. 'Oh yes, he will,' replied Jack; 'he didn't understand what you meant. Mr. Sponge,' said he, addressing himself slowly and distinctly up the table to our hero--'Mr. Sponge, my friend Mr. Pacey here challenges your chestnut.' Sponge still stared in well-feigned astonishment. 'It's a custom we have in this country,' continued Jack, looking, as he thought, at Sponge, but, in reality, squinting most frightfully at the sideboard. 'Do you mean he wants to buy him?' asked Sponge. 'Yes,' replied Jack confidently. 'No, I don't,' whispered Pacey, giving Jack a kick under the table. Pacey had not yet drunk sufficient wine to be rash. 'Yes, yes,' replied Jack tartly, 'you do,' adding, in an undertone, 'leave it to me, man, and I'll let you in for a good thing. Yes, Mr. Sponge,' continued he, addressing himself to our hero, 'Mr. Pacey fancies the chestnut and challenges him.' 'Why doesn't he ask the price?' replied Sponge, who was always ready for a deal. 'Ah, the price must be left to a third party,' said Jack. 'The principle of the thing is this,' continued he, enlisting the aid of his fingers to illustrate his position: 'Mr. Pacey, here,' said he, applying the forefinger of his right hand to the thumb of the left, looking earnestly at Sponge, but in reality squinting up at the chandelier--'Mr. Pacey here challenges your horse Multum-in-somethin'--I forget what you said you call him--but the nag I rode to-day. Well, then,' continued Jack, 'you' (demonstrating Sponge by pressing his two forefingers together, and holding them erect) 'accept the challenge, but can challenge anything Mr. Pacey has--a horse, dog, gun--anything; and, having fixed on somethin' then a third party' (who Jack represented by cocking up his thumb), 'any one you like to name, makes the award. Well, having agreed upon that party' (Jack still cocking up the thumb to represent the arbitrator), 'he says, "Give me money." The two then put, say half a crown or five shillin's each, into his hand, to which the arbitrator adds the same sum for himself. That being done, the arbitrator says, "Hands in pockets, gen'lemen."' (Jack diving his right hand up to the hilt in his own.) 'If this be an award, Mr. Pacey's horse gives Mr. Sponge's horse so much--draw.' (Jack suiting the action to the word, and laying his fist on the table.) 'If each person's hand contains money, it is an award--it is a deal; and the arbitrator gets the half-crowns, or whatever it is, for his trouble; so that, in course, he has a direct interest in makin' such an award as will lead to a deal. _Now_ do you understand?' continued Jack, addressing himself earnestly to Sponge. 'I think I do,' replied Sponge who had been at the game pretty often. 'Well, then,' continued Jack, reverting to his original position, 'my friend, Mr. Pacey here, challenges your chestnut.' 'No, never mind,' muttered Pacey peevishly, in an undertone, with a frown on his face, giving Jack a dig in the ribs with his elbow. 'Never mind,' repeated he; '_I_ don't care about it--_I_ don't want the horse.' 'But _I_ do,' growled Jack, adding, in an undertone also, as he stooped for his napkin, 'don't spoil sport, man; he's as good a horse as ever stepped; and if you'll challenge him, I'll stand between you and danger.' 'But he may challenge something I don't want to part with,' observed Pacey. 'Then you've nothin' to do,' replied Jack, 'but bring up your hand without any money in it.' 'Ah! I forgot,' replied Pacey, who did not like not to appear what he called 'fly.' 'Well, then, I challenge your chestnut!' exclaimed he, perking up, and shouting up the table to Sponge. 'Good!' replied our friend. 'I challenge your watch and chain, then,' looking at Pacey's chain-daubed vest. 'Name _me_ arbitrator,' muttered Jack, as he again stooped for his napkin. 'Who shall handicap us? Captain Guano, Mr. Lumpleg, or who?' asked Sponge. 'Suppose we say Spraggon?--he says he rode the horse to-day,' replied Pacey. 'Quite agreeable,' said Sponge. 'Now, Jack!' 'Now, Spraggon!' 'Now, old Solomon!' 'Now, Doctor Wiseman,' resounded from different parts of the table. Jack looked solemn; and diving both hands into his breeches' pockets, stuck out his legs extensively before him. 'Give me money,' said he pompously. They each handed him half a crown; and Jack added a third for himself. 'Mr. Pacey challenges Mr. Sponge's chestnut horse, and Mr. Sponge challenges Mr. Pacey's gold watch,' observed Jack sententiously. 'Come, old Slowman, go on!' exclaimed Guano, adding, 'have you got no further than that?' 'Hurry no man's cattle,' replied Jack tartly, adding, 'you may keep a donkey yourself some day.' 'Mr. Pacey challenges Mr. Sponge's chestnut horse,' repeated Jack. 'How old is the chestnut, Mr. Sponge?' added he, addressing himself to our friend. 'Upon my word I hardly know,' replied Sponge, 'he's past mark of mouth; but I think a hunter's age has very little to do with his worth.' 'Who-y, that depends,' rejoined Jack, blowing out his cheeks, and looking as pompous as possible--'that depends a good deal upon how he's been used in his youth.' 'He's about nine, I should say,' observed Sponge, pretending to have been calculating, though, in reality, he knew nothing whatever about the horse's age. 'Say nine, or rising ten, and never did a day's work till he was six.' 'Indeed!' said Jack, with an important bow, adding, 'being easy with them at the beginnin' puts on a deal to the end. Perfect hunter, I s'pose?' 'Why, you can judge of that yourself,' replied Sponge. 'Perfect hunter, _I_ should say,' rejoined Jack, 'and steady at his fences--don't know that I ever rode a better fencer. Well,' continued he, having apparently pondered all that over in his mind, 'I must trouble you to let me look at your ticker,' said he, turning short round on his neighbour. 'There,' said Mr. Pacey, producing a fine flash watch from his waistcoat-pocket, and holding it to Jack. 'The chain's included in the challenge, mind,' observed Sponge. 'In course,' said Jack; 'it's what the pawnbrokers call a watch with its appurts.' (Jack had his watch at his uncle's and knew the terms exactly.) 'It's a repeater, mind,' observed Pacey, taking off the chain. 'The chain's heavy,' said Jack, running it up in his hand; 'and here's a pistol-key and a beautiful pencil-case, with the Pacey crest and motto,' observed Jack, trying to decipher the latter. 'If it had been without the words, whatever they are,' said he, giving up the attempt, 'it would have been worth more, but the gold's fine, and a new stone can easily be put in.' He then pulled an old hunting-card out of his pocket, and proceeded to make sundry calculations and estimates in pencil on the back. 'Well, now,' said he, at length, looking up, 'I should say, such a watch as that and appurts,' holding them up, 'couldn't be bought in a shop under eight-and-twenty pund.' 'It cost five-and-thirty,' observed Mr. Pacey. 'Did it!' rejoined Jack, adding, 'then you were done.' Jack then proceeded to do a little more arithmetic, during which process Mr. Puffington passed the wine and gave as a toast--'Success to the handicap.' 'Well,' at length said Jack, having apparently struck a balance, 'hands in pocket, gen'lemen. If this is an award, Mr. Pacey's gold watch and appurts gives Mr. Sponge's chestnut horse seventy golden sovereigns. Show money,' whispered Jack to Pacey, adding, 'I'll stand the shot.' 'Stop!' roared Guano, 'do either of you sport your hand?' 'Yes, I do,' replied Mr. Pacey coolly. 'And I,' said Mr. Sponge. 'Hold hard, then, gen'lemen!' roared Jack, getting excited, and beginning to foam. 'Hold hard, gen'lemen!' repeated he, just as he was in the habit of roaring at the troublesome customers in Lord Scamperdale's field; 'Mr. Pacey and Mr. Sponge both sport their hands.' 'I'll lay a guinea Pacey doesn't hold money,' exclaimed Guano. 'Done!' exclaimed Parson Blossomnose. 'I'll bet it does,' observed Charley Slapp. 'I'll take you,' replied Mr. Miller. Then the hubbub of betting commenced, and raged with fury for a short time; some betting sovereigns, some half-sovereigns, other half-crowns and shillings, as to whether the hands of one or both held money. Givers and takers being at length accommodated, perfect silence at length reigned, and all eyes turned upon the double fists of the respective champions. Jack having adjusted his great tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and put on a most consequential air, inquired, like a gambling-house keeper, if they were 'All done'--had all 'made their game?' And 'Yes! yes! yes!' resounded from all quarters. 'Then, gen'lemen,' said Jack, addressing Pacey and Sponge, who still kept their closed hands on the table, '_show_!' At the word, their hands opened, and each held money. 'A deal! a deal! a deal!' resounded through the room, accompanied with clapping of hands, thumping of the table, and dancing of glasses. 'You owe me a guinea,' exclaimed one. 'I want half a sovereign of you,' roared another. 'Here's my half-crown,' said a third, handing one across the table to the fortunate winner. A general settlement took place, in the midst of which the 'watch and appurts' were handed to Mr. Sponge. 'We'll drink Mr. Pacey's health,' said Mr. Puffington, helping himself to a bumper, and passing the lately replenished decanters. 'He's done the thing like a sportsman, and deserves to have luck with his deal. Your good health, Mr. Pacey!' continued he, addressing himself specifically to our friend, 'and luck to your horse.' 'Your good health, Mr. Pacey--your good health, Mr. Pacey--your good health, Mr. Pacey,' then followed in the various intonations that mark the feelings of the speaker towards the toastee, as the bottles passed round the table. The excitement seemed to have given fresh zest to the wine, and those who had been shirking, or filling on heel-taps, now began filling bumpers, while those who always filled bumpers now took back hands. There is something about horse-dealing that seems to interest every one. Conversation took a brisk turn, and nothing but the darkness of the night prevented their having the horse out and trying him. Pacey wanted him brought into the dining-room, _à la_ Briggs, but Puff wouldn't stand that. The transfer seemed to have invested the animal with supernatural charms, and those who in general cared nothing about horses wanted to have a sight of him. Toasting having commenced, as usual, it was proceeded with. Sponge's health followed that of Mr. Pacey's, Mr. Puffington availing himself of the opportunity afforded by proposing it, of expressing the gratification it afforded himself and all true sportsmen to see so distinguished a character in the country; and he concluded by hoping that the diminution of his stud would not interfere with the length of his visit--a toast that was drunk with great applause. Mr. Sponge replied by saying, 'That he certainly had not intended parting with his horse, though one more or less was neither here nor there, especially in these railway times, when a man had nothing to do but take a half-guinea's worth of electric wire, and have another horse in less than no time; but Mr. Pacey having taken a fancy to the horse, he had been more accommodating to him than he had to his friend, Mr. Spraggon, if he would allow him to call him so (Jack squinted and bowed assent), who,' continued Mr. Sponge, 'had in vain attempted that morning to get him to put a price upon him.' 'Very true,' whispered Jack to Pacey, with a feel of the elbow in his ribs, adding, in an undertone, 'the beggar doesn't think I've got him in spite of him, though.' 'The horse,' Mr. Sponge continued, 'was an undeniable good 'un, and he wished Mr. Pacey joy of his bargain.' This venture having been so successful, others attempted similar means, appointing Mr. Spraggon the arbitrator. Captain Guano challenged Mr. Fogo's phaeton, while Mr. Fogo retaliated upon the captain's chestnut horse; but the captain did not hold money to the award. Blossomnose challenged Mr. Miller's pig; but the latter could not be induced to claim anything of the worthy rector's for Mr. Spraggon to exercise his appraising talents upon. After an evening of much noise and confusion, the wine-heated party at last broke up--the staying company retiring to their couches, and the outlying ones finding their ways home as best they could. CHAPTER XLII THE MORNING'S REFLECTIONS When young Pacey awoke in the morning he had a very bad headache, and his temples throbbed as if the veins would burst their bounds. The first thing that recalled the actual position of affairs to his mind was feeling under the pillow for his watch: a fruitless search that ended in recalling something of the overnight's proceedings. Pacey liked a cheap flash, and when elated with wine might be betrayed into indiscretions that his soberer moments were proof against. Indeed, among youths of his own age he was reckoned rather a sharp hand; and it was the vanity of associating with men, and wishing to appear a match for them, that occasionally brought him into trouble. In a general way, he was a very cautious hand. He now lay tumbling and tossing about in bed, and little by little he laid together the outline of the evening's proceedings, beginning with his challenging Mr. Sponge's chestnut, and ending with the resignation of his watch and chain. He thought he was wrong to do anything of the sort. He didn't want the horse, not he. What should he do with him? he had one more than he wanted as it was. Then, paying for him seventy sovereigns! confound it, it would be very inconvenient--_most_ inconvenient--indeed, he couldn't do it, so there was an end of it. The facilities of carrying out after-dinner transactions frequently vanish with the morning's sun. So it was with Mr. Pacey. Then he began to think how to get out of it. Should he tell Mr. Sponge candidly the state of his finances, and trust to his generosity for letting him off? Was Mr. Sponge a likely man to do it? He thought he was. But, then, would he blab? He thought he would, and that would blow him among those by whom he wished to be thought knowing, a man not to be done. Altogether he was very much perplexed: seventy pounds was a vast of money; and then there was his watch gone, too! a hundred and more altogether. He must have been drunk to do it--_very_ drunk, he should say; and then he began to think whether he had not better treat it as an after-dinner frolic, and pretend to forget all about it. That seemed feasible. All at once it occurred to Pacey that Mr. Spraggon was the purchaser, and that he was only a middle-man. His headache forsook him for the moment, and he felt a new man. It was clearly the case, and bit by bit he recollected all about it. How Jack had told him to challenge the horse, and he would stand to the bargain; how he had whispered him (Pacey) to name him (Jack) arbitrator; and how he had done so, and Jack had made the award. Then he began to think that the horse must be a good one, as Jack would not set too high a price on him, seeing that he was the purchaser. Then he wondered that he had put enough on to induce Sponge to sell him: that rather puzzled him. He lay a long time tossing, and proing and coning, without being able to arrive at any satisfactory solution of the matter. At last he rang his bell, and finding it was eight o'clock he got up, and proceeded to dress himself; which operation being accomplished, he sought Jack's room, to have a little confidential conversation with him on the subject, and arrange about paying Sponge for the horse, without letting out who was the purchaser. Jack was snoring, with his great mouth wide open, and his grizzly head enveloped in a white cotton nightcap. The noise of Pacey entering awoke him. 'Well, old boy' growled he, turning over as soon as he saw who it was, 'what are you up to?' 'Oh, nothing particular,' replied Mr. Pacey, in a careless sort of tone. 'Then make yourself scarce, or I'll baptize you in a way you won't like,' growled Jack, diving under the bedclothes. 'Oh, why I just wanted to have--have half a dozen words with you about our last night's' (ha--hem--haw!) 'handicap, you know--about the horse, you know.' 'About the w-h-a-w-t?' drawled Jack, as if perfectly ignorant of what Pacey was talking about. 'About the horse, you know--about Mr. Sponge's horse, you know--that you got me to challenge for you, you know,' stammered Pacey. 'Oh, dash it, the chap's drunk,' growled Jack aloud to himself, adding to Pacey, 'you shouldn't get up so soon, man--sleep the drink off.' Pacey stood nonplussed. 'Don't you remember, Mr. Spraggon,' at last asked he, after watching the tassel of Jack's cap peeping above the bedclothes, 'what took place last night, you know? You asked me to get you Mr. Sponge's chestnut, and you know I did, you know.' 'Hout, lad, disperse!--get out of this!' exclaimed Jack, starting his great red face above the bedclothes and squinting frightfully at Pacey. 'Well, my dear friend, but you did,' observed Pacey soothingly. 'Nonsense!' roared Jack, again ducking under. Pacey stood agape. 'Come!' exclaimed Jack, again starting up, 'cut your stick!--be off!--make yourself scarce!--give your rags a gallop, in short!--don't be after disturbin' a gen'leman of fortin's rest in this way.' 'But, my dear Mr. Spraggon,' resumed Pacey, in the same gentle tone, 'you surely forget what you asked me to do.' '_I do_,' replied Jack firmly. 'Well, but, my dear Mr. Spraggon, if you'll have the kindness to recollect--to consider--to reflect on what passed, you'll surely remember commissioning me to challenge Mr. Sponge's horse for you?' '_Me!_' exclaimed Jack, bouncing up in bed, and sitting squinting furiously. '_Me!_' repeated he; '_un_possible. How could _I_ do such a thing? Why, I handicap'd him, man, for you, man?' 'You told me, for all that,' replied Mr. Pacey, with a jerk of the head. 'Oh, by Jove!' exclaimed Jack, taking his cap by the tassel, and twisting it off his head,' that won't do!--downright impeachment of one's integrity. Oh, by Jingo! that won't do!' motioning as if he was going to bounce out of bed; 'can't stand that--impeach one's integrity, you know, better take one's life, you know. Life without honour's nothin', you know. Cock Pheasant at Weybridge, six o'clock i' the mornin'!' 'Oh, I assure you, I didn't mean anything of that sort,' exclaimed Mr. Pacey, frightened at Jack's vehemence, and the way in which he now foamed at the mouth, and flourished his nightcap about. 'Oh, I assure you, I didn't mean anything of that sort,' repeated he, 'only I thought p'raps you mightn't recollect all that had passed, p'raps; and if we were to talk matters quietly over, by putting that and that together, we might assist each other and--' 'Oh, by Jove!' interrupted Jack, dashing his nightcap against the bedpost, 'too late for anything of that sort, sir--_down_right impeachment of one's integrity, sir--must be settled another way, sir.' 'But, I assure you, you mistake!' exclaimed Pacey. 'Rot your mistakes!' interrupted Jack; 'there's no mistake in the matter. You've _reg_larly impeached my integrity--blood of the Spraggons won't stand that. "Death before Dishonour!"' shouted he, at the top of his voice, flourishing his nightcap over his head, and then dashing it on to the middle of the floor. 'What's the matter?--what's the matter?--what's the matter?' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, rushing through the connecting door. 'What's the matter?' repeated he, placing himself between the bed in which Jack still sat upright, squinting his eyes inside out, and where Mr. Pacey stood. 'Oh, Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed Jack, clasping his raised hands in thankfulness, 'I'm so glad you're here!--I'm so thankful you're come! I've been insulted!--oh, goodness, how I've been insulted!' added he, throwing himself back in the bed, as if thoroughly overcome with his feelings. 'Well, but what's the matter?--what is it all about?' asked Sponge coolly, having a pretty good guess what it was. 'Never was so insulted in my life!' ejaculated Jack, from under the bedclothes. 'Well but what _is_ it?' repeated Sponge, appealing to Pacey, who stood as pale as ashes. 'Oh! nothing,' replied he; 'quite a mistake; Mr. Spraggon misunderstood me altogether.' 'Mistake! There's no mistake in the matter!' exclaimed Jack, appearing again on the surface like an otter; 'you gave me the lie as plain as a pikestaff.' 'Indeed!' observed Mr. Sponge, drawing in his breath and raising his eyebrows right up into the roof of his head. 'Indeed!' repeated he. 'No; nothing of the sort, I assure you,' asserted Mr. Pacey. 'Must have satisfaction!' exclaimed Jack, again diving under the bedclothes. 'Well, but let us hear how matters stand,' said Mr. Sponge coolly, as Jack's grizzly head disappeared. 'You'll be my second,' growled Jack, from under the bedclothes. 'Oh! second be hanged,' retorted Sponge. 'You've nothing to fight about; Mr. Pacey says he didn't mean anything, that you misunderstood him, and what more can a man want?' 'Just so,' replied Mr. Pacey, 'just so. I assure you I never intended the slightest imputation on Mr. Spraggon.' 'I'm sure not,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'H-u-m-p-h,' grunted Jack from under the bedclothes, like a pig in the straw. Not showing any disposition to appear on the surface again, Mr. Sponge, after standing a second or two, gave a jerk of his head to Mr. Pacey, and forthwith conducted him into his own room, shutting the door between Mr. Spraggon and him. Mr. Sponge then inquired into the matter, kindly sympathizing with Mr. Pacey, who he was certain never meant anything disrespectful to Mr. Spraggon, who, Mr. Sponge thought, seemed rather quick at taking offence; though, doubtless, as Mr. Sponge observed, 'a man was perfectly right in being tenacious of his integrity,' a position that he illustrated by a familiar passage from Shakespeare, about stealing a purse and stealing trash, &c. Emboldened by his kindness, Mr. Pacey then got Mr. Sponge on to talk about the horse of which he had become the unwilling possessor--the renowned chestnut, Multum in Parvo. Mr. Sponge spoke like a very prudent, conscientious man; said that really it was difficult to give an opinion about a horse; that what suited one man might not suit another--that _he_ considered Multum in Parvo a very good horse; indeed, that he wouldn't have parted with him if he hadn't more than he wanted, and the cream of the season had passed without his meeting with any of those casualties that rendered the retention of an extra horse or two desirable. Altogether, he gave Mr. Pacey to understand that he held him to his bargain. Having thanked Sponge for his great kindness, and got an order on the groom (Mr. Leather) to have the horse out, Mr. Pacey took his departure to the stable, and Sponge having summoned his neighbour Mr. Spraggon from his bed, the two proceeded to a passage window that commanded a view of the stable-yard. Mr. Pacey presently went swaggering across it, cracking his jockey whip against his leg, followed by Mr. Leather, with a saddle on his shoulder and a bridle in his hand. 'He'd better keep his whip quiet,' observed Mr. Sponge, with a shake of his head, as he watched Pacey's movements. 'The beggar thinks he can ride anything,' observed Jack. 'He'll find his mistake out just now,' replied Sponge. Presently the stable-door opened, and the horse stepped slowly and quietly out, looking blooming and bright after his previous day's gallop. Pacey, running his eyes over his clean muscular legs and finely shaped form, thought he hadn't done so far amiss after all. Leather stood at the horse's head, whistling and soothing him, feeling anything but the easy confidence that Mr. Pacey exhibited. Putting his whip under his arm, Pacey just walked up to the horse, and, placing the point of his foot in the stirrup, hoisted himself on by the mane, without deigning to take hold of the reins. Having soused himself into the saddle, he then began feeling the stirrups. 'How are they for length, sir?' asked Leather, with a hitch of his hand to his forehead. 'They'll do,' replied Pacey, in a tone of indifference, gathering up the reins, and applying his left heel to the horse's side, while he gave him a touch of the whip on the other. The horse gave a wince, and a hitch up behind; as much as to say, 'If you do that again I'll kick in right earnest,' and then walked quietly out of the yard. 'I took the fiery edge off him yesterday, I think,' observed Jack, as he watched the horse's leisurely movements. 'Not so sure of that,' replied Sponge, adding, as he left the passage-window, 'He'll be trying him in the park; let's go and see him from my window.' Accordingly, our friends placed themselves at Sponge's bedroom window, and presently the clash of a gate announced that Sponge was right in his speculation. In another second the horse and rider appeared in sight--the horse going much at his ease, but Mr. Pacey preparing himself for action. He began working the bridle and kicking his sides, to get him into a canter; an exertion that produced quite a contrary effect, for the animal slackened his pace as Pacey's efforts increased. When, however, he took his whip from under his arm, the horse darted right up into the air, and plunging down again, with one convulsive effort shot Mr. Pacey several yards over his head, knocking his head clean through his hat. The brute then began to graze, as if nothing particular had happened. This easy indifference, however, did not extend to the neighbourhood; for no sooner was Mr. Pacey floored than there was such a rush of grooms, and helpers, and footmen, and gardeners--to say nothing of women, from all parts of the grounds, as must have made it very agreeable to him to know how he had been watched. One picked him up--another his hat-crown--a third his whip--a fourth his gloves--while Margaret, the housemaid, rushed to the rescue with her private bottle of _sal volatile_--and John, the under-butler, began to extricate him from the new-fashioned neckcloth he had made of his hat. [Illustration: MR. PACEY TRIES MULTUM-IN-PARVO] Though our friend was a good deal shaken by the fall, the injury to his body was trifling compared to that done to his mind. Being kicked off a horse was an indignity he had never calculated upon. Moreover, it was done in such a masterly manner as clearly showed it could be repeated at pleasure. In addition to which everybody laughs at a man that is kicked off. All these considerations rushed to his mind, and made him determine not to brook the mirth of the guests as well as the servants. Accordingly he borrowed a hat and started off home, and seeking his guardian, Major Screw, confided to him the position of affairs. The major, who was a man of the world, forthwith commenced a negotiation with Mr. Sponge, who, after a good deal of haggling, and not until the horse had shot the major over his head, too, at length, as a great favour, consented to take fifty pounds to rescind the bargain, accompanying his kindness by telling the major to advise his ward never to dabble in horseflesh after dinner; a piece of advice that we also very respectfully tender to our juvenile readers. And Sponge shortly after sent Spraggon a five pound note as his share of the transaction. CHAPTER XLIII ANOTHER SICK HOST [Illustration: letter W] When Mr. Puffington read Messrs. Sponge and Spraggon's account of the run with his hounds, in the Swillingford paper, he was perfectly horrified; words cannot describe the disgust that he felt. It came upon him quite by surprise, for he expected to be immortalized in some paper or work of general circulation, in which the Lords Loosefish, Sir Toms, and Sir Harrys of former days might recognize the spirited doings of their early friend. He wanted the superiority of his establishment, the excellence of his horses, the stoutness of his hounds, and the polish of his field, proclaimed, with perhaps a quiet cut at the Flat-Hat gentry; instead of which he had a mixed medley sort of a mess, whose humdrum monotony was only relieved by the absurdities and errors with which it was crammed. At first, Mr. Puffington could not make out what it meant, whether it was a hoax for the purpose of turning run-writing into ridicule, or it had suffered mutilation at the hands of the printer. Calling a good scent an exquisite perfume looked suspicious of a hoax, but then seasonal fox for seasoned fox, scorning to cry for scoring to cry, bay fox for bag fox, grunting for hunting, thrashing for trashing, rests for casts, and other absurdities, looked more like accident than design. These are the sort of errors that non-sporting compositors might easily make, one term being as much like English to them as the other, though amazingly different to the eye or the ear of a sportsman. Mr. Puffington was thoroughly disgusted. He was sick of hounds and horses, and Bragg, and hay and corn, and kennels and meal, and saddles and bridles; and now, this absurdity seemed to cap the whole thing. He was ill-prepared for such a shock. The exertion of successive dinner-giving--above all, of bachelor dinner-giving--and that too in the country, where men sit, talk, talk, talking, sip, sip, sipping, and 'just another bottle-ing'; more, we believe, from want of something else to do than from any natural inclination to exceed; the exertion, we say, of such parties had completely unstrung our fat friend, and ill-prepared his nerves for such a shock. Being a great man for his little comforts, he always breakfasted in his dressing-room, which he had fitted up in the most luxurious style, and where he had his newspapers (most carefully ironed out) laid with his letters against he came in. It was late on the morning following our last chapter ere he thought he had got rid of as much of his winey headache as fitful sleep would carry off, and enveloped himself in a blue and yellow-flowered silk dressing-gown and Turkish slippers. He looked at his letters, and knowing their outsides, left them for future perusal, and sousing himself into the depths of a many-cushioned easy-chair, proceeded to spell his _Morning Post_--Tattersall's advertisements--'Grosjean's Pale-tots'--'Mr. Albert Smith'--'Coals, best Stewart Hetton or Lambton's'--'Police Intelligence,' and such other light reading as does not require any great effort to connect or comprehend. Then came his breakfast, for which he had very little appetite, though he relished his coffee, and also an anchovy. While dawdling over these, he heard sundry wheels grinding about below the window, and the bumping and thumping of boxes, indicative of 'goings away,' for which he couldn't say he felt sorry. He couldn't even be at the trouble of getting up and going to the window to see who it was that was off, so weary and head-achy was he. He rolled and lolled in his chair, now taking a sip of coffee, now a bite of anchovy toast, now considering whether he durst venture on an egg, and again having recourse to the _Post_. At last, having exhausted all the light reading in it, and scanned through the list of hunting appointments, he took up the Swillingford paper to see that they had got his 'meets' right for the next week. How astonished he was to find the previous day's run staring him in the face, headed 'SPLENDID RUN WITH MR. PUFFINGTON'S HOUNDS,' in the imposing type here displayed. 'Well, that's quick work, however,' said he, casting his eyes up to the ceiling in astonishment, and thinking how unlike it was the Swillingford papers, which were always a week, but generally a fortnight behindhand with information. 'Splendid run with Mr. Puffington's hounds,' read he again, wondering who had done it: Bardolph, the innkeeper; Allsop, the cabinet-maker; Tuggins, the doctor, were all out; so was Weatherhog, the butcher. Which of them could it be? Grimes, the editor, wasn't there; indeed, he couldn't ride, and the country was not adapted for a gig. He then began to read it, and the further he got the more he was disgusted. At last, when he came to the 'seasonal fox, which some thought was a bay one,' his indignation knew no bounds, and crumpling the paper up in a heap, he threw it from him in disgust. Just then in came Plummey, the butler. Plummey saw at a glance what had happened; for Mr. Bragg, and the whips, and the grooms, and the helpers, and the feeder--the whole hunting establishment--were up in arms at the burlesque, and vowing vengeance against the author of it. Mr. Spraggon, on seeing what a mess had been made of his labours, availed himself of the offer of a seat in Captain Guano's dog-cart, and was clear of the premises; while Mr. Sponge determined to profit by Spraggon's absence, and lay the blame on him. 'Oh, Plummey!' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, as his servant entered, 'I'm deuced unwell--quite knocked up, in short,' clapping his hand on his forehead, adding, 'I shall not be able to dine downstairs to-day.' ''Deed, sir,' replied Mr. Plummey, in a tone of commiseration--''deed, sir; sorry to hear that, sir.' 'Are they all gone?' asked Mr. Puffington, dropping his boiled-gooseberry-looking eyes upon the fine-flowered carpet. 'All gone, sir--all gone,' replied Mr. Plummey; 'all except Mr. Sponge.' 'Oh, he's still here!' replied Mr. Puffington, shuddering with disgust at the recollection of the newspaper run. 'Is he going to-day?' asked he. 'No, sir--I dare say not, sir,' replied Mr. Plummey. 'His man--his groom--his--whatever he calls him, expects they'll be staying some time.' 'The deuce!' exclaimed Mr. Puffington, whose hospitality, like Jawleyford's, was greater in imagination than in reality. 'Shall I take these things away?' asked Plummey, after a pause. 'Couldn't you manage to get him to go?' asked Mr. Puffington, still harping on his remaining guest. 'Don't know, sir. I could try, sir--believe he's bad to move, sir,' replied Plummey, with a grin. 'Is he really?' replied Mr. Puffington, alarmed lest Sponge should fasten himself upon him for good. 'They say so,' replied Mr. Plummey, 'but I don't speak from any personal knowledge, for I know nothing of the man.' 'Well,' said Mr. Puffington, amused at his servant's exclusiveness, 'I wish you would try to get rid of him, bow him out civilly, you know--say I'm unwell--very unwell--deuced unwell--_ordered_ to keep quiet--say it as if from yourself, you know--it mustn't appear as if it came from me, you know.' 'In course not,' replied Mr. Plummey, 'in course not,' adding, 'I'll do my best, sir--I'll do my best.' So saying, he took up the breakfast things and departed. Mr. Sponge regaling himself with a cigar in the stables and shrubberies, it was some time before Mr. Plummey had an opportunity of trying his diplomacy upon him, it being contrary to Mr. Plummey's custom to go out of doors after any one. At last he saw Sponge coming lounging along the terrace-walk, looking like a man thoroughly disengaged, and, timing himself properly, encountered him in the entrance. 'Beg pardon, sir,' said Mr. Plummey, 'but cook, sir, wishes to know, sir, if you dine here to-day, sir?' 'Of course,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'where would you have me dine?' 'Oh, I don't know, sir--only Mr. Puffington, sir, is very poorly, sir, and I thought p'raps you'd be dining out. 'Poorly is he?' replied Mr. Sponge; 'sorry to hear that--what's the matter with him?' 'Bad bilious attack, I think,' replied Plummey--'very subject to them, at this time of year particklarly; was laid up, at least confined to his room, three weeks last year of a similar attack.' 'Indeed!' replied Mr. Sponge, not relishing the information. 'Then I must say you'll dine here?' said the butler. 'Yes; I must have my dinner, of course,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'I'm not ill, you know. No occasion to make a great spread for me, you know; but still I must have some victuals, you know.' 'Certainly, sir, certainly,' replied Mr. Plummey. 'I couldn't think of leaving Mr. Puffington when he's poorly,' observed Mr. Sponge, half to himself and half to the butler. 'Oh, master--that's to say, Mr. Puffington--always does best when left alone,' observed Mr. Plummey, catching at the sentence: 'indeed the medical men recommend perfect quiet and moderate living as the best thing.' 'Do they?' replied Sponge, taking out another cigar. Mr. Plummey then withdrew, and presently went upstairs to report progress, or rather want of progress, to the gentleman whom he sometimes condescended to call 'master.' Mr. Puffington had been taking another spell at the paper, and we need hardly say that the more he read of the run the less he liked it. 'Ah, that's Mr. Sponge's handiwork,' observed Plummey, as with a sneer of disgust Mr. Puffington threw the paper from him as Plummey entered the room. 'How do you know?' asked Mr. Puffington. 'Saw it, sir--saw it in the letter-bag going to the post.' 'Indeed!' replied Mr. Puffington. 'Mr. Spraggon and he did it after they came in from hunting.' 'I thought as much,' replied Mr. Puffington, in disgust. Mr. Plummey then related how unsuccessful had been his attempts to get rid of the now most unwelcome guest. Mr. Puffington listened with attention, determined to get rid of him somehow or other. Plummey was instructed to ply Sponge well with hints, all of which, however, Mr. Sponge skilfully parried. So, at last, Mr. Puffington scrawled a miserable-looking note, explaining how very ill he was, how he regretted being deprived of Mr. Sponge's agreeable society, but hoping that it would suit Mr. Sponge to return as soon as he was better and pay the remainder of his visit--a pretty intelligible notice to quit, and one which even the cool Mr. Sponge was rather at a loss how to parry. He did not like the aspect of affairs. In addition to having to spend the evening by himself, the cook sent him a very moderate dinner, smoked soup, sodden fish, scraggy cutlets, and sour pudding. Mr. Plummey, too, seemed to have put all the company bottle-ends together for him. This would not do. If Sponge could have satisfied himself that his host would not be better in a day or two, he would have thought seriously of leaving; but as he could not bring himself to think that he would not, and, moreover, had no place to go to, had it not been for the concluding portion of Mr. Puffington's note, he would have made an effort to stay. That, however, put it rather out of his power, especially as it was done so politely, and hinted at a renewal of the visit. Mr. Sponge spent the evening in cogitating what he should do--thinking what sportsmen had held out the hand of good-fellowship, and hinted at hoping to have the pleasure of seeing him. Fyle, Fossick, Blossomnose, Capon, Dribble, Hook, and others, were all run through his mind, without his thinking it prudent to attempt to fix a volunteer visit upon any of them. Many people he knew could pen polite excuses, who yet could not hit them off at the moment, especially in that great arena of hospitality--the hunting-field. He went to bed very much perplexed. CHAPTER XLIV WANTED--A RICH GOD-PAPA! 'When one door shuts another opens,' say the saucy servants; and fortune was equally favourable to our friend Mr. Sponge. Though he could not think of any one to whom he could volunteer a visit. Dame Fortune provided him with an overture from a party who wanted him! But we will introduce his new host, or rather victim. People hunt from various motives--some for the love of the thing--some for show--some for fashion--some for health--some for appetites--some for coffee-housing--some to say they have hunted--some because others hunt. Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey did not hunt from any of these motives, and it would puzzle a conjurer to make out why he hunted; indeed, the members of the different hunts he patronized--for he was one of the run-about, non-subscribing sort--were long in finding out. It was observed that he generally affected countries abounding in large woods, such as Stretchaway Forest, Hazelbury Chase, and Oakington Banks, into which he would dive with the greatest avidity. At first people thought he was a very keen hand, anxious to see a fox handsomely found, if he could not see him handsomely finished, against which latter luxury his figure and activity, or want of activity, were somewhat opposed. Indeed, when we say that he went by the name of the Woolpack, our readers will be able to imagine the style of man he was: long-headed, short-necked, large-girthed, dumpling-legged little fellow, who, like most fat men, made himself dangerous by compressing a most unreasonable stomach into a circumscribed coat, each particular button of which looked as if it was ready to burst off, and knock out the eye of any one who might have the temerity to ride alongside of him. He was a puffy, wheezy, sententious little fellow, who accompanied his parables with a snort into a large finely plaited shirt-frill, reaching nearly up to his nose. His hunting-costume consisted of a black coat and waistcoat, with white moleskin breeches, much cracked and darned about the knees and other parts, as nether garments made of that treacherous stuff often are. His shapeless tops, made regardless of the refinements of 'right and left,' dangled at his horse's sides like a couple of stable-buckets; and he carried his heavy iron hammer-headed whip over his shoulder like a flail. But we are drawing his portrait instead of saying why he hunted. Well, then, having married Mrs. Springwheat's sister, who was always boasting to Mrs. Crowdey what a loving, doting husband Springey was after hunting, Mrs. Crowdey had induced Crowdey to try his hand, and though soon satisfied that he hadn't the slightest taste for the sport, but being a great man for what he called gibbey-sticks, he hunted for the purpose of finding them. As we said before, he generally appeared at large woodlands, into which he would ride with the hounds, plunging through the stiffest clay, and forcing his way through the strongest thickets, making observations all the while of the hazels, and the hollies, and the blackthorns, and, we are sorry to say, sometimes of the young oaks and ashes, that he thought would fashion into curious-handled walking-sticks; and these he would return for at a future day, getting them with as large clubs as possible, which he would cut into the heads of beasts, or birds, or fishes, or men. At the time of which we are writing, he had accumulated a vast quantity--thousands; the garret at the top of his house was quite full, so were most of the closets, while the rafters in the kitchen, and cellars, and out-houses, were crowded with others in a state of _déshabille_. He calculated his stock at immense worth, we don't know how many thousand pounds; and as he cut, and puffed, and wheezed, and modelled, with a volume of Buffon, or the picture of some eminent man before him, he chuckled, and thought how well he was providing for his family. He had been at it so long, and argued so stoutly, that Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey, if not quite convinced of the accuracy of his calculations, nevertheless thought it well to encourage his hunting predilections, inasmuch as it brought him in contact with people he would not otherwise meet, who, she thought, might possibly be useful to their children. Accordingly, she got him his breakfast betimes on hunting-mornings, charged his pockets with currant-buns, and saw to the mending of his moleskins when he came home, after any of those casualties that occur as well in the chase as in gibbey-stick hunting. A stranger being a marked man in a rural country, Mr. Sponge excited more curiosity in Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's mind than Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey did in Mr. Sponge's. In truth, Jogglebury was one of those unsportsmanlike beings, that a regular fox-hunter would think it waste of words to inquire about, and if Mr. Sponge saw him, he did not recollect him; while, on the other hand, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey went home very full of our friend. Now, Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey was a fine, bustling, managing woman, with a large family, for whom she exerted all her energies to procure desirable god-papas and mammas; and, no sooner did she hear of this newcomer, than she longed to appropriate him for god-papa to their youngest son. 'Jog, my dear,' said she, to her spouse, as they sat at tea; 'it would be well to look after him.' 'What for, my dear?' asked Jog, who was staring a stick, with a half-finished head of Lord Brougham for a handle, out of countenance. 'What for, Jog? Why, can't you guess?' 'No,' replied Jog doggedly. 'No!' ejaculated his spouse. 'Why, Jog, you certainly are the stupidest man in existence.' 'Not necessarily!' replied Jog, with a jerk of his head and a puff into his shirt-frill that set it all in a flutter. 'Not necessarily!' replied Mrs. Jogglebury, who was what they call a 'spirited woman,' in the same rising tone as before. 'Not necessarily! but I say necessarily--yes, necessarily. Do you hear me, Mr. Jogglebury?' 'I hear you,' replied Jogglebury scornfully, with another jerk, and another puff into the frill. The two then sat silent for some minutes, Jogglebury still contemplating the progressing head of Lord Brougham, and recalling the eye and features that some five-and-twenty years before had nearly withered him in a breach of promise action, 'Smiler _v_. Jogglebury,'[3] that being our friend's name before his uncle Crowdey left him his property. [Illustration] Mrs. Jogglebury having an object in view, and knowing that, though Jogglebury might lead, he would not drive, availed herself of the lull to trim her sail, to try and catch him on the other tack. 'Well, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey,' said she, in a passive tone of regret, 'I certainly thought however indifferent you might be to me' (and here she applied her handkerchief--rather a coarse one--to her eyes) 'that still you had some regard for the interests of your (sob) children'; and here the waterfalls of her beady black eyes went off in a gush. 'Well, my dear,' replied Jogglebury, softened, 'I'm (puff) sure I'm (wheeze) anxious for my (puff) children. You don't s'pose if I wasn't (puff), I'd (wheeze) labour as I (puff--wheeze) do to leave them fortins?'--alluding to his exertions in the gibbey-stick line. 'Oh, Jog, I dare say you're very good and very industrious,' sobbed Mrs. Jogglebury, 'but I sometimes (sob) think that you might apply your (sob) energies to a better (sob) purpose.' 'Indeed, my dear (puff), I don't see that (wheeze),' replied Jogglebury, mildly. 'Why, now, if you were to try and get this rich Mr. Sponge for a god-papa for Gustavus James,' continued she, drying her eyes as she came to the point, '_that_, I should say, would be worthy of you.' 'But, my (puff) dear,' replied Jogglebury, 'I don't know Mr. (wheeze) Sponge, to begin with.' 'That's nothing,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury; 'he's a stranger, and you should call upon him.' Mr. Jogglebury sat silent, still staring at Lord Brougham, thinking how he pitched into him, and how sick he was when the jury, without retiring from the box, gave five hundred pounds damages against him. 'He's a fox-hunter, too,' continued his wife; 'and you ought to be civil to him.' 'Well, but, my (puff) dear, he's as likely to (wheeze) these fifty years as any (puff, wheeze) man I ever looked at,' replied Jogglebury. 'Oh, nonsense,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury; 'there's no saying when a fox-hunter may break his neck. My word! but Mrs. Slooman tells me pretty stories of Sloo's doings with the harriers--jumping over hurdles, and everything that comes in the way, and galloping along the stony lanes as if the wind was a snail compared to his horse. I tell you. Jog, you should call on this gentleman--' 'Well,' replied Mr. Jogglebury. 'And ask him to come and stay here,' continued Mrs. Jogglebury. 'Perhaps he mightn't like it (puff),' replied Jogglebury. 'I don't know that we could (puff) entertain him as he's (wheeze) accustomed to be,' added he. 'Oh, nonsense,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury; 'we can entertain him well enough. You always say fox-hunters are not ceremonious. I tell you what, Jog, you don't think half enough of yourself. You are far too easily set aside. My word! but I know some people who would give themselves pretty airs if their husband was chairman of a board of guardians, and trustee of I don't know how many of Her Majesty's turnpike roads,' Mrs. Jog here thinking of her sister Mrs. Springwheat, who, she used to say, had married a mere farmer. 'I tell you, Jog, you're far too humble, you don't think half enough of yourself.' 'Well, but, my (puff) dear, you don't (puff) consider that all people ain't (puff) fond of (wheeze) children,' observed Jogglebury, after a pause. 'Indeed, I've (puff) observed that some (wheeze) don't like them.' 'Oh, but those will be nasty little brats, like Mrs. James Wakenshaw's, or Mrs. Tom Cheek's. But such children as ours! such charmers! such delights! there isn't a man in the county, from the Lord-Lieutenant downwards, who wouldn't be proud--who wouldn't think it a compliment--to be asked to be god-papa to such children. I tell you what, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey, it would be far better to get them rich god-papas and god-mammas than to leave them a whole house full of sticks.' 'Well, but, my (puff) dear, the (wheeze) sticks will prove very (wheeze) hereafter,' replied Jogglebury, bridling up at the imputation on his hobby. 'I _hope_ so,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury, in a tone of incredulity. 'Well, but, my (puff) dear, I (wheeze) you that they will be--indeed (puff), I may (wheeze) say that they (puff) are. It was only the other (puff) day that (wheeze) Patrick O'Fogo offered me five-and-twenty (wheeze) shillings for my (puff) blackthorn Daniel O'Connell, which is by no means so (puff) good as the (wheeze) wild-cherry one, or, indeed (puff), as the yew-tree one that I (wheeze) out of Spankerley Park.' 'I'd have taken it if I'd been you,' observed Mrs. Jogglebury. 'But he's (puff) worth far more,' retorted Jogglebury angrily; 'why (wheeze) Lumpleg offered me as much for Disraeli.' 'Well, I'd have taken it, too,' rejoined Mrs. Jogglebury. 'But I should have (wheeze) spoilt my (puff) set,' replied the gibbey-stick man. 'S'pose any (wheeze) body was to (puff) offer me five guineas a (puff) piece for the (puff) pick of my (puff) collection--my (puff) Wellingtons, my (wheeze) Napoleons, my (puff) Byrons, my (wheeze) Walter Scotts, my (puff) Lord Johns, d'ye think I'd take it?' 'I should hope so,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury. 'I should (puff) do no such thing,' snorted her husband into his frill. 'I should hope,' continued he, speaking slowly and solemnly, 'that a (puff) wise ministry will purchase the whole (puff) collection for a (wheeze) grateful nation, when the (wheeze)' something 'is no more (wheeze).' The concluding words being lost in the emotion of the speaker (as the reporters say). 'Well, but will you go and call on Mr. Sponge, dear?' asked Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey, anxious as well to turn the subject as to make good her original point. 'Well, my dear, I've no objection,' replied Joggle, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye with his coat-cuff. 'That's a good soul!' exclaimed Mrs. Jogglebury soothingly. 'Go to-morrow, like a nice, sensible man.' 'Very well,' replied her now complacent spouse. 'And ask him to come here,' continued she. 'I can't (puff) ask him to (puff) come, my dear (wheeze), until he (puff--wheeze) returns my (puff) call.' 'Oh, fiddle,' replied his wife, 'you always say fox-hunters never stand upon ceremony; why should you stand upon any with him?' Mr. Jogglebury was posed, and sat silent. CHAPTER XLV THE DISCOMFITED DIPLOMATIST Well, then, as we said before, when one door shuts another opens; and just as Mr. Puffington's door was closing on poor Mr. Sponge, who should cast up but our newly introduced friend, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey. Mr. Sponge was sitting in solitary state in the fine drawing-room, studying his old friend _Mogg_, calculating what he could ride from Spur Street, Leicester Square, by Short's Gardens, and across Waterloo Bridge, to the Elephant and Castle for, when the grinding of a vehicle on the gravelled ring attracted his attention. Looking out of the window, he saw a horse's head in a faded-red, silk-fronted bridle, with the letters 'J.C.' on the winkers; not 'J.C.' writhing in the elegant contortions of modern science, but 'J.C.' in the good, plain, matter-of-fact characters we have depicted above. 'That'll be the doctor,' said Mr. Sponge to himself, as he resumed his reading and calculations, amidst a peal of the door-bell, well calculated to arouse the whole house. 'He's a good un to ring!' added he, looking up and wondering when the last lingering tinkle would cease. Before the fact was ascertained, there was a hurried tramp of feet past the drawing-room door, and presently the entrance one opened and let in--a rush of wind. 'Is Mr. Sponge at home?' demanded a slow, pompous-speaking, deep-toned voice, evidently from the vehicle. 'Yez-ur,' was the immediate answer. 'Who can that be?' exclaimed Sponge, pocketing his _Mogg_. Then there was a creaking of springs and a jingling against iron steps, and presently a high-blowing, heavy-stepping body was heard crossing the entrance-hall, while an out-stripping footman announced Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey, leaving the owner to follow his name at his leisure. Mrs. Jogglebury had insisted on Jog putting on his new black frock--a very long coat, fitting like a sack, with the well-filled pockets bagging behind, like a poor man's dinner wallet. In lieu of the shrunk and darned white moleskins, receding in apparent disgust from the dingy tops, he had got his nether man enveloped in a pair of fine cinnamon-coloured tweeds, with broad blue stripes down the sides, and shaped out over the clumsy foot. [Illustration: MR. JOGGLEBURY INTRODUCING HIMSELF TO MR. SPONGE] Puff, wheeze, puff, he now came waddling and labouring along, hat in hand, hurrying after the servant; puff, wheeze, puff, and he found himself in the room. 'Your servant, sir,' said he, sticking himself out behind, and addressing Mr. Sponge, making a ground sweep with his woolly hat. '_Yours_,' said Mr. Sponge, with a similar bow. 'Fine day (puff--wheeze),' observed Mr. Jogglebury, blowing into his large frill. 'It is,' replied Mr. Sponge, adding, 'won't you be seated?' 'How's Puffington?' gasped our visitor, sousing himself upon one of the rosewood chairs in a way that threatened destruction to the slender fabric. 'Oh, he's pretty middling, _I_ should say,' replied Sponge, now making up his mind that he was addressing the doctor. 'Pretty middlin' (puff),' repeated Jogglebury, blowing into his frill; 'pretty middlin' (wheeze); I s'pose that means he's got a (puff) gumboil. My third (wheeze) girl, Margaret Henrietta has one.' 'Do you want to see him?' asked Sponge, after a pause, which seemed to indicate that his friend's conversation had come to a period, or full stop. 'No,' replied Jogglebury unconcernedly. 'No; I'll leave a (puff) card for him (wheeze),' added he, fumbling in his wallet behind for his card-case. 'My (puff) object is to pay my (wheeze) respects to you,' observed he, drawing a great carved Indian case from his pocket, and pulling off the top with a noise like the drawing of a cork. 'Much obliged for the compliment,' observed Mr. Sponge, as Jogglebury fumbled and broke his nails in attempting to get a card out. 'Do you stay long in this part of the world?' asked he, as at last he succeeded, and commenced tapping the corners of the card on the table. 'I really don't know,' replied Mr. Sponge, as the particulars of his situation flashed across his mind. Could this pudding-headed man be a chap Puffington had got to come and sound him, thought he. Jogglebury sat silent for a time, examining his feet attentively as if to see they were pairs, and scrutinizing the bags of his cinnamon-coloured trousers. 'I was going to say (hem--cough--hem),' at length observed he, looking up, 'that's to say, I was thinking (hem--wheeze--cough--hem), or rather I should say, Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey sent me to say--I mean to say,' continued he, stamping one of his ponderous feet against the floor as if to force out his words, 'Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey and I would be glad--happy, that's to say (hem)--if you would arrange (hem) to (wheeze) pay us a visit (hem).' 'Most happy, I'm sure!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, jumping at the offer. 'Before you go (hem),' continued our visitor, taking up the sentence where Sponge had interrupted him; 'I (hem) live about nine miles (hem) from here (hem).' 'Are there any hounds in your neighbourhood?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Oh yes,' replied Mr. Jogglebury slowly; 'Mr. Puffington here draws up to Greatacre Gorse within a few (puff--wheeze) miles--say, three (puff)--of my (wheeze) house; and Sir Harry Scattercash (puff) hunts all the (puff--wheeze) country below, right away down to the (puff--wheeze) sea.' 'Well, you're a devilish good fellow!' exclaimed Sponge; 'and I'll tell you what, as I'm sure you mean what you say, I'll take you at your word and go at once; and that'll give our friend here time to come round.' 'Oh, but (puff--wheeze--gasp),' started Mr. Jogglebury, the blood rushing to his great yellow, whiskerless cheeks, 'I'm not quite (gasp) sure that Mrs. (gasp) Jogglebury (puff) Crowdey would be (puff--wheeze--gasp) prepared.' 'Oh, _hang_ preparation!' interrupted Mr. Sponge. 'I'll take you as you are. Never mind me. I hate being made company of. Just treat me like one of yourselves; toad-in-the-hole, dog-in-the-blanket, beef-steaks and oyster-sauce, rabbits and onions--anything; nothing comes amiss to me.' So saying, and while Jogglebury sat purple and unable to articulate, Mr. Sponge applied his hand to the ivory bell-knob and sounded an imposing peal. Mr. Jogglebury sat wondering what was going to happen, and thinking what a wigging he would get from Mrs. J. if he didn't manage to shake off his friend. Above all, he recollected that they had nothing but haddocks and hashed mutton for dinner. 'Tell Leather I want him,' said Mr. Sponge, in a tone of authority, as the footman answered the summons; then, turning to his guest, as the man was leaving the room, he said, 'Won't you take something after your drive--cold meat, glass of sherry, soda-water, bottled porter--anything in that line?' In an ordinary way, Jogglebury would have said, 'if you please,' at the sound of the words 'cold meat,' for he was a dead hand at luncheon; but the fix he was in completely took away his appetite, and he sat wheezing and thinking whether to make another effort, or to wait the arrival of Leather. Presently Leather appeared, jean-jacketed and gaitered, smoothing his hair over his forehead, after the manner of the brotherhood. 'Leather,' said Mr. Sponge, in the same tone of importance, 'I'm going to this gentleman's'; for as yet he had not sufficiently mastered the name to be able to venture upon it in the owner's presence. 'Leather, I'm going to this gentleman's, and I want you to bring me a horse over in the morning; or stay,' said he, interrupting himself, and, turning to Jogglebury, he exclaimed, 'I dare say you could manage to put me up a couple of horses, couldn't you? and then we should be all cosy and jolly together, you know.' ''Pon my word,' gasped Jogglebury nearly choked by the proposal; ''pon my word, I can hardly (puff) say, I hardly (wheeze) know, but if you'll (puff--wheeze) allow me, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll (puff--wheeze) home, and see what I can (puff) do in the way of entertainment for (puff--wheeze) man as well as for (puff--wheeze) horse.' 'Oh, _thank you_, my dear fellow!' exclaimed Sponge, seeing the intended dodge; '_thank you_, my dear fellow!' repeated he; 'but that's giving you too much trouble--_far_ too much trouble!--couldn't think of such a thing--no, indeed, I couldn't. _I'll_ tell you what we'll do--_I'll_ tell you what we'll do. You shall drive me over in that shandrydan-rattle-trap thing of yours'--Sponge looking out of the window, as he spoke, at the queer-shaped, jumped-together, lack-lustre-looking vehicle, with a turnover seat behind, now in charge of a pepper-and-salt attired youth, with a shabby hat, looped up by a thin silver cord to an acorn on the crown, and baggy Berlin gloves--'and I'll just see what there is in the way of stabling; and if I think it will do, then I'll give a boy sixpence or a shilling to come over to Leather, here,' jerking his head towards his factotum; 'if it won't do, why then--' 'We shall want _three_ stalls, sir--recollect, sir, 'interrupted Leather, who did not wish to move his quarters. 'True, I forgot,' replied Sponge, with a frown at his servant's officiousness; 'however, if we can get two good stalls for the hunters,' said he, 'we'll manage the hack somehow or other.' 'Well,' replied Mr. Leather, in a tone of resignation, knowing how hopeless it was arguing with his master. 'I really think,' gasped Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey, encouraged by the apparent sympathy of the servant to make a last effort, 'I really think,' repeated he, as the hashed mutton and haddocks again flashed across his mind, 'that my (puff--wheeze) plan is the (puff) best; let me (puff--wheeze) home and see how all (puff--wheeze) things are, and then I'll write you a (puff--wheeze) line, or send a (puff--wheeze) servant over.' 'Oh no,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'oh no--that's far too much trouble. I'll just go over with you now and reconnoitre.' 'I'm afraid Mrs. (puff--wheeze) Crowdey will hardly be prepared for (puff--wheeze) visitors,' ejaculated our friend, recollecting it was washing-day, and that Mary Ann would be wanted in the laundry. 'Don't mention it!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge; 'don't mention it. I hate to be made company of. Just give me what you have yourselves--just give me what you have yourselves. Where two can dine, three can dine, you know.' Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey was nonplussed. 'Well, now,' said Mr. Sponge, turning again to Leather; 'just go upstairs and help me to pack up my things; and,' addressing himself to our visitor, he said, 'perhaps you'll amuse yourself with the paper--the _Post_--or I'll lend you my _Mogg_,' continued he, offering the little gilt-lettered, purple-backed volume as he spoke. 'Thank'ee,' replied Mr. Jogglebury, who was still tapping away at the card, which he had now worked very soft. Mr. Sponge then left him with the volume in his hand, and proceeded upstairs to his bedroom. In less than twenty minutes, the vehicle was got under way, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey and Mr. Sponge occupying the roomy seats in front, and Bartholomew Badger, the before-mentioned tiger, and Mr. Sponge's portmanteau and carpet-bag, being in the very diminutive turnover seat behind. The carriage was followed by the straining eyes of sundry Johns and Janes, who unanimously agreed that Mr. Sponge was the meanest, shabbiest gent they had ever had in _their_ house. Mr. Leather was, therefore, roasted in the servants' hall, where the sins of the masters are oft visited upon the servants. But to our travellers. Little conversation passed between our friends for the first few miles, for, in addition to the road being rough, the driving-seat was so high, and the other so low, that Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's parables broke against Mr. Sponge's hat-crown, instead of dropping into his ear; besides which, the unwilling host's mind was a good deal occupied with wishing that there had been three haddocks instead of two, and speculating whether Mrs. Crowdey would be more pleased at the success of his mission, or put out of her way by Mr. Sponge's unexpected coming. Above all, he had marked some very promising-looking sticks--two blackthorns and a holly--to cut on his way home, and he was intent on not missing them. So sudden was the jerk that announced his coming on the first one, as nearly to throw the old family horse on his knees, and almost to break Mr. Sponge's nose against the brass edge of the cocked-up splash-board. Ere Mr. Sponge recovered his equilibrium, the whip was in the case, the reins dangling about the old screw's heels, and Mr. Crowdey scrambling up a steep bank to where a very thick boundary-hedge shut out the view of the adjacent country. Presently, chop, chop, chop, was heard, from Mr. Crowdey's pocket axe, with a tug--wheeze--puff from himself; next a crash of separation; and then the purple-faced Mr. Crowdey came bearing down the bank dragging a great blackthorn bush after him. 'What have you got there?' inquired Mr. Sponge, with surprise. 'Got! (wheeze--puff--wheeze),' replied Mr. Crowdey, pulling up short, and mopping his perspiring brow with a great claret-coloured bandana. 'Got! I've (puff--wheeze) got what I (wheeze) think will (puff) into a most elaborate and (wheeze) valuable walking-stick. This I (puff) think,' continued he, eyeing the great ball with which he had got it up, 'will (wheeze) come in most valuably (puff) for my great (puff--wheeze--gasp) national undertaking--the (puff) Kings and (wheeze) Queens of Great Britain (gasp).' 'What are _they_?' asked Mr. Sponge, astonished at his vehemence. 'Oh! (puff--wheeze--gasp) haven't you heard?' exclaimed Mr. Jogglebury, taking off his great woolly hat, and giving his lank, dark hair, streaked with grey, a sweep round his low forehead with the bandana. 'Oh! (puff--gasp) haven't you heard?' repeated he, getting a little more breath. 'I'm (wheeze) undertaking a series of (gasp) sticks, representing--(gasp)--immortalizing, I may say (puff), all the (wheeze) crowned heads of England (puff).' 'Indeed!' replied Mr. Sponge. 'They'll be a most valuable collection (wheeze--puff),' continued Mr. Jogglebury, still eyeing the knob. 'This,' added he, 'shall be William the Fourth.' He then commenced lopping and docking the sides, making Bartholomew Badger bury them in a sand-pit hard by, observing, in a confidential wheeze to Mr. Sponge, 'that he had once been county-courted for a similar trespass before.' The top and lop being at length disposed of, Mr. Crowdey, grasping the club-end, struck the other forcibly against the ground, exclaiming, 'There!--there's a (puff) stick! Who knows what that (puff--wheeze) stick may be worth some day?' He then bundled into his carriage and drove on. Two more stoppages marked their arrival at the other sticks, which being duly captured and fastened within the straps of the carriage-apron, Mr. Crowdey drove on somewhat more at ease in his mind, at all events somewhat comforted at the thoughts of having increased his wealth. He did not become talkative--indeed that was not his forte, but he puffed into his shirt-frill, and made a few observations, which, if they did not possess much originality, at all events showed that he was not asleep. 'Those are draining-tiles,' said he, after a hearty stare at a cart-load. Then about five minutes after he blew again, and said, 'I don't think (puff) that (wheeze) draining without (gasp) manuring will constitute high farming (puff).' So he jolted and wheezed, and jerked and jagged the old quadruped's mouth, occasionally hissing between his teeth, and stamping against the bottom of the carriage, when other persuasive efforts failed to induce it to keep up the semblance of a trot. At last the ill-supported hobble died out into a walk, and Mr. Crowdey, complacently dropping his fat hand on his fat knees, seemed to resign himself to his fate. So they crawled along the up-and-downy piece of road below Poplarton plantations, Mr. Jogglebury keeping a sharp eye upon the underwood for sticks. After passing these, they commenced the gradual ascent of Roundington Hill, when a sudden sweep of the road brought them in view of the panorama of the rich Vale of Butterflower. 'There's a snug-looking box,' observed Sponge, as he at length espied a confused jumble of gable-ends and chimney-pots rising from amidst a clump of Scotch firs and other trees, looking less like a farmhouse than anything he had seen. 'That's my house (puff); that's Puddingpote Bower (wheeze),' replied Crowdey slowly and pompously, adding an 'e' to the syllable, to make it sound better, the haddocks, hashed mutton, and all the horrors of impromptu hospitality rushing upon his mind. Things began to look worse the nearer he got home. He didn't care to aggravate the old animal into a trot. He again wondered whether Mrs. J. would be pleased at the success of his mission, or angry at the unexpected coming. 'Where are the stables?' asked Sponge, as he scanned the in-and-out irregularities of the building. 'Stables (wheeze), stables (puff),' repeated Crowdey--thinking of his troubles--of its being washing-day, and Mary Ann, or Murry Ann, as he called her, the under-butler, being engaged; of Bartholomew Badger having the horse and fe-_a_-ton to clean, &c.--'stables,' repeated he for the third time; 'stables are at the back, behind, in fact; you'll see a (puff) vane--a (wheeze) fox, on the top.' 'Ah, indeed!' replied Mr. Sponge, brightening up, thinking there would be old hay and corn. They now came to a half-Swiss, half-Gothic little cottage of a lodge, and the old horse turned instinctively into the open white gate with pea-green bands. 'Here's Mrs. Crow--Crow--Crowdey!' gasped Jogglebury, convulsively, as a tall woman, in flare-up red and yellow stunner tartan, with a swarm of little children, similarly attired, suddenly appeared at an angle of the road, the lady handling a great alpaca umbrella-looking parasol in the stand-and-deliver style. 'What's kept you?' exclaimed she, as the vehicle got within ear-shot. 'What's kept you?' repeated she, in a sharper key, holding her parasol across the road, but taking no notice of our friend Sponge, who, in truth, she took for Edgebone, the butcher. 'Oh! you've been after your sticks, have you?' added she, as her spouse drew the vehicle up alongside of her, and she caught the contents of the apron-straps. 'My dear (puff)' gasped her husband, 'I've brought Mr. (wheeze) Sponge,' said he, winking his right eye, and jerking his head over his left shoulder, looking very frightened all the time. 'Mr. (puff) Sponge, Mrs. (gasp) Jogglebury (wheeze) Crowdey,' continued he, motioning with his hand. Finding himself in the presence of his handsome hostess, Sponge made her one of his best bows, and offered to resign his seat in the carriage to her. This she declined, alleging that she had the children with her--looking round on the grinning, gaping group, the majority of them with their mouths smeared with lollipops. Crowdey, who was not so stupid as he looked, was nettled at Sponge's attempting to fix his wife upon him at such a critical moment, and immediately retaliated with, 'P'raps (puff) you'd like to (puff) out and (wheeze) walk.' There was no help for this, and Sponge having alighted, Mr. Crowdey said, half to Mr. Sponge and half to his fine wife, 'Then (puff--wheeze) I'll just (puff) on and get Mr. (wheeze) Sponge's room ready.' So saying, he gave the old nag a hearty jerk with the bit, and two or three longitudinal cuts with the knotty-pointed whip, and jingled away with a bevy of children shouting, hanging on, and dragging behind, amidst exclamations from Mrs. Crowdey, of 'O Anna Maria! Juliana Jane! O Frederick James, you naughty boy! you'll spoil your new shoes! Archibald John, you'll be kilt! you'll be run over to a certainty. O Jogglebury, you inhuman man!' continued she, running and brandishing her alpaca parasol, 'you'll run over your children! you'll run over your children!' 'My (puff) dear,' replied Jogglebury, looking coolly over his shoulder,' how can they be (wheeze) run over behind?' [Illustration] So saying Jogglebury ground away at his leisure. CHAPTER XLVI PUDDINGPOTE BOWER, THE SEAT OF JOGGLEBURY CROWDEY, ESQ. 'Your good husband,' observed Mr. Sponge as he now overtook his hostess and proceeded with her towards the house, 'has insisted upon bringing me over to spend a few days till my friend Puffington recovers. He's just got the gout. I said I was 'fraid it mightn't be quite convenient to you, but Mr. Crowdey assured me you were in the habit of receivin' fox-hunters at short notice; and so I have taken him at his word, you see, and come.' Mrs. Jogglebury, who was still out of wind from her run after the carriage, assured him that she was extremely happy to see him, though she couldn't help thinking what a noodle Jog was to bring a stranger on a washing-day. That, however, was a point she would reserve for Jog. Just then a loud outburst from the children announced the approach of the eighth wonder of the world, in the person of Gustavus James in the nurse's arms, with a curly blue feather nodding over his nose. Mrs. Jogglebury's black eyes brightened with delight as she ran forward to meet him; and in her mind's eye she saw him inheriting a splendid mansion, with a retinue of powdered footmen in pea-green liveries and broad gold-laced hats. Great--prospectively great, at least--as had been her successes in the sponsor line with her other children, she really thought, getting Mr. Sponge for a god-papa for Gustavus James eclipsed all her other doings. Mr. Sponge, having been liberal in his admiration of the other children, of course could not refuse unbounded applause to the evident object of a mother's regards; and, chucking the young gentleman under his double chin, asked him how he was, and said something about something he had in his 'box,' alluding to a paper of cheap comfits he had bought at Sugarchalk's, the confectioner's, sale in Oxford Street, and which he carried about for contingencies like the present. This pleased Mrs. Crowdey--looking, as she thought, as if he had come predetermined to do what she wanted. Amidst praises and stories of the prodigy, they reached the house. If a 'hall' means a house with an entrance-'hall,' Puddingpote Bower did not aspire to be one. A visitor dived, _in medias res_, into the passage at once. In it stood an oak-cased family clock, and a large glass-case, with an alarming-looking, stuffed tiger-like cat, on an imitation marble slab. Underneath the slab, indeed all about the passage, were scattered children's hats and caps, hoops, tops, spades, and mutilated toys--spotted horses without heads, soldiers without arms, windmills without sails, and wheelbarrows without wheels. In a corner were a bunch of 'gibbeys' in the rough, and alongside the weather-glass hung Jog's formidable flail of a hunting-whip. Mr. Sponge found his portmanteau standing bolt upright in the passage, with the bag alongside of it, just as they had been chucked out of the phaeton by Bartholomew Badger, who, having got orders to put the horse right, and then to put himself right to wait at dinner, Mr. Jogglebury proceeded to vociferate: 'Murry Ann!--Murry Ann!' in such a way that Mary Ann thought either that the cat had got young Crowdey, or the house was on fire. 'Oh! Murry Ann!' exclaimed Mr. Jogglebury, as she came darting into the passage from the back settlements, up to the elbows in soap-suds; 'I want you to (puff) upstairs with me, and help to get my (wheeze) gibbey-sticks out of the best room; there's a (puff) gentleman coming to (wheeze) here.' 'Oh, indeed, sir,' replied Mary Ann, smiling, and dropping down her sleeves--glad to find it was no worse. They then proceeded upstairs together. All the gibbey-sticks were bundled out, both the finished ones, that were varnished and laid away carefully in the wardrobe, and those that were undergoing surgical treatment, in the way of twistings, and bendings, and tyings in the closets. As they routed them out of hole and corner, Jogglebury kept up a sort of running recommendation to mercy, mingled with an inquiry into the state of the household affairs. 'Now (puff), Murry Ann!' exclaimed he; 'take care you don't scratch that (puff) Franky Burdett,' handing her a highly varnished oak stick, with the head of Sir Francis for a handle; 'and how many (gasp) haddocks d'ye say there are in the house?' 'Three, sir,' replied Mary Ann. 'Three!' repeated he, with an emphasis. 'I thought your (gasp) missus told me there were but (puff) two; and, Murry Ann, you must put the new (puff) quilt on the (gasp) bed, and (puff) just look under it (gasp) and you'll find the (puff) old Truro rolled up in a dirty (puff) pocket hankercher; and, Murry Ann, d'ye think the new (wheeze) purtaters came that I bought of (puff) Billy Bloxom? If so, you'd better (puff) some for dinner, and get the best (wheeze) decanters out; and, Murry Ann, there are two gibbeys on the (puff) surbase at the back of the bed, which you may as well (puff) away. Ah! here he is,' added Mr. Jogglebury, as Mr. Sponge's voice rose now from the passage into the room above. Things now looked pretty promising. Mr. Sponge's attentions to the children generally, and to Gustavus James in particular, coupled with his free-and-easy mode of introducing himself, made Mrs. Crowdey feel far more at her ease with regard to entertaining him than she would have done if her neighbour, Mr. Makepeace, or the Rev. Mr. Facey himself, had dropped in to take 'pot luck,' as they called it. With either of these she would have wished to appear as if their every-day form was more in accordance with their company style, whereas Jog and she wanted to get something out of Mr. Sponge, instead of electrifying him with their grandeur. That Gustavus James was destined for greatness she had not the least doubt. She began to think whether it might not be advisable to call him Gustavus James Sponge. Jog, too, was comforted at hearing there were three haddocks, for though hospitably inclined, he did not at all like the idea of being on short commons himself. He had sufficient confidence in Mrs. Jogglebury's management--especially as the guest was of her own seeking--to know that she would make up a tolerable dinner. [Illustration] Nor was he out of his reckoning, for at half-past five Bartholomew announced dinner, when in sailed Mrs. Crowdey fresh from the composition of it and from the becoming revision of her own dress. Instead of the loose, flowing, gipsified, stunner tartan of the morning, she was attired in a close-fitting French grey silk, showing as well the fulness and whiteness of her exquisite bust, as the beautiful formation of her arms. Her raven hair was ably parted and flattened on either side of her well-shaped head. Sponge felt proud of the honour of having such a fine creature on his arm, and kicked about in his tights more than usual. The dinner, though it might show symptoms of hurry, was yet plentiful and good of its kind; and if Bartholomew had not been always getting in Murry Ann's way, would have been well set on and served. Jog quaffed quantities of foaming bottled porter during the progress of it, and threw himself back in his chair at the end, as if thoroughly overcome with his exertions. Scarcely were the wine and dessert set on, ere a violent outbreak in the nursery caused Mrs. Crowdey to hurry away, leaving Mr. Sponge to enjoy the company of her husband. 'You'll drink (puff) fox-hunting, I s'pose,' observed Jog after a pause, helping himself to a bumper of port and passing the bottle to Sponge. 'With all my heart,' replied our hero, filling up. 'Fine (puff, wheeze) amusement,' observed Mr. Crowdey, with a yawn after another pause, and beating the devil's tattoo upon the table to keep himself awake. 'Very,' replied Mr. Sponge, wondering how such a thick-winded chap as Jog managed to partake of it. 'Fine (puff, wheeze) appetizer,' observed Jogglebury, after another pause. 'It is,' replied Mr. Sponge. Presently Jog began to snore, and as the increasing melody of his nose gave little hopes of returning animation, Mr. Sponge had recourse to his old friend _Mogg_ and amidst speculations as to time and distances, managed to finish the port. We will now pass to the next morning. Whatever deficiency there might be at dinner was amply atoned for at breakfast, which was both good and abundant; bread and cake of all sorts, eggs, muffins, toast, honey, jellies, and preserves without end. On the side-table was a dish of hot kidneys and a magnificent red home-fed ham. But a greater treat far, as Mrs. Jogglebury thought, was in the guests set around. There were arranged all her tulips in succession, beginning with that greatest of all wonders, Gustavus James, and running on with Anna Maria, Frederick John, Juliana Jane, Margaret Henrietta, Sarah Amelia, down to Peter William, the heir, who sat next his pa. These formed a close line on the side of the table opposite the fire, that side being left for Mr. Sponge. All the children had clean pinafores on, and their hairs plastered according to nursery regulation. Mr. Sponge's appearance was a signal for silence, and they all sat staring at him in mute astonishment. Baby, Gustavus James, did more; for after reconnoitring him through a sort of lattice window formed of his fingers, he whined out, 'Who's that ogl-e-y man, ma?' amidst the titter of the rest of the line. 'Hush! my dear,' exclaimed Mrs. Crowdey, hoping Mr. Sponge hadn't heard. But Gustavus James was not to be put down, and he renewed the charge as his mamma began pouring out the tea. 'Send that ogl-e-y man away, ma!' whined he, in a louder tone, at which all the children burst out a-laughing. 'Baby (puff), Gustavus! (wheeze),' exclaimed Jog, knocking with the handle of his knife against the table, and frowning at the prodigy. 'Well, pa, he _is_ a ogl-e-y man,' replied the child, amid the ill-suppressed laughter of the rest. 'Ah, but what have _I_ got!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, producing a gaudily done-up paper of comfits from his pocket, opening and distributing the unwholesome contents along the line, stopping the orator's mouth first with a great, red-daubed, almond comfit. Breakfast was then proceeded with without further difficulty. As it drew to a close, and Mr. Sponge began nibbling at the sweets instead of continuing his attack on the solids, Mrs. Jogglebury began eyeing and telegraphing her husband. 'Jog, my dear,' said she, looking significantly at him, and then at the egg-stand, which still contained three eggs. 'Well, my dear,' replied Jog, with a vacant stare, pretending not to understand. 'You'd better eat them,' said she, looking again at the eggs. 'I've (puff) breakfasted, my (wheeze) dear,' replied Jog pompously, wiping his mouth on his claret-coloured bandana. 'They'll be wasted if you don't,' replied Mrs. Jog. 'Well, but they'll be wasted if I eat them without (wheeze) wanting them,' rejoined he. 'Nonsense, Jog, you always say that,' retorted his wife. 'Nonsense (puff), nonsense (wheeze), I say they _will_.' 'I say they _won't_!' replied Mrs. Jog; 'now will they, Mr. Sponge?' continued she, appealing to our friend. 'Why, no, not so much as if they went out,' replied our friend, thinking Mrs. Jog was the one to side with. 'Then you'd better (puff, wheeze, gasp) eat them between you,' replied Jog, getting up and strutting out of the room. Presently he appeared in front of the house, crowned in a pea-green wide-awake, with a half-finished gibbey in his hand; and as Mr. Sponge did not want to offend him, and moreover wanted to get his horses billeted on him, he presently made an excuse for joining him. Although his horses were standing 'free gratis,' as he called it, at Mr. Puffington's, and though he would have thought nothing of making Mr. Leather come over with one each hunting morning, still he felt that if the hounds were much on the other side of Puddingpote Bower, it would not be so convenient as having them there. Despite the egg controversy, he thought a judicious application of soft sawder might accomplish what he wanted. At all events, he would try. Jog had brought himself short up, and was standing glowering with his hands in his coat-pockets, as if he had never seen the place before. 'Pretty look-out you have here, Mr. Jogglebury,' observed Mr. Sponge, joining him. 'Very,' replied Jog, still cogitating the egg question, and thinking he wouldn't have so many boiled the next day. 'All yours?' asked Sponge, waving his hand as he spoke. 'My (puff) ter-ri-tory goes up to those (wheeze) firs in the grass-field on the hill,' replied Jogglebury, pompously. 'Indeed,' said Mr. Sponge, 'they are fine trees'; thinking what a finish they would make for a steeple-chase. 'My (puff) uncle, Crowdey, planted those (wheeze) trees,' observed Jog. 'I observe,' added he, 'that it is easier to cut down a (puff) tree than to make it (wheeze) again.' 'I believe you're right,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'that idea has struck me very often.' 'Has it?' replied Jog, puffing voluminously into his frill. They then advanced a few paces, and, leaning on the iron hurdles, commenced staring at the cows. 'Where are the stables?' at last asked Sponge, seeing no inclination to move on the part of his host. 'Stables (wheeze)--stables (puff),' replied Jogglebury, recollecting Sponge's previous day's proposal--'stables (wheeze) are behind,' said he, 'at the back there (puff); nothin' to see at them (wheeze).' 'There'll be the horse you drove yesterday; won't you go to see how he is?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Oh, sure to be well (puff); never nothing the matter with him (wheeze),' replied Jogglebury. 'May as well see,' rejoined Mr. Sponge, turning up a narrow walk that seemed to lead to the back. Jog followed doggedly. He had a good deal of John Bull in him, and did not fancy being taken possession of in that sort of way; and thought, moreover, that Mr. Sponge had not behaved very well in the matter of the egg controversy. The stables certainly were nothing to boast of. They were in an old rubble-stone, red-tiled building, without even the delicacy of a ceiling. Nevertheless, there was plenty of room even after Jogglebury had cut off one end for a cow-house. 'Why, you might hunt the country with all this stabling,' observed Mr. Sponge, as he entered the low door. 'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine stalls, I declare,' added he, after counting them. 'My (puff) uncle used to (wheeze) a good deal of his own (puff) land,' replied Jogglebury. 'Ah, well, I'll tell you what: these stables will be much better for being occupied,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'And I'll tell you what I'll do for you.' 'But they _are_ occupied!' gasped Jogglebury, convulsively. 'Only half,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'or a quarter, I may say--not even that, indeed. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll have my horses over here, and you shall find them in straw in return for the manure, and just charge me for hay and corn at market price, you know. That'll make it all square and fair, and no obligation, you know. I hate obligations,' added he, eyeing Jog's disconcerted face. 'Oh, but (puff, wheeze, gasp)--' exclaimed Jogglebury, reddening up--'I don't (puff) know that I can (gasp) that. I mean (puff) that this (wheeze) stable is all the (gasp) 'commodation I have; and if we had (puff) company, or (gasp) anything of that sort, I don't know where we should (wheeze) their horses,' continued he. 'Besides, I don't (puff, wheeze) know about the market price of (gasp) corn. My (wheeze) tenant, Tom Hayrick, at the (puff) farm on the (wheeze) hill yonder, supplies me with the (puff) quantity I (wheeze) want, and we just (puff, wheeze, gasp) settle once a (puff) half-year, or so.' 'Ah, I see,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'you mean to say you wouldn't know how to strike the average so as to say what I ought to pay.' 'Just so,' rejoined Mr. Jogglebury, jumping at the idea. 'Ah, well,' said Mr. Sponge, in a tone of indifference; 'it's no great odds--it's no great odds--more the name of the thing than anything else; one likes to be independent, you know--one likes to be independent; but as I shan't be with you long, I'll just put up with it for once--I'll just put up with it for once--and let you find me--and let you find me.' So saying, he walked away, leaving Jogglebury petrified at his impudence. 'That husband of yours is a monstrous good fellow,' observed Mr. Sponge to Mrs. Jogglebury, who he now met coming out with her tail: 'he _will_ insist on my having my horses over here--most liberal, handsome thing of him, I'm sure; and that reminds me, can you manage to put up my servant?' 'I dare say we can,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury thoughtfully. 'He's not a very fine gentleman, is he?' asked she, knowing that servants were often more difficult to please than their masters. 'Oh, not at all,' replied Sponge; 'not at all--wouldn't suit me if he was--wouldn't suit me if he was.' Just then up waddled Jogglebury, puffing and wheezing like a stranded grampus; the idea having just struck him that he might get off on the plea of not having room for the servant. 'It's very unfortunate (wheeze)--that's to say, it never occurred to me (puff), but I quite forgot (gasp) that we haven't (wheeze) room for your (puff) servant.' 'Ah, you are a good fellow,' replied Mr. Sponge--'a devilish good fellow. I was just telling Mrs. Jogglebury--wasn't I, Mrs. Jogglebury?--what an excellent fellow you are, and how kind you'd been about the horses and corn, and all that sort of thing, when it occurred to me that it mightn't be convenient, p'raps to put up a servant; but your wife assures me that it will; so that settles the matter, you know--that settles the matter and I'll now send for the horses forthwith.' Jog was utterly disconcerted, and didn't know which way to turn for an excuse. Mrs. Jogglebury, though she would rather have been without the establishment, did not like to peril Gustavus James's prospects by appearing displeased; so she smilingly said she would see and do what they could. Mr. Sponge then procured a messenger to take a note to Hanby House, for Mr. Leather, and having written it, amused himself for a time with his cigars and his _Mogg_ in his bedroom, and then turned out to see the stable got ready, and pick up any information about the hounds, or anything else, from anybody he could lay hold of. As luck would have it, he fell in with a groom travelling a horse to hunt with Sir Harry Scattercash's hounds, which, he said, met at Snobston Green, some eight or nine miles off, the next day, and whither Mr. Sponge decided on going. Mr. Jogglebury's equanimity returning at dinner time, Mr. Sponge was persuasive enough to induce him to accompany him, and it was finally arranged that Leather should go on with the horses, and Jog should drive Sponge to cover in the phe-_a_-ton. CHAPTER XLVII A FAMILY BREAKFAST ON A HUNTING MORNING [Illustration] Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey was a good deal disconcerted at Gustavus James's irreverence to his intended god-papa, and did her best, both by promises and entreaties, to bring him to a more becoming state of mind. She promised him abundance of good things if he would astonish Mr. Sponge with some of his wonderful stories, and expatiated on Mr. Sponge's goodness in bringing him the nice comfits, though Mrs. Jogglebury could not but in her heart blame them for some little internal inconvenience the wonder had experienced during the night. However, she brought him to breakfast in pretty good form, where he was cocked up in his high chair beside his mamma, the rest of the infantry occupying the position of the previous day, all under good-behaviour orders. Unfortunately, Mr. Sponge, not having been able to get himself up to his satisfaction, was late in coming down; and when he did make his appearance, the unusual sight of a man in a red coat, a green tie, a blue vest, brown boots, &c., completely upset their propriety, and deranged the order of the young gentleman's performance. Mr. Sponge, too, conscious that he was late, was more eager for his breakfast than anxious to be astonished; so, what with repressing the demands of the youngster, watching that the others did not break loose, and getting Jog and Mr. Sponge what they wanted, Mrs. Crowdey had her hands full. At last, having got them set a-going, she took a lump of sugar out of the basin, and showing it to the wonder, laid it beside her plate, whispering 'Now, my beauty!' into his ear, as she adjusted him in his chair. The child, who had been wound up like a musical snuff-box, then went off as follows: 'Bah, bah, back sheep, have 'ou any 'ool? Ess, marry, have I, three bags full; Un for ye master, un for ye dame, Un for ye 'ittle boy 'ot 'uns about ye 'are.' But unfortunately, Mr. Sponge was busy with his breakfast, and the prodigy wasted his sweetness on the desert air. Mrs. Jogglebury, who had sat listening in ecstasies, saw the offended eye and pouting lip of the boy, and attempted to make up with exclamations of 'That _is_ a clever fellow! That _is_ a wonder!' at the same time showing him the sugar. 'A little more (puff) tea, my (wheeze) dear,' said Jogglebury, thrusting his great cup up the table. 'Hush! Jog, hush!' exclaimed Mrs. Crowdey, holding up her forefinger, and looking significantly first at him, and then at the urchin. 'Now, "Obin and Ichard," my darling,' continued she, addressing herself coaxingly to Gustavus James. 'No, _not_ "Obin and Ichard,"' replied the child peevishly. 'Yes, my darling, _do_, that's a treasure.' 'Well, _my_ (puff) darling, give me some (wheeze) tea,' interposed Jogglebury, knocking with his knuckles on the table. 'Oh dear. Jog, you and your tea!--you're always wanting tea,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury snappishly. 'Well, but, my (puff) dear, you forget that Mr. (wheeze) Sponge and I have to be at (puff) Snobston Green at a (wheeze) quarter to eleven, and it's good twelve (gasp) miles off.' 'Well, but it'll not take you long to get there,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury; 'will it, Mr. Sponge?' continued she, again appealing to our friend. 'Sure I don't know,' replied Sponge, eating away; 'Mr. Crowdey finds conveyance--I only find company.' Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey then prepared to pour her husband out another cup of tea, and the musical snuff-box, being now left to itself, went off of its own accord with: 'Diddle, diddle, doubt, My candle's out. My 'ittle dame's not at 'ome-- So saddle my hog, and bridle my dog' And bring my 'ittle dame 'ome.' A poem that in the original programme was intended to come in after 'Obin and Ichard,' which was to be the _chef-d'oeuvre_. Mrs. Jog was delighted, and found herself pouring the tea into the sugar-basin instead of into Jog's cup. Mr. Sponge, too, applauded. 'Well, that _was_ very clever,' said he, filling his mouth with cold ham. '"Saddle my dog, and bridle my hog"--I'll trouble you for another cup of tea,' addressing Mrs. Crowdey. 'No, not "saddle my dog," sil-l-e-y man!' drawled the child, making a pet lip: '"saddle my _hog_."' 'Oh! "saddle my hog," was it?' replied Mr. Sponge, with apparent surprise; 'I thought it was "saddle my dog." I'll trouble you for the sugar, Mrs. Jogglebury'; adding, 'you have devilish good cream here; how many cows have you?' 'Cows (puff), cows (wheeze)?' replied Jogglebury; 'how many cows?' repeated he. 'Oh, _two_,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury tartly, vexed at the interruption. 'Pardon me (puff),' replied Jogglebury slowly and solemnly, with a full blow into his frill; 'pardon me, Mrs. (puff) Jogglebury (wheeze) Crowdey, but there are _three_ (wheeze).' 'Not in milk. Jog--not in milk,' retorted Mrs. Crowdey. 'Three cows, Mrs. (puff) Jogglebury (wheeze) Crowdey, notwithstanding,' rejoined our host. 'Well; but when people talk of cream, and ask how many cows you have, they mean in milk, _Mister_ Jogglebury Crowdey.' 'Not necessarily. Mistress Jogglebury Crowdey,' replied the pertinacious Jog, with another heavy snort. 'Ah, now you're coming your fine poor-law guardian knowledge,' rejoined his wife. Jog was chairman of the Stir-it-stiff Union. While this was going on, young hopeful was sitting cocked up in his high chair, evidently mortified at the want of attention. Mrs. Crowdey saw how things were going, and turning from the cow question, endeavoured to re-engage him in his recitations. 'Now, my angel!' exclaimed she, again showing him the sugar; 'tell us about "Obin and Ichard."' 'No--not "Obin and Ichard,"' pouted the child. 'Oh yes, my sweet, _do_, that's a good child; the gentleman in the pretty coat, who gives baby the nice things, wants to hear it.' 'Come, out with it, young man!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, now putting a large piece of cold beef into his mouth. 'Not a 'ung man,' muttered the child, bursting out a-crying, and extending his little fat arms to his mamma. 'No, my angel, not a 'ung man yet,' replied Mrs. Jogglebury, taking him out of the chair, and hugging him to her bosom. 'He'll be a man before his mother for all that,' observed Mr. Sponge, nothing disconcerted by the noise. Jog had now finished his breakfast, and having pocketed three buns and two pieces of toast, with a thick layer of cold ham between them, looked at his great warming-pan of a watch, and said to his guest, 'When you're (wheeze), I'm (puff).' So saying he got up, and gave his great legs one or two convulsive shakes, as if to see that they were on. Mrs. Jogglebury looked reproachfully at him, as much as to say, 'How _can_ you behave so?' Mr. Sponge, as he eyed Jog's ill-made, queerly put on garments, wished that he had not desired Leather to go to the meet. It would have been better to have got the horses a little way off, and have shirked Jog, who did not look like a desirable introducer to a hunting field. 'I'll be with you directly,' replied Mr. Sponge, gulping down the remains of his tea; adding, 'I've just got to run upstairs and get a cigar.' So saying, he jumped up and disappeared. Murry Ann, not approving of Sponge's smoking in his bedroom, had hid the cigar-case under the toilet cover, at the back of the glass, and it was some time before he found it. Mrs. Jogglebury availed herself of the lapse of time, and his absence, to pacify her young Turk, and try to coax him into reciting the marvellous 'Obin and Ichard.' As Mr. Sponge came clanking downstairs with the cigar-case in his hand, she met him (accidentally, of course) at the bottom, with the boy in her arms, and exclaimed, 'O Mr. Sponge, here's Gustavus James wants to tell you a little story.' Mr. Sponge stopped--inwardly hoping that it would not be a long one. 'Now, my darling,' said she, sticking the boy up straight to get him to begin. 'Now, then!' exclaimed Mr. Crowdey, in the true Jehu-like style, from the vehicle at the door, in which he had composed himself. 'Coming, Jog! coming!' replied Mrs. Crowdey, with a frown on her brow at the untimely interruption; then appealing again to the child, who was nestling in his mother's bosom, as if disinclined to show off, she said, 'Now, my darling, let the gentleman hear how nicely you'll say it.' The child still slunk. 'That's a fine fellow, out with it!' said Mr. Sponge, taking up his hat to be off. 'Now, then!' exclaimed his host again. 'Coming!' replied Mr. Sponge. As if to thwart him, the child then began, Mrs. Jogglebury holding up her forefinger as well in admiration as to keep silence: 'Obin and Ichard, two pretty men, Lay in bed till 'e clock struck ten; Up starts Obin, and looks at the sky--' And then the brat stopped. 'Very beautiful!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge; 'very beautiful! One of Moore's, isn't it? Thank you, my little dear, thank you,' added he, chucking him under the chin, and putting on his hat to be off. 'O, but stop, Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed Mrs. Jogglebury, 'you haven't heard it all--there's more yet.' Then turning to the child, she thus attempted to give him the cue. 'O, ho! bother--' 'Now, then! time's hup!' again shouted Jogglebury into the passage. 'O dear, Mr. Jogglebury, will you hold your stoopid tongue!' exclaimed she, adding, 'you certainly are the most tiresome man under the sun.' She then turned to the child with: 'O ho! bother Ichard' again. But the child was mute, and Mr. Sponge fearing, from some indistinct growling that proceeded from the carriage, that a storm was brewing, endeavoured to cut short the entertainment by exclaiming: 'Wonderful two-year-old! Pity he's not in the Darby. Dare say he'll tell me the rest when I come back.' But this only added fuel to the fire of Mrs. Jogglebury's ardour, and made her more anxious that Sponge should not lose a word of it. Accordingly she gave the fat dumpling another jerk up on her arm, and repeated: 'O ho! bother Ichard, the--What's very high?' asked Mrs. Jogglebury coaxingly. 'Sun's very high,' replied the child. 'Yes, my darling!' exclaimed the delighted mamma. Mrs. Jogglebury then proceeded with: 'Ou go before--' CHILD.--'With bottle and bag,' MAMMA.--'And I'll follow after--' CHILD.--'With 'ittle Jack Nag.' 'Well now, that _is_ wonderful!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, hurrying on his dog-skin gloves, and wishing both Obin and Ichard farther. 'Isn't it!' exclaimed Mrs. Jogglebury, in ecstasies; then addressing the child, she said, 'Now that _is_ a good boy--that _is_ a fine fellow. Now couldn't he say it all over by himself, doesn't he think?' Mrs. Jogglebury looking at Sponge, as if she was meditating the richest possible treat for him. 'Oh,' replied Mr. Sponge, quite tired of the detention, 'he'll tell me it when I return--he'll tell me it when I return,' at the same time giving the child another parting chuck under the chin. But the child was not to be put off in that way, and instead of crouching, and nestling, and hiding its face, it looked up quite boldly, and after a little hesitation went through 'Obin and Ichard,' to the delight of Mrs. Jogglebury, the mortification of Sponge, and the growling denunciations of old Jog, who still kept his place in the vehicle. Mr. Sponge could not but stay the poem out. At last they got started, Jog driving. Sponge occupying the low seat, Jog's flail and Sponge's cane whip-stick stuck in the straps of the apron. Jog was very crusty at first, and did little but whip and flog the old horse, and puff and growl about being late, keeping people waiting, over-driving the horse, and so on. 'Have a cigar?' at last asked Sponge, opening the well-filled case, and tendering that olive branch to his companion. 'Cigar (wheeze), cigar (puff)?' replied Jog, eyeing the case; 'why, no, p'raps not, I think (wheeze), thank'e.' 'Do you never smoke?' asked Sponge. '(Puff--wheeze) Not often,' replied Jogglebury, looking about him with an air of indifference. He did not like to say no, because Springwheat smoked, though Mrs. Springey highly disapproved of it. 'You'll find them very mild,' observed Sponge, taking one out for himself, and again tendering the case to his friend. 'Mild (wheeze), mild (puff), are they?' said Jog, thinking he would try one. Mr. Sponge then struck a light, and, getting his own cigar well under way, lit one for his friend, and presented it to him. They then went puffing, and whipping, and smoking in silence. Jog spoke first. 'I'm going to be (puff) sick,' observed he, slowly and solemnly. 'Hope not,' replied Mr. Sponge, with a hearty whiff, up into the air. 'I _am_ going to be (puff) sick,' observed Jog, after another pause. 'Be sick on your own side, then,' replied Sponge, with another hearty whiff. 'By the (puff) powers! I _am_ (puff) sick!' exclaimed Jogglebury, after another pause, and throwing away the cigar. 'Oh, dear!' exclaimed he, 'you shouldn't have given me that nasty (puff) thing.' 'My dear fellow, I didn't know it would make you sick,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'Well, but (puff) if they (wheeze) other people sick, in all (puff) probability they'll (wheeze) me. There!' exclaimed he, pulling up again. The delays occasioned by these catastrophes, together with the time lost by 'Obin and Ichard,' threw our sportsmen out considerably. When they reached Chalkerley Gate it wanted ten minutes to eleven, and they had still three miles to go. 'We shall be late,' observed Sponge inwardly denouncing 'Obin and Ichard.' 'Shouldn't wonder,' replied Jog, adding, with a puff into his frill, 'consequences of making me sick, you see.' 'My dear fellow, if you don't know your own stomach by this time, you did ought to do,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'I (puff) flatter myself I _do_ (wheeze) my own stomach,' replied Jogglebury tartly. They then rumbled on for some time in silence. When they came within sight of Snobston Green, the coast was clear. Not a red coat, or hunting indication of any sort, was to be seen. 'I told you so (puff)!' growled Jog, blowing full into his frill, and pulling up short. 'They be gone to Hackberry Dean,' said an old man, breaking stones by the roadside. 'Hackberry Dean (puff)--Hackberry Dean (wheeze)!' replied Jog thoughtfully; 'then we must (puff) by Tollarton Mill, and through the (wheeze) village to Stewley?' 'Y-e-a-z,' drawled the man. Jog then drove on a few paces, and turned up a lane to the left, whose finger-post directed the road 'to Tollarton.' He seemed less disconcerted than Sponge, who kept inwardly anathematizing, not only 'Obin and Ichard,' but 'Diddle, diddle, doubt'--'Bah, bah, black sheep'--the whole tribe of nursery ballads, in short. The fact was, Jog wanted to be into Hackberry Dean, which was full of fine, straight hollies, fit either for gibbeys or whip-sticks, and the hounds being there gave him the entrée. It was for helping himself there, without this excuse, that he had been 'county-courted,' and he did not care to renew his acquaintance with the judge. He now whipped and jagged the old nag, as if intent on catching the hounds. Mr. Sponge liberated his whip from the apron-straps, and lent a hand when Jog began to flag. So they rattled and jingled away at an amended pace. Still it seemed to Mr. Sponge as if they would never get there. Having passed through Tollarton, and cleared the village of Stewley, Mr. Sponge strained his eyes in every direction where there was a bit of wood, in hopes of seeing something of the hounds. Meanwhile Jog was shuffling his little axe from below the cushion of the driving-seat into the pocket of his great-coat. All of a sudden he pulled up, as they were passing a bank of wood (Hackberry Dean), and handing the reins to his companion, said: 'Just lay hold for a minute whilst I (puff) out.' 'What's happened?' asked Sponge. 'Not sick again, are you?' 'No (puff), not exactly (wheeze) sick, but I want to be out all the (puff) same.' So saying, out he bundled, and, crushing through the fern-grown woodbiney fence, darted into the wood in a way that astonished our hero. Presently the chop, chop, chop of the axe revealed the mystery. 'By the powers, the fool's at his sticks!' exclaimed Sponge, disgusted at the contretemps. 'Mister Jogglebury!' roared he, 'Mister Jogglebury, we shall never catch up the hounds at this rate!' But Jog was deaf--chop, chop, chop was all the answer Mr. Sponge got. 'Well, hang me if ever I saw such a fellow!' continued Sponge, thinking he would drive on if he only knew the way. 'Chop, chop, chop,' continued the axe. 'Mister Jogglebury! Mister Jogglebury Crowdey _a-hooi_!' roared Sponge, at the top of his voice. [Illustration: MR. JOGGLEBURY CROWDEY ON HIS HOBBY] The axe stopped. 'Anybody comin'?' resounded from the wood. '_You come_,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'Presently,' was the answer; and the chop, chop, chopping was resumed. 'The man's mad,' muttered Mr. Sponge, throwing himself back in the seat. At length Jog appeared brushing and tearing his way out of the wood, with two fine hollies under his arm. He was running down with perspiration, and looked anxiously up and down the road as he blundered through the fence to see if there was any one coming. 'I really think (puff) this will make a four-in-hander (wheeze),' exclaimed he, as he advanced towards the carriage, holding a holly so as to show its full length--'not that I (puff, wheeze, gasp) do much in that (puff, wheeze) line, but really it is such a (puff, wheeze) beauty that I couldn't (puff, wheeze, gasp) resist it.' 'Well, but I thought we were going to hunt,' observed Mr. Sponge dryly. 'Hunt (puff)! so we are (wheeze); but there are no hounds (gasp). My good (puff) man,' continued he, addressing a smock-frocked countryman, who now came up, 'have you seen anything of the (wheeze) hounds?' 'E-e-s,' replied the man. 'They be gone to Brookdale Plantin'.' 'Then we'd better (puff) after them,' said Jog, running the stick through the apron-straps, and bundling into the phaeton with the long one in his hand. Away they rattled and jingled as before. 'How far is it?' asked Mr. Sponge, vexed at the detention. 'Oh (puff), close by (wheeze),' replied Jog. 'Close by,' as most of our sporting readers well know to their cost, is generally anything but close by. Nor was Jog's close by, close by on this occasion. 'There,' said Jog, after they had got crawled up Trampington Hill; 'that's it (puff) to the right, by the (wheeze) water there,' pointing to a plantation about a mile off, with a pond shining at the end. Just as Mr. Sponge caught view of the water, the twang of a horn was heard, and the hounds came pouring, full cry, out of cover, followed by about twenty variously clad horsemen, and our friend had the satisfaction of seeing them run clean out of sight, over as fine a country as ever was crossed. Worst of all, he thought he saw Leather pounding away on the chestnut. CHAPTER XLVIII HUNTING THE HOUNDS Tramptinton Hill, whose summit they had just reached as the hounds broke cover, commanded an extensive view over the adjoining vale, and, as Mr. Sponge sat shading his eyes with his hands from a bright wintry sun, he thought he saw them come to a check, and afterwards bend to the left. 'I really think,' said he, addressing his still perspiring companion, 'that if you were to make for that road on the left' (pointing one out as seen between the low hedge-rows in the distance), 'we might catch them up yet.' 'Left (puff), left (wheeze)?' replied Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey, staring about with anything but the quickness that marked his movements when he dived into Hackberry Dean. 'Don't you see,' asked Sponge tartly, 'there's a road by the corn-stacks yonder?' Pointing them out. 'I see,' replied Jogglebury, blowing freely into his shirt-frill. 'I see,' repeated he, staring that way; 'but I think (puff) that's a mere (wheeze) occupation road, leading to (gasp) nowhere.' 'Never mind, let's try!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, giving the rein a jerk, to get the horse into motion again; adding, 'it's no use sitting here, you know, like a couple of fools, when the hounds are running.' 'Couple of (puff)!' growled Jog, not liking the appellation, and wishing to be home with the long holly. 'I don't see anything (wheeze) foolish in the (puff) business.' 'There they are!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, who had kept his eye on the spot he last viewed them, and now saw the horsemen titt-up-ing across a grass field in the easy way that distance makes very uneasy riding look. 'Cut along!' exclaimed he, laying into the horse's hind-quarters with his hunting-whip. 'Don't! the horse is (puff) tired,' retorted Jog angrily, holding the horse, instead of letting him go to Sponge's salute. 'Not a bit on't!' exclaimed Sponge; 'fresh as paint! Spring him a bit, that's a good fellow!' added he. Jog didn't fancy being dictated to in this way, and just crawled along at his own pace, some six miles an hour, his dull phlegmatic face contrasting with the eager excitement of Mr. Sponge's countenance. If it had not been that Jog wanted to see that Leather did not play any tricks with his horse, he would not have gone a yard to please Mr. Sponge. Jog might, however, have been easy on that score, for Leather had just buckled the curb-rein of the horse's bridle round a tree in the plantations where they found, and the animal, being used to this sort of work, had fallen-to quite contentedly upon the grass within reach. Bilkington Pike now appeared in view, and Jog drew in as he spied it. He knew the damage: sixpence for carriages, and he doubted that Sponge would pay it. 'It's no use going any (wheeze) farther,' observed he, drawing up into a walk, as he eyed the red-brick gable end of the toll-house, and the formidable white gate across the road. Tom Coppers had heard the hounds, and, knowing the hurry sportsmen are often in, had taken the precaution to lock the gate. 'Just a _leetle_ farther!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge soothingly, whose anxiety in looking after the hounds had prevented his seeing this formidable impediment. 'If you would just drive up to that farmhouse on the hill,' pointing to one about half a mile off, 'I think we should be able to decide whether it's worth going on or not.' 'Well (puff), well (wheeze), well (gasp),' pondered Jogglebury, still staring at the gate, 'if you (puff) think it's worth (wheeze) while going through the (gasp) gate,' nodding towards it as he spoke. 'Oh, never mind the gate,' replied Mr. Sponge, with an ostentatious dive into his breeches pocket, as if he was going to pay it. He kept his hand in his pocket till he came close up to the gate, when, suddenly drawing it out, he said: 'Oh, hang it! I've left my purse at home! Never mind, drive on,' said he to his host; exclaiming to the man, 'it's Mr. Crowdey's carriage--Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's carriage! Mr. Crowdey, the chairman of the Stir-it-stiff Poor-Law Union!' 'Sixpence!' shouted the man, following the phaeton with outstretched hand. ''Ord, hang it (puff)! I could have done that (wheeze),' growled Jogglebury, pulling up. 'You harn't got no ticket,' said Coppers, coming up, 'and ain't a-goin' to not never no meetin' o' trustees, are you?' asked he, seeing the importance of the person with whom he had to deal;--a trustee of that and other roads, and one who always availed himself of his privilege of going to the meetings toll-free. 'No,' replied Jog, pompously handing Sponge the whip and reins. He then rose deliberately from his seat, and slowly unbuttoned each particular button of the brown great-coat he had over the tight black hunting one. He then unbuttoned the black, and next the right-hand pocket of the white moleskins, in which he carried his money. He then deliberately fished up his green-and-gold purse, a souvenir of Miss Smiler (the plaintiff in the breach-of-promise action, Smiler _v._ Jogglebury), and holding it with both hands before his eyes, to see which end contained the silver, he slowly drew the slide, and took out a shilling, though there were plenty of sixpences in. This gave the man an errand into the toll-house to get one, and, by way of marking his attention, when he returned he said, in the negative way that country people put a question: 'You'll not need a ticket, will you?' 'Ticket (puff), ticket (wheeze)?' repeated Jog thoughtfully. 'Yes, I'll take a ticket,' said he. 'Oh! hang it, no,' replied Sponge; 'let's get on!' stamping against the bottom of the phaeton to set the horse a-going. 'Costs nothin',' observed Jog drily, drawing the reins, as the man again returned to the gate-house. A considerable delay then took place; first, Pikey had to find his glasses, as he called his spectacles, to look out a one-horse-chaise ticket. Then he had to look out the tickets, when he found he had all sorts except a one-horse-chaise one ready--waggons, hearses, mourning-coaches, saddle-horses, chaises and pair, mules, asses, every sort but the one that was wanted. Well, then he had to fill one up, and to do this he had, first, to find the ink-horn, and then a pen that would 'mark,' so that, altogether, a delay took place that would have been peculiarly edifying to a Kennington Common or Lambeth gate-keeper to witness. But it was not all over yet. Having got the ticket Jog examined it minutely, to see that it was all right, then held it to his nose to smell it, and ultimately drew the purse slide, and deposited it among the sovereigns. He then restored that expensive trophy to his pocket, shook his leg, to send it down, then buttoned the pocket, and took the tight black coat with both hands and dragged it across his chest, so as to get his stomach in. He then gasped and held his breath, making himself as small as possible, while he coaxed the buttons into the holes; and that difficult process being at length accomplished, he stood still awhile to take breath after the exertion. Then he began to rebutton the easy, brown great-coat, going deliberately up the whole series, from the small button below, to keep the laps together, up to the one on the neck, or where the neck would have been if Jog had not been all stomach up to the chin. He then soused himself into his seat, and, snorting heavily through his nostrils, took the reins and whip and long holly from Mr. Sponge, and drove leisurely on. Sponge sat anathematizing his slowness. When they reached the farmhouse on the hill the hounds were fairly in view. The huntsman was casting them, and the horsemen were grouped about as usual, while the laggers were stealing quietly up the lanes and by-roads, thinking nobody would see them. Save the whites or the greys, our friends in the 'chay' were not sufficiently near to descry the colours of the horses; but Mr. Sponge could not help thinking that he recognized the outline of the wicked chestnut, Multum in Parvo. 'By the powers, but if it is him,' muttered he to himself, clenching his fist and grinding his teeth as he spoke, 'but I'll--I'll--I'll make _sich_ an example of you,' meaning of Leather. Mr. Sponge could not exactly say what he would do, for it was by no means a settled point whether Leather or he were master. But to the hounds. If it had not been for Mr. Sponge's shabbiness at the turnpike gate, we really believe he might now have caught them up, for the road to them was down hill all the way, and the impetus of the vehicle would have sent the old screw along. That delay, however, was fatal. Before they had gone a quarter of the distance the hounds suddenly struck the scent at a hedge-row, and, with heads up and sterns down, went straight away at a pace that annihilated all hope. They were out of sight in a minute. It was clearly a case of kill. 'Well, there's a go!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, folding his arms, and throwing himself back in the phaeton in disgust. 'I think I never saw such a mess as we've made this morning.' And he looked at the stick in the apron, and the long holly between Jog's legs, and longed to lay them about his great back. 'Well (puff), I s'pose (wheeze) we may as well (puff) home now?' observed Jog, looking about him quite unconcernedly. 'I think so,' snapped Sponge, adding, 'we've done it for once, at all events.' The observation, however, was lost upon Jog, whose mind was occupied with thinking how to get the phaeton round without upsetting. The road was narrow at best, and the newly laid stone-heaps had encroached upon its bounds. He first tried to back between two stone-heaps, but only succeeded in running a wheel into one; he then tried the forward tack, with no better success, till Mr. Sponge seeing matters were getting worse, just jumped out, and taking the old horse by the head, executed the manoeuvre that Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey first attempted. They then commenced retracing their steps, rather a long trail, even for people in an amiable mood, but a terribly long one for disagreeing ones. Jog, to be sure, was pretty comfortable. He had got all he wanted--all he went out a-hunting for; and as he hissed and jerked the old horse along, he kept casting an eye at the contents of the apron, thinking what crowned, or great man's head, the now rough, club-headed knobs should be fashioned to represent; and indulged in speculations as to their prospective worth and possible destination. He had not the slightest doubt that a thousand sticks to each of his children would be as good as a couple of thousand pounds a-piece; sometimes he thought more, but never less. Mr. Sponge, on the other hand, brooded over the loss of the run; indulged in all sorts of speculations as to the splendour of the affair; pictured the figure he would have cut on the chestnut, and the price he might have got for him in the field. Then he thought of the bucketing Leather would give him; the way he would ram him at everything; how he would let him go with a slack rein in the deep--very likely making him over-reach--nay, there was no saying but he might stake him. Then he thought over all the misfortunes and mishaps of the day. The unpropitious toilet; the aggravation of 'Obin and Ichard'; the delay caused by Jog being sick with his cigar; the divergence into Hackberry Dean; and the long protracted wait at the toll-bar. Reviewing all the circumstances fairly and dispassionately, Mr. Sponge came to the determination of having nothing more to do with Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey in the hunting way. These, or similar cogitations and resolutions were, at length, interrupted by their arriving at home, as denoted by an outburst of children rushing from the lodge to receive them--Gustavus James, in his nurse's arms, bringing up the rear, to whom our friend could hardly raise the semblance of a smile. It was all that little brat! thought he. CHAPTER XLIX COUNTRY QUARTERS [Illustration: LADY SCATTERCASH] Sir Harry Scattercash's were only an ill-supported pack of hounds; they were not kept upon any fixed principles. We do not mean to say that they had not plenty to eat, but their management was only of the scrimmaging order. Sir Harry was what is technically called 'going it.' Like our noble friend, Lord Hard-up, now Earl of Scamperdale, he had worked through the morning of life without knowing what it was to be troubled with money; but, unlike his lordship, now that he had unexpectedly come into some, he seemed bent upon trying how fast he could get through it. In this laudable endeavour he was ably assisted by Lady Scattercash, late the lovely and elegant Miss Spangles, of the 'Theatre Royal, Sadler's Wells.' Sir Harry had married her before his windfall made him a baronet, having, at the time, some intention of trying his luck on the stage, but he always declared that he never regretted his choice; on the contrary, he said, if he had gone among the 'duchesses,' he could not have suited himself better. Lady Scattercash could ride--indeed, she used to do scenes in the circle (two horses and a flag)--and she could drive, and smoke, and sing, and was possessed of many other accomplishments. Sir Harry would sometimes drink straight on end for a week, and then not taste wine again for a month; sometimes the hounds hunted, and sometimes they did not; sometimes they were advertized, and sometimes they were not; sometimes they went out on one day, and sometimes on another; sometimes they were fixed to be at such a place, and went to quite a different one. When Sir Harry was on a drinking-bout they were shut up altogether; and the huntsman, Tom Watchorn, late of the 'Camberwell and Balham Hill Union Harriers,' an early acquaintance of Miss Spangles--indeed, some said he was her uncle--used to go away on a drinking excursion too. Altogether, they were what the country people called a very 'promiscuous set.' The hounds were of all sorts and sizes; the horses of no particular stamp; and the men scamps and vagabonds of the first class. With such a master and such an establishment, we need hardly say that no stranger ever came into the country for the purpose of hunting. Sir Harry's fields were entirely composed of his own choice 'set,' and a few farmers, and people whom he could abuse and do what he liked with. Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey, to be sure, had mentioned Sir Harry approvingly, when he went to Mr. Puffington's, to inveigle Mr. Sponge over to Puddingpote Bower; but what might suit Mr. Jogglebury, who went out to seek gibbey sticks, might not suit a person who went out for the purpose of hunting a fox in order to show off and sell his horses. In fact, Puddingpote Bower was an exceedingly bad hunting quarter, as things turned out. Sir Harry Scattercash, having had the run described in our two preceding chapters, and having just imported a few of the 'sock-and-buskin' sort from town, was not likely to be going out again for a time; while Mr. Puffington, finding where Mr. Sponge had taken refuge, determined not to meet within reach of Puddingpote Bower, if he could possibly help it; and Lord Scamperdale was almost always beyond distance, unless horse and rider lay out over-night--a proceeding always deprecated by prudent sportsmen. Mr. Sponge, therefore, got more of Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's company than he wanted, and Mr. Crowdey got more of Mr. Sponge's than he desired. In vain Jog took him up into his attics and his closets, and his various holes and corners, and showed him his enormous stock of sticks--some tied in sheaves, like corn; some put up more sparingly; and others, again, wrapped in silver paper, with their valuable heads enveloped in old gloves. Jog would untie the strings of these, and placing the heads in the most favourable position before our friend, just as an artist would a portrait, question him as to whom he thought they were. 'There, now (puff),' said he, holding up one that he thought there could be no mistake about; 'who do you (wheeze) that is?' 'Deaf Burke,' replied Mr. Sponge, after a stare. '_Deaf Burke!_ (puff),' replied Jog indignantly. 'Who is it, then?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Can't you see? (wheeze),' replied Jog tartly. 'No,' replied Sponge, after another examination. 'It's not Scroggins, is it?' 'Napoleon (puff) Bonaparte,' replied Jog, with great dignity, returning the head to the glove. He showed several others, with little better success, Mr. Sponge seeming rather to take a pleasure in finding ridiculous likenesses, instead of helping his host out in his conceits. The stick-mania was a failure, as far as Mr. Sponge was concerned. Neither were the peregrinations about the farms, or ter-ri-to-ry, as Jog called his estate, more successful; a man's estate, like his children, being seldom of much interest to any but himself. Jog and Sponge were soon most heartily sick of each other. Nor did Mrs. Jog's charms, nor the voluble enunciation of 'Obin and Ichard,' followed by 'Bah, bah, black sheep,' &c, from that wonderful boy, Gustavus James, mend matters; for the young rogue having been in Mr. Sponge's room while Murry Ann was doing it out, had torn the back off Sponge's _Mogg_, and made such a mess of his tooth-brush, by cleaning his shoes with it, as never was seen. Mr. Sponge soon began to think it was not worth while staying at Puddingpote Bower for the mere sake of his keep, seeing there was no hunting to be had from it, and it did not do to keep hack hunters idle, especially in open weather. Leather and he, for once, were of the same opinion, and that worthy shook his head, and said Mr. Crowdey was 'awful mean,' at the same time pulling out a sample of bad ship oats, that he had got from a neighbouring ostler, to show the 'stuff' their 'osses' were a eatin' of. The fact was, Jog's beer was nothing like so strong as Mr. Puffington's; added to which, Mr. Crowdey carried the principles of the poor-law union into his own establishment, and dieted his servants upon certain rules. Sunday, roast beef, potatoes, and pudding under the meat; Monday, fried beef, and stick-jaw (as they profanely called a certain pudding); Wednesday, leg of mutton, and so on. The allowance of beer was a pint and a half per diem to Bartholomew, and a pint to each woman; and Mr. Crowdey used to observe from the head of the servants' dinner-table on the arrival of each cargo, 'Now this (puff) beer is to (wheeze) a month, and, if you choose to drink it in a (gasp) day, you'll go without any for the rest of the (wheeze) time'; an intimation that had a very favourable effect upon the tap. Mr. Leather, however, did not like it. 'Puffington's servants,' he said, 'had beer whenever they chose,' and he thought it 'awful mean' restricting the quantity. Mr. Jog, however, was not to be moved. Thus time crawled heavily on. Mr. and Mrs. Jog had a long confab one night on the expediency of getting rid of Mr. Sponge. Mrs. Jog wanted to keep him on till after the christening; while Jog combated her reasons by representing the improbability of its doing Gustavus James any good having him for a godpapa, seeing Sponge's age, and the probability of his marrying himself. Mrs. Jog, however, was very determined; rather too much so, indeed, for she awakened Jog's jealousy, who lay tossing and tumbling about all through the night. He was up very early, and as Mrs. Jog was falling into a comfortable nap, she was aroused by his well-known voice hallooing as loud as he could in the middle of the entrance-passage. 'BARTHOLO-_me-e-w!_' the last syllable being pronounced or prolonged like a mew of a cat. 'BARTHOLO-_me-e-w!_' repeated he, not getting an answer to the first shout. 'MURRY ANN!' shouted he, after another pause. 'MURRY ANN!' exclaimed he, still louder. Just then, the iron latch of a door at the top of the house opened, and a female voice exclaimed hurriedly over the banisters: 'Yes, sir! here, sir! comin' sir! comin'!' 'Oh, Murry Ann (puff), that's (wheeze) you, is it?' asked Jog, still speaking at the top of his voice. 'Yes, sir,' replied Mary Ann. 'Oh! then, Murry Ann, I wanted to (puff)--that you'd better get the (puff) breakfast ready early. I think Mr. (gasp)--Sponge will be (wheezing) away to-day.' 'Yes, sir,' replied Mary Ann. All this was said in such a tone as could not fail to be heard all over the house; certainly into Mr. Sponge's room, which was midway between the speakers. What prevented Mr. Sponge wheezing away, will appear in the next chapter. CHAPTER L SIR HARRY SCATTERCASH'S HOUNDS [Illustration] The reason Mr. Sponge did not take his departure, after the pretty intelligible hint given by his host, was that, as he was passing his shilling army razor over his soapy chin, he saw a stockingless lad, in a purply coat and faded hunting-cap, making his way up to the house, at a pace that betokened more than ordinary vagrancy. It was the kennel, stable, and servants' hall courier of Nonsuch House, come to say that Sir Harry hunted that day. Presently Mr. Leather knocked at Mr. Sponge's bedroom door, and, being invited in, announced the fact. 'Sir 'Arry's 'ounds 'unt,' said he, twisting the door handle as he spoke. 'What time?' asked Mr. Sponge, with his half-shaven face turned towards him. 'Meet at eleven,' replied Leather. 'Where?' inquired Mr. Sponge. 'Nonsuch House, 'bout nine miles off.' It was thirteen, but Mr. Leather heard the malt liquor was good and wanted to taste it. 'Take on the brown, then,' said Mr. Sponge, quite pompously;' and tell Bartholomew to have the hack at the door at ten--or say a quarter to. Tell him, I'll lick him for every minute he's late; and, mind, don't let old Rory O'More here know,' meaning our friend Jog, 'or he may take a fancy to go, and we shall never get there,' alluding to their former excursion. 'No, no,' replied Mr. Leather, leaving the room. Mr. Sponge then arrayed himself in his hunting costume--scarlet coat, green tie, blue vest, gosling-coloured cords, and brown tops; and was greeted with a round of applause from the little Jogs as he entered the breakfast-room. Gustavus James would handle him; and, considering that his paws were all over raspberry jam, our friend would as soon have dispensed with his attentions. Mrs. Jog was all smiles, and Jog all scowls. A little after ten our friend, cigar in mouth, was in the saddle. Mrs. Jog, with Gustavus James in her arms, and all the children clustering about, stood in the passage to see him start, and watch the capers and caprioles of the piebald, as he ambled down the avenue. 'Nine miles--nine miles,' muttered Mr. Sponge to himself, as he passed through the Lodge and turned up the Quarryburn road; 'do it in an hour well enough,' said he, sticking spurs into the hack, and cantering away. Having kept this pace up for about five miles, till he thought from the view he had taken of the map it was about time to be turning, he hailed a blacksmith in his shop, who, next to saddlers, are generally the most intelligent people about hounds, and asked how far it was to Sir Harry's? 'Eight miles,' replied the man, in a minute. 'Impossible!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge. 'It was only nine at starting, and I've come I don't know how many.' The next person Mr. Sponge met told him it was ten miles; the third, after asking him where he had come from, said he was a stranger in the country, and had never heard of the place; and, what with Mr. Leather's original mis-statement, misdirections from other people, and mistakes of his own, it was more good luck than good management that got Mr. Sponge to Nonsuch House in time. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE STARTING FROM THE BOWER] The fact was, the whole hunt was knocked up in a hurry. Sir Harry, and the choice spirits by whom he was surrounded, had not finished celebrating the triumphs of the Snobston Green day, and as it was not likely that the hounds would be out again soon, the people of the hunting establishment were taking their ease. Watchorn had gone to be entertained at a public supper, given by the poachers and fox-stealers of the village of Bark-shot, as a 'mark of respect for his abilities as a sportsman and his integrity as a man,' meaning his indifference to his master's interests; while the first-whip had gone to visit his aunt, and the groom was away negotiating the exchange of a cow. With things in this state, Wily Tom of Tinklerhatch, a noted fox-stealer in Lord Scamperdale's country, had arrived with a great thundering dog fox, stolen from his lordship's cover near the cross roads at Dallington Burn, which being communicated to our friends about midnight in the smoking-room at Nonsuch House, it was resolved to hunt him forthwith, especially as one of the guests, Mr. Orlando Bugles, of the Surrey Theatre, was obliged to return to town immediately, and, as he sometimes enacted the part of Squire Tallyho, it was thought a little of the reality might correct the Tom and Jerry style in which he did it. Accordingly, orders were issued for a hunt, notwithstanding the hounds were fed and the horses watered. Sir Harry didn't 'care a rap; let them go as fast as they could.' All these circumstances conspired to make them late; added to which, when Watchorn, the huntsman, cast up, which he did on a higgler's horse, he found the only sound one in his stud had gone to the neighbouring town to get some fiddlers--her ladyship having determined to compliment Mr. Bugles' visit by a quadrille party. Bugles and she were old friends. When Mr. Sponge cast up at half-past eleven, things were still behind-hand. Sir Harry and party had had a wet night of it, and were all more or less drunk. They had kept up the excitement with a champagne breakfast and various liqueurs, to say nothing of cigars. They were a sad debauched-looking set, some of them scarcely out of their teens, with pallid cheeks, trembling hands, sunken eyes, and all the symptoms of premature decay. Others--the sock-and-buskin ones--were a made-up, wigged, and padded set. Bugles was resplendent. He had on a dress scarlet coat, lined and faced with yellow satin (one of the properties, we believe, of the Victoria), a beautifully worked pink shirt-front, a pitch-plaster coloured waistcoat, white ducks, and jack-boots, with brass heel spurs. He carried his whip in the arm's-length-way of a circus master following a horse. Some dozen of these curiosities were staggering, and swaggering, and smoking in front of Nonsuch House, to the edification of a lot of gaping grooms and chawbacons, when Mr. Sponge cantered becomingly up on the piebald. Lady Scattercash, with several elegantly dressed females, all with cigars in their mouths, were conversing with them from the open drawing-room windows above, while sundry good-looking damsels ogled them from the attics above. Such was the tableau that presented itself to Mr. Sponge as he cantered round the turn that brought him in front of the Elizabethan mansion of Nonsuch House. Sir Harry, who was still rather drunk, thinking that every person there must be either one of his party, or a friend of one of his party, or a neighbour, or some one that he had seen before, reeled up to our friend as he stopped, and, shaking him heartily by the hand, asked him to come in and have something to eat. This was a godsend to Mr. Sponge, who accepted the proffered hand most readily, shaking it in a way that quite satisfied Sir Harry he was right in some one or other of his conjectures. Bugles, and all the reeling, swaggering bucks, looked respectfully at the well-appointed man, and Bugles determined to have a pair of nut-brown tops as soon as ever he got back to town. Sir Harry was a tall, wan, pale young man, with a strong tendency to delirium tremens; that, and consumption, appeared to be running a match for his person. He was a harum-scarum fellow, all strings, and tapes, and ends, and flue. He looked as if he slept in his clothes. His hat was fastened on with a ribbon, or rather a ribbon passed round near the band, in order to fasten it on, for it was seldom or ever applied to the purpose, and the ends generally went flying out behind like a Chinaman's tail. Then his flashy, many-coloured cravats, stared and straggled in all directions, while his untied waistcoat-strings protruded between the laps of his old short-waisted swallow-tailed scarlet, mixing in glorious confusion with those of his breeches behind. The knee-strings were generally also loose; the web straps of his boots were seldom in; and, what with one set of strings and another, he had acquired the name of Sixteen-string'd Jack. Mr. Sponge having dismounted, and given his hack to the now half-drunken Leather, followed Sir Harry through a foil and four-in-hand whip-hung hall to the deserted breakfast-room, where chairs stood in all directions, and crumpled napkins strewed the floor. The litter of eggs, and remnants of muffins, and diminished piles of toast, and broken bread and empty toast racks, and cups and saucers, and half-emptied glasses, and wholly emptied champagne bottles, were scattered up and down a disorderly table, further littered with newspapers, letter backs, county court summonses, mustard pots, anchovies, pickles--all the odds and ends of a most miscellaneous meal. The side-table exhibited cold joints, game, poultry, lukewarm hashed venison, and sundry lamp-lit dishes of savoury grills. 'Here you are!' exclaimed Sir Harry, taking his hunting-whip and sweeping the contents of one end of the table on to the floor with a crash that brought in the butler and some theatrical-looking servants. 'Take those filthy things away! (hiccup),' exclaimed Sir Harry, crushing the broken china smaller under his heels; 'and (hiccup) bring some red-herrings and soda-water. What the deuce does the (hiccup) cook mean by not (hiccuping) things as he ought? Now,' said he, addressing Mr. Sponge, and raking the plates and dishes up to him with the handle of his whip, just as a gaming-table keeper rakes up the stakes, 'now,' said he, 'make your (hiccup) game. There'll be some hot (hiccup) in directly.' He meant to say 'tea,' but the word failed him. Mr. Sponge fell to with avidity. He was always ready to eat, and attacked first one thing and then another, as though he had not had any breakfast at Puddingpote Bower. Sir Harry remained mute for some minutes, sitting cross-legged and backwards in his chair, with his throbbing temples resting upon the back, wondering where it was that he had met Mr. Sponge. He looked different without his hat; and, though he saw it was no one he knew particularly, he could not help thinking he had seen him before. Indeed, he thought it was clear, from Mr. Sponge's manner, that they had met, and he was just going to ask him whether it was at Offley's or the Coal Hole, when a sudden move outside attracted his attention. It was the hounds. The huntsman's horse having at length returned from the fiddler hunt, and being whisped over, and made tolerably decent, Mr. Watchorn, having exchanged the postilion saddle in which it had been ridden for a horn-cased hunting one, had mounted, and, opening the kennel-door, had liberated the pent-up pack, who came tearing out full cry and spread themselves over the country, regardless alike of the twang, twang, twang of the horn and the furious onslaught of a couple of stable lads in scarlet and caps, who, true to the title of 'whippers-in,' let drive at all they could get within reach of. The hounds had not been out, even to exercise, since the Snobston-Green day, and were as wild as hawks. They were ready to run anything. Furious and Furrier tackled with a cow. Bountiful ran a black cart-colt, and made him leap the haw-haw. Sempstress, Singwell, and Saladin (puppies), went after some crows. Mercury took after the stable cat, while old Thunderer and Come-by-chance (supposed to be one of Lord Scamperdale's) joined in pursuit of a cur. Watchorn, however, did not care for these little ebullitions of spirit, and never having been accustomed to exercise the Camberwell and Balham Hill Union Harriers, he did not see any occasion for troubling the fox-hounds. 'They would soon settle,' he said, 'when they got a scent.' It was this riotous start that diverted Sixteen-string'd Jack's attention from our friend, and, looking out of the window, Mr. Sponge saw all the company preparing to be off. There was the elegant Bugles mounting her ladyship's white Arab; the brothers Spangles climbing on to their cream-colours; Mr. This getting on to the postman's pony, and Mr. That on to the gamekeeper's. Mr. Sponge hurried out to get to the brown ere his anger arose at being left behind, and provoked a scene. He only just arrived in time; for the twang of the horn, the cracks of the whips, the clamorous rates of the servants, the yelping of the hounds, and the general commotion, had got up his courage, and he launched out in such a way, when Mr. Sponge mounted, as would have shot a loose rider into the air. As it was, Mr. Sponge grappled manfully with him, and, letting the Latchfords into his sides, shoved him in front of the throng, as if nothing had happened. Mr. Leather then slunk back to the stables, to get out the hack to have a hunt in the distance. The hounds, as we said before, were desperately wild; but at length, by dint of coaxing and cracking, and whooping and hallooing, they got some ten couples out of the five-and-twenty gathered together, and Mr. Watchorn, putting himself at their head, trotted briskly on, blowing most lustily, in the hopes that the rest would follow. So he clattered along the avenue, formed between rows of sombre-headed firs and sweeping spruce, out of which whirred clouds of pheasants, and scuttling rabbits, and stupid hares kept crossing and recrossing, to the derangement of Mr. Watchorn's temper, and the detriment of the unsteady pack. Squeak, squeak, squeal sounded right and left, followed sometimes by the heavy retributive hand of Justice on the offenders' hides, and sometimes by the snarl, snap, and worry of a couple of hounds contending for the prey. Twang, twang, twang, still went the horn; and when the huntsman reached the unicorn-crested gates, between tea-caddy looking lodges, he found himself in possession of a clear majority of his unsizable pack. Some were rather bloody to be sure, and a few carried scraps of game, which fastidious masters would as soon have seen them without; but neither Sir Harry nor his huntsman cared about appearances. On clearing the lodges, and passing about a quarter of a mile on the Hardington road, hedge-rows ceased, and they came upon Farleyfair Downs, across which Mr. Watchorn now struck, making for a square plantation, near the first hill-top, where it had been arranged the bag-fox should be shook. It was a fine day, rather brighter perhaps, than sportsmen like, and there was a crispness in the air indicative of frost, but then there is generally a burning scent just before one. So thought Mr. Watchorn, as he turned his feverish face up to the bright, blue sky, imbibing the fine fresh air of the wide-extending downs, instead of the stale tobacco smoke of the fetid beer-shop. As he trotted over the springy sward, up the gently rising ground, he rose in his stirrups; and, laying hold of his horse's mane, turned to survey the long-drawn, lagging field behind. 'You'll have to look sharp, my hearties,' said he to himself, as he ran them over in his eye, and thought there might be twenty or five-and-twenty horsemen; 'you'll have to look sharp, my hearties,' said he, 'if you mean to get away, for Wily Tom has his hat on the ground, which shows he has put him down, and if he's the sort of gem'man I expect he'll not be long in cover.' So saying, he resumed his seat in the saddle, and easing his horse, endeavoured, by sundry dog noises--such as, 'Yooi doit, Ravager!' 'Gently, Paragon!' 'Here again. Mercury!'--to restrain the ardour of the leading hounds, so as to let the rebellious tail ones up and go into cover with something like a body. This was rather a difficult task to accomplish, for those with him being light, and consequently anxious to be doing and ready for riot, were difficult to restrain from dashing forward; while those that had taken their diversion and refreshment among the game, were easy whether they did anything more or not. While Watchorn was thus manoeuvring his forces Wily Tom beckoned him on, and old Cruiser and Marmion, who had often been at the game before, and knew what Wily Tom's hat on the ground meant, flew to him full cry, drawing all their companions after them. 'I think he's away to the west,' said Tom in an undertone, resting his hand on Watchorn's horse's shoulder; 'back home,' added he, jerking his head with a knowing leer of his roguish eye. 'They're on him!' exclaimed he after a pause, as the outburst of melody proclaimed that the hounds had crossed his line. Then there was such racing and striving among the field to get up, and such squeezing and crowding, and 'Mind, my horse kicks!' at the little white hunting wicket leading into cover. 'Knock down the wall!' exclaimed one. 'Get out of the way; I'll ride over it!' roared another. 'We shall be here all day!' vociferated a third. 'That's a header!' cried another, as a clatter of stones was followed by a pair of white breeches summerseting in the air with a horse underneath. 'It's Tom Sawbones, the doctor!' exclaimed one, 'and he can mend himself.' 'By Jove! but he's killed!' shrieked another. 'Not a bit of it,' added a third, as the dead man rose and ran after his horse. 'Let Mr. Bugles through,' cried Sir Harry, seeing his friend, or rather his wife's friend, was fretting the Arab. Meanwhile, the melody of hounds increased, and each man, as he got through the little gate, rose in his stirrups and hustled his horse along the green ride to catch up those on before. The plantation was about twenty acres, rather thick and briary at the bottom; and master Reynard, finding it was pretty safe, and, moreover, having attempted to break just by where some chawbacons were ploughing, had headed short back, so that, when the excited field rushed through the parallel gate on the far side of the plantation, expecting to see the pack streaming away over the downs, they found most of the hounds with their heads in the air, some looking for halloos, others watching their companions trying to carry the scent over the fallow. Watchorn galloped up in the frantic state half-witted huntsmen generally are, and one of the impromptu whips being in attendance, got quickly round the hounds, and commenced a series of assaults upon them that very soon sent them scuttling to Mr. Watchorn for safety. If they had been at the hares again, or even worrying sheep, he could not have rated or flogged more severely. 'MARKSMAN! MARKSMAN! _ough, ye old Divil, get to him!_' roared the whip, aiming a stinging cut with his heavy knotty-pointed whip, at a venerable sage who still snuffed down a furrow to satisfy himself the fox was not on before he returned to cover--an exertion that overbalanced the whip, and would have landed him on the ground, had not he caught by the spur in the old mare's flank. Then he went on scrambling and rating after Marksman, the field exclaiming, as the Edmonton people did, by Johnny Gilpin: He's on! no, he's off, he hangs by the mane! [Illustration: 'LET MR. BUGLES THROUGH'] At last he got shuffled back into the saddle, and the cry of hounds in cover attracting the outsiders back, the scene quickly changed, and the horsemen were again overhead in wood. They now swept up the grass ride to the exposed part of the higher ground, the trees gradually diminishing in size, till, on reaching the top, they did not come much above a horse's shoulder. This point commanded a fine view over the adjacent country. Behind was the rich vale of Dairylow, with its villages and spires, and trees and enclosures, while in front was nothing but the undulating, wide-stretching downs, reaching to the soft grey hills in the distance. There was not, however, much time for contemplating scenery; for Wily Tom, who had stolen to this point immediately the hounds took up the scent, now viewed the fox stealing over a gap in the wall, and, the field catching sight, there was such a hullabaloo as would have made a more composed and orderly minded fox think it better to break instead of running the outside of the wall as this one intended to do. What wind there was swept over the downs; and putting himself straight to catch it, he went away whisking his brush in the air, as if he was fresh out of his kennel instead of a sack. Then what a commotion there was! Such jumpings off to lead down, such huggings and holdings, and wooa-ings of those that sat on, such slidings and scramblings, and loosenings and rollings of stones. Then the frantic horses began to bound, and the frightened riders to exclaim: 'Do get out of my way, sir.' 'Mind, sir! I'm a-top of you!' 'Give him his head and let him go!' exclaimed the still drunken brother Bob Spangles, sliding his horse down with a slack rein. 'That's your sort!' roared Sir Harry, and just as he said it, his horse dropped on his hind-quarters like a rabbit, landing Sir Harry comfortably on his feet, amid the roars of the foot-people, and the mirth of such of the horsemen as were not too frightened to laugh. 'I think I'll stay where I am,' observed Mr. Bugles, preparing for a bird's-eye view where he was. 'This hunting,' said he, getting off the fidgety Arab, 'seems dangerous.' The parties who accomplished the descent had now some fine plain sailing for their trouble. The line lay across the open downs, composed of sound, springy, racing-like turf, extremely well adapted for trying the pace either of horses or hounds. And very soon it did try the pace of them, for they had not gone above a mile before there was very considerable tailing with both. To be sure, they had never been very well together, but still the line lengthened instead of contracting. Horses that could hardly be held downhill, and that applied themselves to the turf, on landing, as if they could never have enough of it, now began to bear upon the rein and hang back to those behind; while the hounds came straggling along like a flock of wild geese, with full half a mile between the leader and the last. However, they all threw their tongues, and each man flattered himself that the hound he was with was the first. In vain the galloping Watchorn looked back and tootled his horn; in vain he worked with his cap; in vain the whips rode at the tail hounds, cursing and swearing, and vowing they would cut them in two. There was no getting them together. Every now and then the fox might be seen, looking about the size of a marble, as he rounded some distant hill, each succeeding view making him less, till, at last, he seemed no bigger than a pea. Five-and-twenty minutes best pace over downs is calculated to try the mettle of anything; and, long before the leading hounds reached Cockthropple Dean, the field was choked by the pace. Sir Harry had long been tailed off; both the brothers Spangles had dropped astern; the horse of one had dropped too; Sawbones, the doctor's, had got a stiff neck; Willing, the road surveyor, and Mr. Lavender, the grocer, pulled up together. Muddyman, the farmer's four-year-old, had enough at the end of ten minutes; both the whips tired theirs in a quarter of an hour; and in less than twenty minutes Watchorn and Sponge were alone in their glory, or rather Sponge was in his glory, for Watchorn's horse was beat. 'Lend me your horn!' exclaimed Sponge, as he heard by the hammer and pincering of Watchorn's horse, it was all U P with him. The horse stopped as if shot; and getting the horn, Mr. Sponge went on, the brown laying himself out as if still full of running. Cockthropple Dean was now close at hand, and in all probability the fox would not leave it. So thought Mr. Sponge as he dived into it, astonished at the chorus and echo of the hounds. [Illustration: 'HE'S AWAY!--REET 'CROSS TORNOPS'] 'Tally ho!' shouted a countryman on the opposite side; and the road Sponge had taken being favourable to the point, he made for it at a hand-gallop, horn in hand, to blow as soon as he got there. 'He's away!' cried the man as soon as our friend appeared; 'reet 'cross tornops!' added he, pointing with his hoe. Mr. Sponge then put his horse's head that way, and blew a long shrill reverberating blast. As he paused to take breath and listen, he heard the sound of horses' hoofs, and presently a stentorian voice, half frantic with rage, exclaimed from behind: 'WHO THE DICKENS ARE YOU?' 'Who the Dickens are you?' retorted Mr. Sponge, without looking round. 'They commonly call me the EARL OF SCAMPERDALE,' roared the same sweet voice, 'and those are my hounds.' 'They're not your hounds!' snapped Mr. Sponge, now looking round on his big-spectacled, flat-hatted lordship, who was closely followed by his double, Mr. Spraggon. 'Not my hounds!' screeched his lordship. 'Oh, ye barber's apprentice! Oh, ye draper's assistant! Oh ye unmitigated Mahomedon! Sing out, Jack! sing out! For Heaven's sake, sing out!' added he, throwing out his arms in perfect despair. 'Not his lordship's hounds!' roared Jack, now rising in his stirrups and brandishing his big whip. 'Not his lordship's hounds! Tell me _that_, when they cost him five-and-twenty 'underd--two thousand five 'underd a year! Oh, by Jingo, but that's a pretty go! If they're not his lordship's hounds, I should like to know whose they are?' and thereupon Jack wiped the foam from his mouth on his sleeve. 'Sir Harry's!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, again putting the horn to his lips, and blowing another shrill blast. 'Sir Harry's!' screeched his lordship in disgust, for he hated the very sound of his name--'Sir Harry's! Oh, you rusty-booted ruffian! Tell me that to my very face!' 'Sir Harry's!' repeated Jack, again standing erect in his stirrups. 'What! impeach his lordship's integrity--oh, by Jove, there's an end of everything! Death before dishonour! Slugs in a saw-pit! Pistols and coffee for two! Cock Pheasant at Weybridge, six o'clock i' the mornin'!' And Jack, sinking exhausted on his saddle, again wiped the foam from his mouth. His lordship then went at Sponge again. 'Oh, you sanctified, putrified, pestilential, perpendicular, gingerbread-booted, counter-skippin' snob, you think because I'm a lord, and can't swear or use coarse language, that you may do what you like; but I'll let you see the contrary,' said he, brandishing his brother to Jack's whip. 'Mark you, sir, I'll fight you, sir, any non-huntin' day you like, sir, 'cept Sunday.' Just then the clatter and blowing of horses was heard, and Frostyface emerged from the wood followed by the hounds, who, swinging themselves 'forrard' over the turnips, hit off the scent and went away full cry, followed by his lordship and Jack, leaving Mr. Sponge transfixed with astonishment. 'Changed foxes,' at length said Sponge, with a shake of his head; and just then the cry of hounds on the opposite bank confirmed his conjecture, and he got to Sir Harry's in time to take up his lordship's fox. His lordship's hounds ran into Sir Harry's fox about two miles farther on, but the hounds would not break him up; and, on examining him, he was found to have been aniseeded; and, worst of all, by the mark on his ear to be one that they had turned down themselves the season before, being one of a litter that Sly had stolen from Sir Harry's cover at Seedeygorse--a beautiful instance of retributive justice. CHAPTER LI FARMER PEASTRAW'S D�N�-MATIN�E There are pleasanter situations than being left alone with twenty couple of even the best-mannered fox-hounds; far pleasanter situations than being left alone with such a tearing, frantic lot as composed Sir Harry Scattercash's pack. Sportsmen are so used (with some hounds at least) to see foxes 'in hand' that they never think there is any difficulty in getting them there; and it is only a single-handed combat with the pack that shows them that the hound does not bring the fox up in his mouth like a retriever. A tyro's first _tête-à-tête_ with a half-killed fox, with the baying pack circling round, must leave as pleasing a souvenir on the memory as Mr. Gordon Cumming would derive from his first interview with a lion. Our friend Mr. Sponge was now engaged with a game of 'pull devil, pull baker' with the hounds for the fox, the difficulty of his situation being heightened by having to contend with the impetuous temper of a high-couraged, dangerous horse. To be sure, the gallant Hercules was a good deal subdued by the distance and severity of the pace, but there are few horses that get to the end of a run that have not sufficient kick left in them to do mischief to hounds, especially when raised or frightened by the smell of blood; nevertheless, there was no help for it. Mr. Sponge knew that unless he carried off some trophy, it would never be believed he had killed the fox. Considering all this, and also that there was no one to tell what damage he did, he just rode slap into the middle of the pack, as Marksman, Furious, Thunderer, and Bountiful were in the act of despatching the fox. Singwell and Saladin (puppies) having been sent away howling, the one bit through the jowl, the other through the foot. 'Ah! leave him--leave him--leave him!' screeched Mr. Sponge, trampling over Warrior and Tempest, the brown horse lashing out furiously at Melody and Lapwing. 'Ah, leave him! leave him!' repeated he, throwing himself off his horse by the fox, and clearing a circle with his whip, aided by the hoofs of the animal. There lay the fox before him killed, but as yet little broken by the pack. He was a noble fellow; bright and brown, in the full vigour of life and condition, with a gameness, even in death, that no other animal shows. Mr. Sponge put his foot on the body, and quickly whipped off his brush. Before he had time to pocket it, the repulsed pack broke in upon him and carried off the carcass. 'Ah! dash ye, you may have _that_,' said he, cutting at them with his whip as they clustered upon it like a swarm of bees. They had not had a wild fox for five weeks. 'Who-hoop!' cried Mr. Sponge, in the hopes of attracting some of the field. 'WHO-HOOP!' repeated he, as loud as he could halloo. 'Where can they all be, I wonder?' said he, looking around; and echo answered--where? The hounds had now crunched their fox, or as much of him as they wanted. Old Marksman ran about with his head, and Warrior with a haunch. 'Drop it, you old beggar!' cried Mr. Sponge, cutting at Marksman with his whip, and Mr. Sponge being too near to make a trial of speed prudent, the old dog did as he was bid, and slunk away. Our friend then appended this proud trophy to his saddle-flap by a piece of whipcord, and, mounting the now tractable Hercules, began to cast about in search of a landmark. Like most down countries, this one was somewhat deceptive; there were plenty of landmarks, but they were all the same sort--clumps of trees on hill-tops, and plantations on hill-sides, but nothing of a distinguishing character, nothing that a stranger could say, 'I remember seeing that as I came'; or, 'I remember passing that in the run.' The landscape seemed all alike: north, south, east, and west, equally indifferent. 'Curse the thing,' said Mr. Sponge, adjusting himself in his saddle, and looking about; 'I haven't the _slightest_ idea where I am. I'll blow the horn, and see if that will bring any one.' So saying, he applied the horn to his lips, and blew a keen, shrill blast, that spread over the surrounding country, and was echoed back by the distant hills. A few lost hounds cast up from various quarters, in the unexpected way that hounds do come to a horn. Among them were a few branded with S,[4] who did not at all set off the beauty of the rest. ''Ord rot you, you belong to that old ruffian, do you?' said Mr. Sponge, riding and cutting at one with his whip, exclaiming, 'Get away to him, ye beggar, or I'll tuck you up short.' He now, for the first time, saw them together in anything like numbers, and was struck with the queerness and inequality of the whole. They were of all sorts and sizes, from the solemn towering calf-like fox-hound down to the little wriggling harrier. They seemed, too, to be troubled with various complaints and infirmities. Some had the mange; some had blear eyes; some had but one; many were out at the elbows; and not a few down at the toes. However, they had killed a fox, and 'Handsome is that handsome does,' said Mr. Sponge, as, with his horse surrounded by them, he moved on in quest of his way home. At first, he thought to retrace his steps by the marks of his horse's hoofs, and succeeded in getting back to the dean, where Sir Harry's hounds changed foxes with Lord Scamperdale's; but he got confused with the imprints of the other horses, and very soon had to trust entirely to chance. Chance, we are sorry to say, did not befriend him; for, after wandering over the wide-extending downs, he came upon the little hamlet of Tinkler Hatch, and was informed that he had been riding in a semicircle. He there got some gruel for his horse, and, with day closing in, now set off, as directed, on the Ribchester road, with the assurance that he 'couldn't miss his way.' Some of the hounds here declined following him any farther, and slunk into cottages and outhouses as they passed along. Mr. Sponge, however, did not care for their company. Having travelled musingly along two or three miles of road, now thinking over the glorious run--now of the gallant way in which Hercules had carried him--now of the pity it was that there was nobody there to see--now of the encounter with Lord Scamperdale, just as he passed a well-filled stackyard, that had shut out the view of a flaming red brick house with a pea-green door and windows, an outburst of 'hoo-rays!' followed by one cheer more--'hoo-ray!' made the remaining wild hounds prick up their ears, and our friend rein in his horse, to hear what was 'up.' A bright fire in a room on the right of the door overpowered the clouds of tobacco-smoke with which the room was enveloped, and revealed sundry scarlet coats in the full glow of joyous hilarity. It was Sir Harry and friends recruiting at Fanner Peastraw's after their exertions; for, though they could not make much of hunting, they were always ready to drink. They were having a rare set-to--rashers of bacon, wedges of cheese, with oceans of malt-liquor. It was the appearance of a magnificent cold round of home-fed beef, red with saltpetre and flaky with white fat, borne on high by their host, that elicited the applause and the one cheer more that broke on Mr. Sponge's ear as he was passing--applause that was renewed as they caught a glimpse of his red coat, not on account of his safety or that of the hounds, but simply because being in the cheering mood, they were ready to cheer anything. 'Hil-loo! there's Mr. What's-his-name!' exclaimed brother Bob Spangles, as he caught view of Sponge and the hounds passing the window. 'So there is!' roared another; 'Hoo-ray!' 'Hoo-ray!' yelled two or three more. 'Stop him!' cried another. 'Call him in,' roared Sir Harry, 'and let's liquor him.' 'Hilloo! Mister What's-your-name!' exclaimed the other Spangles, throwing up the window. 'Hilloo, won't you come in and have some refreshment?' 'Who's there?' asked Mr. Sponge, reining in the brown. 'Oh, we're all here,' shouted brother Bob Spangles, holding up a tumbler of hot brandy-and-water; 'we're all here--Sir Harry and all,' added he. 'But what shall I do with the hounds?' asked Mr. Sponge, looking down upon the confused pack, now crowding about his horse's head. 'Oh, let the beef-eaters--the scene-shifters--I meant to say the servants--those fellows, you know, in scarlet and black caps, look after them,' replied brother Bob Spangles. 'But there are none of them here,' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, looking back on the deserted road. 'None of them here!' hiccuped Sir Harry, who had now got reeled to the window. 'None of them here,' repeated he, staring vacantly at the uneven pack. 'Oh (hiccup) I'll tell you what do--(hiccup) them into a barn or a stable, or a (hiccup) of any sort, and we'll send for them when we want to (hiccup) again.' 'Then just you call them to you,' replied Sponge, thinking they would go to their master. 'Just you call them,' repeated he, 'and I'll put them to you.' '(Hiccup) call to them?' replied Harry. 'I can't (hiccup).' 'Oh yes!' rejoined Mr. Sponge; 'call one or two by their names, and the rest will follow.' 'Names! (hiccup) I don't know any of their nasty names,' replied Sir Harry, staring wildly. 'Towler! Towler! Towler! here, good dog--hoop!--here's your liquor!' cried brother Bob Spangles, holding the smoking tumbler of brandy-and-water out of the window, as if to tempt any hound that chose to answer to the name of Towler. There didn't seem to be a Towler in the pack; at least, none of them qualified for the brandy-and-water. 'Oh, I'll (hiccup) you what we'll do,' exclaimed Sir Harry: 'I'll (hiccup) you what we'll do. 'We'll just give them a (hiccup) kick a-piece and send them (hiccuping) home,' Sir Harry reeling back into the room to the black horse-hair sofa, where his whip was. He presently appeared at the door, and, going into the midst of the hounds, commenced laying about him, rating, and cutting, and kicking, and shouting. [Illustration: SIR HARRY OF NONSUCH HOUSE] 'Geete away home with ye, ye brutes; what are you all (hiccup)ing here about? Ah! cut off his tail!' cried he, staggering after a venerable blear-eyed sage, who dropped his stern and took off. 'Be off! Does your mother know you're out?' cried Bob Spangles, out of the window, to old Marksman, who stood wondering what to do. The old hound took the hint also. 'Now, then, old feller,' cried Sir Harry, staggering up to Mr. Sponge, who still sat on his horse, in mute astonishment at Sir Harry's mode of dealing with his hounds. 'Now, then, old feller,' said he, seizing Mr. Sponge by the hand, 'get rid of your quadruped, and (hiccup) in, and make yourself "o'er all the (hiccups) of life victorious," as Bob Spangles says, when he (hiccups) it neat. This is old (hiccup) Peastraw's, a (hiccup) tenant of mine, and he'll be most (hiccup) to see you.' 'But what must I do with my horse?' asked Mr. Sponge, rubbing some of the dried sweat off the brown's shoulder as he spoke; adding, 'I should like to get him a feed of corn.' 'Give him some ale, and a (hiccup) of sherry in it,' replied Sir Harry; 'it'll do him far more good--make his mane grow,' smoothing the horse's thin, silky mane as he spoke. 'Well, I'll put him up,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'and then come to you,' throwing himself, jockey fashion, off the horse as he spoke. 'That's a (hiccup) feller,' said Sir Harry; adding, 'here's old Pea himself come to see after you.' So saying, Sir Harry reeled back to his comrades in the house, leaving Mr. Sponge in the care of the farmer. 'This way, sir; this way,' said the burly Mr. Peastraw, leading the way into his farmyard, where a line of hunters stood shivering under a long cart-shed. 'But I can't put my horse in here,' observed Mr. Sponge, looking at the unfortunate brutes. 'No, sir, no,' replied Mr. Peastraw; 'put yours in a stable, sir; put yours in a stable'; adding, 'these young gents don't care much about their horses.' 'Does anybody know the chap's name?' asked Sir Harry, reeling back into the room. 'Know his name!' exclaimed Bob Spangles; 'why, don't you?' 'No,' replied Sir Harry, with a vacant stare. 'Why, you went up and shook hands with him, as if you were as thick as thieves,' replied Bob. 'Did I?' hiccuped Sir Harry. 'Well, I thought I knew him. At least, I thought it was somebody I had (hiccup)ed before; and at one's own (hiccup) house, you know, one's 'bliged to be (hiccup) feller well (hiccup) with everybody that comes. But surely, some of you know his (hiccup) name,' added he, looking about at the company. 'I think I know his (hiccup) face,' replied Bob Spangles, imitating his brother-in-law. 'I've seen him somewhere,' observed the other Spangles, through a mouthful of beef. 'So have I,' exclaimed some one else, 'but where I can't say.' 'Most likely at church,' observed brother Bob Spangles. 'Well, I don't think he'll corrupt me,' observed Captain Quod, speaking between the fumes of a cigar. 'He'll not borrow much of me,' observed Captain Seedeybuck, producing a much tarnished green purse, and exhibiting two fourpenny-pieces at one end, and three-halfpence at the other. 'Oh, I dare say he's a good feller,' observed Sir Harry; 'I make no doubt he's one of the right sort.' Just then in came the man himself, hat and whip in hand, waving the brush proudly over his head. 'Ah, that's (hiccup) right, old feller,' exclaimed Sir Harry, again advancing with extended hand to meet him, adding, 'you'd (hiccup) all you wanted for your (hiccup) horse: mutton broth--I mean barley-water, foot-bath, everything right. Let me introduce my (hiccup) brother-in-law, Bob Spangles, my (hiccup) friend Captain Ladofwax, Captain Quod, Captain (hiccup) Bouncey, Captain (hiccup) Seedeybuck, and my (hiccup) brother-in-law, Mr. Spangles, as lushy a cove as ever was seen; ar'n't you, old boy?' added he, grasping the latter by the arm. All these gentlemen severally bobbed their heads as Sir Harry called them over, and then resumed their respective occupations--eating, drinking, and smoking. These were some of the debauched gentlemen Mr. Sponge had seen before Nonsuch House in the morning. They were all captains, or captains by courtesy. Ladofwax had been a painter and glazier in the Borough, where he made the acquaintance of Captain Quod, while that gentleman was an inmate of Captain Hudson's strong house. Captain Bouncey was the too well-known betting-office keeper; and Seedeybuck was such a constant customer of Mr. Commissioner Fonblanque's court, that that worthy legal luminary, on discharging him for the fifth time, said to him, with a very significant shake of the head, 'You'd better not come here again, sir.' Seedeybuck, being of the same opinion, had since fastened himself on to Sir Harry Scattercash, who found him in meat, drink, washing, and lodging. They were all attired in red coats, of one sort or another, though some of which were of a very antediluvian, and others of a very dressing-gown cut. Bouncey's had a hare on the button, and Seedeybuck's coat sat on him like a sack. Still a scarlet coat is a scarlet coat in the eyes of some, and the coats were not a bit more unsportsmanlike than the men. To Mr. Sponge's astonishment, instead of breaking out in inquiries as to where they had run to, the time, the distance, who was up, who was down, and so on, they began recommending the victuals and drink; and this, notwithstanding Mr. Sponge kept flourishing the brush. 'We've had a rare run,' said he, addressing himself to Sir Harry. 'Have you (hiccup)? I'm glad of it (hiccup). Pray have something to (hiccup) after it; you _must_ be (hiccup).' 'Let me help you to some of this cold round of beef?' exclaimed Captain Bouncey, brandishing the great broad-bladed carving knife. 'Have a slice of 'ot 'am,' suggested Captain Quod. 'The finest run I ever rode!' observed Mr. Sponge, still endeavouring to get a hearing. 'Dare say it would,' replied Sir Harry;' those (hiccup) hounds of mine are uncommon (hiccup).' He didn't know what they were, and the hiccup came very opportunely. 'The pace was terrific!' exclaimed Sponge. 'Dare say it would,' replied Sir Harry; 'and that's what makes me (hiccup) you're so (hiccup). Pea, here, has some rare old October--(hiccup) bushels to the (hiccup) hogshead.' 'It's capital!' exclaimed Captain Seedeybuck, frothing himself a tumblerful out of the tall brown jug. 'So is this,' rejoined Captain Quod, pouring himself out a liberal allowance of gin. 'That horse of mine carried me MAG_nificently_!' observed Mr. Sponge, with a commanding emphasis on the MAG. 'Dare say he would,' replied Sir Harry; 'he looked like a (hiccup)er--a white 'un, wasn't he?' 'No; a _brown_,' replied Mr. Sponge, disgusted at the mistake. 'Ah, well; but there _was_ somebody on a white,' replied Sir Harry. 'Oh--ah--yes--it was old Bugles on my lady's horse. By the (hiccup) way (hiccup), gentlemen, what's got Mr. Orlando (hiccup) Bugles?' asked Sir Harry, staring wildly round. 'Oh! old Bugles! old Pad-the-Hoof! old Mr. Funker! the horse frightened him so, that he went home crying,' replied Bob Spangles. 'Hope he didn't lose him?' asked Sir Harry. 'Oh no,' replied Bob; 'he gave a lad a shilling to lead him, and they trudged away very quietly together.' 'The old (hiccup)!' exclaimed Sir Harry; 'he told me he was a member of the Surrey something.' 'The Sorry Union,' replied Captain Quod. 'He _was_ out with them once, and fell off on his head and knocked his hat-crown out.' 'Well, but I was telling you about the run,' interposed Mr. Sponge, again endeavouring to enlist an audience. 'I was telling you about the run,' repeated he. 'Don't trouble yourself, my dear sir,' interrupted Captain Bouncey; 'we know all about it--found--checked--killed, killed--found--checked.' 'You _can't_ know all about it!' snapped Mr. Sponge; 'for there wasn't a soul there but myself, much to my horror, for I had a reg'lar row with old Scamperdale, and never a soul to back me.' 'What! you fell in with that mealy-mouthed gentleman, who can't (hiccup) swear because he's a (hiccup) lord, did you?' asked Sir Harry, his attention being now drawn to our friend. '_I did_,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'and a pretty passage of politeness we had of it.' 'Indeed! (hiccup),' exclaimed Sir Harry. 'Tell us (hiccup) all about it.' 'Well,' said Mr. Sponge, laying the brush lengthways before him on the table, as if he was going to demonstrate upon it. 'Well, you see we had a devil of a run--I don't know how many miles, as hard as ever we could lay legs to the ground; one by one the field all dropped astern, except the huntsman and myself. At last he gave in, or rather his horse did, and I was left alone in my glory. Well, we went over the downs at a pace that nothing but blood could live with, and, though my horse has never been beat, and is as thorough-bred as Eclipse--a horse that I have refused three hundred guineas for over and over again, I really did begin to think I might get to the bottom of him, when all of a sudden we came to a dean.' 'Ah! Cockthropple that would be,' observed Sir Harry. 'Dare say,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'Cock-anything-you-like-to-call-it for me. Well, when we got there, I thought we should have some breathing time, for the fox would be sure to hug it. But no; no sooner had I got there than a countryman hallooed him away on the far side. I got to the halloo as quick as I could, and just as I was blowing the horn,' producing Watchorn's from his pocket as he spoke; 'for I must tell you,' said he, 'that when I saw the huntsman's horse was beat, I took this from him--a horn to a foot huntsman being of no more use, you know, than a side-pocket to a cow, or a frilled shirt to a pig. Well, as I was tootleing the horn for hard life, who should turn out of the wood but old mealy-mouth himself, as you call him, and a pretty volley of abuse he let drive at me.' 'No doubt,' hiccuped Sir Harry; 'but what was _he_ doing there?' 'Oh! I should tell you,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'his hounds had run a fox into it, and were on him full cry when I got there.' 'I'll be bund,' cried Sir Harry, 'it was all sham--that he just (hiccup) and excuse for getting into that cover. The old (hiccup) beggar is always at some trick, (hiccup)-ing my foxes or disturbing my covers or something,' Sir Harry being just enough of a master of hounds to be jealous of the neighbouring ones. 'Well, however, there he was,' continued Mr. Sponge; 'and the first intimation I had of the fact was a great, gruff voice, exclaiming, "Who the Dickens are you?" '"Who the Dickens are you?" replied I.' 'Bravo!' shouted Sir Harry. 'Capital!' exclaimed Seedeybuck. 'Go it, you cripples! Newgate's on fire!' shouted Captain Quod. 'Well, what said he?' asked Sir Harry. '"They commonly call me the Earl of Scamperdale," roared he, "and those are MY HOUNDS." '"They're _not_ your hounds," replied I. '"Whose are they, then?" asked he. '"Sir Harry Scattercash's, a devilish deal better fellow," replied I. '"Oh, by Jove!" roared he, "there's an end of everything, Jack," shouted he to old Spraggon, "this gentleman says these are not my hounds!" '"I'll tell you what it is, my lord," said I, gathering my whip and riding close up as if I was goin' to pitch into him, "I'll tell you what it is; you think, because you're a lord, you may abuse people as you like, but by Jingo you've mistaken your man. I'll not put up with any of your nonsense. The Sponges are as old a family as the Scamperdales, and I'll fight you any non-hunting day you like with pistols, broadswords, fists or blunder-busses."' 'Well done you! Bravo! that's your sort!' with loud thumping of tables and clapping of hands, resounded from all parts. 'By Jove, fill him up a stiff'un! he deserves a good drink after that!' exclaimed Sir Harry, pouring Mr. Sponge out a beaker, equal parts brandy and water. Mr. Sponge immediately became a hero, and was freely admitted into their circle. He was clearly a choice spirit--a trump of the first water--and they only wanted his name to be uncommonly thick with him. As it was, they plied him with victuals and drink, all seeming anxious to bring him up to the same happy state of inebriety as themselves. They talked and they chattered, and they abused Old Scamperdale and Jack Spraggon, and lauded Mr. Sponge up to the skies. Thus day closed in, with Farmer Peastraw's bright fire shedding its cheering glow over the now encircling group. One would have thought that, with their hearts mellow, and their bodies comfortable, their minds would have turned to that sport in whose honour they sported the scarlet; but no, hunting was never mentioned. They were quite as genteel as Nimrod's swell friends at Melton, who cut it altogether. They rambled from subject to subject, chiefly on indoor and London topics; billiards, betting-offices, Coal Holes, Cremorne, Cider Cellars, Judge and Jury Courts, there being an evident confusion in their minds between the characters of sportsmen and sporting men, or gents as they are called. Mr. Sponge tried hard to get them on the right tack, were it only for the sake of singing the praises of the horse for which he had so often refused three hundred guineas, but he never succeeded in retaining an hearing. Talkers were far more plentiful than listeners. At last they got to singing, and when men begin to sing, it is a sign that they are either drunk, or have had enough of each other's company. Sir Harry's hiccup, from which he was never wholly free, increased tenfold, and he hiccuped and spluttered at almost every word. His hand, which shook so at starting that it was odds whether he got his glass to his mouth or his ear, was now steadied, but his glazed eye and green haggard countenance showed at what a fearful sacrifice the temporary steadiness had been obtained. At last his jaw dropped on his chest, his left arm hung listlessly over the back of the chair, and he fell asleep. Captain Quod, too, was overcome, and threw himself full-length on the sofa. Captain Seedeybuck began to talk thick. Just as they were all about brought to a standstill, the trampling of horses, the rumbling of wheels, and the shrill twang, twang, twang of the now almost forgotten mail horn, roused them from their reveries. It was Sir Harry's drag scouring the country in search of our party. It had been to all the public-houses and beer-shops within a radius of some miles of Nonsuch House, and was now taking a speculative blow through the centre of the circle. It was a clear frosty night, and the horses' hoofs rang, and the wheels rolled soundly over the hard road, cracking the thin ice, yet hardly sufficiently frozen to prevent a slight upshot from the wheels. [Illustration: MR. BUGLES PREFERS DANCING TO HUNTING] Twang, twang, twang, went the horn full upon Farmer Peastraw's house, causing the sleepers to start, and the waking ones to make for the window. 'COACH-A-HOY!' cried Bob Spangles, smashing a pane in a vain attempt to get the window up. The coachman pulled up at the sound. 'Here we are, Sir Harry!' cried Bob Spangles, into his brother-in-law's ear, but Sir Harry was too far gone; he could not 'come to time.' Presently a footman entered with furred coats, and shawls, and checkered rugs, in which those who were sufficiently sober enveloped themselves, and those who were too far gone were huddled by Peastraw and the man; and amid much hurry and confusion, and jostling for inside seats, the party freighted the coach, and whisked away before Mr. Sponge knew where he was. When they arrived at Nonsuch House, they found Mr. Bugles exercising the fiddlers by dancing the ladies in turns. CHAPTER LII A MOONLIGHT RIDE The position, then, of Mr. Sponge was this. He was left on a frosty, moonlight night at the door of a strange farmhouse, staring after a receding coach, containing all his recent companions. 'You'll not be goin' wi' 'em, then?' observed Mr. Peastraw, who stood beside him, listening to the shrill notes of the horn dying out in the distance. 'No,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'Rummy lot,' observed Mr. Peastraw, with a shake of the head. 'Are they?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Very!' replied Mr. Peastraw. 'Be the death of Sir Harry among 'em.' 'Who are they all?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Rubbish!' replied Peastraw with a sneer, diving his hands into the depths of his pockets. 'Well, we'd better go in,' added he, pulling his hands out and rubbing them, to betoken that he felt cold. Mr. Sponge, not being much of a drinker, was more overcome with what he had taken than a seasoned cask would have been; added to which the keen night air striking upon his heated frame soon sent the liquor into his head. He began to feel queer. 'Well,' said he to his host, 'I think I'd better be going.' 'Where are you bound for?' asked Mr. Peastraw. 'To Puddingpote Bower,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'S-o-o,' observed Mr. Peastraw thoughtfully; 'Mr. Crowdey's--Mr. Jogglebury that was?' 'Yes,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'He is a deuce of a man, that, for breaking people's hedges,' observed Mr. Peastraw; after a pause, 'he can't see a straight stick of no sort, but he's sure to be at it.' 'He's a great man for walking-sticks,' replied Mr. Sponge, staggering in the direction of the stable in which he put his horse. The house clock then struck ten. 'She's fast,' observed Mr. Peastraw, fearing his guest might be wanting to stay all night. 'How far will Puddingpote Bower be from here?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Oh, no distance, sir, no distance,' replied Mr. Peastraw, now leading out the horse. 'Can't miss your way, sir--can't miss your way. First turn on the right takes you to Collins' Green; then keep by the side of the church, next the pond; then go straight forward for about a mile and a half, or two miles, till you come to a small village called Lea Green; turn short at the finger-post as you enter, and keep right along by the side of the hills till you come to the Winslow Woods; leave them to the left, and pass by Mr. Roby's farm, at Runton--you'll know Mr. Roby?' 'Not I,' replied Mr. Sponge, hoisting himself into the saddle, and holding out a hand to take leave of his host. 'Good night, sir; good night!' exclaimed Mr. Peastraw, shaking it; 'and have the goodness to tell Mr. Crowdey from me that the next time he comes here a bush-rangin', I'll thank him to shut the gates after him. He set all my young stock wrong the last time he was here.' 'I will,' replied Mr. Sponge, riding off. Mr. Peastraw's directions were well calculated to confuse a clearer head than Mr. Sponge then carried; and the reader will not be surprised to learn that, long before he reached the Winslow Woods, he was regularly bewildered. Indeed, there is no surer way of losing oneself than trying to follow a long train of directions in a strange country. It is far better to establish one's own landmarks, and make for them as the natural course of the country seems to direct. Our forefathers had a wonderful knack of getting to points with as little circumlocution as possible. Mr. Sponge, however, knew no points, and was quite at sea; indeed, even if he had, they would have been of little use, for a fitful and frequently obscured moon threw such bewildering lights and shades around, that a native would have had some difficulty in recognizing the country. The frost grew more intense, the stars shone clear and bright, and the cold took our friend by the nape of the neck, shooting across his shoulder-blades and right down his back. Mr. Sponge wished and wished he was anywhere but where he was--flattening his nose against the coffee-room window of the Bantam, tooling in a hansom as hard as he could go, squaring along Oxford Street criticizing horses--nay, he wouldn't care to be undergoing Gustavus James himself--anything, rather than rambling about a strange country in a cold winter's night, with nothing but the hooting of owls and the occasional bark of shepherds' dogs to enliven his solitude. The houses were few and far between. The lights in the cottages had long been extinguished, and the occupiers of such of the farmhouses as would come to his knocks were gruff in their answers, and short in their directions. At length, after riding, and riding, and riding, more with a view of keeping himself awake than in the expectation of finding his way, just as he was preparing to arouse the inmates of a cottage by the roadside, a sudden gleam of moonlight fell upon the building, revealing the half-Swiss, half-Gothic lodge of Puddingpote Bower. CHAPTER LIII PUDDINGPOTE BOWER We must now back the train a little, and have a look at Jog and Co. Mr. and Mrs. Jog had had another squabble after Mr. Sponge's departure in the morning, Mr. Jog reproving Mrs. Jog for the interest she seemed to take in Mr. Sponge, as shown by her going to the door to see him amble away on the piebald hack. Mrs. Jog justified herself on the score of Gustavus James, with whom she was quite sure Mr. Sponge was much struck, and to whom, she made no doubt, he would leave his ample fortune. Jog, on the other hand, wheezed and puffed into his frill, and reasserted that Mr. Sponge was as likely to live as Gustavus James, and to marry and to have a bushel of children of his own; while Mrs. Jog rejoined that he was 'sure to break his neck'--breaking their necks being, as she conceived, the inevitable end of fox-hunters. Jog, who had not prosecuted the sport of hunting long enough to be able to gainsay her assertion, though he took especial care to defer the operation of breaking his own neck as long as he could, fell back upon the expense and inconvenience of keeping Mr. Sponge and his three horses, and his saucy servant, who had taught their domestics to turn up their noses at his diet table; above all, at his stick-jaw and undeniable small-beer. So they went fighting and squabbling on, till at last the scene ended, as usual, by Mrs. Jogglebury bursting into tears, and declaring that Jog didn't care a farthing either for her or her children. Jog then bundled off, to try and fashion a most incorrigible-looking, knotty blackthorn into a head of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. He afterwards took a turn at a hazel that he thought would make a Joe Hume. Having occupied himself with these till the children's dinner-hour, he took a wandering, snatching sort of meal, and then put on his paletot, with a little hatchet in the pocket, and went off in search of the raw material in his own and the neighbouring hedges. Evening came, and with it came Jog, laden, as usual, with an armful of gibbeys, but the shades of night followed evening ere there was any tidings of the sporting inmates of his house. At length, just as Jog was taking his last stroll prior to going in for good, he espied a pair of vacillating white breeches coming up the avenue with a clearly drunken man inside them. Jog stood straining his eyes watching their movements, wondering whether they would keep the saddle or come off--whenever the breeches seemed irrevocably gone, they invariably recovered themselves with a jerk or a lurch--Jog now saw it was Leather on the piebald, and though he had no fancy for the man, he stood to let him come up, thinking to hear something of Sponge. Leather in due time saw the great looming outline of our friend and came staring and shaking his head, endeavouring to identify it. He thought at first it was the Squire--next he thought it wasn't--then he was sure it wasn't. 'Oh! it's you, old boy, is it?' at last exclaimed he, pulling up beside the large holly against which our friend had placed himself, 'It's you, old boy, is it?' repeated he, extending his right hand and nearly overbalancing himself, adding as he recovered his equilibrium, 'I thought it was the old Woolpack at first,' nodding his head towards the house. 'Well,' spluttered he, pulling up, and sitting, as he thought, quite straight in the saddle, 'we've had the finest day's sport and the most equitable drink I've enjoyed for many a long day. 'Ord bless us, what a gent that Sir 'Arry is! He's the sort of man that should have money. I'm blowed, if I were queen, but I'd melt all the great blubber-headed fellows like this 'ere Crowdey down, and make one sich man as Sir 'Arry out of the 'ole on 'em. Beer! they don't know wot beer is there! nothin' but the werry strongest hale, instead of the puzzon one gets at this awful mean place, that looks like nothin' but the weshin' o' brewers' haprons. Oh! I 'umbly begs pardon,' exclaimed he, dropping from his horse on to his knees on discovering that he was addressing Mr. Crowdey--'I thought it was Robins, the mole-ketcher.' 'Thought it was Robins, the mole-catcher,' growled Jog; 'what have you to do with (puff) Robins, the (wheeze) mole-catcher?' Jog boiled over with indignation. At first he thought of kicking Leather, a feat that his suppliant position made extremely convenient, if not tempting. Prudence, however, suggested that Leather might have him up for the assault. So he stood puffing and wheezing and eyeing the blear-eyed, brandy-nosed old drunkard with, as he thought, a withering look of contempt; and then, though the man was drunk and the night was dark, he waddled off, leaving Mr. Leather on his once white breeches' knees. If Jog had had reasonable time, say an hour or an hour and twenty minutes, to improvise it in, he would have said something uncommonly sharp; as it was he left him with the pertinent inquiry we have recorded--'What have you to do with Robins, the mole-catcher?' We need hardly say that this little incident did not at all ingratiate Mr. Sponge with his host, who re-entered his house in a worse humour than ever. It was insulting a gentleman on his own ter-ri-tory--bearding an Englishman in his own castle. 'Not to be borne (puff),' said Jog. It was now nearly five o'clock, Jog's dinner hour, and still no Mr. Sponge. Mrs. Jog proposed waiting half an hour, indeed, she had told Susan, the cook, to keep the dinner back a little, to give Mr. Sponge a chance, who could not possibly change his tight hunting things for his evening tights in the short space of time that Jog could drop off his loose-flowing garments, wash his hands, and run the comb through his lank, candle-like hair. Five o'clock struck, and Jog was just applying his hand to the fat red-and-black worsted bell-pull, when Mrs. Jog announced what she had done. 'Put off the dinner (wheeze)! put off the dinner (puff)!' repeated he, blowing furiously into his clean shirt-frill, which stuck up under his nose like a hand-saw; 'put off the dinner (wheeze)! put off the dinner (puff), I wish you wouldn't do such (wheeze) things without consulting (gasp) me.' 'Well, but, my dear, you couldn't possibly sit down without him,' observed Mrs. Jog mildly. 'Possibly! (puff), possibly! (wheeze),' repeated Jog. 'There's no possibly in the matter,' retorted he, blowing more furiously into the frill. Mrs. Jog was silent. 'A man should conform to the (puff) hours of the (wheeze) house,' observed Jog, after a pause. 'Well, but, my dear, you know hunters are always allowed a little law,' observed Mrs. Jog. 'Law! (puff), law! (wheeze),' retorted Jog. 'I never want any law,' thinking of Smiler _v._ Jogglebury. Half-past five o'clock came, and still no Sponge; and Mrs. Jog, thinking it would be better to arrange to have something hot for him when he came, than to do further battle with her husband, gave the bell the double ring indicative of 'bring dinner.' 'Nay (puff), nay (wheeze); when you have (gasp)ed so long,' growled Jog, taking the other tack, 'you might as well have (wheez)ed a little longer'--snorting into his frill as he spoke. Mrs. Jogglebury said nothing, but slipped quietly out, as if after her keys, to tell Susan to keep so-and-so in the meat-screen, and have a few potatoes ready to boil against Mr. Sponge arrived. She then sidled back quietly into the room. Jog and she presently proceeded to that all-important meal. Jog blowing out the company candles on the side-table as he passed. Jog munched away with a capital appetite; but Mrs. Jog, who took the bulk of her lading in at the children's dinner, sat trifling with the contents of her plate, listening alternately for the sound of horses' hoofs outside, and for nursery squalls in. Dinner passed over, and the fruity port and sugary sherry soon usurped the places that stick-jaw pudding and cheese had occupied. 'Mr. (puff) Sponge must be (wheeze), I think,' observed Jog, hauling his great silver watch out, like a bucket, from his fob, on seeing that it only wanted ten minutes to seven. 'Oh, Jog!' exclaimed Mrs. Jog, clasping her beautiful hands, and casting her bright beady eyes up to the low ceiling. 'Oh, Jog! What's the matter now? (puff--wheeze--gasp),' exclaimed our friend, reddening up, and fixing his stupid eyes intently on his wife. 'Oh, nothing,' replied Mrs. Jog, unclasping her hands, and bringing down her eyes. 'Oh, nothin'!' retorted Jog. 'Nothin'!' repeated he. 'Ladies don't get into such tantrums for nothin'.' 'Well, then, Jog, I was thinking if anything should have ha--ha--happened Mr. Sponge, how Gustavus Ja--Ja--James will have lost his chance.' And thereupon she dived for her lace-fringed pocket-handkerchief, and hurried out of the room. But Mrs. Jog had said quite enough to make the caldron of Jog's jealousy boil over, and he sat staring into the fire, imagining all sorts of horrible devices in the coals and cinders, and conjuring up all sorts of evils, until he felt himself possessed of a hundred and twenty thousand devils. 'I'll get shot of this chap at last,' said he, with a knowing jerk of his head and a puff into his frill, as he drew his thick legs under his chair, and made a semi-circle to get at the bottle. 'I'll get shot of this chap,' repeated he, pouring himself out a bumper of the syrupy port, and eyeing it at the composite candle. He drained off the glass, and immediately filled another. That, too, went down; then he took another, and another, and another; and seeing the bottle get low, he thought he might as well finish it. He felt better after it. Not that he was a bit more reconciled to our friend Mr. Sponge, but he felt more equal to cope with him--he even felt as if he could fight him. There did not, however, seem to be much likelihood of his having to perform that ceremony, for nine o'clock struck and no Mr. Sponge, and at half-past Mr. Crowdey stumped off to bed. Mrs. Crowdey, having given Bartholomew and Susan a dirty pack of cards to play with to keep them awake till Mr. Sponge arrived, went to bed, too, and the house was presently tranquil. It, however, happened that that amazing prodigy, Gustavus James, having been out on a sort of eleemosynary excursion among the neighbouring farmers and people, exhibiting as well his fine blue-feathered hat, as his astonishing proficiency in 'Bah! bah! black sheep,' and 'Obin and Ichard,' getting seed-cake from one, sponge cake from another, and toffy from a third, was troubled with a very bad stomach-ache during the night, of which he soon made the house sensible by his screams and his cries. Jog and his wife were presently at him; and, as Jog sat in his white cotton nightcap and flowing flannel dressing-gown in an easy chair in the nursery, he heard the crack of the whip, and the prolonged _yeea-yu-u-p_ of Mr. Sponge's arrival. Presently the trampling of a horse was heard passing round to the stable. The clock then struck one. [Illustration: GUSTAVUS JAMES IN TROUBLE] 'Pretty hour for a man to come home to a strange house!' observed Mr. Jog, for the nurse, or Murry Ann, or Mrs. Jog, or any one that liked, to take up. Mrs. Jog was busy with the rhubarb and magnesia, and the others said nothing. After the lapse of a few minutes, the clank, clank, clank of Mr. Sponge's spurs was heard as he passed round to the front, and Mr. Jog stole out on to the landing to hear how he would get in. Thump! thump! thump! went Mr. Sponge at the door; rap--tap--tap he went at it with his whip. 'Comin', sir! comin'!' exclaimed Bartholomew from the inside. Presently the shooting of bolts, the withdrawal of bands, and the opening of doors, were heard. 'Not gone to bed yet, old boy?' said Mr. Sponge, as he entered. 'No, thir!' snuffled the boy, who had a bad cold, 'been thitten up for you.' 'Old puff-and-blow gone?' asked Mr. Sponge, depositing his hat and whip on a chair. The boy gave no answer. 'Is old bellows-to-mend gone to bed?' asked Mr. Sponge in a louder voice. 'The charman's gone,' replied the boy, who looked upon his master--the chairman of the Stir-it-stiff Union--as the impersonification of all earthly greatness. 'Dash your impittance,' growled Jog, slinking back into the nursery; 'I'll pay you off! (puff),' added he, with a jerk of his white night-capped head, 'I'll bellows-to-mend you! (wheeze).' CHAPTER LIV FAMILY JARS Gustavus James's internal qualms being at length appeased, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey returned to bed, but not to sleep--sleep there was none for him. He was full of indignation and jealousy, and felt suspicious of the very bolster itself. He had been insulted--grossly insulted. Three such names--the 'Woolpack,' 'Old puff-and-blow,' and 'Bellows-to-mend'--no gentleman, surely, ever was called before by a guest, in his own house. Called, too, before his own servant. What veneration, what respect, could a servant feel for a master whom he heard called 'Old bellows-to-mend'? It damaged the respect inspired by the chairmanship of the Stir-it-stiff Union, to say nothing of the trusteeship of the Sloppyhocks, Tolpuddle, and other turnpike-roads. It annihilated everything. So he fumed, and fretted, and snorted, and snored. Worst of all, he had no one to whom he could unburden his grievance. He could not make the partner of his bosom a partner in his woes, because--and he bounced about so that he almost shot the clothes off the bed, at the thoughts of the 'why.' Thus he lay tumbling and tossing, and fuming and wheezing and puffing, now vowing vengeance against Leather, who he recollected had called him the 'Woolpack,' and determining to have him turned off in the morning for his impudence--now devising schemes for getting rid of Mr. Sponge and him together. Oh, could he but see them off! could he but see the portmanteau and carpet-bag again standing in the passage, he would gladly lend his phaeton to carry them anywhere. He would drive it himself for the pleasure of knowing and feeling he was clear of them. He wouldn't haggle about the pikes; nay, he would even give Sponge a gibbey, any he liked--the pick of the whole--Wellington, Napoleon Bonaparte, a crowned head even, though it would damage the set. So he lay, rolling and restless, hearing every clock strike; now trying to divert his thoughts, by making a rough calculation what all his gibbeys put together were worth; now considering whether he had forgotten to go for any he had marked in the course of his peregrinations; now wishing he had laid one about old Leather, when he fell on his knees after calling him the 'Woolpack'; then wondering whether Leather would have had him before the County Court for damages, or taken him before Justice Slowcoach for the assault. As morning advanced, his thoughts again turned upon the best mode of getting rid of his most unwelcome guests, and he arose and dressed, with the full determination of trying what he could do. Having tried the effects of an upstairs shout the morning before, he decided to see what a down one would do; accordingly, he mounted the stairs and climbed the sort of companion-ladder that led to the servants' attics, where he kept a stock of gibbeys in the rafters. Having reached this, he cleared his throat, laid his head over the banisters, and putting an open hand on each side of his mouth to direct the sound, exclaimed with a loud and audible voice: 'BARTHOLO--_m--e--w_!' 'BAR--THO--LO--_m--e--e--w_!' repeated he, after a pause, with a full separation of the syllables and a prolonged intonation of the _m--e--w_. No Bartholomew answered. 'MURRAY ANN!' then hallooed Jog, in a sharper, quicker key. 'MURRAY ANN!' repeated he, still louder, after a pause. 'Yes, sir! here, sir!' exclaimed that invaluable servant, tidying her pink-ribboned cap as she hurried into the passage below. Looking up, she caught sight of her master's great sallow chaps hanging like a flitch of bacon over the garret banister. 'Oh, Murry Ann,' bellowed Mr. Jog, at the top of his voice, still holding his hands to his mouth, as soon as he saw her, 'Oh, Murry Ann, you'd better get the (puff) breakfast ready; I think the (gasp) Mr. Sponge will be (wheezing) away to-day.' 'Yes, sir,' replied Mary Ann. 'And tell Bartholomew to get his washin' bills in.' 'He harn't had no washin' done,' replied Mary Ann, raising her voice to correspond with that of her master. 'Then his bill for postage,' replied Mr. Jog, in the same tone. 'He harn't had no letters neither,' replied Mary Ann. 'Oh, then, just get the breakfast ready,' rejoined Jog, adding, 'he'll be (wheezing) away as soon as he gets it, I (puff) expect.' 'Will he?' said Mr. Sponge to himself, as, with throbbing head, he lay tumbling about in bed, alleviating the recollections of the previous day's debauch with an occasional dive into his old friend _Mogg_. Corporeally, he was in bed at Puddingpote Bower, but mentally, he was at the door of the Goose and Gridiron, in St. Paul's Churchyard, waiting for the three o'clock bus, coming from the Bank to take him to Isleworth Gate. Jog's bellow to 'Bartholo--_m--e--w_' interrupted the journey, just as in imagination Mr. Sponge was putting his foot on the wheel and hallooing to the driver to hand him the strap to help him on to the box. 'Will he?' said Mr. Sponge to himself, as he heard Jog's reiterated assertion that he would be wheezing away that day. 'Wish you may get it, old boy,' added he, tucking the now backless _Mogg_ under his pillow, and turning over for a snooze. When he got down, he found the party ranged at breakfast, minus the interesting prodigy, Gustavus James, whom Sponge proceeded to inquire after as soon as he had made his obeisance to his host and hostess, and distributed a round of daubed comfits to the rest of the juvenile party. 'But where's my little friend, Augustus James?' asked he, on arriving at the wonder's high chair by the side of mamma. 'Where's my little friend, Augustus James?' asked he, with an air of concern. 'Oh, _Gustavus_ James,' replied Mrs. Jog, with an emphasis on Gustavus; '_Gustavus_ James is not very well this morning; had a little indigestion during the night.' 'Poor little hound,' observed Mr. Sponge, filling his mouth with hot kidney, glad to be rid for a time of the prodigy. 'I thought I heard a row when I came home, which was rather late for an early man like me, but the fact was, nothing would serve Sir Harry but I should go with him to get some refreshment at a tenant's of his; and we got on talking, first about one thing, and then about another, and the time slipped away so quickly, that day was gone before I knew where I was; and though Sir Harry was most anxious--indeed, would hardly take a refusal--for me to go home with him, I felt that, being a guest here, I couldn't do it--at least, not then; so I got my horse, and tried to find my way with such directions as the farmer gave me, and soon lost my way, for the moon was uncertain, and the country all strange both to me and my horse.' 'What farmer was it?' asked Jog, with the butter streaming down the gutters of his chin from a mouthful of thick toast. 'Farmer--farmer--farmer--let me see, what farmer it was,' replied Mr. Sponge thoughtfully, again attacking the kidneys. 'Oh, farmer Beanstraw, I should say.' '_Pea_straw, p'raps?' suggested Jog, colouring up, and staring intently at Mr. Sponge. 'Pea--Peastraw was the name,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'I know him,' said Jog; 'Peastraw of Stoke.' 'Ah, he said he knew you.' replied Mr. Sponge. 'Did he?' asked Jog eagerly. 'What did he say?' 'Say--let me see what he said,' replied he, pretending to recollect.' He said "you are a deuced good feller," and I'd to make his compliments to you, and to say that there were some nice young ash saplings on his farm that you were welcome to cut.' 'Did he?' exclaimed Jog; 'I'm sure that's very (puff) polite of him. I'll (wheeze) over there the first opportunity.' 'And what did you make of Sir Harry?' asked Mrs. Jog. 'Did you (puff) say you were going to (wheeze) over to him?' asked Jog eagerly. 'I told him I'd go to him before I left the country,' replied Mr. Sponge carelessly; adding, 'Sir Harry is rather too fast a man for me.' 'Too fast for himself, I should think,' observed Mrs. Jog. 'Fine (puff--wheeze) young man,' growled Jog into the bottom of his cup. 'Have you known him long?' asked Mrs. Jogglebury. 'Oh, we fox-hunters all know each other,' replied Mr. Sponge evasively. 'Well, now that's what I tell Mr. Jogglebury,' exclaimed she. 'Mr. Jog's so shy, that there's no getting him to do what he ought,' added the lady. 'No one, to hear him, would think he's the great man he is.' 'Ought (puff)--ought (wheeze),' retorted Jog, puffing furiously into his capacious shirt-frill. 'It's one (puff) thing to know (puff) people out with the (wheeze) hounds, and another to go calling upon them at their (gasp) houses.' 'Well, but, my dear, that's the way people make acquaintance,' replied his wife. 'Isn't it, Mr. Sponge?' continued she, appealing to our friend. 'Oh, certainly,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'certainly; all men are equal out hunting.' 'So I say,' exclaimed Mrs. Jogglebury; 'and yet I can't get Jog to call on Sir George Stiff, though he meets him frequently out hunting.' 'Well, but then I can't (puff) upon him out hunting (wheeze), and then we're not all equal (gasp) when we go home.' So saying, our friend rose from his chair, and after giving each leg its usual shake, and banging his pockets behind to feel that he had his keys safe, he strutted consequentially up to the window to see how the day looked. Mr. Sponge, not being desirous of continuing the 'calling' controversy, especially as it might lead to inquiries relative to his acquaintance with Sir Harry, finished the contents of his plate quickly, drank up his tea, and was presently alongside of his host, asking him whether he 'was good for a ride, a walk, or what?' 'A (puff) ride, a (wheeze) walk, or a (gasp) what?' repeated Jog thoughtfully. 'No, I (puff) think I'll stay at (puff) home,' thinking that would be the safest plan. ''Ord, hang it, you'll never lie at earth such a day as this!' exclaimed Sponge, looking out on the bright, sunny landscape. 'Got a great deal to do,' retorted Jog, who, like all thoroughly idle men, was always dreadfully busy. He then dived into a bundle of rough sticks, and proceeded to select one to fashion into the head of Mr. Hume. Sponge, being unable to make anything of him, was obliged to exhaust the day in the stable, and in sauntering about the country. It was clear Jog was determined to be rid of him, and he was sadly puzzled what to do. Dinner found his host in no better humour, and after a sort of Quakers' meeting of an evening, they parted heartily sick of each other. CHAPTER LV THE TRIGGER Jog slept badly again, and arose next morning full of projects for getting rid of his impudent, unceremonious, free-and-easy guest. Having tried both an up and a downstairs shout, he now went out and planted himself immediately under Mr. Sponge's bedroom window, and, clearing his voice, commenced his usual vociferations. 'Bartholo--_m--e--w_!' whined he. '_Bartholo--m--e--w_!' repeated he, somewhat louder. 'BAR--THOLO--_m--e--w_!' roared he, in a voice of thunder. Bartholomew did not answer. 'Murry Ann!' exclaimed Jog, after a pause. '_Murry Ann!_' repeated he, still louder. 'MURRAY ANN!' roared he, at the top of his voice. 'Comin', sir! comin'!' exclaimed Mary Ann, peeping down upon him from the garret-window. 'Oh, Murry Ann,' cried Mr. Jog, looking up, and catching the ends of her blue ribbons streaming past the window-frame, as she changed her nightcap for a day one, 'oh, Murry Ann, you'd better be (puff)in' forrard with the (gasp) breakfast; Mr. Sponge'll most likely be (wheeze)in' away to-day.' 'Yes, sir,' replied Mary Ann, adjusting the cap becomingly. 'Confounded, puffing, wheezing, gasping, broken-winded old blockhead it is!' growled Mr. Sponge, wishing he could get to his former earth at Puffington's, or anywhere else. When he got down he found Jog in a very roomy, bright, green-plush shooting-jacket, with pockets innumerable, and a whistle suspended to a button-hole. His nether man was encased in a pair of most dilapidated white moleskins, that had been degraded from hunting into shooting ones, and whose cracks and darns showed the perils to which their wearer had been exposed. Below these were drab, horn-buttoned gaiters, and hob-nailed shoes. 'Going a-gunning, are you?' asked Mr. Sponge, after the morning salutation, which Jog returned most gruffly. 'I'll go with you,' said Mr. Sponge, at once dispelling the delusion of his wheezing away. 'Only going to frighten the (puff) rooks off the (gasp) wheat,' replied Jog carelessly, not wishing to let Sponge see what a numb hand he was with a gun. 'I thought you told me you were going to get me a hare,' observed Mrs. Jog; adding, 'I'm sure shooting is a much more rational amusement than tearing your clothes going after the hounds,' eyeing the much dilapidated moleskins as she spoke. Mrs. Jog found shooting more useful than hunting. 'Oh, if a (puff) hare comes in my (gasp) way, I'll turn her over,' replied Jog carelessly, as if turning them over was quite a matter of course with him; adding, 'but I'm not (wheezing) out for the express purpose of shooting one.' 'Ah, well,' observed Sponge, 'I'll go with you, all the same.' 'But I've only got one gun,' gasped Jog, thinking it would be worse to have Sponge laughing at his shooting than even leaving him at home. 'Then, we'll shoot turn and turn about,' replied the pertinacious guest. Jog did his best to dissuade him, observing that the birds were (puff) scarce and (wheeze) wild, and the (gasp) hares much troubled with poachers; but Mr. Sponge wanted a walk, and moreover had a fancy for seeing Jog handle his gun. Having cut himself some extremely substantial sandwiches, and filled his 'monkey' full of sherry, our friend Jog slipped out the back way to loosen old Ponto, who acted the triple part of pointer, house-dog, and horse to Gustavus James. He was a great fat, black-and-white brute, with a head like a hat-box, a tail like a clothes-peg, and a back as broad as a well-fed sheep's. The old brute was so frantic at the sight of his master in his green coat, and wide-awake to match, that he jumped and bounced, and barked, and rattled his chain, and set up such yells, that his noise sounded all over the house, and soon brought Mr. Sponge to the scene of action, where stood our friend, loading his gun and looking as consequential as possible. 'I shall only just take a (puff) stroll over moy (wheeze) ter-ri-to-ry,' observed Jog, as Mr. Sponge emerged at the back door. [Illustration: FRANTIC DELIGHT OF PONTO] Jog's pace was about two miles and a half an hour, stoppages included, and he thought it advisable to prepare Mr. Sponge for the trial. He then shouldered his gun and waddled away, first over the stile into Farmer Stiffland's stubble, round which Ponto ranged in the most riotous, independent way, regardless of Jog's whistles and rates and the crack of his little knotty whip. Jog then crossed the old pasture into Mr. Lowland's turnips, into which Ponto dashed in the same energetic way, but these impediments to travelling soon told on his great buttermilk carcass, and brought him to a more subdued pace; still, the dog had a good deal more energy than his master. Round he went, sniffing and hunting, then dashing right through the middle of the field, as if he was out on his own account alone, and had nothing whatever to do with a master. 'Why, your dog'll spring all the birds out of shot,' observed Mr. Sponge; and, just as he spoke, whirr! rose a covey of partridges, eleven in number, quite at an impossible distance, but Jog blazed away all the same. ''Ord rot it, man! if you'd only held your (something) tongue,' growled Jog, as he shaded the sun from his eyes to mark them down, 'I'd have (wheezed) half of them over.' 'Nonsense, man!' replied Mr. Sponge. 'They were a mile out of shot.' 'I think I should know my (puff) gun better than (wheeze) you,' replied Jog, bringing it down to load. 'They're down!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, who, having watched them till they began to skim in their flight, saw them stop, flap their wings, and drop among some straggling gorse on the hill before them. 'Let's break the covey; we shall bag them better singly.' 'Take time (puff), replied Jog, snorting into his frill, and measuring out his powder most leisurely. 'Take time (wheeze),' repeated he; 'they're just on the bounds of moy ter-ri-to-ry.' Jog had had many a game at romps with these birds, and knew their haunts and habits to a nicety. The covey consisted of thirteen at first, but by repeated blazings into the 'brown of 'em,' he had succeeded in knocking down two. Jog was not one of your conceited shots, who never fired but when he was sure of killing; on the contrary, he always let drive far or near; and even if he shot a hare, which he sometimes did, with the first barrel, he always popped the second into her, to make sure. The chairman's shooting afforded amusement to the neighbourhood. On one occasion a party of reapers, having watched him miss twelve shots in succession, gave him three cheers on coming to the thirteenth--but to our day. Jog had now got his gun reloaded with mischief, the cap put on, and all ready for a fresh start. Ponto, meanwhile, had been ranging, Jog thinking it better to let him take the edge off his ardour than conform to the strict rules of lying down or coming to heel. 'Now, let's on,' cried Mr. Sponge, stepping out quickly. 'Take time (puff), take time (wheeze),' gasped Jog, waddling along; 'better let 'em settle a little (puff). Better let 'em settle a little (gasp),' added he, labouring on. 'Oh no, keep them moving,' replied Mr. Sponge, 'keep them moving. Only get at 'em on the hill, and drive 'em into the fields below, and we shall have rare fun.' 'But the (puff) fields below are not mine,' gasped Jog. 'Whose are they?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Oh (puff), Mrs. Moses's,' gasped Jog. 'My stoopid old uncle,' continued he, stopping, and laying hold of Mr. Sponge's arm, as if to illustrate his position, but in reality to get breath, 'my stoopid old uncle (puff) missed buying that (wheeze) land when old Harry Griperton died. I only wanted that to make moy (wheeze) ter-ri-to-ry extend all the (gasp) way up to Cockwhistle Park there,' continued he, climbing on to a stile they now approached, and setting aside the top stone. 'That's Cockwhistle Park, up there--just where you see the (puff) windmill--then (puff) moy (wheeze) ter-ri-to-ry comes up to the (wheeze) fallow you see all yellow with runch; and if my old (puff) uncle (wheeze) Crowdey had had the sense of a (gasp) goose, he'd have (wheezed) that when it was sold. Moy (puff) name was (wheeze) Jogglebury,' added he, 'before my (gasp) uncle died.' 'Well, never mind about that,' replied Mr. Sponge; 'let us go on after these birds.' 'Oh, we'll (puff) up to them presently,' observed Jog, labouring away, with half a ton of clay at each foot, the sun having dispelled the frost where it struck, and made the land carry. '_Presently!_' retorted Mr. Sponge. 'But you should make haste, man.' 'Well, but let me go my own (puff) pace,' snapped Jog, labouring away. 'Pace!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, 'your own crawl, you should say.' 'Indeed!' growled Jog, with an angry snort. They now got through a well-established cattle-gap into a very rushy, squashy, gorse-grown pasture, at the bottom of the rising ground on which Mr. Sponge had marked the birds. Ponto, whose energetic exertions had been gradually relaxing, until he had settled down to a leisurely hunting-dog, suddenly stood transfixed, with the right foot up, and his gaze settled on a rushy tuft. 'P-o-o-n-to!' ejaculated Jog, expecting every minute to see him dash at it. 'P-o-o-n-to!' repeated he, raising his hand. Mr. Sponge stood on the tip-toe of expectation; Jog raised his wide-awake hat from his eyes and advanced cautiously with the engine of destruction cocked. Up started a great hare; bang! went the gun, with the hare none the worse. Bang! went the other barrel, which the hare acknowledged by two or three stotting bounds and an increase of pace. 'Well missed!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge. Away went Ponto in pursuit. 'P-o-o-n-to!' shrieked Jog, stamping with rage. 'I could have wiped your nose,' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, covering the hare with a hedge-stake placed to his shoulder like a gun. 'Could you?' growled Jog; ''spose you wipe your own,' added he, not understanding the meaning of the term. Meanwhile, old Ponto went rolling away most energetically, the farther he went the farther he was left behind, till the hare having scuttled out of sight, he wheeled about and came leisurely back, as if he was doing all right. Jog was very wroth, and vented his anger on the dog, which, he declared, had caused him to miss, vowing, as he rammed away at the charge, that he never missed such a shot before. Mr. Sponge stood eyeing him with a look of incredulity, thinking that a man who could miss such a shot could miss anything. They were now all ready for a fresh start, and Ponto, having pocketed his objurgation, dashed forward again up the rising ground over which the covey had dropped. Jog's thick wind was a serious impediment to the expeditious mounting of the hill, and the dog seemed aware of his infirmity, and to take pleasure in aggravating him. 'P-o-o-n-to!' gasped Jog, as he slipped, and scrambled, and toiled, sorely impeded by the encumbrance of his gun. But P-o-o-n-to heeded him not. He knew his master couldn't catch him, and if he did, that he durstn't flog him. 'P-o-o-n-to!' gasped Jog again, still louder, catching at a bush to prevent his slipping back. 'T-o-o-h-o-o! P-o-o-n-to!' wheezed he; but the dog just rolled his great stern, and bustled about more actively than ever. 'Hang ye! but I'd cut you in two if I had you!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, eyeing his independent proceedings. 'He's not a bad (puff) dog,' observed Jog, mopping the perspiration from his brow. 'He's not a good 'un,' retorted Mr. Sponge. 'D'ye think not (wheeze)?' asked Jog. 'Sure of it,' replied Sponge. 'Serves me,' growled Jog, labouring up the hill. 'Easy served,' replied Mr. Sponge, whistling, and eyeing the independent animal. 'T-o-o-h-o-o! P-o-o-n-t-o!' gasped Jog, as he dashed forward on reaching level ground more eagerly than ever. 'P-o-o-n-to! T-o-o-h-o-o!' repeated he, in a still louder tone, with the same success. 'You'd better get up to him,' observed Mr. Sponge, 'or he'll spring all the birds.' Jog, however, blundered on at his own pace, growling: 'Most (puff) haste, least (wheeze) speed.' The dog was now fast drawing upon where the birds lit; and Mr. Sponge and Jog having reached the top of the hill, Mr. Sponge stood still to watch the result. Up whirred four birds out of a patch of gorse behind the dog, all presenting most beautiful shots. Jog blazed a barrel at them without touching a feather, and the report of the gun immediately raised three brace more into the thick of which he fired with similar success. They all skimmed away unhurt. 'Well missed!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge again. 'You're what they call a good shooter but a bad hitter.' 'You're what they call a (wheeze) fellow,' growled Jog. He meant to say 'saucy,' but the word wouldn't rise. He then commenced reloading his gun, and lecturing P-o-o-n-to, who still continued his exertions, and inwardly anathematizing Mr. Sponge. He wished he had left him at home. Then recollecting Mrs. Jog, he thought perhaps he was as well where he was. Still his presence made him shoot worse than usual, and there was no occasion for that. 'Let _me_ have a shot now,' said Mr. Sponge. 'Shot (puff)--shot (wheeze); well, take a shot if you choose,' replied he. Just as Mr. Sponge got the gun, up rose the eleventh bird, and he knocked it over. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE GIVES PONTO A LESSON] '_That's_ the way to do it!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, as the bird fell dead before Ponto. The excited dog, unused to such descents, snatched it up and ran off. Just as he was getting out of shot, Mr. Sponge fired the other barrel at him, causing him to drop the bird and run yelping and howling away. Jog was furious. He stamped, and gasped, and fumed, and wheezed, and seemed like to burst with anger and indignation. Though the dog ran away as hard as he could lick, Jog insisted that he was mortally wounded, and would die. 'He never saw so (wheeze) a thing done. He wouldn't have taken twenty pounds for the dog. No, he wouldn't have taken thirty. Forty wouldn't have bought him. He was worth fifty of anybody's money,' and so he went on, fuming and advancing his value as he spoke. Mr. Sponge stole away to where the dog had dropped the bird; and Mr. Jog, availing himself of his absence, retraced his steps down the hill, and struck off home at a much faster pace than he came. Arrived there, he found the dog in the kitchen, somewhat sore from the visitation of the shot, but not sufficiently injured to prevent his enjoying a most liberal plate of stick-jaw pudding supplied by a general contribution of the servants. Jog's wrath was then turned in another direction, and he blew up for the waste and extravagance of the act, hinting pretty freely that he knew who it was that had set them against it. Altogether he was full of troubles, vexations, and annoyances; and after spending another most disagreeable evening with our friend Sponge, went to bed more determined than ever to get rid of him. CHAPTER LVI NONSUCH HOUSE AGAIN Poor Jog again varied his hints the next morning. After sundry prefatory 'Murry Anns!' and 'Bar-tho-lo-_mews_!' he at length got the latter to answer, when, raising his voice so as to fill the whole house, he desired him to go to the stable, and let Mr. Sponge's man know his master would be (wheezing) away. 'You're wrong there, old buck,' growled Leather, as he heard the foregoing; 'he's half-way to Sir 'Arry's by this time.' And sure enough, Mr. Sponge was, as none knew better than Leather, who had got him his horse, the hack being indisposed--that is to say, having been out all night with Mr. Leather on a drinking excursion, Leather having just got home in time to receive the purple-coated, bare-footed runner of Nonsuch House, who dropped in, _en passant_, to see if there was anything to stow away in his roomy trouser-pockets, and leave word that Sir Harry was going to hunt, and would meet before the house. Leather, though somewhat muzzy, was sufficiently sober to be able to deliver this message, and acquaint Mr. Sponge with the impossibility of his 'ridin' the 'ack.' Indeed, he truly said that he had 'been hup with him all night, and at one time thought it was all hover with him,' the all-overishness consisting of Mr. Leather being nearly all over the hack's head, in consequence of the animal shying at another drunken man lying across the road. Mr. Sponge listened to the recital with the indifference of a man who rides hack-horses, and coolly observed that Leather must take on the chestnut, and he would ride the brown to cover. 'Couldn't, sir, couldn't,' replied Leather, with a shake of the head and a twinkle of his roguish, watery grey eyes. 'Why not?' asked Mr. Sponge, who never saw any difficulty. 'Oh, sur,' replied Leather, in a tone of despondency, 'it would be quite unpossible. Consider wot a day the last one was; why, he didn't get to rest till three the next mornin'.' 'It'll only be walking exercise,' observed Mr. Sponge; 'do him good.' 'Better valk the chestnut,' replied Mr. Leather; 'Multum in Parvo hasn't 'ad a good day this I don't know wen, and will be all the better of a bucketin'.' 'But I hate crawling to cover on my horse,' replied Mr. Sponge, who liked cantering along with a flourish. 'You'll have to crawl if you ride 'Ercles,' observed Leather, 'if not walk. Bless you! I've been a-nussin' of him and the 'ack most the 'ole night.' 'Indeed!' replied Mr. Sponge, who began to be alarmed lest his hunting might be brought to an abrupt termination. 'True as I'm 'ere,' rejoined Leather. 'He's just as much off his grub as he vos when he com'd in; never see'd an 'oss more reg'larly dished--more--' 'Well, well,' said Mr. Sponge, interrupting the catalogue of grievances; 'I s'pose I must do as you say--I s'pose I must do as you say: what sort of a day is it?' 'Vy, the day's not a bad day; at least that's to say, it's not a wery haggrivatin' day. I've seen a betterer day, in course; but I've also seen many a much worser day, and days at this time of year, you know, are apt to change--sometimes, in course, for the betterer--sometimes, in course, for the worser.' 'Is it a frost?' snapped Mr. Sponge, tired of his loquacity. 'Is it a frost?' repeated Mr. Leather thoughtfully; 'is it a frost? Vy, no; I should say it _isn't_ a frost--at least, not a frost to 'urt; there may be a little rind on the ground and a little rawness in the hair, but the general concatenation--' 'Hout, tout!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, 'let's have none of your dictionary words.' Mr. Leather stood silent, twisting his hat about. The consequence of all this was, that Mr. Sponge determined to ride over to Nonsuch House to breakfast, which would give his horse half an hour in the stable to eat a feed of corn. Accordingly, he desired Leather to bring him his shaving-water, and have the horse ready in the stable in half an hour, whither, in due time, Mr. Sponge emerged by the back door, without encountering any of the family. The ambling piebald looked so crestfallen and woebegone in all the swaddling-clothes in which Leather had got him enveloped, that Mr. Sponge did not care to look at the gallant Hercules, who occupied a temporary loose-box at the far end of the dark stable, lest he might look worse. He, therefore, just mounted Multum in Parvo as Leather led him out at the door, and set off without a word. 'Well, hang me, but you are a good judge of weather,' exclaimed Sponge to himself, as he got into the field at the back of the house, and found the horse made little impression on the grass. '_No frost!_' repeated he, breathing into the air; 'why it's freezing now, out of the sun.' On getting into Marygold Lane, our friend drew rein, and was for turning back, but the resolute chestnut took the bit between his teeth and shook his head, as if determined to go on. 'Oh, you brute!' growled Mr. Sponge, letting the spurs into his sides with a hearty good-will, which caused the animal to kick, as if he meant to stand on his head. 'Ah, you _will_, will ye?' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, letting the spurs in again as the animal replaced his legs on the ground. Up they went again, if possible higher than before. The brute was clearly full of mischief, and even if the hounds did not throw off, which there was little prospect of their doing from the appearance of the weather, Mr. Sponge felt that it would be well to get some of the nonsense taken out of him; and, moreover, going to Nonsuch House would give him a chance of establishing a billet there--a chance that he had been deprived of by Sir Harry's abrupt departure from Farmer Peastraw's. So saying, our friend gathered his horse together, and settling himself in his saddle, made his sound hoofs ring upon the hard road. 'He _may_ hunt,' thought Mr. Sponge, as he rattled along; 'such a rum beggar as Sir Harry may think it fun to go out in a frost. It's hard, too,' said he, as he saw the poor turnip-pullers enveloped in their thick shawls, and watched them thumping their arms against their sides to drive the cold from their finger-ends. Multum in Parvo was a good, sound-constitutioned horse, hard and firm as a cricket-ball, a horse that would not turn a hair for a trifle even on a hunting morning, let alone on such a thorough chiller as this one was; and Mr. Sponge, after going along at a good round pace, and getting over the ground much quicker than he did when the road was all new to him, and he had to ask his way, at length drew in to see what o'clock it was. It was only half-past nine, and already in the far distance he saw the encircling woods of Nonsuch House. 'Shall be early,' said Mr. Sponge, returning his watch to his waistcoat-pocket, and diving into his cutty coat-pocket for the cigar-case. Having struck a light, he now laid the rein on the horse's neck and proceeded leisurely along, the animal stepping gaily and throwing its head about as if he was the quietest, most trustworthy nag in the world. If he got there at half-past ten, Mr. Sponge calculated he would have plenty of time to see after his horse, get his own breakfast, and see how the land lay for a billet. It would be impossible to hunt before twelve; so he went smoking and sauntering along, now wondering whether he would be able to establish a billet, now thinking how he would like to sell Sir Harry a horse, then considering whether he would be likely to pay for him, and enlivening the general reflections by ringing his spurs against his stirrup-irons. Having passed the lodges at the end of the avenue, he cocked his hat, twiddled his hair, felt his tie, and arranged for a becoming appearance. The sudden turn of the road brought him full upon the house. How changed the scene! Instead of the scarlet-coated youths thronging the gravelled ring, flourishing their scented kerchiefs and hunting-whips--instead of buxom Abigails and handsome mistresses hanging out of the windows, flirting and chatting and ogling, the door was shut, the blinds were down, the shutters closed, and the whole house had the appearance of mourning. Mr. Sponge reined up involuntarily, startled at the change of scene. What could have happened! Could Sir Harry be dead? Could my lady have eloped? 'Oh, that horrid Bugles!' thought he; 'he looked like a gay deceiver.' And Mr. Sponge felt as if he had sustained a personal injury. Just as these thoughts were passing in his mind, a drowsy, slatternly charwoman, in an old black straw bonnet and grey bed-gown, opened one of the shutters, and throwing up the sash of the window by where Mr. Sponge sat, disclosed the contents of the apartment. The last waxlight was just dying out in the centre of a splendid candelabra on the middle of a table scattered about with claret-jugs, glasses, decanters, pine-apple tops, grape-dishes, cakes, anchovy-toast plates, devilled biscuit-racks--all the concomitants of a sumptuous entertainment. 'Sir Harry at home?' asked Mr. Sponge, making the woman sensible of his presence, by cracking his whip close to her ear. 'No,' replied the dame gruffly, commencing an assault upon the nearest chair with a duster. 'Where is he?' asked our friend. 'Bed, to be sure,' replied the woman, in the same tone. [Illustration: MR. SPONGE'S RED COAT COMMANDS NO RESPECT] 'Bed, to be sure,' repeated Mr. Sponge. 'I don't think there's any 'sure' in the case. Do you know what o'clock it is?' asked he. 'No,' replied the woman, flopping away at another chair, and arranging the crimson velvet curtains on the holders. Mr. Sponge was rather nonplussed. His red coat did not command the respect that a red coat generally does. The fact was, they had such queer people in red coats at Nonsuch House, that a red coat was rather an object of suspicion than otherwise. 'Well, but, my good woman,' continued Mr. Sponge, softening his tone, 'can you tell me where I shall find anybody who can tell me anything about the hounds?' 'No,' growled the woman, still flopping, and whisking, and knocking the furniture about. 'I'll remember you for your trouble,' observed Mr. Sponge, diving his right hand into his breeches' pocket. 'Mr. Bottleends be gone to bed,' observed the woman, now ceasing her evolutions, and parting her grisly, disordered tresses, as she advanced and stood staring, with her arms akimbo, out of the window. She was the under-housemaid's deputy; all the servants at Nonsuch House doing the rough of their work by deputy. Lady Scattercash was a _real_ lady, and liked to have the credit of the house maintained, which of course can only be done by letting the upper servants do nothing. 'Mr. Bottleends be gone to bed,' observed the woman. 'Mr. Bottleends?' repeated Mr. Sponge; 'who's he?' 'The butler, to be sure,' replied she, astonished that any person should have to ask who such an important personage was. 'Can't you call him?' asked Mr. Sponge, still fumbling in his pocket. 'Couldn't, if it was ever so,' replied the dame, smoothing her dirty blue-checked apron with her still dirtier hand. 'Why not?' asked Mr. Sponge. 'Why not?' repeated the woman; 'why, 'cause Mr. Bottleends won't be disturbed by no one. He said when he went to bed that he hadn't to be called till to-morrow.' 'Not called till to-morrow!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge; 'then is Sir Harry from home?' 'From home, no; what should put that i' your head?' sneered the woman. 'Why, if the butler's in bed, one may suppose the master's away.' 'Hout!' snapped the woman; 'Sir Harry's i' bed--Captin Seedeybuck's i' bed--Captin Quod's i' bed--Captin Spangle's i' bed--Captin Bouncey's i' bed--Captin Cutitfat's i' bed--they're all i' bed 'cept me, and I've got the house to clean and right, and high time it was cleaned and righted, for they've not been i' bed these three nights any on 'em.' So saying, she flourished her duster as if about to set-to again. 'Well, but tell me,' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, 'can I see the footman, or the huntsman, or the groom, or a helper, or anybody?' 'Deary knows,' replied the woman thoughtfully, resting her chin on her hand. 'I dare say they'll be all i' bed too.' 'But they are going to hunt, aren't they?' asked our friend. '_Hunt!_' exclaimed the woman; 'what should put that i' your head.' 'Why, they sent me word they were.' 'It'll be i' bed, then,' observed she, again giving symptoms of a desire to return to her dusting. Mr. Sponge, who still kept his hand in his pocket, sat on his horse in a state of stupid bewilderment. He had never seen a case of this sort before--a house shut up, and a master of hounds in bed when the hounds were to meet before the door. It couldn't be the case: the woman must be dreaming, or drunk, or both. 'Well, but, my good woman,' exclaimed he, as she gave a punishing cut at the chair, as if to make up for lost time; 'well, but, my good woman, I wish you would try and find somebody who can tell me something about the hounds. I'm sure they must be going to hunt. I'll remember you for your trouble, if you will,' added he, again diving his hand up to the wrist in his pocket. 'I tell you,' replied the woman slowly and deliberately, 'there'll be no huntin' to-day. Huntin'!' exclaimed she; 'how can they hunt when they've all had to be carried to bed?' 'Carried to bed! had they?' exclaimed Mr. Sponge; 'what, were they drunk?' 'Drunk! aye, to be sure. What would you have them be?' replied the crone, who seemed to think that drinking was a necessary concomitant of hunting. 'Well, but I can see the footman or somebody, surely,' observed Mr. Sponge, fearing that his chance was out for a billet, and recollecting old Jog's 'Bartholo-_m-e-ws_!' and 'Murry Anns!' and intimations for him to start. ''Deed you can't,' replied the dame--'ye can see nebody but me,' added she, fixing her twinkling eyes intently upon him as she spoke. 'Well, that's a pretty go,' observed Mr. Sponge aloud to himself, ringing his spurs against his stirrup-irons. 'Pretty go or ugly go,' snapped the woman, thinking it was a reflection on herself, 'it's all you'll get'; and thereupon she gave the back of the chair a hearty bastinadoing as if in exemplification of the way she would like to serve Mr. Sponge out for the observation. 'I came here thinking to get some breakfast,' observed Mr. Sponge, casting an eye upon the disordered table, and reconnoitring the bottles and the remains of the dessert. 'Did you?' said the woman; 'I wish you may get it.' 'I wish I may,' replied he. 'If you would manage that for me, just some coffee and a mutton chop or two, I'd remember you,' said he, still tantalizing her with the sound of the silver in his pocket. 'Me manish it!' exclaimed the woman, her hopes again rising at the sound; 'me manish it! how d'ye think I'm to manish sich things?' asked she. 'Why, get at the cook, or the housekeeper, or somebody,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'Cook or housekeeper!' exclaimed she. 'There'll be no cook or housekeeper astir here these many hours yet; I question,' added she, 'they get up to-day.' 'What! they've been put to bed too, have they?' asked he. 'W-h-y no--not zactly that,' drawled the woman; 'but when sarvants are kept up three nights out of four, they must make up for lost time when they can.' 'Well,' mused Mr. Sponge, 'this is a bother, at all events; get no breakfast, lose my hunt, and perhaps a billet into the bargain. Well, there's sixpence for you, my good woman,' said he at length, drawing his hand out of his pocket and handing her the contents through the window; adding, 'don't make a beast of yourself with it.' 'It's nabbut _fourpence_,' observed the woman, holding it out on the palm of her hand. 'Ah, well, you're welcome to it whatever it is,' replied our friend, turning his horse to go away. A thought then struck him. 'Could you get me a pen and ink, think you?' asked he; 'I want to write a line to Sir Harry.' 'Pen and ink!' replied the woman, who had pocketed the groat and resumed her dusting; 'I don't know where they keep no such things as penses and inkses.' 'Most likely in the drawing-room or the sitting-room, or perhaps in the butler's pantry,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'Well, you can come in and see,' replied the woman, thinking there was no occasion to give herself any more trouble for the fourpenny-piece. Our worthy friend sat on his horse a few seconds staring intently into the dining-room window, thinking that lapse of time might cause the fourpenny-piece to be sufficiently respected to procure him something like directions how to proceed as well to get rid of his horse, as to procure access to the house, the door of which stood frowningly shut. In this, however, he was mistaken, for no sooner had the woman uttered the words, 'Well, you can come in and see,' than she flaunted into the interior of the room, and commenced a regular series of assaults upon the furniture, throwing the hearth-rug over one chair back, depositing the fire-irons in another, rearing the steel fender up against the Carrara marble chimney-piece, and knocking things about in the independent way that servants treat unoffending furniture, when master and mistress are comfortably esconced in bed. 'Flop' went the duster again; 'bang' went the furniture; 'knock' this chair went against that, and she seemed bent upon putting all things into that happy state of sixes and sevens that characterizes a sale of household furniture, when chairs mount tables, and the whole system of domestic economy is revolutionized. Seeing that he was not going to get anything more for his money, our friend at length turned his horse and found his way to the stables by the unerring drag of carriage-wheels. All things there being as matters were in the house, he put the redoubtable nag into a stall, and helped him to a liberal measure of oats out of the well-stored unlocked corn-bin. He then sought the back of the house by the worn flagged-way that connected it with the stables. The back yard was in the admired confusion that might be expected from the woman's account. Empty casks and hampers were piled and stowed away in all directions, while regiments of champagne and other bottles stood and lay about among blacking bottles, Seltzer-water bottles, boot-trees, bath-bricks, old brushes, and stumpt-up besoms. Several pair of dirty top-boots, most of them with the spurs on, were chucked into the shoe-house just as they had been taken off. The kitchen, into which our friend now entered, was in the same disorderly state. Numerous copper pans stood simmering on the charcoal stoves, and the jointless jack still revolved on the spit. A dirty slip-shod girl sat sleeping, with her apron thrown over her head, which rested on the end of a table. The open door of the servants' hall hard by disclosed a pile of dress and other clothes, which, after mopping up the ale and other slops, would be carefully folded and taken back to the rooms of their respective owners. [Illustration: DOMESTIC ECONOMY OF NONSUCH HOUSE] 'Halloo!' cried Mr. Sponge, shaking the sleeping girl by the shoulder, which caused her to start up, stare, and rub her eyes in wild affright. 'Halloo!' repeated he, 'what's happened you?' 'Oh, beg pardon, sir!' exclaimed she; 'beg pardon,' continued she, clasping her hands; 'I'll never do so again, sir; no, sir, I'll never do so again, indeed I won't.' She had just stolen a shape of blanc-mange, and thought she was caught. 'Then show me where I'll find pen and ink and paper,' replied our friend. 'Oh, sir, I don't know nothin' about them,' replied the girl; 'indeed, sir, I don't'; thinking it was some other petty larceny he was inquiring about. 'Well, but you can tell me where to find a sheet of paper, surely?' rejoined he. 'Oh, indeed, sir, I can't,' replied she; 'I know nothin' about nothin' of the sort.' Servants never do. 'What sort?' asked Mr. Sponge, wondering at her vehemence. 'Well, sir, about what you said,' sobbed the girl, applying the corner of her dirty apron to her eyes. 'Hang it, the girl's mad,' rejoined our friend, brushing by, and making for the passage beyond. This brought him past the still-room, the steward's room, the housekeeper's room, and the butler's pantry. All were in most glorious confusion; in the latter, Captain Cutitfat's lacquer-toed, lavender-coloured dress-boots were reposing in the silver soup tureen, and Captain Bouncey's varnished pumps were stuffed into a wine-cooler. The last detachment of empty bottles stood or lay about the floor, commingling with boot-jacks, knife-trays, bath-bricks, coat-brushes, candle-end boxes, plates, lanterns, lamp-glasses, oil bottles, corkscrews, wine-strainers--the usual miscellaneous appendages of a butler's pantry. All was still and quiet; not a sound, save the loud ticking of a timepiece, or the occasional creak of a jarring door, disturbed the solemn silence of the house. A nimble-handed mugger or tramp might have carried off whatever he liked. Passing onward, Mr. Sponge came to a red-baized, brass-nailed door, which, opening freely on a patent spring, revealed the fine proportions of a light picture-gallery with which the bright mahogany doors of the entertaining rooms communicated. Opening the first door he came to, our friend found himself in the elegant drawing-room, on whose round bird's-eye-maple table, in the centre, were huddled all the unequal-lengthed candles of the previous night's illumination. It was a handsome apartment, fitted up in the most costly style; with rose-colour brocaded satin damask, the curtains trimmed with silk tassel fringe, and ornamented with massive bullion tassels on cornices, Cupids supporting wreaths under an arch, with open carved-work and enrichments in burnished gold. The room, save the muster of the candles, was just as it had been left; and the richly gilt sofa still retained the indentations of the sitters, with the luxurious down pillows, left as they had been supporting their backs. The room reeked of tobacco, and the ends and ashes of cigars dotted the tables and white marble chimney-piece, and the gilt slabs and the finely flowered Tournay carpet, just as the fires of gipsies dot and disfigure the fair face of a country. Costly china and nick-nacks of all sorts were scattered about in profusion. Altogether, it was a beautiful room. 'No want of money here,' said Mr. Sponge to himself, as he eyed it, and thought what havoc Gustavus James would make among the ornaments if he had a chance. He then looked about for pen, ink, and paper. These were distributed so wide apart as to show the little request they were in. Having at length succeeded in getting what he wanted gathered together, Mr. Sponge sat down on the luxurious sofa, considering how he should address his host, as he hoped. Mr. Sponge was not a shy man, but, considering the circumstances under which he made Sir Harry Scattercash's acquaintance, together with his design upon his hospitality--above all, considering the crew by whom Sir Harry was surrounded--it required some little tact to pave the way without raising the present inmates of the house against him. There are no people so anxious to protect others from robbery as those who are robbing them themselves. Mr. Sponge thought, and thought, and thought. At last he resolved to write on the subject of the hounds. After sundry attempts on pink, blue, and green-tinted paper, he at last succeeded in hitting off the following, on yellow: 'NONSUCH HOUSE. 'DEAR SIR HARRY,--I rode over this morning, hearing you were to hunt, and am sorry to find you indisposed. I wish you would drop me a line to Mr. Crowdey's, Puddingpote Bower, saying when next you go out, as I should much like to have another look at your splendid pack before I leave this country, which I fear will have to be soon.--Yours in haste, 'H. SPONGE. 'P.S.--I hope you all got safe home the other night from Mr. Peastraw's.' Having put this into a richly gilt and embossed envelope, our friend directed it conspicuously to Sir Harry Scattercash, Bart., and stuck it in the centre of the mantelpiece. He then retraced his steps through the back regions, informing the sleeping beauty he had before disturbed, and who was now busy scouring a pan, that he had left a letter in the drawing-room for Sir Harry, and if she would see that he got it, he (Mr. Sponge) would remember her the next time he came, which he inwardly hoped would be soon. He then made for the stable, and got his horse, to go home, sauntering more leisurely along than one would expect of a man who had not got his breakfast, especially one riding a hack hunter. The truth was, Mr. Sponge did not much like the aspect of affairs. Sir Harry's was evidently a desperately 'fast' house; added to which, the guests by whom he was surrounded were clearly of the wide-awake order, who could not spare any pickings for a stranger. Indeed, Mr. Sponge felt that they rather cold-shouldered him at Farmer Peastraw's, and were in a greater hurry to be off when the drag came, than the mere difference between inside and outside seats required. He much questioned whether he got into Sir Harry's at all. If it came to a vote, he thought he should not. Then, what was he to do? Old Jog was clearly tired of him; and he had nowhere else to go to. The thought made him stick spurs into the chestnut, and hurry home to Puddingpote Bower, where he endeavoured to soothe his host by more than insinuating that he was going on a visit to Nonsuch House. Jog inwardly prayed that he might. CHAPTER LVII THE DEBATE It was just as Mr. Sponge predicted with regard to his admission to Nonsuch House. The first person who spied his note to Sir Harry Scattercash was Captain Seedeybuck, who, going into the drawing-room, the day after Mr. Sponge's visit, to look for the top of his cigar-case, saw it occupying the centre of the mantelpiece. Having mastered its contents, the Captain refolded and placed it where he found it, with the simple observation to himself of--'That cock won't fight.' Captain Quod saw it next, then Captain Bouncey, who told Captain Cutitfat what was in it, who agreed with Bouncey that it wouldn't do to have Mr. Sponge there. Indeed, it seemed agreed on all hands that their party rather wanted weeding than increasing. Thus, in due time, everybody in the house knew the contents of the note save Sir Harry, though none of them thought it worth while telling him of it. On the third morning, however, as the party were assembling for breakfast, he came into the room reading it. 'This (hiccup) note ought to have been delivered before,' observed he, holding it up. 'Indeed, my dear,' replied Lady Scattercash, who was sitting gloriously fine and very beautiful at the head of the table, 'I don't know anything about it.' 'Who is it from?' asked brother Bob Spangles. 'Mr. (hiccup) Sponge,' replied Sir Harry. 'What a name!' exclaimed Captain Seedeybuck. 'Who is he?' asked Captain Quod. 'Don't know,' replied Sir Harry; 'he writes to (hiccup) about the hounds.' 'Oh, it'll be that brown-booted buffer,' observed Captain Bouncey, 'that we left at old Peastraw's.' 'No doubt,' assented Captain Cutitfat, adding, 'what business has he with the hounds?' 'He wants to know when we are going to (hiccup) again,' observed Sir Harry. 'Does he?' replied Captain Seedeybuck. 'That, I suppose, will depend upon Watchorn.' The party now got settled to breakfast, and as soon as the first burst of appetite was appeased, the conversation again turned upon our friend Mr. Sponge. 'Who _is_ this Mr. Sponge?' asked Captain Bouncey, the billiard-marker, with the air of a thorough exclusive. Nobody answered. 'Who's your friend?' asked he of Sir Harry direct. 'Don't know,' replied Sir Harry, from between the mouthfuls of a highly cayenned grill. 'P'raps a bolting betting-office keeper,' suggested Captain Ladofwax, who hated Captain Bouncey. 'He looks more like a glazier, I think,' retorted Captain Bouncey, with a look of defiance at the speaker. 'Lucky if he is one,' retorted Captain Ladofwax, reddening up to the eyes; 'he may have a chance of repairing somebody's daylights.' The captain raising his saucer, to discharge it at his opponent's head. 'Gently with the cheney!' exclaimed Lady Scattercash, who was too much used to such scenes to care about the belligerents. Bob Spangles caught Ladofwax's arm at the nick of time, and saved the saucer. 'Hout! you (hiccup) fellows are always (hiccup)ing,' exclaimed Sir Harry. 'I declare I'll have you both (hiccup)ed over to keep the peace.' They then broke out into wordy recrimination and abuse, each declaring that he wouldn't stay a day longer in the house if the other remained; but as they had often said so before, and still gave no symptoms of going, their assertion produced little effect upon anybody. Sir Harry would not have cared if all his guests had gone together. Peace and order being at length restored, the conversation again turned upon Mr. Sponge. 'I suppose we must have another (hiccup) hunt soon,' observed Sir Harry. 'In course,' replied Bob Spangles; 'it's no use keeping the hungry brutes unless you work them.' 'You'll have a bagman, I presume,' observed Captain Seedeybuck, who did not like the trouble of travelling about the country to draw for a fox. 'Oh yes,' replied Sir Harry; 'Watchorn will manage all that. He's always (hiccup) in that line. We'd better have a hunt soon, and then, Mr. (hiccup) Bugles, you can see it.' Sir Harry addressing himself to a gentleman he was as anxious to get rid of as Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey was to get rid of Mr. Sponge. 'No; Mr. Bugles won't go out any more,' replied Lady Scattercash peremptorily. 'He was nearly killed last time'; her ladyship casting an angry glance at her husband, and a very loving one on the object of her solicitude. 'Oh, nought's never in danger!' observed Bob Spangles. 'Then _you_ can go, Bob,' snapped his sister. 'I intend,' replied Bob. 'Then (hiccup), gentlemen, I think I'll just write this Mr. (hiccup) What's-his-name to (hiccup) over here,' observed Sir Harry, 'and then he'll be ready for the (hiccup) hunt whenever we choose to (hiccup) one.' The proposition fell still-born among the party. 'Don't you think we can do without him?' at last suggested Captain Seedeybuck. '_I_ think so,' observed the elder Spangles, without looking up from his plate. 'Who is it?' asked Lady Scattercash. 'The man that was here the other morning--the man in the queer chestnut-coloured boots,' replied Mr. Orlando Bugles. 'Oh, I think he's rather good-looking; I vote we have him,' replied her ladyship. That was rather a damper for Sir Harry; but upon reflection, he thought he could not be worse off with Mr. Sponge and Mr. Bugles than he was with Mr. Bugles alone; so, having finished a poor appetiteless breakfast, he repaired to what he called his 'study,' and with a feeble, shaky hand, scrawled an invitation to Mr. Sponge to come over to Nonsuch House, and take his chance of a run with his hounds. He then sealed and posted the letter without further to do. CHAPTER LVIII FACEY ROMFORD [Illustration: MR. FACEY ROMFORD] Four days had now elapsed since Mr. Sponge penned his overture to Sir Harry, and each succeeding day satisfied him more of the utter impossibility of holding on much longer in his then billet at Puddingpote Bower. Not only was Jog coarse and incessant in his hints to him to be off, but Jawleyford-like he had lowered the standard of entertainment so greatly, that if it hadn't been that Mr. Sponge had his servant and horses kept also, he might as well have been living at his own expense. The company lights were all extinguished; great, strong-smelling, cauliflower-headed moulds, that were always wanting snuffing, usurped the place of Belmont wax; napkins were withdrawn; second-hand table-cloths introduced; marsala did duty for sherry; and the stickjaw pudding assumed a consistency that was almost incompatible with articulation. In the course of this time Sponge wrote to Puffington, saying if he was better he would return and finish his visit; but the wary Puff sent a messenger off express with a note, lamenting that he was ordered to Handley Cross for his health, but 'pop'lar man' like, hoping that the pleasure of Sponge's company was only deferred for another season. Jawleyford, even Sponge thought hopeless; and, altogether, he was very much perplexed. He had made a little money certainly, with his horses; but a permanent investment of his elegant person, such as he had long been on the look-out for, seemed as far off as ever. On the afternoon of the fifth day, as he was taking a solitary stroll about the country, having about made up his mind to be off to town, just as he was crossing Jog's buttercup meadow on his way to the stable, a rapid bang! bang! caused him to start, and, looking over the hedge, he saw a brawny-looking sportsman in brown reloading his gun, with a brace of liver-and-white setters crouching like statues in the stubble. 'Seek dead!' presently said the shooter, with a slight wave of his hand; and in an instant each dog was picking up his bird. 'I'll have a word with you,' said Sponge, 'on and off-ing' the hedge, his beat causing the shooter to start and look as if inclined for a run; second thoughts said Sponge was too near, and he'd better brave it. 'What sport?' asked Sponge, striding towards him. 'Oh, pretty middling,' replied the shooter, a great red-headed, freckly faced fellow, with backward-lying whiskers, crowned in a drab rustic. 'Oh, pretty middling,' repeated he, not knowing whether to act on the friendly or defensive. 'Fine day!' said Sponge, eyeing his fox-maskey whiskers and stout, muscular frame. 'It is,' replied the shooter; adding, 'just followed my birds over the boundary. No 'fence, I s'pose--no 'fence.' 'Oh no,' said Mr. Sponge. 'Jog, I dessay, 'll be very glad to see you.' 'Oh, you'll be Mr. Sponge?' observed the stranger, jumping to a conclusion. 'I am,' replied our hero; adding, 'may I ask who I have the honour of addressing?' 'My name's Romford--Charley Romford; everybody knows me. Very glad to make your 'quaintance,' tendering Sponge a great, rough, heavy hand. 'I was goin' to call upon you,' observed the stranger, as he ceased swinging Sponge's arm to and fro like a pump-handle; 'I was goin' to call upon you, to see if you'd come over to Washingforde, and have some shootin' at me Oncle's--Oncle Gilroy's, at Queercove Hill.' 'Most happy!' exclaimed Sponge, thinking it was the very thing he wanted. 'Get a day with the harriers, too, if you like,' continued the shooter, increasing the temptation. 'Better still!' thought Sponge. 'I've only bachelor 'commodation to offer you; but p'raps you'll not mind roughing it a bit?' observed Romford. 'Oh, faith, not I!' replied Sponge, thinking of the luxuries of Puffington's bachelor habitation. 'What sort of stables have you?' asked our friend. 'Capital stables--excellent stables!' replied the shooter; 'stalls six feet in the clear, by twelve dip (deep), iron racks, oak stall-posts covered with zinc, beautiful oats, capital beans, splendacious hay--won without a shower!' 'Bravo!' exclaimed Sponge, thinking he had lit on his legs, and might snap his fingers at Jog and his hints. He'd take the high hand, and give Jog up. 'I'm your man!' said Sponge, in high glee. 'When will you come?' asked Romford. 'To-morrow!' replied Sponge firmly. 'So be it,' rejoined his proffered host; and, with another hearty swing of the arm, the newly made friends parted. Charley Romford, or Facey, as he was commonly called, from his being the admitted most impudent man in the country, was a great, round-faced, coarse-featured, prize-fighting sort of fellow, who lived chiefly by his wits, which he exercised in all the legitimate lines of industry--poaching, betting, boxing, horse-dealing, cards, quoits--anything that came uppermost. That he was a man of enterprise, we need hardly add, when he had formed a scheme for doing our Sponge--a man that we do not think any of our readers would trouble themselves to try a 'plant' upon. This impudent Facey, as if in contradiction of terms, was originally intended for a civil engineer; but having early in life voted himself heir to his uncle, Mr. Gilroy, of Queercove Hill, a great cattle-jobber, with a 'small independence of his own'--three hundred a year, perhaps, which a kind world called six--Facey thought he would just hang about until his uncle was done with his shoes, and then be lord of Queercove Hill. Now, 'me Oncle Gilroy,' of whom Facey was constantly talking, had a left-handed wife and promising family in the sylvan retirement of St. John's Wood, whither he used to retire after his business in 'Smi'fiel'' was over; so that Facey, for once, was out in his calculations. Gilroy, however, being as knowing as 'his nevvey,' as he called him, just encouraged Facey in his shooting, fishing, and idle propensities generally, doubtless finding it more convenient to have his fish and game for nothing than to pay for them. Facey, having the apparently inexhaustible sum of a thousand pounds, began life as a fox-hunter--in a very small way, to be sure--more for the purpose of selling horses than anything else; but, having succeeded in 'doing' all the do-able gentlemen, both with the 'Tip and Go' and Cranerfield hounds, his occupation was gone, it requiring an extended field--such as our friend Sponge roamed--to carry on cheating in horses for any length of time. Facey was soon blown, his name in connexion with a horse being enough to prevent any one looking at him. Indeed, we question that there is any less desirable mode of making, or trying to make money, than by cheating or even dealing in horses. Many people fancy themselves cheated, whatever they get; while the man who is really cheated never forgets it, and proclaims it to the end of time. Moreover, no one can go on cheating in horses for any length of time, without putting himself in the power of his groom; and let those who have seen how servants lord it over each other say how they would like to subject themselves to similar treatment.--But to our story. Facey Romford had now a splendid milk-white horse, well-known in Mr. Nobbington's and Lord Leader's hunts as Mr. Hobler, but who Facey kindly rechristened the 'Nonpareil,' which the now rising price of oats, and falling state of his finances, made him particularly anxious to get rid of, ere the horse performed the equestrian feat of 'eating its head off.' He was a very hunter-like looking horse, but his misfortune consisted in having such shocking seedy toes, that he couldn't keep his shoes on. If he got through the first field with them on, they were sure to be off at the fence. This horse Facey voted to be the very thing for Mr. Sponge, and hearing that he had come into the country to hunt, it occurred to him that it would be a capital thing if he could get him to take Mother Overend's spare bed and lodge with him, twelve shillings a week being more than Facey liked paying for his rooms. Not that he paid twelve shillings for the rooms alone; on the contrary, he had a two-stalled stable, with a sort of kennel for his pointers, and a sty for his pig into the bargain. This pig, which was eaten many times in anticipation, had at length fallen a victim to the butcher, and Facey's larder was uncommonly well found in black-puddings, sausages, spare ribs, and the other component parts of a pig: so that he was in very hospitable circumstances--at least, in his rough and ready idea of what hospitality ought to be. Indeed, whether he had or not, he'd have risked it, being quite as good at carrying things off with a high hand as Mr. Sponge himself. The invitation came most opportunely; for, worn out with jealousy and watching, Jog had made up his mind to cut to Australia, and when Sponge returned after meeting Facey, Jog was in the act of combing out an advertisement, offering all that desirable sporting residence called Puddingpote Bower, with the coach-house, stables, and offices thereunto belonging, to let, and announcing that the whole of the valuable household furniture, comprising mahogany, dining, loo, card, and Pembroke tables; sofa, couch, and chairs in hair seating; cheffonier, with plate glass; book-case; flower-stands; pianoforte, by Collard and Collard; music-stool and Canterbury; chimney and pier-glasses; mirror; ormolu time-piece; alabaster and wax figures and shades; china; Brussels carpets and rugs; fenders and fire-irons; curtains and cornices; Venetian blinds; mahogany four-post, French, and camp bedsteads; feather beds; hair mattresses; mahogany chests of drawers; dressing-glasses; wash and dressing-tables; patent shower-bath; bed and table-linen; dinner and tea-ware; warming-pans, &c., would be exposed to immediate and unreserved sale. How gratefully Sponge's inquiry if he knew Mr. Romford fell on his ear, as they sat moodily together after dinner over some very low-priced port. 'Oh yes (puff)--oh yes (wheeze)--oh yes (gasp)! Know Charley Romford--Facey, as they call him. He's (puff, wheeze, gasp) heir to old Mr. Gilroy, of Queercove Hill.' 'Just so,' rejoined Sponge, 'just so; that's the man--stout, square-built fellow, with backward-growing whiskers. I'm going to stay with him to shoot at old Gil's. Where does Charley live?' 'Live!' exclaimed Jog, almost choked with delight at the information; 'live! live!' repeated he, for the third time; 'lives at (puff, wheeze, gasp, cough) Washingforde--yes, at Washingforde; 'bout ten miles from (puff, wheeze) here. When d'ye go?' 'To-morrow,' replied Sponge, with an air of offended dignity. Jog was so rejoiced that he could hardly sit on his chair. Mrs. Jog, when she heard it, felt that Gustavus James's chance of independence was gone; for well she knew that Jog would never let Sponge come back to the Bower. We need scarcely say that Jog was up betimes in the morning, most anxious to forward Mr. Sponge's departure. He offered to allow Bartholomew to convey him and his 'traps' in the phaeton--an offer that Mr. Sponge availed himself of as far as his 'traps' were concerned, though he preferred cantering over on his piebald to trailing along in Jog's jingling chay. So matters were arranged, and Mr. Sponge forthwith proceeded to put his brown boots, his substantial cords, his superfine tights, his cuttey scarlet, his dress blue saxony, his clean linen, his heavy spurs, and though last, not least in importance, his now backless _Mogg_, into his solid leather portmanteau, sweeping the surplus of his wardrobe into a capacious carpet-bag. While the guest was thus busy upstairs, the host wandered about restlessly, now stirring up this person, now hurrying that, in the full enjoyment of the much-coveted departure. His pleasure was, perhaps, rather damped by a running commentary he overheard through the lattice-window of the stable, from Leather, as he stripped his horses and tried to roll up their clothing in a moderate compass. ''Ord rot your great carcass!' exclaimed he, giving the roll a hearty kick in its bulging-out stomach, on finding that he had not got it as small as he wanted. ''Ord rot your great carcass,' repeated he, scratching his head and eyeing it as it lay; 'this is all the consequence of your nasty brewers' hapron weshins--blowin' of one out, like a bladder!' and, thereupon, he placed his hand on his stomach to feel how his own was. 'Never see'd sich a house, or sich an awful mean man!' continued he, stooping and pommelling the package with his fists. It was of no use, he could not get it as small as he wished--'Must have my jacket out on you, I do believe,' added he, seeing where the impediment was; 'sticks in your gizzard just like a lump of old Puff-and-blow's puddin''; and then he thrust his hand into the folds of the clothing, and pulled out the greasy garment. 'Now,' said he, stooping again, 'I think we may manish ye'; and he took the roll in his arms and hoisted it on to Hercules, whom he meant to make the led horse, observing aloud, as he adjusted it on the saddle, and whacked it well with his hands to make it lie right, 'I wish it was old Jog--wouldn't I sarve him out!' He then turned his horses round in their stalls, tucked his greasy jacket under the flap of the saddle-bags, took his ash-stick from the crook, and led them out of the capacious door. Jog looked at him with mingled feelings of disgust and delight. Leather just gave his old hat flipe a rap with his forefinger as he passed with the horses--a salute that Jog did not condescend to return. Having eyed the receding horses with great satisfaction, Jog re-entered the house by the kitchens, to have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Sponge off. He found the portmanteau and carpet-bag standing in the passage, and just at the moment the sound of the phaeton wheels fell on his ear, as Bartholomew drove round from the coach-house to the door. Mr. Sponge was already in the parlour, making his adieus to Mrs. Jog and the children, who were all assembled for the purpose. 'What, are you goin'?' (puff) asked Jog, with an air of surprise. 'Yes,' replied Mr. Sponge; adding, as he tendered his hand, 'the best friends must part, you know.' 'Well (puff), but you'd better have your (wheeze) horse round,' observed Jog, anxious to avoid any overture for a return. 'Thankee,' replied Mr. Sponge, making a parting bow; 'I'll get him at the stable.' 'I'll go with you,' said Jog, leading the way. Leather had saddled, and bridled, and turned him round in the stall, with one of Mr. Jog's blanket-rugs on, which Mr. Sponge just swept over his tail into the manger, and led the horse out. 'Adieu!' said he, offering his hand to his host. 'Good-bye!--good (puff) sport to you,' said Jog, shaking it heartily. Mr. Sponge then mounted his hack, and cocking out his toe, rode off at a canter. At the same moment, Bartholomew drove away from the front door; and Jog, having stood watching the phaeton over the rise of Pennypound Hill, scraped his feet, re-entered his house, and rubbing them heartily on the mat as he closed the sash-door, observed aloud to himself, with a jerk of his head: 'Well, now, that's the most (puff) impittent feller I ever saw in my life! Catch me (gasp) godpapa-hunting again.' CHAPTER LIX THE ADJOURNED DEBATE The fatal invitation to Mr. Sponge having been sent, the question that now occupied the minds of the assembled sharpers at Nonsuch House, was, whether he was a pigeon or one of themselves. That point occupied their very deep and serious consideration. If he was a 'pigeon,' they could clearly accommodate him, but if, on the other hand, he was one of themselves, it was painfully apparent that there were far too many of them there already. Of course, the subject was not discussed in full and open conclave--they were all highly honourable men in the gross--and it was only in the small and secret groups of those accustomed to hunt together and unburden their minds, that the real truth was elicited. 'What an ass Sir Harry is, to ask this Mr. Sponge,' observed Captain Quod to Captain Seedeybuck, as (cigar in mouth) they paced backwards and forwards under the flagged veranda on the west side of the house, on the morning that Sir Harry had announced his intention of asking him. 'Confounded ass,' assented Seedeybuck, from between the whiffs of his cigar. 'Dash it! one would think he had more money than he knew what to do with,' observed the first speaker, 'instead of not knowing where to lay hands on a halfpenny.' 'Soon be who-hoop,' here observed Quod, with a shake of the head. 'Fear so,' replied Seedeybuck. 'Have you heard anything fresh?' 'Nothing particular. The County Court bailiff was here with some summonses, which, of course, he put in the fire.' 'Ah! that's what he always does. He got tired of papering the smoking-room with them,' replied Seedeybuck. 'Well, it's a pity,' observed Quod, spitting as he spoke; 'but what can you expect, eaten up as he is by such a set of rubbish.' 'Shockin',' replied Seedeybuck, thinking how long he and his friend might have fattened there together. 'Do you know anything of this Mr. Sponge?' asked Captain Quod, after a pause. 'Nothin',' replied Seedeybuck, 'except what we saw of him here; but I'm sure he won't do.' 'Well, I think not either,' replied Quod; 'I didn't like his looks--he seems quite one of the free-and-easy sort.' 'Quite,' observed Seedeybuck, determined to make a set against him, instead of cultivating his acquaintance. 'This Mr. Sponge won't be any great addition to our party, I think,' muttered Captain Bouncey to Captain Cutitfat, as they stood within the bay of the library window, in apparent contemplation of the cows, but in reality conning the Sponge matter over in their minds. 'I think not,' replied Captain Cutitfat, with an emphasis. 'Wonder what made Sir Harry ask him!' whispered Bouncey, adding, aloud, for the bystanders to hear, 'That's a fine cow, isn't it?' 'Very,' replied Cutitfat, in the same key, adding, in a whisper, with a shrug of his shoulders, 'Wonder what made him ask half the people that are here!' 'The black and white one isn't a bad un,' observed Bouncey, nodding his head towards the cows, adding in an undertone, 'Most of them asked themselves, I should think.' 'Admiring the cows. Captain Bouncey?' asked the beautiful and tolerably virtuous Miss Glitters, of the Astley's Royal Amphitheatre, who had come down to spend a few days with her old friend, Lady Scattercash. 'Admiring the cows, Captain Bouncey?' asked she, sidling her elegant figure between our friends in the bay. 'We were just saying how nice it would be to have two or three pretty girls, and a sillabub, under those cedars,' replied Captain Bouncey. 'Oh, charming!' exclaimed Miss Glitters, her dark eyes sparkling as she spoke. 'Harriet!' exclaimed she, addressing herself to a young lady, who called herself Howard, but whose real name was Brown--Jane Brown--'Harriet!' exclaimed she, 'Captain Bouncey is going to give a _fête champêtre_ under those lovely cedars.' 'Oh, how nice!' exclaimed Harriet, clapping her hands in ecstasies--theatrical ecstasies at least. 'It must be Sir Harry,' replied the billiard-table man, not fancying being 'let in' for anything. 'Oh! Sir Harry will let us have anything we like, I'm sure,' rejoined Miss Glitters. 'What is it (hiccup)?' asked Sir Harry, who, hearing his name, now joined the party. 'Oh, we want you to give us a dance under those charming cedars,' replied the lady, looking lovingly at him. 'Cedars!' hiccuped Sir Harry, 'where do you see any cedars?' 'Why there,' replied Miss Glitters, nodding towards a clump of evergreens. 'Those are (hiccup) hollies,' replied Sir Harry. [Illustration] 'Well, under the hollies,' rejoined Miss Glitters; adding, 'it was Captain Bouncey who said they were cedars.' 'Ah, I meant those beyond,' observed the captain, nodding in another direction. 'Those are (hiccup) Scotch firs,' rejoined Sir Harry. 'Well, never mind what they are,' resumed the lady; 'let us have a dance under them.' 'Certainly,' replied Sir Harry, who was always ready for anything. 'We shall have plenty of partners,' observed Miss Howard, recollecting how many men there were in the house. 'And another coming,' observed Captain Cutitfat, still fretting at the idea. 'Indeed!' exclaimed Miss Howard, raising her hands and eyebrows in delight; 'and who is he?' asked she, with unfeigned glee. 'Oh such a (hiccup) swell,' replied Sir Harry; 'reg'lar Leicestershire man. A (hiccup) Quornite, in fact.' 'We'll not have the dance till he comes, then,' observed Miss Glitters. 'No more we will,' said Miss Howard, withdrawing from the group. CHAPTER LX FACEY ROMFORD AT HOME We will now suppose our distinguished Sponge entering the village, or what the natives call the town of Washingforde, towards the close of a short December day, on his arrival from Mr. Jog's. 'What sort of stables are there?' asked he, reining up his hack, as he encountered the brandy-nosed Leather airing himself on the main street. 'Stables be good enough--forage, too,' replied the stud groom--'_per_-wided you likes the sittivation.' 'Oh, the sittivation 'll be good enough,' retorted Sponge, thinking that, groom-like, Leather was grumbling because he hadn't got the best stables. 'Well, sir, as you please,' replied the man. 'Why, where are they?' asked Sponge, seeing there was more in Leather's manner than met the eye. '_Rose and Crown!_' replied Leather, with an emphasis. 'Rose and Crown!' exclaimed Sponge, starting in his saddle; 'Rose and Crown! Why, I'm going to stay with Mr. Romford!' 'So he said.' replied Leather; 'so he said. I met him as I com'd in with the osses, and said he to me, said he, "You'll find captle quarters at the Crown!"' 'The deuce!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, dropping the reins on his hack's neck; 'the deuce!' repeated he with a look of disgust. 'Why, where does he live?' ''Bove the saddler's, thonder,' replied Leather, nodding to a small bow-windowed white house a little lower down, with the gilt-lettered words: OVEREND, SADDLER AND HARNESS-MAKER TO THE QUEEN, above a very meagrely stocked shop. 'The devil!' replied Mr. Sponge, boiling up as he eyed the cottage-like dimensions of the place. The dialogue was interrupted by a sledge-hammer-like blow on Sponge's back, followed by such a proffered hand as could proceed from none but his host. 'Glad to see ye!' exclaimed Facey, swinging Sponge's arm to and fro. 'Get off!' continued he, half dragging him down, 'and let's go in; for it's beastly cold, and dinner'll be ready in no time!' So saying, he led the captive Sponge down street, like a prisoner, by the arm, and, opening the thin house-door, pushed him up a very straight staircase into a little low cabin-like room, hung with boxing-gloves, foils, and pictures of fighters and ballet girls. 'Glad to see ye!' again said Facey, poking the diminutive fire. 'Axed Nosey Nickel and Gutty Weazel to meet you,' continued he, looking at the little 'dinner-for-two' table; 'but Nosey's gone wrong in a tooth, and Gutty's away sweetheartin'. However, we'll be very cosy and jolly together; and if you want to wash your hands, or anything afore dinner, I'll show you your bedroom,' continued he, backing Sponge across the staircase landing to where a couple of little black doors opened into rooms, formed by dividing what had been the duplicate of the sitting-room into two. 'There!' exclaimed Facey, pointing to Sponge's portmanteau and bag, standing midway between the window and door: 'There! there are your traps. Yonder's the washhand-stand. You can put your shavin'-things on the chair below the lookin'-glass 'gainst the wall,' pointing to a fragment of glass nailed against the stencilled wall, all of which Sponge stood eyeing with a mingled air of resignation and contempt; but when Facey pointed to: 'The chest, contrived a double debt to pay-- A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day' and said that was where Sponge would have to curl himself up, our friend shook his head, and declared he could not. 'Oh, fiddle!' replied Facey, 'Jack Weatherley slept in it for months, and he's half a hand higher than you--sixteen hands, if he's an inch.' And Sponge jerked his head and bit his lips, thinking he was 'done' for once. 'W-h-o-y, ar thought you'd been a fox-hunter,' observed Facey, seeing his guest's disconcerted look. 'Well, but bein' a fox-hunter won't enable one to sleep in a band-box, or to shut one's-self up like a telescope,' retorted the indignant Sponge. ''Ord hang it, man! you're so nasty partickler,' rejoined Facey; 'you're so nasty partickler. You'll never do to go out duck-shootin' i' your shirt. Dash it, man! Oncle Gilroy would disinherit me if ar was such a chap. However, look sharp,' continued he, 'if you are goin' to clean yourself; for dinner 'll be ready in no time, indeed, I hear Mrs. End dishin' it up.' So saying, Facey rolled out of the room, and Sponge presently heard him pulling off his clogs of shoes in the adjoining one. Dinner spoke for itself, for the house reeked with the smell of fried onions and roast pork. Now, Sponge didn't like pork; and there was nothing but pork, or pig in one shape or another. Spare ribs, liver and bacon, sausages, black puddings, &c.--all very good in their way, but which came with a bad grace after the comforts of Jog's, the elegance of Puffington's, and the early splendour of Jawleyford's. Our hero was a good deal put out, and felt as if he was imposed upon. What business had a man like this to ask him to stay with him--a man who dined by daylight, and ladled his meat with a great two-pronged fork? Facey, though he saw Mr. Sponge wasn't pleased, praised and pressed everything in succession down to a very strong cheese; and as the slip-shod girl whisked away crumbs and all in the coarse tablecloth, he exclaimed in a most open-hearted air, 'Well, now, what shall we have to drink?' adding, 'You smoke, of course--shall it be gin, rum, or Hollands--Hollands, rum, or gin?' Sponge was half inclined to propose wine, but recollecting what sloe-juice sort of stuff it was sure to be, and that Facey, in all probability, would make him finish it, he just replied, 'Oh, I don't care; 'spose we say gin?' 'Gin be it,' said Facey, rising from his seat, and making for a little closet in the wall, he produced a bottle labelled 'Fine London Spirit'; and, hallooing to the girl to get a few 'Captins' out of the box under his bed, he scattered a lot of glasses about the table, and placed a green dessert-dish for the biscuits against they came. Night had now closed in--a keen, boisterous, wintry night, making the pocketful of coals that ornamented the grate peculiarly acceptable. 'B-o-y Jove, what a night!' exclaimed Facey, as a blash of sleet dashed across the window as if some one had thrown a handful of pebbles against it. 'B-o-y Jove, what a night!' repeated he, rising and closing the shutters, and letting down the little scanty red curtain. 'Let us draw in and have a hot brew,' continued he, stirring the fire under the kettle, and handing a lot of cigars out of the table-drawer. They then sat smoking and sipping, and smoking and sipping, each making a mental estimate of the other. 'Shall we have a game at cards? or what shall we do to pass the evenin'?' at length asked our host. 'Better have a game at cards, p'raps,' continued he. 'Thank'ee, no; thank'ee, no. I've a book in my pocket,' replied Sponge, diving into his jacket-pocket; adding, as he fished up his _Mogg_, 'always carry a book of light reading about with me.' 'What, you're a literary cove, are you?' asked Facey, in a tone of surprise. 'Not exactly that,' replied Sponge; 'but I like to improve my mind.' He then opened the valuable work, taking a dip into the Omnibus Guide--'Brentford, 7 from Hyde Park Corner--European Coffee House, near the Bank, daily,' and so worked his way on through the 'Brighton Railway Station, Brixton, Bromley both in Kent and Middlesex, Bushey Heath, Camberwell, Camden Town, and Carshalton,' right into Cheam, when Facey, who had been eyeing him intently, not at all relishing his style of proceeding and wishing to be doing, suddenly exclaimed, as he darted up: [Illustration: FACEY ROMFORD TREATS SPONGE TO A LITTLE MUSIC] 'B-o-y Jove! You've not heard me play the flute! No more you have. Dash it, how remiss!' continued he, making for the little bookshelf on which it lay; adding, as he blew into it and sucked the joints, 'you're musical, of course?' 'Oh, I can stand music,' muttered Sponge, with a jerk of his head, as if a tune was neither here nor there with him. 'By Jingo! you should see me Oncle Gilroy when a'rm playin'! The old man act'ly sheds tears of delight--he's so pleased.' 'Indeed,' replied Sponge, now passing on into _Mogg's Cab Fares_--'Aldersgate Street, Hare Court, to or from Bagnigge Wells,' and so on, when Facey struck up the most squeaking, discordant, broken-winded 'Jump Jim Crow' that ever was heard, making the sensitive Sponge shudder, and setting all his teeth on edge. 'Hang me, but that flute of yours wants nitre, or a dose of physic, or something most dreadful!' at length exclaimed he, squeezing up his face as if in the greatest agony, as the laboured: 'Jump about and wheel about' completely threw Sponge over in his calculation as to what he could ride from Aldgate Pump to the Pied Bull at Islington for. 'Oh no!' replied Facey, with an air of indifference, as he took off the end and jerked out the steam. 'Oh no--only wants work--only wants work,' added he, putting it together again, exclaiming, as he looked at the now sulky Sponge, 'Well, what shall it be?' 'Whatever you please,' replied our friend, dipping frantically into his _Mogg_. 'Well, then, I'll play you me oncle's favourite tune, "The Merry Swiss Boy,"' whereupon Facey set to most vigorously with that once most popular air. It, however, came off as rustily as 'Jim Crow,' for whose feats Facey evidently had a partiality; for no sooner did he get squeaked through 'me oncle's' tune than he returned to the nigger melody with redoubled zeal, and puffed and blew Sponge's calculations as to what he could ride from 'Mother Redcap's at Camden Town down Liquorpond Street, up Snow Hill, and so on, to the 'Angel' in Ratcliff Highway for, clean out of his head. Nor did there seem any prospect of relief, for no sooner did Facey get through one tune than he at the other again. 'Rot it!' at length exclaimed Sponge, throwing his _Mogg_ from him in despair, 'you'll deafen me with that abominable noise.' 'Bless my heart!' exclaimed Facey, in well-feigned surprise, 'Bless my heart! Why, I thought you liked music, my dear feller!' adding, 'I was playin' to please you.' 'The deuce you were!' snapped Mr. Sponge. 'I wish I'd known sooner: I'd have saved you a deal of wind.' 'Why, my dear feller,' replied Facey, 'I wished to entertain you the best in my power. One must do somethin', you know.' 'I'd rather do anything than undergo that horrid noise,' replied Sponge, ringing his left ear with his forefinger. 'Let's have a game at cards, then,' rejoined Facey soothingly, seeing he had sufficiently agonized Sponge. 'Cards,' replied Mr. Sponge. 'Cards,' repeated he thoughtfully, stroking his hairy chin. 'Cards,' added he, for the third time, as he conned Facey's rotund visage, and wondered if he was a sharper. If the cards were fair, Sponge didn't care trying his luck. It all depended upon that. 'Well,' said he, in a tone of indifference, as he picked up his _Mogg_, thinking he wouldn't pay if he lost, 'I'll give you a turn. What shall it be?' 'Oh--w-h-o-y--s'pose we say _écarté_?' replied Facey, in an off-hand sort of way. 'Well,' drawled Sponge, pocketing his _Mogg_, preparatory to action. 'You haven't a clean pack, have you?' asked Sponge, as Facey, diving into a drawer, produced a very dirty, thumb-marked set. 'W-h-o-y, no, I haven't,' replied Facey. 'W-h-o-y, no, I haven't: but, honour bright, these are all right and fair. Wouldn't cheat a man, if it was ever so.' 'Sure you wouldn't,' replied Sponge, nothing comforted by the assertion. They then resumed their seats opposite each other at the little table, with the hot water and sugar, and 'Fine London Spirit' bottle equitably placed between them. At first Mr. Sponge was the victor, and by nine o'clock had scored eight-and-twenty shillings against his host, when he was inclined to leave off, alleging that he was an early man, and would go to bed--an arrangement that Facey seemed to come into, only pressing Sponge to accompany the gin he was now helping himself to with another cigar. This seemed all fair and reasonable; and as Sponge conned matters over, through the benign influence of the ''baccy,' he really thought Facey mightn't be such a bad beggar after all. 'Well, then,' said he, as he finished cigar and glass together, 'if you'll give me eight-and-twenty bob, I'll be off to Bedfordshire.' 'You'll give me my revenge surely!' exclaimed Facey, in pretended astonishment. 'To-morrow night,' replied Sponge firmly, thinking it would have to go hard with him if he remained there to give it. 'Nay, _now_!' rejoined Facey, adding, 'it's quite early. Me Oncle Gilroy and I always play much later at Queercove Hill.' Sponge hesitated. If he had got the money, he would have refused point-blank; as it was, he thought, perhaps the only chance of getting it was to go on. With no small reluctance and misgivings he mixed himself another tumbler of gin and water, and, changing seats, resumed the game. Nor was our discreet friend far wrong in his calculations, for luck now changed, and Facey seemed to have the king quite at command. In less than an hour he had not only wiped off the eight-and-twenty shillings, but had scored three pound fifteen against his guest. Facey would now leave off. Sponge, on the other hand, wanted to go on. Facey, however, was firm. 'I'll cut you double or quits, then,' cried Sponge, in rash despair. Facey accommodated him and doubled the debt. 'Again!' exclaimed Sponge, with desperate energy. 'No! no more, thank ye,' replied Facey coolly. 'Fair play's a jewel.' 'So it is,' assented Mr. Sponge, thinking he hadn't had it. 'Now,' continued Facey, poking into the table-drawer and producing a dirty scrap of paper, with a little pocket ink-case, 'if you'll give me an "I.O.U.," we'll shut up shop.' 'An "I.O.U.!"' retorted Sponge, looking virtuously indignant. 'An "I.O.U.!" I'll give you your money i' the mornin'.' 'I know you will,' replied Facey coolly, putting himself in boxing attitude, exclaiming, as he measured out a distance, 'just feel the biceps muscle of my arm--do believe I could fell an ox. However, never mind,' continued he, seeing Sponge declined the feel. 'Life's uncertain: so you give me an "I.O.U." and we'll be all right and square. Short reckonin's make long friends, you know,' added he, pointing peremptorily to the paper. 'I'd better give you a cheque at once,' retorted Sponge, looking the very essence of chivalry. '_Money_, if you please,' replied Facey; muttering, with a jerk of his head, 'don't like paper.' The renowned Sponge, for once, was posed. He had the money, but he didn't like to part with it. So he gave the 'I.O.U.' and, lighting a twelve-to-the-pound candle, sulked off to undress and crawl into the little impossibility of a bed. Night, however, brought no relief to our distinguished friend; for, little though the bed was, it was large enough to admit lodgers, and poor Sponge was nearly worried by the half-famished vermin, who seemed bent on making up for the long fast they had endured since the sixteen-hands-man left. Worst of all, as day dawned, the eternal 'Jim Crow' recommenced his saltations, varied only with the: 'Come, arouse ye, arouse ye, my merry Swiss boy' of 'me Oncle Gilroy.' 'Well, dash my buttons!' groaned Sponge, as the discordant noise shot through his aching head, 'but this is the worst spec I ever made in my life. Fed on pork, fluted deaf, bit with bugs, and robbed at cards--fairly, downrightly robbed. Never was a more reg'ler plant put on a man. Thank goodness, however, I haven't paid him--never will, either. Such a confounded, disreputable scoundrel deserves to be punished--big, bad, blackguard-looking fellow! How the deuce I could ever be taken in by such a fellow! Believe he's nothing but a great poaching blackleg. Hasn't the faintest outlines of a gentleman about him--not the slightest particle--not the remotest glimmerin'.' These and similar reflections were interrupted by a great thump against the thin lath-and-plaster wall that separated their rooms, or rather closets, accompanied by an exclamation of: 'HALLOO, OLD BOY! HOW GOES IT?'--an inquiry to which our friend deigned no answer. ''Ord rot ye! you're awake,' muttered Facey to himself, well knowing that no one could sleep after such a 'Jim-Crow-ing' and 'Swiss-boy-ing' as he had given him. He therefore resumed his battery, thumping as though he would knock the partition in. 'HALLOO!' at last exclaimed Mr. Sponge, 'who's there?' 'Well, old Sivin-Pund-Ten, how goes it?' asked Facey, in a tone of the keenest irony. 'You be ----!' growled Mr. Sponge, in disgust. 'Breakfast in half an hour!' resumed Facey. 'Pigs'-puddin's and sarsingers--all 'ot--pipin' 'ot!' continued our host. 'Wish you were pipin' 'ot,' growled Mr. Sponge, as he jerked himself out of his little berth. Though Facey pumped him pretty hard during this second pig repast, he could make nothing out of Sponge with regard to his movements--our friend parrying all his inquiries with his _Mogg_, and assurances that he could amuse himself. In vain Facey represented that his Oncle Gilroy would be expecting them; that Mr. Hobler was ready for him to ride over on; Sponge wasn't inclined to shoot, but begged Facey wouldn't stay at home on his account. The fact was, Sponge meditated a bolt, and was in close confab with Leather, in the Rose and Crown stables, arranging matters, when the sound of his name in the yard caused him to look out, when--oh, welcome sight!--a Puddingpote Bower messenger put Sir Harry's note in his hand, which had at length arrived at Jog's through their very miscellaneous transit, called a post. Sponge, in the joy of his heart, actually gave the lad a shilling! He now felt like a new man. He didn't care a rap for Facey, and, ordering Leather to give him the hack and follow with the hunters, he presently cantered out of town as sprucely as if all was on the square. When, however, Facey found how matters stood, he determined to stop Sponge's things, which Leather resisted; and, Facey showing fight, Leather butted him with his head, sending him backwards downstairs and putting his shoulder out. Leather than marched off with the kit, amid the honours of war. CHAPTER LXI NONSUCH HOUSE AGAIN [Illustration: 'MR. SPONGE, MY LADY'] The gallant inmates of Nonsuch House had resolved themselves into a committee of speculation, as to whether Mr. Sponge was coming or not; indeed, they had been betting upon it, the odds at first being a hundred to one that he came, though they had fallen a point or two on the arrival of the post without an answer. 'Well, I say Mr. What-d'ye-call-him--Sponge--doesn't come!' exclaimed Captain Seedeybuck, as he lay full length, with his shaggy greasy head on the fine rose-coloured satin sofa, and his legs cocked over the cushion. 'Why not?' asked Miss Glitters, who was beguiling the twilight half-hour before candles with knitting. 'Don't know,' replied Seedeybuck, twirling his moustache, 'don't know--have a presentiment he won't.' 'Sure to come!' exclaimed Captain Bouncey, knocking the ashes off his cigar on to the fine Tournay carpet. 'I'll lay ten to one--ten fifties to one--he does,--a thousand to ten if you like.' If all the purses in the house had been clubbed together, we don't believe they would have raised fifty pounds. 'What sort of a looking man is he?' asked Miss Glitters, now counting her loops. 'Oh--whoy--ha--hem--haw--he's just an ordinary sort of lookin' man--nothin' 'tickler any way,' drawled Captain Seedeybuck, now wetting and twirling his moustache. 'Two legs, a head, a back, and so on, I presume,' observed the lady. 'Just so,' assented Captain Seedeybuck. 'He's a horsey-lookin' sort o' man, I should say,' observed Captain Bouncey, 'walks as if he ought to be ridin'--wears vinegar tops.' 'Hate vinegar tops,' growled Seedeybuck. Just then, in came Lady Scattercash, attended by Mr. Orlando Bugles, the ladies' attractions having caused that distinguished performer to forfeit his engagement at the Surrey Theatre. Captain Cutitfat, Bob Spangles, and Sir Harry quickly followed, and the Sponge question was presently renewed. 'Who says old brown boots comes?' exclaimed Seedeybuck from the sofa. 'Who's that with his nasty nob on my fine satin sofa?' asked the lady. 'Bob Spangles,' replied Seedeybuck. 'Nothing of the sort,' rejoined the lady; 'and I'll trouble you to get off.' 'Can't--I've got a bone in my leg,' rejoined the captain. 'I'll soon make you,' replied her ladyship, seizing the squab, and pulling it on to the floor. As the captain was scrambling up, in came Peter--one of the wageless footmen--with candles, which having distributed equitably about the room, he approached Lady Scattercash, and asked, in an independent sort of way, what room Mr. Soapsuds was to have. 'Soapsuds!--Soapsuds!--that's not his name,' exclaimed her ladyship. '_Sponge_, you fool! Soapey Sponge,' exclaimed Cutitfat, who had ferreted out Sponge's _nomme de Londres_. 'He's not come, has he?' asked Miss Glitters eagerly. 'Yes, my lady--that's to say, miss,' replied Peter. 'Come, has he!' chorused three or four voices. 'Well, he must have a (hiccup) room,' observed Sir Harry. 'The green--the one above the billiard-room will do,' added he. 'But _I_ have that, Sir Harry,' exclaimed Miss Howard. 'Oh, it'll hold two well enough,' observed Miss Glitters. 'Then _you_ can be the second,' replied Miss Howard, with a toss of her head. 'Indeed!' sneered Miss Glitters, bridling up. 'I like that.' 'Well, but where's the (hiccup) man to be put?' asked Sir Harry. 'There's Ladofwax's room,' suggested her ladyship. 'The captain's locked the door and taken the key with him,' replied the footman; 'he said he'd be back in a day or two.' 'Back in a (hiccup) or two!' observed Sir Harry. 'Where is he gone?' The man smiled. '_Borrowed_,' observed Captain Quod, with an emphasis. 'Indeed!' exclaimed Sir Harry, adding, 'well, I thought that was Nabbum's gig with the old grey.' 'He'll not be back in a hurry,' observed Bouncey. 'He'll be like the Boulogne gents, who are always going to England, but never do.' 'Poor Wax!' observed Quod; 'he's a big fool, to give him his due.' 'If you give him his due it's more than he gives other people, it seems.' observed Miss Howard. 'Oh, fie, Miss H.!' exclaimed Captain Seedeybuck. 'Well, but the (hiccup) man must have a (hiccup) bed somewhere,' observed Sir Harry; adding to the footman, 'you'd better (hiccup) the door open, you know.' 'Perhaps you'd better try what one of yours will do,' observed Bob Spangles, to the convulsion of the company. In the midst of their mirth Mr. Bottleends was seen piloting Mr. Sponge up to her ladyship. 'Mr. Sponge, my lady,' said he in as low and deferential a tone as if he got his wages punctually every quarter-day. 'How do you do. Mr. Sponge?' said her ladyship, tendering him her hand with an elegant curtsey. 'How are you, Mr. (hiccup) Sponge?' asked Sir Harry, offering his; 'I believe you know the (hiccup) company?' continued he, waving his hand around; 'Miss (hiccup) Glitters, Captain (hiccup) Quod, Captain Bouncey, Mr. (hiccup) Bugles, Captain (hiccup) Seedeybuck, and so on'; whereupon Miss Glitters curtsied, the gentlemen bobbed their heads and drew near our hero, who had now stationed himself before the fire. 'Coldish to-night,' said he, stooping, and placing both hands to the bars. 'Coldish,' repeated he, rubbing his hands and looking around. [Illustration] 'It generally is about this time of year, I think,' observed Miss Glitters, who was quite ready to enter for our friend. 'Hope it won't stop hunting,' said Mr. Sponge. 'Hope not,' replied Sir Harry; 'would be a bore if it did.' 'I wonder you gentlemen don't prefer hunting in a frost,' observed Miss Howard; 'one would think it would be just the time you'd want a good warming.' 'I don't agree with you, there,' replied Mr. Sponge, looking at her, and thinking she was not nearly so pretty as Miss Glitters. 'Do you hunt to-morrow?' asked he of Sir Harry, not having been able to obtain any information at the stables. '(Hiccup) to-morrow? Oh, I dare say we shall,' replied Sir Harry, who kept his hounds as he did his carriages, to be used when wanted. 'Dare say we shall,' repeated he. But though Sir Harry spoke thus encouragingly of their prospects, he took no steps, as far as Mr. Sponge could learn, to carry out the design. Indeed, the subject of hunting was never once mentioned, the conversation after dinner, instead of being about the Quorn, or the Pytchley, or Jack Thompson with the Atherstone, turning upon the elegance and lighting of the Casinos in the Adelaide Gallery and Windmill Street, and the relative merits of those establishments over the Casino de Venise in High Holborn. Nor did morning produce any change for the better, for Sir Harry and all the captains came down in their usual flashy broken-down player-looking attire, their whole thoughts being absorbed in arranging for a pool at billiards, in which the ladies took part. So with billiards, brandy, and ''baccy,'--''baccy,' brandy, and billiards, varied with an occasional stroll about the grounds, the non-sporting inmates of Nonsuch House beguiled the time, much to Mr. Sponge's disgust, whose soul was on fire and eager for the fray. The reader's perhaps being the same, we will skip Christmas and pass on to New Year's Day. CHAPTER LXII A FAMILY BREAKFAST 'Twere almost superfluous to say that NEW YEAR'S DAY is always a great holiday. It is a day on which custom commands people to be happy and idle, whether they have the means of being happy and idle or not. It is a day for which happiness and idleness are 'booked,' and parties are planned and arranged long beforehand. Some go to the town, some to the country; some take rail; some take steam; some take greyhounds; some take gigs; while others take guns and pop at all the little dicky-birds that come in their way. The rural population generally incline to a hunt. They are not very particular as to style, so long as there are a certain number of hounds, and some men in scarlet, to blow their horns, halloo, and crack their whips. The population, especially the rising population about Nonsuch House, all inclined that way. A New Year's Day's hunt with Sir Harry had long been looked forward to by the little Raws, and the little Spooneys, and the big and little Cheeks, and we don't know how many others. Nay, it had been talked of by the elder boys at their respective schools--we beg pardon, academies--Dr. Switchington's, Mr. Latherington's, Mrs. Skelper's, and a liberal allowance of boasting indulged in, as to how they would show each other the way over the hedges and ditches. The thing had long been talked of. Old Johnny Raw had asked Sir Harry to arrange the day so long ago that Sir Harry had forgotten all about it. Sir Harry was one of those good-natured souls who can't say 'No' to any one. If anybody had asked if they might set fire to his house, he would have said: 'Oh (hiccup) certainly, my dear (hiccup) fellow, if it will give you any (hiccup) pleasure.' Now, for the hiccup day. It is generally a frost on New Year's Day. However wet and sloppy the weather may be up to the end of the year, it generally turns over a new leaf on that day. New Year's Day is generally a bright, bitter, sunshiny day, with starry ice, and a most decided anti-hunting feeling about it--light, airy, ringy, anything but cheery for hunting. Thus it was in Sir Harry Scattercash's county. Having smoked and drunk the old year out, the captains and company retired to their couches without thinking about hunting. Mr. Sponge, indeed, was about tired of asking when the hounds would be going out. It was otherwise, however, with the rising generation, who were up betimes, and began pouring in upon Nonsuch House in every species of garb, on every description of steed, by every line and avenue of approach. 'Halloo! what's up now?' exclaimed Lady Scattercash, as she caught view of the first batch rounding the corner to the front of the house. 'Who have we here?' asked Miss Glitters, as a ponderous, parti-coloured clown, on a great, curly-coated cart-horse, brought up the rear. 'Early callers,' observed Captain Seedeybuck, eating away complacently. 'Friends of Mr. Sponge's, most likely,' suggested Captain Quod. 'Some of the little Sponges come to see their pa, p'raps,' lisped Miss Howard, pretending to be shocked after she had said it. 'Bravo, Miss Howard!' exclaimed Captain Cutitfat, clapping his hands. '_I_ said nothing, Captain,' observed the young lady with becoming prudery. 'Here we are again!' exclaimed Captain Quod, as a troop of various-sized urchins, in pea-jackets, with blue noses and red comforters, on very shaggy ponies, the two youngest swinging in panniers over an ass, drew up alongside of the first comers. 'Whose sliding-scale of innocence is that, I wonder!' exclaimed Miss Howard, contemplating the variously sized chubby faces through the window. 'He, he, he! ho, ho, ho!' giggled the guests. Another batch of innocence now hove in sight. 'Oh, those are the little (hiccup) Raws,' observed Sir Harry, catching sight of the sky-blue collar of the servant's long drab coat. 'Good chap, old Johnny Raw; ask them to (hiccup) in,' continued he, 'and give them some (hiccup) cherry brandy'; and thereupon Sir Harry began nodding and smiling, and making signs to them to come in. The youngsters, however, maintained their position. 'The little stupexes!' exclaimed Miss Howard, going to the window, and throwing up the sash. 'Come in, young gents!' cried she, in a commanding tone, addressing herself to the last comers. 'Come in, and have some toffy and lollypops! D'ye hear?' continued she, in a still louder voice, and motioning her head towards the door. The boys sat mute. 'You little stupid monkeys,' muttered she in an undertone, as the cold air struck upon her head. 'Come in, like good boys,' added she in a louder key, pointing with her finger towards the door. 'Nor, thenk ye!' at last drawled the elder of the boys. 'Nor, thenk ye!' repeated Miss Howard, imitating the drawl. 'Why not?' asked she sharply. The boy stared stupidly. 'Why won't you come in?' asked she, again addressing him. 'Don't know!' replied the boy, staring vacantly at his younger brother, as he rubbed a pearl off his nose on the back of his hand. 'Don't know!' ejaculated Miss Howard, stamping her little foot on the Turkey carpet. 'Mar said we hadn't,' whined the younger boy, coming to the rescue of his brother. 'Mar said we hadn't!' retorted the fair interrogator. 'Why not?' 'Don't know,' replied the elder. 'Don't know! you little stupid animal,' snapped Miss Howard, the cold air increasing the warmth of her temper. 'I wonder what you _do_ know. Why did your ma say you were not to come in?' continued she, addressing the younger one. 'Because--because,' hesitated he, 'she said the house was full of trumpets.' 'Trumpets, you little scamp!' exclaimed the lady, reddening up; 'I'll get a whip and cut your jacket into ribbons on your back.' And thereupon she banged down the window and closed the conversation. CHAPTER LXIII THE RISING GENERATION The lull that prevailed in the breakfast-room on Miss Howard's return from the window was speedily interrupted by fresh arrivals before the door. The three Master Baskets in coats and lay-over collars, Master Shutter in a jacket and trousers, the two Master Bulgeys in woollen overalls with very large hunting whips, Master Brick in a velveteen shooting-jacket, and the two Cheeks with their tweed trousers thrust into fiddle-case boots, on all sorts of ponies and family horses, began pawing and disordering the gravel in front of Nonsuch House. George Cheek was the head boy at Mr. Latherington's classical and commercial academy, at Flagellation Hall (late the Crown and Sceptre Hotel and Posting House, on the Bankstone road), where, for forty pounds a year, eighty young gentlemen were fitted for the pulpit, the senate, the bar, the counting-house, or anything else their fond parents fancied them fit for. George was a tall stripling, out at the elbows, in at the knees, with his red knuckled hands thrust a long way through his tight coat. He was just of that awkward age when boys fancy themselves men, and men are not prepared to lower themselves to their level. Ladies get on better with them than men: either the ladies are more tolerant of twaddle, or their discerning eyes see in the gawky youth the germ of future usefulness. George was on capital terms with himself. He was the oracle of Mr. Latherington's school, where he was not only head boy and head swell, but a considerable authority on sporting matters. He took in _Bell's Life_, which he read from beginning to end, and 'noted its contents,' as they say in the city. 'I'll tell you what all these little (hiccup) animals will be wanting,' observed Sir Harry, as he cayenne-peppered a turkey's leg; 'they'll be come for a (hiccup) hunt.' 'Wish they may get it,' observed Captain Seedeybuck; adding, 'why, the ground's as hard as iron.' 'There's a big boy,' observed Miss Howard, eyeing George Cheek through the window. 'Let's have him in, and see what he's got to say for himself,' said Miss Glitters. '_You_ ask him, then,' rejoined Miss Howard, who didn't care to risk another rub. 'Peter,' said Lady Scattercash to the footman, who had been loitering about, listening to the conversation,--'Peter, go and ask that tall boy with the blue neckerchief and the riband round his hat to come in.' 'Yes, my lady,' replied Peter. 'And the (hiccup) Spooneys, and the (hiccup) Bulgeys, and the (hiccup) Raws, and all the little (hiccup) rascals,' added Sir Harry. 'The Raws won't come. Sir H.,' observed Miss Howard soberly. 'Bigger fools they,' replied Sir Harry. Presently Peter returned with a tail, headed by George Cheek, who came striding and slouching up the room, and stuck himself down on Lady Scattercash's right. The small boys squeezed themselves in as they could, one by Captain Seedeybuck, another by Captain Bouncey, one by Miss Glitters, a fourth by Miss Howard, and so on. They all fell ravenously upon the provisions. Gobble, gobble, gobble was the order of the day. 'Well, and how often have you been flogged this half?' asked Lady Scattercash of George Cheek, as she gave him a cup of coffee. Her ladyship hadn't much liking for youths of his age, and would just as soon vex them as not. 'Well, and how often have you been flogged this half?' asked she again, not getting an answer to her first inquiry. 'Not at all,' growled Cheek, reddening up. 'Oh, flogged!' exclaimed Miss Glitters. 'You wouldn't have a young man like him flogged; it's only the little boys that get that--is it, Mister Cheek?' 'To be sure not,' assented the youth. 'Mister Cheek's a man,' observed Miss Glitters, eyeing him archly, as he sat stuffing his mouth with currant-loaf plentifully besmeared with raspberry-jam. 'He'll be wanting a wife soon,' added she, smiling across the table at Captain Seedeybuck. 'I question but he's got one,' observed the captain. 'No, ar haven't,' replied Cheek, pleased at the imputation. 'Then there's a chance for you. Miss G.,' retorted the captain. 'Mrs. George Cheek would look well on a glazed card with gilt edges.' 'What a cub!' exclaimed Miss Howard, in disgust. 'You're another,' replied Master Cheek, amidst a roar of laughter from the party. 'Well, but you ask your master if you mayn't have a wife next half, and we'll see if we can't arrange matters,' observed Miss Glitters. 'Noo, ar sharn't,' replied George, stuffing his mouth full of preserved apricot. 'Why not?' asked Miss Howard, 'Because--because--ar'll have somethin' younger,' replied George. 'Bravo, young Chesterfield!' exclaimed Miss Howard; adding, 'what it is to be thick with Lord John Manners!' 'Ar'm not,' growled the boy, amidst the mirth of the company. 'Well, but what must we do with these little (hiccup)?' asked Sir Harry, at last rising from the breakfast-table, and looking listlessly round the company for an answer. [Illustration] 'Oh! liquor them well, and send them home to their mammas,' suggested Captain Bouncey, who was all for the drink. 'But they won't take their (hiccup),' replied Sir Harry, holding up a Curacao bottle to show how little had disappeared. 'Try them with cherry brandy,' suggested Captain Seedeybuck; adding, 'it's sweeter. Now, young man,' continued he, addressing George Cheek, as he poured him out a wineglassful, 'this is the real Daffy's elixir that you read of in the papers. It's the finest compound that ever was known. It will make your hair curl, your whiskers grow, and you a man before your mother.' 'N-o-a, n-o-ar, don't want any more,' growled the young gentleman, turning away in disgust. 'Ar won't drink any more.' 'Well, but be sociable,' observed Miss Howard, helping herself to a glass. 'N-o-a, no, ar don't want to be sociable,' growled he, diving into his trouser-pockets, and wriggling about on his chair. 'Well, then, what _will_ you do?' asked Miss Howard. 'Hunt,' replied the youth. 'Hunt!' exclaimed Bob Spangles; 'why, the ground's as hard as bricks.' 'N-o-a, it's not,' replied the youth. 'What a whelp!' exclaimed Miss Howard, rising from the table in disgust. 'My Uncle Jellyboy wouldn't let such a frost stop him, I know,' observed the boy. 'Who's your Uncle Jellyboy?' asked Miss Glitters. 'He's a farmer, and keeps a few harriers at Scutley,' observed Bob Spangles, _sotto voce_. 'And is that your extraordinary horse with all the legs?' asked Miss Howard, putting her glass to her eye, and scrutinizing a lank, woolly-coated weed, getting led about by a blue-aproned gardener. 'Is that your extraordinary horse, with all the legs?' repeated she, following the animal about with her glass. 'Hoots, it hasn't more legs than other people's,' growled George. 'It's got ten, at all events,' replied Miss Howard, to the astonishment of the juveniles. 'Nor, it hasn't,' replied George. 'Yes, it has,' rejoined the lady. 'Nor, it hasn't,' repeated George. 'Come and see,' said the lady; adding, 'perhaps it's put out some since you got off.' George slouched up to where she stood at the window. 'Now,' said he, as the gardener turned the horse round, and he saw it had but four, 'how many has it?' 'Ten!' replied Miss Howard. 'Hoots,' replied George, 'you think it's April Fool's Day, I dare say.' 'No, I don't,' replied Miss Howard; 'but I maintain your horse has ten legs. See, now!' continued she, 'what do you call these coming here?' 'His two forelegs,' replied George. 'Well, two fours--twice four's eight, eh? and his two hind ones make ten.' 'Hoots,' growled George, amidst the mirth of his comrades, 'you're makin' a fool o' one.' 'Well, but what must I do with all these little (hiccup) creatures?' asked Sir Harry again, seeing the plot still thickening outside. 'Turn them out a bagman?' suggested Mr. Sponge, in an undertone; adding, 'Watchorn has a three-legged 'un, I know, in the hay-loft.' 'Oh, Watchorn wouldn't (hiccup) on such a day as this,' replied Sir Harry. 'New Year's Day, too--most likely away, seeing his young hounds at walk.' 'We might see, at all events,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'Well,' assented Sir Harry, ringing the bell. 'Peter,' said he, as the servant answered the summons, 'I wish you would (hiccup) to Mr. Watchorn's, and ask if he'll have the kindness to (hiccup) down here.' Sir Harry was obliged to be polite, for Watchorn, too, was on the 'free' list as Miss Glitters called it. 'Yes, Sir Harry,' replied Peter, leaving the room. Presently Peter's white legs were seen wending their way among the laurels and evergreens, in the direction of Mr. Watchorn's house; he having a house and grass for six cows, all whose milk, he declared, went to the puppies and young hounds. Luckily, or unluckily perhaps, Mr. Watchorn was at home, and was in the act of shaving as Peter entered. He was a square-built dark-faced, dark-haired, good-looking, ill-looking fellow who cultivated his face on the four-course system of husbandry. First, he had a bare fallow--we mean a clean shave; that of course was followed by a full crop of hair all over, except on his upper lip; then he had a soldier's shave, off by the ear; which in turn was followed by a Newgate frill. The latter was his present style. He had now no whiskers, but an immense protuberance of bristly black hair, rising like a wave above his kerchief. Though he cared no more about hunting than his master, he was very fond of his red coat, which he wore on all occasions, substituting a hat for a cap when 'off duty,' as he called it. Having attired himself in his best scarlet, of which he claimed three a year--one for wet days, one for dry days, another for high days--very natty kerseymere shorts and gaiters, with a small-striped, standing-collar, toilenette waistcoat, he proceeded to obey the summons. 'Watchorn,' said Sir Harry, as the important gentleman appeared at the breakfast-room door--'Watchorn, these young (hiccup) gentlemen want a (hiccup) hunt.' 'Oh! want must be their master, Sir 'Arry,' replied Watchorn, with a broad grin on his flushed face, for he had been drinking all night, and was half drunk then. 'Can't you manage it?' asked Sir Harry, mildly. ''Ow is't possible. Sir 'Arry,' asked the huntsman, ''ow is't possible? No man's fonder of 'untin' than I am, but to turn out on sich a day as this would be a daring--a desperate violation of all the laws of registered propriety. The Pope's bull would be nothin' to it!' 'How so?' asked Sir Harry, puzzled with the jumble. 'How so?' repeated Watchorn; 'how so? Why, in the fust place, it's a mortal 'ard frost, 'arder nor hiron; in the second place, I've got no arrangements made--you can't turn out a pack of 'igh-bred fox-'ounds as you would a lot of "staggers" or "muggers"; and, in the third place, you'll knock all your nags to bits, and they are a deal better in their wind than they are on their legs, as it is. No, Sir 'Arry--no,' continued he, slowly and thoughtfully. 'No, Sir 'Arry, no. Be Cardinal Wiseman, for once. Sir 'Arry; be Cardinal Wiseman for once, and don't _think_ of it.' 'Well,' replied Sir Harry, looking at George Cheek, 'I suppose there's no help for it.' 'It was quite a thaw where I came from,' observed Cheek, half to Sir Harry and half to the huntsman. ''Deed, sir, 'deed,' replied Mr. Watchorn, with a chuck of his fringed chin, 'it generally is a thaw everywhere but where hounds meet.' 'My Uncle Jollyboy wouldn't be stopped by such a frost as this,' observed Cheek. ''Deed, sir, 'deed,' replied Watchorn, 'your Uncle Jellyboy's a very fine feller, I dare say--very fine feller; no such conjurers in these parts as he is. What man dare, I dare; he who dares more, is no man,' added Watchorn, giving his fat thigh a hearty slap. 'Well done, old Talliho!' exclaimed Miss Glitters. 'We'll have you on the stage next.' 'What will you wet your whistle with after your fine speech?' asked Lady Scattercash. 'Take a tumbler of chumpine, if there is any,' replied Watchorn, looking about for a long-necked bottle. 'Fear you'll come on badly,' observed Captain Seedeybuck, holding up an empty one, 'for Bouncey and I have just finished the last'; the captain chucking the bottle sideways on to the floor, and rolling it towards its companion in the corner. 'Have a fresh bottle,' suggested Lady Scattercash, drawing the bell-string at her chair. 'Champagne,' said her ladyship, as the footman answered the summons. 'Two on 'em!' exclaimed Captain Bouncey. 'Three!' shouted Sir Harry. 'We'll have a regular set-to,' observed Miss Howard, who was fond of champagne. 'New Year's Day,' replied Bouncey, 'and ought to be properly observed.' Presently, Fiz--z,--pop,--bang! Fiz--z,--pop,--bang! went the bottles; and, as the hissing beverage foamed over the bottle-necks, glasses were sought and held out to catch the creaming contents. 'Here's a (hiccup) happy new year to us all!' exclaimed Sir Harry, drinking off his wine. 'H-o-o-ray!' exclaimed the company in irregular order, as they drank off theirs. 'We'll drink Mr. Watchorn and the Nonsuch hounds!' exclaimed Bob Spangles, as Watchorn, having drained off his tumbler, replaced it on the sideboard. 'With all the honours!' exclaimed Captain Cutitfat, filling his glass and rising to give the time; 'Watchorn, your good health!' 'Watchorn, your good health!' sounded from all parts, which Watchorn kept acknowledging, and looking about for the means to return the compliment, his friends being more intent upon drinking his health than upon supplying him with wine. At last he caught the third of a bottle of 'chumpine,' and, emptying it into his tumbler, held it up while he thus addressed them: 'Gen'lemen all!' said he, 'I thank you most 'ticklarly for this mark of your 'tention (applause); it's most gratifying to my feelins to be thus remembered (applause). I could say a great deal more, but the liquor won't wait.' So saying, he drained off his glass while the wine effervesced. 'Well, and what d'ye (hiccup) of the weather now?' asked Sir Harry, as his huntsman again deposited his tumbler on the sideboard. 'Pon my soul! Sir 'Arry,' replied Watchorn, quite briskly, 'I really think we _might_ 'unt--we might try, at all events. The day seems changed, some'ow,' added he, staring vacantly out of the window on the bright sunny landscape, with the leafless trees dancing before his eyes. '_I_ think so,' said Sir Harry. 'What do you think, Mr. Sponge?' added he, appealing to our hero. 'Half an hour may make a great difference,' observed Mr. Sponge. 'The sun will then be at its best.' 'We'll try, at all events,' observed Sir Harry. 'That's right,' exclaimed George Cheek, waving a scarlet bandana over his head. 'I shall expect you to ride up to the 'ounds, young gent,' observed Watchorn, darting an angry look at the speaker. 'Won't I, old boy!' exclaimed George; 'ride over you, if you don't get out of the way.' ''Deed,' sneered the huntsman, whisking about to leave the room; muttering, as he passed behind the large Indian screen at the door, something about 'jawing jackanapes, well called Cheek.' ''Unt in 'alf an hour!' exclaimed Watchorn, from the steps of the front door; an announcement that was received by the little Raws, and little Spooneys, and little Baskets, and little Bulgeys, and little Bricks, and little others, with rapturous applause. All was now commotion and hurry-scurry inside and out; glasses were drained, lips wiped, and napkins thrown hastily away, while ladies and gentlemen began grouping and talking about hats and habits, and what they should ride. 'You go with me, Orlando,' said Lady Scattercash to our friend Bugles, recollecting the quantity of diachylon plaster it had taken to repair the damage of his former equestrian performance. 'You go with me, Orlando,' said she, 'in the phaeton; and I'll lend Lucy,' nodding towards Miss Glitters, 'my habit and horse.' 'Who can lend me a coat?' asked Captain Seedeybuck, examining the skirts of a much frayed invisible-green surtout. 'A coat!' replied Captain Quod; 'I can lend you a Joinville, if that will do as well,' the captain feeling his own extensive one as he spoke. 'Hardly,' said Seedeybuck, turning about to ask Sir Harry. 'What!--you are going to give Watchorn a tussle, are you?' asked Captain Cutitfat of George Cheek, as the latter began adjusting the fox-toothed riband about his hat. 'I believe you,' replied George, with a knowing jerk of his head; adding, 'it won't take much to beat him.' 'What! he's a slow 'un, is he?' asked Cutitfat, in an undertone. 'Slowest coach I ever saw,' growled George. 'Won't ride, won't he?' asked the Captain. 'Not if he can help it,' replied George, adding, 'but he's such a shocking huntsman--never saw such a huntsman in all my life.' George's experience lay between his Uncle Jellyboy, who rode eighteen stone and a half, Tom Scramble, the pedestrian huntsman of the Slowfoot hounds, near Mr. Latherington's, and Mr. Watchorn. But critics, especially hunting ones, are all ready made, as Lord Byron said. 'Well, we'd better disperse and get ready,' observed Bob Spangles, making for the door; whereupon the tide of population flowed that way, and the room was presently cleared. George Cheek and the juveniles then returned to their friends in the front; and George got up pony races among the Johnny Raws, the Baskets, the Bulgeys, and the Spooneys, thrice round the carriage ring and a distance, to the detriment of the gravel and the discomfiture of the flower-bed in the centre. CHAPTER LXIV THE KENNEL AND THE STUD We will now accompany Mr. Watchorn to the stable, whither his resolute legs carried him as soon as the champagne wrought the wonderful change in his opinion of the weather, though, as he every now and then crossed a spangled piece of ground upon which the sun had not struck, or stopped to crack a piece of ice with his toe, he shook his heated head and doubted whether _he_ was Cardinal Wiseman for making the attempt. Nothing but the fact of his considering it perfectly immaterial whether he was with his hounds or not encouraged him in the undertaking. 'Dash them!' said he, 'they must just take care of themselves.' With which laudable resolution, and an inward anathema at George Cheek, he left off trying the ground and tapping the ice. Watchorn's hurried, excited appearance produced little satisfaction among the grooms and helpers at the stables, who were congratulating themselves on the opportune arrival of the frost, and arranging how they should spend their New Year's Day. 'Look sharp, lads! look sharp!' exclaimed he, clapping his hands as he ran up the yard. 'Look sharp, lads! look sharp!' repeated he, as the astonished helpers showed their bare arms and dirty shirts at the partially opened doors, responsive to the sound. 'Send Snaffle here, send Brown here, send Green here, send Snooks here,' exclaimed he, with the air of a man in authority. Now Snaffle was the stud-groom, a personage altogether independent of the huntsman, and, in the ordinary course of nature, Snaffle had just as much right to send for Watchorn as Watchorn had to send for him; but Watchorn being, as we said before, some way connected with Lady Scattercash, he just did as he liked among the whole of them, and they were too good judges to rebel. 'Snaffle,' said he, as the portly, well-put-on personage waddled up to him; 'Snaffle,' said he, 'how many sound 'osses have you?' '_None_, sir,' replied Snaffle confidently. 'How many three-legged 'uns have you that can go, then?' 'Oh! a good many,' replied Snaffle, raising his hands to tell them off on his fingers. 'There's Hop-the-twig, and Hannah Bell (Hannibal), and Ugly Jade, and Sir-danapalis--the Baronet as we calls him--and Harkaway, and Hit-me-hard, and Single-peeper, and Jack's-alive, and Groggytoes, and Greedyboy, and Puff-and-blow; that's to say _two_ and three-legged 'uns, at least,' observed Snaffle, qualifying his original assertion. 'Ah, well!' said Watchorn, 'that'll do--two legs are too many for some of the rips they'll have to carry--Let me see,' continued he thoughtfully, 'I'll ride 'Arkaway.' 'Yes, sir,' said Snaffle. 'Sir 'Arry, 'It-me-'ard.' 'Won't you put him on Sir-danapalis?' asked Snaffle. 'No,' replied Watchorn, 'no; I wants to save the Bart.--I wants to save the Bart. Sir 'Arry must ride 'It-me-'ard.' 'Is her ladyship going?' asked Snaffle. 'Her ladyship drives,' replied Watchorn. 'And you. Snooks,' addressing a bare-armed helper, 'tell Mr. Traces to turn her out a pony phaeton and pair, with fresh rosettes and all complete, you know.' 'Yes sir,' said Snooks, with a touch of his forelock. 'And you'd better tell Mr. Leather to have a horse for his master,' observed Watchorn to Snaffle, 'unless as how you wish to put him on one of yours.' 'Not I,' exclaimed Snaffle; 'have enough to mount without him. D'ye know how many'll be goin'?' asked he. 'No,' replied Watchorn, hurrying off; adding, as he went, 'oh, hang 'em, just saddle 'em all, and let 'em scramble for 'em.' The scene then changed. Instead of hissing helpers pursuing their vocations in stable or saddle-room, they began bustling about with saddles on their heads and bridles in their hands, the day of expected ease being changed into one of unusual trouble. Mr. Leather declared, as he swept the clothes over Multum in Parvo's tail, that it was the most unconscionable proceeding he had ever witnessed; and muttered something about the quiet comforts he had left at Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's, hinting his regret at having come to Sir Harry's, in a sort of dialogue with himself as he saddled the horse. The beauties of the last place always come out strong when a servant gets to another. But we must accompany Mr. Watchorn. Though his early career with the Camberwell and Balham Hill Union harriers had not initiated him much into the delicacies of the chase, yet, recollecting the presence of Mr. Sponge, he felt suddenly seized with a desire of 'doing things as they should be'; and he went muttering to the kennel, thinking how he would leave Dinnerbell and Prosperous at home, and how the pack would look quite as well without Frantic running half a field ahead, or old Stormer and Stunner bringing up the rear with long protracted howls. He doubted, indeed, whether he would take Desperate, who was an incorrigible skirter; but as she was not much worse in this respect than Chatterer or Harmony, who was also an inveterate babbler, and the pack would look rather short without them, he reserved the point for further consideration, as the judges say. His speculations were interrupted by arriving at the kennel, and finding the door fast, he looked under the slate, and above the frame, and inside the window, and on the wall, for the key; and his shake, and kick, and clatter were only answered by a full chorus from the excited company within. 'Hang the feller! what's got 'im!' exclaimed he, meaning Joe Haggish, the feeder, whom he expected to find there. Joe, however, was absent; not holiday-making, but on a diplomatic visit to Mr. Greystones, the miller, at Splashford, who had positively refused to supply any more meal, until his 'little bill' (£430) for the three previous years was settled; and flesh being very scarce in the country, the hounds were quite light and fit to go. Joe had gone to try and coax Greystones out of a ton or two of meal, on the strength of its being New Year's Day. 'Dash the feller! wot's got'im?' exclaimed Watchorn, seizing the latch, and rattling it furiously. The melody of the hungry pack increased. ''Ord rot the door!' exclaimed the infuriated huntsman, setting his back against it; at the first push, open it flew. Watchorn fell back, and the astonished pack poured over his prostrate body, regardless alike of his holiday coat, his tidy tie, and toilenette vest. What a scrimmage! What a kick-up was there! Away the hounds scampered, towling and howling, some up to the fleshwheel, to see if there was any meat; some to the bone heap, to see if there was any there; others down to the dairy, to try and effect an entrance in it; while Launcher, and Lightsome, and Burster, rushed to the backyard of Nonsuch House, and were presently over ears in the pig-pail. 'Get me my horn! get me my whop!--get me my cap!--get me my bouts!' exclaimed Watchorn, as he recovered his legs, and saw his wife eyeing the scene from the door. 'Get me my bouts!--get me my cap!--get me my whop!--get me my horn, woman!' continued he, reversing the order of things, and rubbing the hounds' feetmarks off his clothes as he spoke. Mrs. Watchorn was too well drilled to dwell upon orders, and she met her lord and master in the passage with the enumerated articles in her hand. Watchorn having deposited himself on an entrance-hall chair--for it was a roomy, well-furnished house, having been the steward's while there was anything to take care of--Mrs. Watchorn proceeded to strip off his gaiters while he drew on his boots and crowned himself with his cap. Mrs. Watchorn then buckled on his spurs, and he hurried off, horn in hand, desiring her to have him a basin of turtle-soup ready against he came in; adding, 'She knew where to get it.' The frosty air then resounded with the twang, twang, twang of his horn, and hounds began drawing up from all quarters, just as sportsmen cast up at a meet from no one knows where. 'He-here, hounds--he-here, good dogs!' cried he, coaxing and making much of the first-comers: 'he-here. Galloper, old boy!' continued he, diving into his coat-pocket, and throwing him a bit of biscuit. The appearance of food had a very encouraging effect, for forthwith there was a general rush towards Watchorn, and it was only by rating and swinging his 'whop' about that he prevented the pack from pawing, and perhaps downing him. At length, having got them somewhat tranquillized, he set off on his return to the stables, coaxing the shy hounds, and rating and rapping those that seemed inclined to break away. Thus he managed to march into the stable-yard in pretty good order, just as the house party arrived in the opposite direction, attired in the most extraordinary and incongruous habiliments. There was Bob Spangles, in a swallow-tailed, mulberry-coloured scarlet, that looked like an old pen-wiper, white duck trousers, and lack-lustre Napoleon boots; Captain Cutitfat, in a smart new 'Moses and Son's' straight-cut scarlet, with bloodhound heads on the buttons, yellow-ochre leathers, and Wellington boots with drab knee-caps; little Bouncey in a tremendously baggy long-backed scarlet, whose gaping outside-pockets showed that they had carried its late owner's hands as well as his handkerchief; the clumsy device on the tarnished buttons looking quite as much like sheep's-heads as foxes'. Bouncey's tight tweed trousers were thrust into a pair of wide fisherman's boots, which, but for his little roundabout stomach, would have swallowed him up bodily. Captain Quod appeared in a venerable dresscoat of the Melton Hunt, made in the popular reign of Mr. Errington, whose much-stained and smeared silk facings bore testimony to the good cheer it had seen. As if in contrast to the light airiness of this garment, Quod had on a tremendously large shaggy brown waistcoat, with horn buttons, a double tier of pockets, and a nick out in front. With an unfair partiality his nether man was attired in a pair of shabby old black, or rather brown, dress trousers, thrust into long Wellington boots with brass heel spurs. Captain Seedeybuck had on a spruce swallow-tailed green coat of Sir Harry's, a pair of old tweed trousers of his own, thrust into long chamois-leather opera-boots, with red morocco tops, giving the whole a very unique and novel appearance. Mr. Orlando Bugles, though going to drive with my lady, thought it incumbent to put on his jack-boots, and appeared in kerseymere shorts, and a highly frogged and furred blue frock-coat, with the corner of a musked cambric kerchief acting the part of a star on his breast. "Here comes old sixteen-string'd Jack!" exclaimed Bob Spangles, as his brother-in-law, Sir Harry, came hitching and limping along, all strings, and tapes, and ends, as usual, followed by Mr. Sponge in the strict and severe order of sporting costume; double-stitched, back-stitched, sleeve-strapped, pull-devil, pull-baker coat, broad corduroy vest with fox-teeth buttons, still broader corded breeches, and the redoubtable vinegar tops. "Now we're all ready!" exclaimed Bob, working his arms as if anxious to be off, and giving a shrill shilling-gallery whistle with his fingers, causing the stable-doors to fly open, and the variously tackled steeds to emerge from their stalls. "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" exclaimed Miss Glitters, running up as fast as her long habit, or rather Lady Scattercash's long habit, would allow her. "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" repeated she, diving into the throng. 'White Surrey is saddled for the field,' replied Mr. Orlando Bugles, drawing himself up pompously, and waving his right hand gracefully towards her ladyship's Arab palfrey, inwardly congratulating himself that Miss Glitters was going to be bumped upon it instead of him. 'Give us a leg up, Seedey!' exclaimed Lucy Glitters to the 'gent' of the green coat, fearing that Miss Howard, who was a little behind, might claim the horse. [Illustration: MR. BUGLES GOES OUT HUNTING AGAIN] Captain Seedeybuck seized her pretty little uplifted foot and vaulted her into the saddle as light as a cork. Taking the horse gently by the mouth, she gave him the slightest possible touch with the whip, and moved him about at will, instead of fretting and fighting him as the clumsy, heavy-handed Bugles had done. She looked beautiful on horseback, and for a time riveted the attention of our sportsmen. At length they began to think of themselves, and then there were such climbings on, and clutchings, and catchings, and clingings, and gently-ings, and who-ho-ings, and who-ah-ings, and questionings if 'such a horse was quiet?' if another 'could leap well?' if a third 'had a good mouth?' and whether a fourth 'ever ran away?' 'Take my port-stirrup up two 'oles!' exclaimed Captain Bouncey from the top of high Hop-the-twig, sticking out a leg to let the groom do it. The captain had affected the sea instead of the land service, while a betting-list keeper, and found the bluff sailor character very taking. 'Avast there!' exclaimed he, as the groom ran the buckle up to the desired hole. 'Now,' said he, gathering up the reins in a bunch, 'how many knots an hour can this 'orse go?' 'Twenty,' replied the man, thinking he meant miles. 'Let her go, then!' exclaimed the captain, kicking the horse's sides with his spurless heels. Mr. Watchorn now mounted Harkaway; Sir Harry scrambled on to Hit-me-hard; Miss Howard was hoisted on to Groggytoes, and all the rest being 'fit' with horses of some sort or other, and the races in the front being over the juveniles poured into the yard. Lady Scattercash's pony-phaeton turned out, and our friends were at length ready for a start. CHAPTER LXV THE HUNT While the foregoing arrangements were in progress, Mr. Watchorn had desired Slarkey, the knife-boy, to go into the old hay-loft and take the three-legged fox he would find, and put him down among the laurels by the summer-house, where he would draw up to him all 'reg'lar' like. Accordingly, Slarkey went, but the old cripple having mounted the rafters, Slarkey didn't see him, or rather seeing but one fox, he clutched him, with a greater regard to his not biting him than to seeing how many legs he had; consequently he bagged an uncommonly fine old dog fox, that Wiley Tom had just stolen from Lord Scamperdale's new cover at Faggotfurze; and it was not until Slarkey put him down among the bushes, and saw how lively he went, that he found out his mistake. However, there was no help for it, and he had just time to pocket the bag when Watchorn's half-drunken cheer, and the reverberating cracks of ponderous whips on either side of the Dean, announced the approach of the pack. 'He-leu in there!' cried Watchorn to the hounds. ''Ord, dommee, but it's slippy,' said he to himself. 'Have at him. Plunderer, good dog! I wish I may be Cardinal Wiseman for comin',' added he, seeing how his breath showed on the air. 'Ho-o-i-cks! p_a_sh 'im hup! I'll be dashed if I shan't be down!' exclaimed he, as his horse slid a long slide. 'He-leu, in! Conqueror, old boy!' continued he, exclaiming loud enough for Mr. Sponge who was drawing near to hear, 'find us a fox that'll give us five and forty minnits!' the speaker inwardly hoping they might chop their bagman in cover. 'Y-o-o-icks! rout him out!' continued he, getting more energetic. 'Y-o-o-icks! wind him! Y-o-o-icks! stir us hup a teaser!' 'No go, I think,' observed George Cheek, ambling up on his leggy weed. 'No go, ye young infidel,' growled Watchorn, 'who taught you to talk about go's, I wonder? ought to be at school larnin' to cipher, or ridin' the globes,' Mr. Watchorn not exactly knowing what the term 'use of the globes,' meant. 'D'ye call that _nothin_'!' exclaimed he, taking off his cap as he viewed the fox stealing along the gravel walk; adding to himself, as he saw his even action, and full, well-tagged brush, ''Ord rot him, he's got hold of the wrong 'un!' It was, however, no time for thought. In an instant the welkin rang with the outburst of the pack and the clamour of the field. 'Talli ho!' 'Talli ho!' 'Talli ho!' 'Hoop!' 'Hoop!' 'Hoop!' cried a score of voices, and 'Twang! twang! twang!' went the shrill horn of the huntsman. The whips, too, stood in their stirrups, cracking their ponderous thongs, which sounded like guns upon the frosty air, and contributed their 'Get together! get together, hounds!' 'Hark away!' 'Hark away!' 'Hark away!' 'Hark' to the general uproar. Oh, what a row, what a riot, what a racket! Watchorn being 'in' for it, and recollecting how many saw a start who never thought of seeing a finish, immediately got his horse by the head, and singled himself out from the crowd now pressing at his horse's heels, determining, if the hounds didn't run into their fox in the park, to ride them off the scent at the very first opportunity. The 'chumpine' being still alive within him, in the excitement of the moment he leaped the hand-gate leading out of the shrubberies into the park; the noise the horse made in taking off resembling the trampling on wood-pavement. 'Cuss it, but it's 'ard!' exclaimed he, as the horse slid two or three yards as he alighted on the frozen field. George Cheek followed him; and Multum in Parvo, taking the bit deliberately between his teeth, just walked through the gate, as if it had been made of paper. 'Ah, ye brute!' groaned Mr. Sponge, in disgust, digging the Latchfords into his sides, as if he intended to make them meet in the middle. 'Ah, ye brute!' repeated he, giving him a hearty cropper as he put up his head after trying to kick him off. 'Thank you!' exclaimed Miss Glitters, cantering up; adding, 'you cleared the way nicely for me.' Nicely he had cleared it for them all; and the pent-up tide of equestrianism now poured over the park like the flood of an irrigated water meadow. Such ponies! such horses! such hugging! such kicking! such scrambling! and so little progress with many! The park being extensive--three hundred acres or more--there was ample space for the aspiring ones to single themselves out; and as Lady Scattercash and Orlando sat in the pony-phaeton, on the rising ground by the keeper's house, they saw a dark-clad horseman (George Cheek), Old Gingerbread Boots, as they called Mr. Sponge, with Lucy Glitters alongside of him, gradually stealing away from the crowd, and creeping up to Mr. Watchorn, who was sailing away with the hounds. 'What a scrimmage!' exclaimed her ladyship, standing up in the carriage, and eyeing the Strange confusion in the vale below. 'There's Bob in his old purple,' said she, eyeing her brother hustling along; 'and there's "Fat" in his new Moses and Son; and Bouncey in poor Wax's coat; and there's Harry all legs and wings, as usual,' added she, as her husband was seen flibberty-gibbertying it along. 'And there's Lucy; and where's Miss Howard, I wonder?' observed Orlando, straining his eyes after the scrambling field. Nothing but the inspiriting aid of 'chumpine,' and the hope that the thing would soon terminate, sustained Mr. Watchorn under the infliction in which he so unexpectedly found himself; for nothing would have tempted him to brave such a frost with the burning scent of a game four-legged fox. The park being spacious, and enclosed by a high plank paling, he hoped the fox would have the manners to confine himself within it; and so long as his threadings and windings favoured the supposition, our huntsman bustled along, yelling and screaming in apparent ecstasy at the top of his voice. The hounds, to be sure, wanted keeping together, for Frantic as usual had shot ahead, while the gorged pigpailers could never extricate themselves from the ponies. 'F-o-o-o-r-r-a-r-d! f-o-o-o-r-r-a-r-d! f-o-o-o-r-r-a-r-d!' elongated Watchorn, rising in his stirrups, and looking back with a grin at George Cheek, who was plying his weed with the whip, exclaiming, 'Ah, you confounded young warmint, I'll give you a warmin'! I'll teach you to jaw about 'untin'!' As he turned his head straight to look at his hounds, he was shocked to see Frantic falling backwards from a first attempt to leap the park-palings, and just as she gathered herself for a second effort, Desperate, Chatterer, and Galloper, charged in line and got over. Then came the general rush of the pack, attended with the usual success--some over, some back, some a-top of others. 'Oh, the devil!' exclaimed Watchorn, pulling up short in a perfect agony of despair. 'Oh, the devil!' repeated he in a lower tone, as Mr. Sponge approached. 'Where's there a gate?' roared our friend, skating up. 'Gate! there's never a gate within a mile, and that's locked,' replied Watchorn sulkily. 'Then here goes!' replied Mr. Sponge, gathering the chestnut together to give him an opportunity of purging himself of his previous _faux pas_. 'Here goes!' repeated he, thrusting his hard hat firmly on his head. Taking his horse back a few paces, Mr. Sponge crammed him manfully at the palings, and got over with a rap. 'Well done you!' exclaimed Miss Glitters in delight; adding to Watchorn, 'Now, old Beardey, you go next.' Beardey was irresolute. He pretended to be anxious to get the tail hounds over. 'Clear the way, then!' exclaimed Miss Glitters, putting her horse back, her bright eyes flashing as she spoke. She took him back as far as Mr. Sponge had done, touched him with the whip, and in an instant she was high in the air, landing safely on the far side. 'Hoo-ray!' exclaimed Captains Quod and Cutitfat, who now came panting up. 'Now, Mr. Watchorn!' cried Captain Seedeybuck, adding, 'You're a huntsman!' 'Yooi over, Prosperous! Yooi over, Buster!' cheered Watchorn, still pretending anxiety about his hounds. 'Let _me_ have a shy,' squeaked George Cheek, backing his giraffe, as he had seen Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters do. George took his screw by the head, and, giving him a hearty rib-roasting with his whip, ran him full tilt at the palings, and carried away half a rood. 'Hoo-ray!' cried the liberated field. '_I_ knew how it would be,' exclaimed Mr. Watchorn, in well-feigned disgust as he rode through the gap; adding, '_con_-founded young waggabone! Deserves to be well _chaste_-tized for breakin' people's palin's in that way--lettin' in all the rubbishin' tail.' The scene then changed. In lieu of the green, though hard, sward of the undulating park, our friends now found themselves on large frozen fallows, upon whose uneven surface the heaviest horses made no impression while the shuffling rats of ponies toiled and floundered about, almost receding in their progress. Mr. Sponge was just topping the fence out of the first one, and Miss Glitters was gathering her horse to ride at it, as Watchorn and Co. emerged from the park. Rounding the turnip-hill beyond, the leading hounds were racing with a breast-high scent, followed by the pack in long-drawn file. 'What a mess!' said Watchorn to himself, shading the sun from his eyes with his hand; when, remembering his _rôle_, he exclaimed, 'Y-o-o-n-der they go!' as if in ecstasies at the sight. Seeing a gate at the bottom of the field, he got his horse by the head, and rattled him across the fallow, blowing his horn more in hopes of stopping the pack than with a view of bringing up the tail-hounds. He might have saved his breath, for the music of the pack completely drowned the noise of the horn. 'Dash it!' said he, thumping the broad end against his thigh; 'I wish I was quietly back in my parlour. Hold up, horse!' roared he, as Harkaway nearly came on his haunches in pulling up at the gate. 'I know who's _not_ Cardinal Wiseman,' continued he, stooping to open it. The gate was fast, and he had to alight and lift it off its hinges. Just as he had done so, and had got it sufficiently open for a horse to pass, George Cheek came up from behind, and slipped through before him. 'Oh, you unrighteous young renegade! Did ever mortal see sich an uncivilized trick?' roared Watchorn; adding, as he climbed on to his horse again, and went spluttering through the frozen turnips after the offender, 'You've no 'quaintance with Lord John Manners, I think!' 'Oh dear!--oh dear!' exclaimed he, as his horse nearly came on his head, 'but this is the most punishin' affair I ever was in at. Puseyism's nothin' to it.' And thereupon he indulged in no end of anathemas at Slarkey for bringing the wrong fox. 'About time to take soundings, and cast anchor, isn't it?' gasped Captain Bouncey, toiling up red-hot on his pulling horse in a state of utter exhaustion, as Watchorn stood craneing and looking at a rasper through which Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters had passed, without disturbing a twig. 'C--a--s--t anchor!' exclaimed Watchorn, in a tone of derision--'not this half-hour yet, I hope!--not this forty minnits yet, I hope;--not this hour and twenty minnits yet, I hope!' continued he, putting his horse irresolutely at the fence. The horse blundered through it, barking Watchorn's nose with a branch. ''Ord rot it, cut off my nose!' exclaimed he, muffling it up in his hand. 'Cut off my nose clean by my face, I do believe,' continued he, venturing to look into his hand for it. 'Well,' said he, eyeing the slight stain of blood on his glove, 'this will be a lesson to me as long as I live. If ever I 'unt again in a frost, may I be ----. Thank goodness! they've checked at last!' exclaimed he, as the music suddenly ceased, and Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters sat motionless together on their panting, smoking steeds. Watchorn then stuck spurs to his horse, and being now on a flat rushy pasture, with a bridle-gate into the field where the hounds were casting, he hustled across, preparing his horn for a blow as soon as he got there. 'Twang--twang--twang--twang,' he went, riding up the hedgerow in the contrary direction to what the hounds leant. 'Twang--twang--twang,' he continued, inwardly congratulating himself that the fox would never face the troop of urchins he saw coming down with their guns. 'Hang him!--he's never that way!' observed Mr. Sponge, _sotto voce_, to Miss Glitters. 'He's never that way,' repeated he, seeing how Frantic flung to the right. 'Twang--twang--twang,' went the horn, but the hounds regarded it not. 'Do, Mr. Sponge, put the hounds to me!' roared Mr. Watchorn, dreading lest they might hit off the scent. Mr. Sponge answered the appeal by turning his horse the way the hounds were feathering, and giving them a slight cheer. ''Ord rot it!' roared Watchorn, '_do_ let 'em alone! that's a _fresh_ fox! ours is over the 'ill,' pointing towards Bonnyfield Hill. 'Hoop!' hallooed Mr. Sponge, taking off his hat, as Frantic hit off the scent to the right, and Galloper, and Melody, and all the rest scored to cry. 'Oh, you confounded brown-bouted beggar!' exclaimed Mr. Watchorn, returning his horn to its case, and eyeing Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters sailing away with the again breast-high-scent pack. 'Oh, you exorbitant usurer!' continued he, gathering his horse to skate after them. 'Well now, that's the most disgraceful proceedin' I ever saw in the whole course of my life. Hang me, if I'll stand such work! Dash me, but I'll 'quaint the Queen!--I'll tell Sir George Grey! I'll write to Mr. Walpole! Fo-orrard! fo-orrard!' hallooed he, as Bob Spangles and Bouncey popped upon him unexpectedly from behind, exclaiming with well-feigned glee, as he pointed to the streaming pack with his whip, ''Ord dash it, but we're in for a good thing!' Little Bouncey's horse was still yawning and star-gazing, and Bouncey, being quite unequal to riding him and well-nigh exhausted, 'downed' him against a rubbing-post in the middle of a field, making a 'cannon' with his own and his horse's head, and was immediately the centre of attraction for the panting tail. Bouncey got near a pint of sherry from among them before he recovered from the shock. So anxious were they about him, that not one of them thought of resuming the chase. Even the lagging whips couldn't leave him. George Cheek was presently _hors de combat_ in a hedge, and Watchorn seeing him 'see-sawing,' exclaimed, as he slipped through a gate: 'I'll send your mar to you, you young 'umbug.' Watchorn would gladly have stopped too, for the fumes of the champagne were dead within him, and the riding was becoming every minute more dangerous. He trotted on, hoping each jump of brown boots would be the last, and inwardly wishing the wearer at the devil. Thus he passed through a considerable extent of country, over Harrowdale Lordship, or reputed Lordship, past Roundington Tower, down Sloppyside Banks, and on to Cheeseington Green; the severity of his affliction being alone mitigated by the intervention of accommodating roads and lines of field gates. These, however, Mr. Sponge generally declined, and went crashing on, now over high places, now over low, just as they came in his way, closely followed by the fair Lucy Glitters. 'Well, I never see'd sich a man as that!' exclaimed Watchorn, eyeing Mr. Sponge clearing a stiff flight of rails, with a gap near at hand. 'Nor woman nouther!' added he, as Miss Glitters did the like. 'Well, I'm dashed if it arn't dangerous!' continued he, thumping his hand against his thick thigh, as the white nearly slipped upon landing. 'F-o-r-r-ard! for-rard! hoop!' screeched he, as he saw Miss Glitters looking back to see where he was. 'F-o-r-rard! for-rard!' repeated he; adding, in apparent delight, 'My eyes, but we're in for a stinger! Hold up, horse!' roared he, as his horse now went starring up to the knees through a long sheet of ice, squirting the clayey water into his rider's face. 'Hold up!' repeated he, adding, 'I'm dashed if one mightn't as well be crashin' over the Christial Palace as ridin' over a country froze in this way! 'Ord rot it, how cold it is!' continued he, blowing on his finger-ends; 'I declare my 'ands are quite numb. Well done, old brown bouts!' exclaimed he, as a crash on the right attracted his attention; 'well done, old brown bouts!--broke every bar i' the gate!' adding, 'but I'll let Mr. Buckram know the way his beautiful horses are 'bused. Well,' continued he, after a long skate down the grassy side of Ditchburn Lane, 'there's no fun in this--none whatever. Who the deuce would be a huntsman that could be anything else? Dash it! I'd rayther be a hosier--I'd rayther be a 'atter--I'd rayther be an undertaker--I'd rayther be a Pusseyite parson--I'd rayther be a pig-jobber--I'd rayther be a besom-maker--I'd rayther be a dog's-meat man--I'd rayther be a cat's-meat man--I'd rayther go about a sellin' of chick-weed and sparrow-grass!' added he, as his horse nearly slipped up on his haunches. 'Thank 'eavens there's relief at last!' exclaimed he, as on rising Gimmerhog Hill he saw Farmer Saintfoin's southdowns wheeling and clustering, indicative of the fox having passed; 'thank 'eavens, there's relief at last!' repeated he, reining up his horse to see the hounds charge them. Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters were now in the bottom below, fighting their way across a broad mill-course with a very stiff fence on the taking-off side. 'Hold up!' roared Mr. Sponge, as, having bored a hole through the fence, he found himself on the margin of the water-race. The horse did hold up, and landed him--not without a scramble--on the far side. 'Run him at it, Lucy!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, turning his horse half round to his fair companion. 'Run him at it, Lucy!' repeated he; and Lucy fortunately hitting the gap, skimmed o'er the water like a swallow on a summer's eve. 'Well done! you're a trump!' exclaimed Mr. Sponge, standing in his stirrups, and holding on by the mane as his horse rose the opposing hill. He just got up in time to save the muttons; another second and the hounds would have been into them. Holding up his hand to beckon Lucy to stop, he sat eyeing them intently. Many of them had their heads up, and not a few were casting sheep's eyes at the sheep. Some few of the line hunters were persevering with the scent over the greasy ground. It was a critical moment. They cast to the right, then to the left, and again took a wider sweep in advance, returning however towards the sheep, as if they thought them the best spec after all. 'Put 'em to me,' said Mr. Sponge, giving Miss Glitters his whip; 'put 'em to me!' said he, hallooing, 'Yor-geot, hounds!--yor-geot!'--which, being interpreted, means, 'here again, hounds!--here again!' 'Oh, the conceited beggar!' exclaimed Mr. Watchorn to himself, as, disappointed of his finish, he sat feeling his nose, mopping his face, and watching the proceedings. 'Oh, the conceited beggar!' repeated he, adding, 'old 'hogany bouts is _ab_solutely a goin' to kest them.' Cast them, however, he did, proceeding very cautiously in the direction the hounds seemed to lean. They were on a piece of cold scenting ground, across which they could hardly own the scent. 'Don't hurry 'em!' cried Mr. Sponge to Miss Glitters, who was acting whipper-in with rather unnecessary vigour. As they got under the lee of the hedge, the scent improved a little, and, from an occasional feathering stern, a hound or two indulged in a whimper, until at length they fairly broke out in a cry. 'I'll lose a shoe,' said Watchorn to himself, looking first at the formidable leap before him, and then to see if there was any one coming up behind. 'I'll lose a shoe,' said he. 'No notion of lippin' of a navigable river--a downright arm of the sea,' added he, getting off. 'Forward! forward!' screeched Mr. Sponge, capping the hounds on, when away they went, heads up and sterns down as before. 'Ay, for-rard! for-rard!' mimicked Mr. Watchorn; adding, 'you're for-rard enough, at all events.' After running about three-quarters of a mile at best pace, Mr. Sponge viewed the fox crossing a large grass field with all the steam up he could raise, a few hundred yards ahead of the pack, who were streaming along most beautifully, not viewing, but gradually gaining upon him. At last they broke from scent to view, and presently rolled him over and over among them. 'WHO-HOOP!' screamed Mr. Sponge, throwing himself off his horse and rushing in amongst them. 'WHO-HOOP!' repeated he, still louder, holding the fox up in grim death above the baying pack. 'Who-hoop!' exclaimed Miss Glitters, reining up in delight alongside the chestnut. 'Who-hoop!' repeated she, diving into the saddle-pocket for her lace-fringed handkerchief. 'Throw me my whip!' cried Mr. Sponge, repelling the attacks of the hounds from behind with his heels. Having got it, he threw the fox on the ground, and clearing a circle, he off with his brush in an instant. 'Tear him and eat him!' cried he, as the pack broke in on the carcass. 'Tear him and eat him!' repeated he, as he made his way up to Miss Glitters with the brush, exclaiming, 'We'll put this in your hat, alongside the cock's feathers.' The fair lady leant towards him, and as he adjusted it becomingly in her hat, looking at her bewitching eyes, her lovely face, and feeling the sweet fragrance of her breath, a something shot through Mr. Sponge's pull-devil, pull-baker coat, his corduroy waistcoat, his Eureka shirt, Angola vest, and penetrated the very cockles of his heart. He gave her such a series of smacking kisses as startled her horse and astonished a poacher who happened to be hid in the adjoining hedge. Sponge was never so happy in his life. He could have stood on his head, or been guilty of any sort of extravagance, short of wasting his money. Oh, he was happy! Oh, he was joyous! He was intoxicated with pleasure. As he eyed his angelic charmer, her lustrous eyes, her glowing cheeks, her pearly teeth, the bewitching fulness of her elegant _tournure_, and thought of the masterly way she rode the run--above all, of the dashing style in which she charged the mill-race--he felt a something quite different to anything he had experienced with any of the buxom widows or lackadaisical misses whom he could just love or not, according to circumstances, among whom his previous experience had lain. Miss Glitters, he knew, had nothing, and yet he felt he could not do without her; the puzzlement of his mind was, how the deuce they should manage matters--'make tongue and buckle meet,' as he elegantly phrased it. It is pleasant to hear a bachelor's pros and cons on the subject of matrimony; how the difficulties of the gentleman out of love vanish or change into advantages with the one in--'Oh, I would never think of marrying without a couple of thousand a year at the _very least_!' exclaims young Fastly. '_I_ can't do without four hunters and a hack. _I_ can't do without a valet. _I_ can't do without a brougham. _I_ must belong to half-a-dozen clubs. _I'll_ not marry any woman who can't keep me comfortable--bachelors can live upon nothing--bachelors are welcome everywhere--very different thing with a wife. Frightful things milliners' bills--fifty guineas for a dress, twenty for a bonnet--ladies' maids are the very devil--never satisfied--far worse to please than their mistresses.' And between the whiffs of a cigar he hums the old saw-- 'Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries his sorrow begins.' Now take him on the other tack--Fast is smitten. ''Ord hang it! a married man can live on very little,' soliloquizes our friend. A nice lovely creature to keep one at home. Hunting's all humbug; it's only the flash of the thing that makes one follow it. Then the danger far more than counterbalances the pleasure. Awful places one has to ride over, to be sure, or submit to be called "slow." Horrible thing to set up for a horseman, and then have to ride to maintain one's reputation. Will be thankful to give it up altogether. The bays will make capital carriage-horses, and one can often pick up a second-hand carriage as good as new. Shall save no end of money by not having to put "B" to my name in the assessed tax-payer. One club's as good as a dozen--will give up the Polyanthus and the Sunflower, and the Refuse and the Rag. Ladies' dresses are cheap enough. Saw a beautiful gown t'other day for a guinea. Will start Master Bergamotte. Does nothing for his wages; will scarce clean my boots. Can get a chap for half what I give him, who'll do double the work. Will make Beans into coachman. What a convenience to have one's wife's maid to sew on one's buttons, and keep one's toes in one's stocking-feet! Declare I lose half my things at the washing for want of marking. Hanged if I won't marry and be respectable--marriage is an honourable state!' And thereupon Tom grows a couple of inches taller in his own conceit. Though Mr. Sponge's thoughts did not travel in quite such a luxurious first-class train as the foregoing, he, Mr. Sponge, being more of a two-shirts-and-a-dicky sort of man, yet still the future ways and means weighed upon his mind, and calmed the transports of his present joy. Lucy was an angel! about that there was no dispute. He would make her Mrs. Sponge at all events. Touring about was very expensive. He could only counterbalance the extravagance of inns by the rigid rule of giving nothing to servants at private houses. He thought a nice airy lodging in the suburbs of London would answer every purpose, while his accurate knowledge of cab-fares would enable Lucy to continue her engagement at the Royal Amphitheatre without incurring the serious overcharges the inexperienced are exposed to. 'Where one can dine, two can dine,' mused Mr. Sponge; 'and I make no doubt we'll manage matters somehow.' 'Twopence for your thoughts!' cried Lucy, trotting up, and touching him gently on the back with her light silver-mounted riding-whip. 'Twopence for your thoughts!' repeated she, as Mr. Sponge sauntered leisurely along, regardless of the bitter cold, followed by such of the hounds as chose to accompany him. 'Ah!' replied he, brightening up; 'I was just thinking what a deuced good run we'd had.' 'Indeed!' pouted the fair lady. 'No, my darling; I was thinking what a very pretty girl you are,' rejoined he, sidling his horse up, and encircling her neat waist with his arm. A sweet smile dimpled her plump cheeks, and chased the recollection of the former answer away. It would not be pretty--indeed, we could not pretend to give even the outline of the conversation that followed. It was carried on in such broken and disjointed sentences, eyes and squeezes doing so much more work than words, that even a reporter would have had to draw largely upon his imagination for the substance. Suffice it to say that, though the thermometer was below zero, they never moved out of a foot's pace; the very hounds growing tired of the trail, and slinking off one by one as the opportunity occurred. A dazzling sun was going down with a blood-red glare, and the partially softened ground was fast resuming its fretwork of frost, as our hero and heroine were seen sauntering up the western avenue to Nonsuch House, as slowly and quietly as if it had been the hottest evening in summer. 'Here's old Coppertops!' exclaimed Captain Seedeybuck, as, turning round in the billiard-room to chalk his cue, he espied them crawling along. 'And Lucy!' added he as he stood watching them. 'How slowly they come!' observed Bob Spangles, going to the window. 'Must have tired their horses,' suggested Captain Quod. 'Just the sort of man to tire a horse,' rejoined Bob Spangles. 'Hate that Sponge,' observed Captain Cutitfat. 'So do I,' replied Captain Quod. 'Well, never mind the beggar! It's you to play!' exclaimed Bob Spangles to Captain Seedeybuck. But Lady Scattercash, who was observing our friends from her boudoir window, saw with a woman's eye that there was something more than a mere case of tired horses; and, tripping downstairs, she arrived at the front door just as the fair Lucy dropped smilingly from her horse into Mr. Sponge's extended arms. Hurrying up into the boudoir, Lucy gave her ladyship one of Mr. Sponge's modified kisses, revealing the truth more eloquently than words could convey. 'Oh,' Lady Scattercash was '_so_ glad!' '_so_ delighted!' '_so_ charmed!' Mr. Sponge was _such_ a _nice_ man, and _so rich_. She was sure he was rich--couldn't hunt if he wasn't. Would advise Lucy to have a good settlement, in case he broke his neck. And pin-money! pin-money was most useful! no husband ever let his wife have enough money. Must forget all about Harry Dacre and Charley Brown, and the swell in the Blues. Must be prudent for the future. Mr. Sponge would never know anything of the past. Then she reverted to the interesting subject of settlements. 'What had Mr. Sponge got, and what would he do?' This Lucy couldn't tell. 'What! hadn't he told her where is estates were?--'No.' 'Well, was his dad dead?' This Lucy didn't know either. They had got no further than the tender prop. 'Ah! well; would get it all out of him by degrees.' And with the reiteration of her 'so glads,' and the repayment of the kiss Lucy had advanced, her ladyship advised her to get off her habit and make herself comfortable while she ran downstairs to communicate the astonishing intelligence to the party below. 'What d'ye think?' exclaimed she, bursting into the billiard-room, where the party were still engaged in a game at pool, all our sportsmen, except Captain Cutitfat, who still sported his new Moses and Son's scarlet, having divested themselves of their hunting-gear--'What d'ye think?' exclaimed she, darting into the middle of them. 'That Bob don't cannon?' observed Captain Bouncey from below the bandage that encircled his broken head, nodding towards Bob Spangles, who was just going to make a stroke. 'That Wax is out of limbo?' suggested Captain Seedeybuck, in the same breath. 'No. Guess again!' exclaimed Lady Scattercash, rubbing her hands in high glee. 'That the Pope's got a son?' observed Captain Quod. 'No. Guess again!' exclaimed her ladyship, laughing. 'I give it up,' replied Captain Bouncey. 'So do I,' added Captain Seedeybuck. '_That Mr. Sponge is going to be married_,' enunciated her ladyship, slowly and emphatically, waving her arms. 'Ho-o-ray! Only think of that!' exclaimed Captain Quod. 'Old 'hogany-tops goin' to be spliced!' 'Did you ever?' asked Bob Spangles. 'No, I _never_,' replied Captain Bouncey. 'He should be called Spooney Sponge, not Soapey Sponge,' observed Captain Seedeybuck. 'Well, but to whom?' asked Captain Bouncey. 'Ah, to whom indeed! That's the question,' rejoined her ladyship archly. 'I know,' observed Bob Spangles. 'No, you don't.' 'Yes, I do.' 'Who is it, then?' demanded her ladyship. 'Lucy Glitters, to be sure,' replied Bob, who hadn't had his stare out of the billiard-room window for nothing. 'Pity her,' observed Bouncey, sprawling along the billiard-table to play for a cannon. 'Why?' asked Lady Scattercash. 'Reg'lar scamp,' replied Bouncey, vexed at missing his stroke. 'Dare say you know nothing about him,' snapped her ladyship. 'Don't I?' replied Bouncey complacently; adding, 'that's all you know.' 'He'll whop her, to a certainty,' observed Seedeybuck. 'What makes you think that?' asked her ladyship. 'Oh--ha--hem--haw--why, because he whopped his poor horse--whopped him over the ears. Whop his horse, whop his wife; whop his wife, whop his horse. Reg'lar Rule-of-three sum.' 'Make her a bad husband, I dare say,' observed Bob Spangles, who was rather smitten with Lucy himself. 'Never mind; a bad husband's a deal better than none, Bob,' replied Lady Scattercash, determined not to be put out of conceit of her man. 'He, he, he!--haw, haw, haw!--ho, ho, ho! Well done you!' laughed several. 'She'll have to keep him,' observed Captain Cutitfat, whose turn it now was to play. 'What makes you think that?' asked Lady Scattercash, coming again to the charge. 'He has nothing,' replied Fat coolly. ''Deed, but he has--a very good property, too,' replied her ladyship. 'In _Air_shire, I should think,' rejoined Fat. 'No, in Englandshire,' retorted her ladyship: 'and great expectations from an uncle,' added she. 'Ah--he looks like a man to be on good terms with his uncle,' sneered Captain Bouncey. 'Make no doubt he pays him many a visit,' observed Seedeybuck. 'Indeed! that's all you know,' snapped Lady Scattercash. 'It's not all I know,' replied Seedeybuck. 'Well, then, what else do you know?' asked she. 'I know he has nothing,' replied Seedey. 'How do you know it?' 'I _know_,' said Seedey, with an emphasis, now settling to his stroke. 'Well, never mind,' retorted her ladyship; 'if he has nothing, she has nothing, and nothing can be nicer.' So saying, she hurried out of the room. CHAPTER LXVI MR. SPONGE AT HOME [Illustration] Sponge was most warmly congratulated by Sir Harry and all the assembled captains, who inwardly hoped his marriage would have the effect of 'snuffing him out,' as they said, and they had a most glorious jollification on the strength of it. They drank Lucy's and his health nine times over, with nine times nine each time. The consequence was, that the footmen and shutter were in earlier requisition than usual to carry them to their respective apartments. Sponge's head throbbed a good deal the next morning; nor was the pulsation abated by the recollection of his matrimonial engagement, and his total inability to keep the angel who had ridden herself into his affections. However, like all untried men, he was strong in the confidence of his own ability, and the sight of his smiling charmer chased away all prudential considerations as quickly as they arose. He made no doubt there would something turn up. Meanwhile, he was in good quarters, and Lady Scattercash having warmly espoused his cause, he assumed a considerable standing in the establishment. Old Beardey having ventured to complain of his interference in the kennel, my lady curtly told him he might 'make himself scarce if he liked'; a step that Beardey was quite ready to take, having heard of a desirable public-house at Newington Butts, provided Sir Harry paid him his wages. This not being quite convenient, Sir Harry gave him an order on 'Cabbage and Co.' for three suits of clothes, and acquiesced in his taking a massive silver soup-tureen, on which, beneath the many quartered Scattercash arms, Mr. Watchorn placed an inscription, stating that it was presented to him by Sir Harry Scattercash, Baronet, and the noblemen and gentlemen of his hunt, in admiration of his talents as a huntsman and his character as a man. Mr. Sponge then became still more at home. It was very soon 'my hounds,' and 'my horses,' and 'my whips'; and he wrote to Jawleyford, and Puffington, and Guano, and Lumpleg, and Washball, and Spraggon, offering to make meets to suit their convenience, and even to mount them if required. His _Mogg_ was quite neglected in favour of Lucy; and it says much for the influence of female charms that, before they had been engaged a fortnight, he, who had been a perfect oracle in cab fares, would have been puzzled to tell the most ordinary fare on the most frequented route. He had forgotten all about them. Nevertheless, Lucy and he went out hunting as often as they could raise hounds, and when they had a good run and killed, he saluted her; and when they didn't kill, why--he just did the same. He headed and tailed the stringing pack, drafted the skirters and babblers (which he sent to Lord Scamperdale, with his compliments), and presently had the uneven kennel in something like shape. [Illustration] Nor was this the only way in which he made himself useful, for Nonsuch House being now supported almost entirely by voluntary contributions--that is to say, by the gullibility of tradesmen--his street and shop knowledge was valuable in determining who to 'do.' With the Post Office Directory and Mr. Sponge at his elbow, Mr. Bottleends, the butler--'delirius tremendous,' as Bottleends called it, having quite incapacitated Sir Harry--wrote off for champagne from this man, sherry from that, turtle from a third, turbot from a fourth, tea from a fifth, truffles from a sixth, wax-lights from one, sperm from another; and down came the things with such alacrity, such thanks for the past and hopes for the future, as we poor devils of the untitled world are quite unacquainted with. Nay, not content with giving him the goods, many of the poor demented creatures actually paraded their folly at their doors in new deal packing-cases, flourishingly directed 'TO SIR HARRY SCATTERCASH, BART., NONSUCH HOUSE, &c. _By Express Train_.' In some cases they even paid the carriage. And here, in the midst of love, luxury, and fox-hunting, let us for a time leave our enterprising friend, Mr. Sponge, while we take a look at a species of cruelty that some people call 'sport.' For this purpose we will begin a fresh chapter. CHAPTER LXVII HOW THEY GOT UP THE 'GRAND ARISTOCRATIC STEEPLE-CHASE' There is no saying what advantages railway communication may confer upon a country. But for the Granddiddle Junction, ----shire never would have had a steeple-chase--an 'Aristocratic,' at least--for it is observable that the more snobbish a thing is, the more certain they are to call it aristocratic. When it is too bad for anything, they call it 'Grand.' Well, as we said before, but for the Granddiddle Junction, ----shire would never have had a 'Grand Aristocratic Steeple-Chase.' A few friends or farmers might have got up a quiet thing among themselves, but it would never have seen a regular trade transaction, with its swell mob, sham captains, and all the paraphernalia of odd laying, 'secret tips,' and market rigging. Who will deny the benefit that must accrue to any locality by the infusion of all the loose fish of the kingdom? Formerly the prize-fights were the perquisite of the publicans. They it was who arranged for Shaggy Tom to pound Harry Billy's nob upon So-and-so's land, the preference being given to the locality that subscribed the most money to the fight. Since the decline of 'the ring,' steeple-chasing, and that still smaller grade of gambling--coursing, have come to their aid. Nine-tenths of the steeple-chasing and coursing-matches are got up by inn-keepers, for the good of their houses. Some of the town publicans, indeed, seem to think that the country was just made for their matches to come off in, and scarcely condescend to ask the leave of the landowners. We saw an advertisement the other day, where a low publican, in a manufacturing town, assured the subscribers to his coursing-club that he would take care to select open ground, with 'plenty of stout hares,' as if all the estates in the neighbourhood were at his command. Another advertised a steeple-chase in the centre of a good hunting country--'amateur and gentleman riders'--with a half-crown ordinary at the end! Fancy the respectability of a steeple-chase, with a half-crown ordinary at the end! Our 'Aristocratic' was got up on the good-of-the-house principle. Whatever benefit the Granddiddle Junction conferred upon the country at large, it had a very prejudicial effect upon the Old Duke of Cumberland Hotel and Posting House, which it left, high and dry, at an angle sufficiently near to be tantalized by the whirr and the whistle of the trains, and yet too far off to be benefited by the parties they brought. This once well-accustomed hostelry was kept by one Mr. Viney, a former butler in the Scattercash family, and who still retained the usual 'old and faithful servant' _entrée_ of Nonsuch House, having his beefsteak and bottle of wine in the steward's room whenever he chose to call. Viney had done good at the Old Duke of Cumberland; and no one, seeing him 'full fig,' would recognize, in the solemn grandeur of his stately person, the dirty knife-boy who had filled the place now occupied by the still dirtier Slarkey. But the days of road travelling departed, and Viney, who, beneath the Grecian-columned portico of his country-house-looking hotel, modulated the ovations of his cauliflower head to every description of traveller--from the lordly occupant of the barouche-and-four, down to the humble sitter in a gig--was cut off by one fell swoop from all further traffic. He was extinguished like a gaslight, and the pipe was laid on a fresh line. Fortunately Mr. Viney was pretty warm; he had done pretty well; and having enjoyed the intimacy of the great 'Jeames' of railway times, had got a hint not to engage the hotel beyond the opening of the line. Consequently, he now had the great house for a mere nothing until such times as the owner could convert it into that last refuge for deserted houses--an academy, or a 'young ladies' seminary.' Mr. Viney now, having plenty of leisure, frequently drove his 'missis' (once a lady's maid in a quality family) up to Nonsuch House, as well for the sake of the airing--for the road was pleasant and picturesque--as to see if he could get the 'little trifle' Sir Harry owed him for post-horses, bottles of soda-water, and such trifles as country gentlemen run up scores for at their posting-houses--scores that seldom get smaller by standing. In these excursions Mr. Viney made the acquaintance of Mr. Watchorn; and a huntsman being a character with whom even the landlord of an inn--we beg pardon, hotel and posting-house--may associate without degradation, Viney and Watchorn became intimate. Watchorn sympathized with Viney, and never failed to take a glass in passing, either at exercise or out hunting, to deplore that such a nice-looking house, so 'near the station, too,' should be ruined as an inn. It was after a more than usual libation that Watchorn, trotting merrily along with the hounds, having accomplished three blank days in succession, asked himself, as he looked upon the surrounding vale from the rising ground of Hammercock Hill, with the cream-coloured station and the rose-coloured hotel peeping through the trees, whether something might not be done to give the latter a lift. At first he thought of a pigeon match--a sweepstake open to all England--fifty members say, at two pound ten each, seven pigeons, seven sparrows, twenty-one yards rise, two ounces of shot, and so on. But then, again, he thought there would be a difficulty in getting guns. A coursing match--how would that do? Answer: 'No hares.' The farmers had made such an outcry about the game, that the landowners had shot them all off, and now the farmers were grumbling that they couldn't get a course. 'Dash my buttons!' exclaimed Watchorn; 'it would be the very thing for a steeple-chase! There's old Puff's hounds, and old Scamp's hounds, and these hounds,' looking down on the ill-sorted lot around him; 'and the deuce is in it if we couldn't give the thing such a start as would bring down the lads of the "village," and a vast amount of good business might be done. I'm dashed if it isn't the very country for a steeple-chase!' continued Watchorn, casting his eye over Cloverly Park, round the enclosure of Langworth Grange, and up the rising ground of Lark Lodge. The more Watchorn thought of it, the more he was satisfied of its feasibility, and he trotted over, the next day, to the Old Duke of Cumberland, to see his friend on the subject. Viney, like most victuallers, was more given to games of skill--billiards, shuttlecock, skittles, dominoes, and so on--than to the rude out-of-door chances of flood and field, and at first he doubted his ability to grapple with the details; but on Mr. Watchorn's assurance that he would keep him straight, he gave Mrs. Viney a key, desiring her to go into the inner cellar, and bring out a bottle of the green seal. This was ninety-shilling sherry--very good stuff to take; and, by the time they got into the second bottle, they had got into the middle of the scheme too. Viney was cautious and thoughtful. He had a high opinion of Watchorn's sagacity, and so long as Watchorn confined himself to weights, and stakes, and forfeits, and so on, he was content to leave himself in the hands of the huntsman; but when Watchorn came to talk of 'stewards,' putting this person and that together, Viney's experience came in aid. Viney knew a good deal. He had not stood twisting a napkin negligently before a plate-loaded sideboard without picking up a good many waifs and strays in the shape of those ins and outs, those likings and dislikings, those hatreds and jealousies, that foolish people let fall so freely before servants, as if for all the world the servants were sideboards themselves; and he had kept up his stock of service-gained knowledge by a liberal, though not a dignity-compromising intercourse--for there is no greater aristocrat than your out-of-livery servant--among the upper servants of all the families in the neighbourhood, so that he knew to a nicety who would pull together, and who wouldn't, whose name it would not do to mention to this person, and who it would not do to apply to before that. Neither Watchorn nor Viney being sportsmen, they thought they had nothing to do but apply to two friends who were; and after thinking over who hunted in couples, they were unfortunate enough to select our Flat Hat friends, Fyle and Fossick. Fyle was indignant beyond measure at being asked to be steward to a steeple-chase, and thrust the application into the fire; while Fossick just wrote below, 'I'll see you hanged first,' and sent it back without putting even a fresh head on the envelope. Nothing daunted, however, they returned to the charge, and without troubling the reader with unnecessary detail, we think it will be generally admitted that they at length made an excellent selection in Mr. Puffington, Guano, and Tom Washball. [Illustration: MR. VINEY AND MR. WATCHORN GETTING UP 'THE GRAND ARISTOCRATIC'] Fortune favoured them also in getting a locality to run in, for Timothy Scourgefield, of Broom Hill, whose farm commanded a good circular three miles of country, with every variety of obstacle, having thrown up his lease for a thirty-per-cent reduction--a giving up that had been most unhandsomely accepted by his landlord--Timothy was most anxious to pay him off by doing every conceivable injury to the farm, than which nothing can be more promising than having a steeple-chase run over it. Scourgefield, therefore, readily agreed to let Viney and Watchorn do whatever they liked, on condition that he received entrance-money at the gate. The name occupied their attention some time, for it did not begin as the 'Aristocratic.' The 'Great National,' the 'Grand Naval and Military,' the 'Sports-man,' the 'Talli-ho,' the 'Out-and-Outer,' the 'Swell,' were all considered and canvassed, and its being called the 'Aristocratic' at length turned upon whether they got Lord Scamperdale to subscribe or not. This was accomplished by a deferential call by Mr. Viney upon Mr. Spraggon, with a little bill for three pound odd, which he presented, with the most urgent request that Jack wouldn't think of it then--any time that was most convenient to Mr. Spraggon--and then the introduction of the neatly-headed sheet-list. It was lucky that Viney was so easily satisfied, for poor Jack had only thirty shillings, of which he owed his washerwoman eight, and he was very glad to stuff Viney's bill into his stunner jacket-pocket, and apply himself exclusively to the contemplated steeple-chase. Like most of us, Jack had no objection to make a little money; and as he squinted his frightful eyes inside out at the paper, he thought over what horses they had in the stable that were like the thing; and then he sounded Viney as to whether he would put him one up for nothing, if he could induce his lordship to send. This, of course, Viney readily assented to, and again requesting Jack not to _think_ of his little bill till it was _perfectly_ convenient to him--a favour that Jack was pretty sure to accord him--Mr. Viney took his departure, Jack undertaking to write him the result. The next day's post brought Viney the document--unpaid, of course--with a great 'Scamperdale' scrawled across the top; and forthwith it was decided that the steeple-chase should be called the 'Grand Aristocratic.' Other names quickly followed, and it soon assumed an importance. Advertisements appeared in all the sporting and would-be sporting papers, headed with the imposing names of the stewards, secretary, and clerk of the course, Mr. Viney. The 'Grand Aristocratic Stakes,' of 20 sovs. each, half-forfeit, and £5 only if declared, &c. The winner to give two dozen of champagne to the ordinary, and the second horse to save his stake. Gentlemen riders (titled ones to be allowed 3 lb.). Over about three miles of fine hunting country, under the usual steeple-chase conditions. Then the game of the 'Peeping Toms,' and 'Sly Sams,' and 'Infallible Joes,' and 'Wideawake Jems,' with their tips and distribution of prints began; Tom counselling his numerous and daily increasing clients to get well on to No. 9, Sardanapalus (the Bart., as Watchorn called him), while 'Infallible Joe' recommended his friends and patrons to be sweet on No. 6 (Hercules), and 'Wide-awake Jem' was all for something else. A gentleman who took the trouble of getting tips from half a dozen of them, found that no two of them agreed in any particular. What information to make books upon! 'But what good,' as our excellent friend Thackeray eloquently asks, 'ever came out of, or went into, a betting book? If I could be CALIPH OMAR for a week,' says he, 'I would pitch every one of those despicable manuscripts into the flames; from my-lord's, who is "in" with Jack Snaffle's stable, and is overreaching worse-informed rogues, and swindling greenhorns, down to Sam's, the butcher's boy, who books eighteen-penny odds in the tap-room, and stands to win five-and-twenty bob.' We say ditto to that, and are not sure that we wouldn't hang a 'leg' or a 'list' man or two into the bargain. Watchorn had a prophet of his own, one Enoch Wriggle, who, having tried his hand unsuccessfully first at tailoring, next as an accountant, then in the watercress, afterwards in the buy ''at-box, bonnet-box,' and lastly in the stale lobster and periwinkle line, had set up as an oracle on turf matters, forwarding the most accurate and infallible information to flats in exchange for half-crowns, heading his advertisements, 'If it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive!' Enoch did a considerable stroke of business, and couched his advice in such dubious terms, as generally to be able to claim a victory whichever way the thing went. So the 'offending soul' prospered; and from scarcely having shoes to his feet, he very soon set up a gig. CHAPTER LXVIII HOW THE 'GRAND ARISTOCRATIC' CAME OFF Steeple-chases are generally crude, ill-arranged things. Few sportsmen will act as stewards a second time; while the victim to the popular delusion of patronizing our 'national sports' considers--like gentlemen who have served the office of sheriff, or church-warden--that once in a lifetime is enough; hence, there is always the air of amateur actorship about them. There is always something wanting or forgotten. Either they forget the ropes, or they forget the scales, or they forget the weights, or they forget the bell, or--more commonly still--some of the parties forget themselves. Farmers, too, are easily satisfied with the benefits of an irresponsible mob careering over their farms, even though some of them are attired in the miscellaneous garb of hunting and racing costume. Indeed, it is just this mixture of two sports that spoils both; steeple-chasing being neither hunting nor racing. It has not the wild excitement of the one, nor the accurate calculating qualities of the other. The very horses have a peculiar air about them--neither hunters nor hacks, nor yet exactly race-horses. Some of them, doubtless, are fine, good-looking, well-conditioned animals; but the majority are lean, lathy, sunken-eyed, woe-begone, iron-marked, desperately-abused brutes, lacking all the lively energy that characterizes the movements of the up-to-the-mark hunter. In the early days of steeple-chasing a popular fiction existed that the horses were hunters; and grooms and fellows used to come nicking and grinning up to masters of hounds at checks and critical times, requesting them to note that they were out, in order to ask for certificates of the horses having been 'regularly hunted'--a species of regularity than which nothing could be more irregular. That nuisance, thank goodness, is abated. A steeple-chaser now generally stands on his own merits; a change for which sportsmen may be thankful. But to our story. The whole country was in a commotion about this 'Aristocratic'. The unsophisticated looked upon it as a grand _réunion_ of the aristocracy; and smart bonnets and cloaks, and jackets and parasols were ordered with the liberality incident to a distant view of Christmas. As Viney sipped his sherry-cobler of an evening, he laughed at the idea of a son-of-a-day-labourer like himself raising such a dust. Letters came pouring in to the clerk of the course from all quarters; some asking about beds; some about breakfasts; some about stakes; some about stables; some about this thing, some about that. Every room in the Old Duke of Cumberland was speedily bespoke. Post-horses rose in price, and Dobbin and Smiler, and Jumper and Cappy, and Jessy and Tumbler were jobbed from the neighbouring farmers, and converted for the occasion into posters. At last came the great and important day--day big with the fate of thousands of pounds; for the betting-list vermin had been plying their trade briskly throughout the kingdom, and all sorts of rumours had been raised relative to the qualities and conditions of the horses. Who doesn't know the chilling feel of an English spring, or rather of a day at the turn of the year before there is any spring? Our gala-day was a perfect specimen of the order--a white frost succeeded by a bright sun, with an east wind, warming one side of the face and starving the other. It was neither a day for fishing, nor hunting, nor coursing, nor anything but farming. The country, save where there were a few lingering patches of turnips, was all one dingy drab, with abundant scalds on the undrained fallows. The grass was more like hemp than anything else. The very rushes were yellow and sickly. Long before midday the whole country was in commotion. The same sort of people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go up, and a man to go down, or be hung at the same place. Fine ladies in all the colours of the rainbow; and swarthy, beady-eyed dames, with their stalwart, big-calved, basket-carrying comrades; gentle young people from behind the counter; Dandy Candy merchants from behind the hedge; rough-coated dandies with their silver-mounted whips; and Shaggyford roughs, in their baggy, poacher-like coats, and formidable clubs; carriages and four, and carriages and pairs; and gigs and dog-carts, and Whitechapels, and Newport Pagnels, and long carts, and short carts, and donkey carts, converged from all quarters upon the point of attraction at Broom Hill. If Farmer Scourgefield had made a mob, he could not have got one that would be more likely to do damage to his farm than this steeple-chase one. Nor was the assemblage confined to the people of the country, for the Granddiddle Junction, by its connection with the great network of railways, enabled all patrons of this truly national sport to sweep down upon the spot like flocks of wolves; and train after train disgorged a generous mixture of sharps and flats, commingling with coatless, baggy-breeched vagabonds, the emissaries most likely of the Peeping Toms and Infallible Joes, if not the worthies themselves. 'Dear, but it's a noble sight!' exclaimed Viney to Watchorn as they sat on their horses, below a rickety green-baize-covered scaffold, labelled, 'GRAND STAND; admission, Two-and-sixpence,' raised against Scourgefield's stack-yard wall, eyeing the population pouring in from all parts. 'Dear, but it's a noble sight!' said he, shading the sun from his eyes, and endeavouring to identify the different vehicles in the distance. 'Yonder's the 'bus comin' again,' said he, looking towards the station, 'loaded like a market-gardener's turnip-waggon. That'll pay,' added he, with a knowing leer at the landlord of the Hen Angel, Newington Butts. 'And who have we here, with the four horses and sky-blue flunkeys? Jawleyford, as I live!' added he, answering himself; adding, 'The beggar had better pay me what he owes.' How great Mr. Viney was! Some people, who have never had anything to do with horses, think it incumbent upon them, when they have, to sport top-boots, and accordingly, for the first time in his life, Viney appears in a pair of remarkably hard, tight, country-made boots, above which are a pair of baggy white cords, with the dirty finger-marks of the tailor still upon them. He sports a single-breasted green cutaway coat, with basket-buttons, a black satin roll-collared waistcoat, and a new white silk hat, that shines in the bright sun like a fish-kettle. His blue-striped kerchief is secured by a butterfly brooch. Who ever saw an innkeeper that could resist a brooch? He is riding a miserable rat of a badly clipped, mouse-coloured pony that looks like a velocipede under him. His companion, Mr. Watchorn, is very great, and hardly condescends to know the country people who claim his acquaintance as a huntsman. He is a Hotel Keeper--master of the Hen Angel, Newington Butts. Enoch Wriggle stands beside them, dressed in the imposing style of a cockney sportsman. He has been puffing 'Sir Danapalus (the Bart.)' in public, and taking all the odds he can get against him in private. Watchorn knows that it is easier to make a horse lose than win. The restless-looking, lynx-eyed caitiff, in the dirty green shawl, with his hands stuffed into the front pockets of the brown tarriar coat, is their jockey, the renowned Captain Hangallows; he answers to the name of Sam Slick in Mr. Spavin the horse-dealer's yard in Oxford Street, when not in the country on similar excursions to the present. And now in the throng on the principal line are two conspicuous horses--a piebald and a white--carrying Mr. Sponge and Lucy Glitters. Lucy appears as she did on the frosty-day hunt, glowing with health and beauty, and rather straining the seams of Lady Scattercash's habit with the additional _embonpoint_ she has acquired by early hours in the country. She has made Mr. Sponge a white silk jacket to ride in, which he has on under his grey tarriar coat, and a cap of the same colour is in his hard hat. He has discarded the gosling-green cords for cream-coloured leathers, and, to please Lucy, has actually substituted a pair of rose-tinted tops for the 'hogany bouts'. Altogether he is a great swell, and very like the bridegroom. But hark--what a crash! The leaders of Sir Harry Scattercash's drag start at a blind fiddler's dog stationed at the gate leading into the fields, a wheel catches the post, and in an instant the sham captains are scattered about the road: Bouncey on his head, Seedeyhuck across the wheelers, Quod on his back, and Sir Harry astride the gate. Meanwhile, the old fiddler, regardless of the shouts of the men and the shrieks of the ladies, scrapes away with the appropriate tune of 'The Devil among the Tailors!' A rush to the horses' heads arrests further mischief, the dislodged captains are at length righted, the nerves of the ladies composed, and Sir Harry once more essays to drive them up the hill to the stand. That feat being accomplished, then came the unloading, and consternation, and huddling of the tight-laced occupants at the idea of these female _women_ coming amongst them, and the usual peeping and spying, and eyeing of the '_creatures_.' 'What impudence!' 'Well, I think!' ''Pon my word!' 'What next!'--exclamations that were pretty well lost upon the fair objects of them amid the noise and flutter and confusion of the scene. But hark again! What's up now? [Illustration] 'Hooray!' 'hooray!' 'h-o-o-o-ray!' 'Three cheers for the Squire! H-o-o-o-ray!' Old Puff as we live! The 'amazin' instance of a pop'lar man' greeted by the Swillingford snobs. The old frost-bitten dandy is flattered by the cheers, and bows condescendingly ere he alights from the well-appointed mail phaeton. See how graciously the ladies receive him, as, having ascended the stairs, he appears among them. 'A man is never too old to marry' is their maxim. The cry is still, 'They come! they come!' See at a hand-gallop, with his bay pony in a white lather, rides Pacey, grinning from ear to ear, with his red-backed betting-book peeping out of the breast pocket of his brown cutaway. He is staring and gaping to see who is looking at him. Pacey has made such a book as none but a wooden-headed boy like himself could make. He has been surfeited with tips. Peeping Tom had advised him to back Daddy Longlegs; and, _nullus error_, Sneaking Joe has counselled him that the 'Baronet' will be 'California without cholera, and gold without danger'; while Jemmy something, the jockey, who advertises that his 'tongue is not for falsehood framed,' though we should think it was framed for nothing else, has urged him to back Parvo to half the amount of the national debt. Altogether, Pacey has made such a mess that he cannot possibly win, and may lose almost any sum from a thousand pounds down to a hundred and eighty. Mr. Sponge has got well on with him, through the medium of Jack Spraggon. Pacey is now going to what he calls 'compare'--see that he has got his bets booked right; and, throwing his right leg over his cob's neck, he blobs on to the ground; and, leaving the pony to take care of itself, disappears in the crowd. What a hubbub! what roarings, and shoutings, and recognizings! 'Bless my heart! who'd have thought of seeing you?' and, 'By jingo! what's sent _you_ here?' 'My dear Waffles,' cries Jawleyford, rushing up to our Laverick Wells friend (who is looking very debauched), 'I'm overjoyed to see you. Do come upstairs and see Mrs. Jawleyford and the dear girls. It was only last night we were talking about you.' And so Jawleyford hurries Mr. Waffles off, just as Waffles is _in extremis_ about his horse. Looking around the scene there seems to be everybody that we have had the pleasure of introducing to the reader in the course of Mr. Sponge's Tour. Mr. and Mrs. Springwheat in their dog-cart, Mrs. Springey's figure looking as though 'wheat had got above forty, my lord'; old Jog and his handsome wife in the ugly old phaeton, well garnished with children, and a couple of sticks in the rough peeping out of the apron, Gustavus James held up in his mother's arms, with the curly blue feather nodding over his nose. There is also Farmer Peastraw, and faces that a patient inspection enables us to appropriate to Dribble, and Hook, and Capon, and Calcot, and Lumpleg, and Crane of Crane Hall, and Charley Slapp of red-coat times--people look so different in plain clothes to what they do in hunting ones. Here, too, is George Cheek, running down with perspiration, having run over from Dr. Latherington's, for which he will most likely 'catch it' when he gets back; and oh, wonder of wonders, here's Robert Foozle himself! 'Well, Robert, you've come to the steeple-chase?' 'Yes, I've come to the steeple-chase.' 'Are you fond of steeple-chases?' 'Yes, I'm fond of steeple-chases.' 'I dare say you never were at one before,' observes his mother. 'No, I never was at one before,' replies Robert. And though last not least, here's Facey Romford, with his arm in a sling, on Mr. Hobler, come to look after that sivin-p'und-ten, which we wish he may get. Hark! there's a row below the stand, and Viney is seen in a state of excitement inquiring for Mr. Washball. Pacey has objected to a gentleman rider, and Guano and Puffington have differed on the point. A nice, slim, well-put-on lad (Buckram's rough rider) has come to the scales and claimed to be allowed 3 lb. as the Honourable Captain Boville. Finding the point questioned, he abandons the 'handle', and sinks into plain Captain Boville. Pacey now objects to him altogether. 'S-c-e-u-s-e me, sir; s-c-e-u-s-e me, sir,' simpers our friend Dick Bragg, sidling up to the objector with a sort of tendency of his turn-back-wristed hand to his hat. 'S-c-e-u-s-e me, sir; s-c-e-u-s-e me,' repeats he, 'but I think you was wrong, sir, in objecting to Captain Boville, sir, as a gen'l'man rider, sir.' 'Why?' demands Pacey, in the full flush of victory. 'Oh, sir--because, sir--in fact, sir--he _is_ a gen'l'man, sir.' '_Is_ a gentleman! How do _you_ know?' demands Pacey, in the same tone as before. 'Oh, sir, he's a gen'l'man--an undoubted gen'l'man. Everything about him shows that. Does nothing--breeches by Anderson--boots by Bartley; besides which, he drinks wine every day, and has a whole box of cigars in his bedroom. But don't take my word for it, pray,' continued Bragg, seeing Pacey was wavering; 'don't take my word for it, pray. There's a gen'l'man, a countryman of his, somewhere about,' added he, looking anxiously into the surrounding crowd--there's a gen'l'man, a countryman of his, somewhere about, if we could but find him,' Bragg standing on his tiptoes, and exclaiming, 'Mr. Buckram! Mr. Buckram! Has anybody seen anything of Mr. Buckram!' 'Here!' replied a meek voice from behind; upon which there was an elbowing through the crowd, and presently a most respectable, rosy-gilled, grey-haired, hawbuck-looking man, attired in a new brown cutaway, with bright buttons and a velvet collar, with a buff waistcoat, came twirling an ash-stick in one hand, and fumbling the silver in his drab trousers' pocket with the other, in front of the bystanders. 'Oh! 'ere he is!' exclaimed Bragg, appealing to the stranger with a hasty '_You_ know Captain Boville, don't you?' 'Why, now, as to the matter of that,' replied the gentleman, gathering all the loose silver up into his hand and speaking very slowly, just as a country gentleman, who has all the live-long day to do nothing in, may be supposed to speak--' Why, now, as to the matter of that,' said he, eyeing Pacey intently, and beginning to drop the silver slowly as he spoke, 'I can't say that I've any very 'ticklar 'quaintance with the captin. I knows him, in course, just as one knows a neighbour's son. The captin's a good deal younger nor me,' continued he, raising his new eight-and-sixpenny Parisian, as if to show his sandy grey hair. 'I'm a'most sixty; and he, I dare say, is little more nor twenty,' dropping a half-crown as he said it. 'But the captin's a nice young gent--a nice young gent, without any blandishment, I should say; and that's more nor one can say of all young gents nowadays,' said Buckram, looking at Pacey as he spoke, and dropping two consecutive half-crowns. 'Why, but you live near him, don't you?' interrupted Bragg. 'Near him,' repeated Buckram, feeling his well-shaven chin thoughtfully. 'Why, yes--that's to say, near his dad. The fact is,' continued he, 'I've a little independence of my own,' dropping a heavy five-shilling piece as he said it,' and his father--old Bo, as I call him--adjoins me; and if either of us 'appen to have a _battue_, or a 'aunch of wenzun, and a few friends, we inwite each other, and wicey wersey, you know,' letting off a lot of shillings and sixpences. And just at the moment the blind fiddler struck up 'The Devil among the Tailors,' when the shouts and laughter of the mob closed the scene. And now gentlemen, who heretofore have shown no more of the jockey than Cinderella's feet in the early part of the pantomime disclose of her ball attire, suddenly cast off the pea-jackets and bearskin wraps, and shawls and overcoats of winter, and shine forth in all the silken flutter of summer heat. We know of no more humiliating sight than misshapen gentlemen playing at jockeys. Playing at soldiers is bad enough, but playing at jockeys is infinitely worse--above all, playing at steeple-chase jockeys, combining, as they generally do, all the worst features of the hunting-field and racecourse--unsympathizing boots and breeches, dirty jackets that never fit, and caps that won't keep on. What a farce to see the great bulky fellows go to scale with their saddles strapped to their backs, as if to illustrate the impossibility of putting a round of beef upon a pudding plate! But the weighed-in ones are mounting. See, there's Jack Spraggon getting a hoist on to Daddy Longlegs! Did ever mortal see such a man for a jockey? He has cut off the laps of a stunner tartan jacket, and looks like a great backgammon-board. He has got his head into an old gold-banded military foraging-cap, which comes down almost on to the rims of his great tortoise-shell spectacles. Lord Scamperdale stands with his hand on the horse's mane, talking earnestly to Jack, doubtless giving him his final instructions. Other jockeys emerge from various parts of the farm-buildings; some out of stables; some out of cow-houses; others from beneath cart-sheds. The scene becomes enlivened with the varied colours of the riders--red, yellow, green, blue, violet, and stripes without end. Then comes the usual difficulty of identifying the parties, many of whose mothers wouldn't know them. 'That's Captain Tongs,' observes Miss Simperley, 'in the blue. I remember dancing with him at Bath, and he did nothing but talk about steeple-chasing.' 'And who's that in yellow?' asks Miss Hardy. 'That's Captain Gander,' replies the gentleman on her left. 'Well, I think he'll win,' replies the lady. 'I'll bet you a pair of gloves he doesn't,' snaps Miss Moore, who fancies Captain Pusher, in the pink. 'What a squat little jockey!' exclaims Miss Hamilton, as a little dumpling of a man in Lincoln green is led past the stand on a fine bay horse, some one recognizing the rider as our old friend Caingey Thornton. 'And look who comes here?' whispers Miss Jawleyford to her sister, as Mr. Sponge, having accomplished a mount without derangement of temper, rides Hercules quietly past the stand, his whip-hand resting on his thigh, and his head turned to his fair companion on the white. 'Oh, the wretch!' sneers Miss Amelia; and the fair sisters look at Lucy and then at him with the utmost disgust. Mr. Sponge may now be doubled up by half a dozen falls ere either of them would suggest the propriety of having him bled. Lucy's cheeks are rather blanched with the 'pale cast of thought,' for she is not sufficiently initiated in the mysteries of steeple-chasing to know that it is often quite as good for a man to lose as to win, which it had just been quietly arranged between Sponge and Buckram should be the case on this occasion, Buckram having got uncommonly 'well on' to the losing tune. Perhaps, however, Lucy was thinking of the peril, not the profit of the thing. The young ladies on the stand eye her with mingled feelings of pity and disdain, while the elderly ones shake their heads, call her a bold hussy--declare she's not so pretty--adding that they 'wouldn't have come if they'd known,' &c. &c. But it is half-past two (an hour and a half after time), and there is at last a disposition evinced by some of the parties to go to the post. Broad-backed parti-coloured jockeys are seen converging that way, and the betting-men close in, getting more and more clamorous for odds. What a hubbub! How they bellow! How they roar! A universal deafness seems to have come over the whole of them. 'Seven to one 'gain the Bart.!' screams one--'I'll take eight!' roars another. 'Five to one agen Herc'les!' cries a third--'Done!' roars a fourth. 'Twice over!' rejoins the other--'Done!' replies the taker. 'Ar'll take five to one agin the Daddy!'--'I'll lay six!' 'What'll any one lay 'gin Parvo?' And so they raise such an uproar that the squeak, squeak, squeak of the 'Devil among the tailors' is hardly heard. Then, in a partial lull, the voice of Lord Scamperdale rises, exclaiming, 'Oh, you hideous Hobgoblin, bull-and-mouth of a boy! you think, because I'm a lord, and can't swear, or use coarse language--' And again the hubbub, led on by the 'Devil among the tailors,' drowns the exclamations of the speaker. It's that Pacey again; he's accusing the virtuous Mr. Spraggon of handing his extra weight to Lord Scamperdale; and Jack, in the full consciousness of injured guilt, intimates that the blood of the Spraggons won't stand that--that there's 'only _one_ way of settling it, and he'll be ready for Pacey half an hour after the race.' At length the horses are all out--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--fifteen of them, moving about in all directions: some taking an up-gallop, others a down; some a spicy trot, others walking to and fro; while one has still his muzzle on, lest he should unship his rider and eat him; and another's groom follows, imploring the mob to keep off his heels if they don't want their heads in their hands. The noisy bell at length summons the scattered forces to the post, and the variegated riders form into as good a line as circumstances will allow. Just as Mr. Sponge turns his horse's head Lucy hands him her little silver sherry-flask, which our friend drains to the dregs. As he returns it, with a warm pressure of her soft hand, a pent-up flood of tears burst their bounds, and suffuse her lustrous eyes. She turns away to hide her emotion; at the same instant a wild shout rends the air--'W-h-i-r-r! They're off!' Thirteen get away, one turns tail, and our friend in the Lincoln green is left performing a _pas seul_, asking the rearing horse, with an oath, if he thinks 'he stole him'? while the mob shout and roar; and one wicked wag, in coaching parlance, advises him to pay the difference, and get inside. But what a display of horsemanship is exhibited by the flyers! Tongs comes off at the first fence, the horse making straight for a pond, while the rest rattle on in a mass. The second fence is small, but there's a ditch on the far side, and Pusher and Gander severally measure their lengths on the rushy pasture beyond. Still there are ten left, and nobody ever reckoned upon these getting to the far end. 'Master wins, for a 'undr'd!' exclaims Leather, as, getting into the third field, Mr. Sponge takes a decided lead; and Lucy, encouraged by the sound, looks up, and sees her 'white jacket' throwing the dry fallow in the faces of the field. 'Oh, how I hope he will!' exclaims she, clasping her hands, with upturned eyes; but when she ventures on another look, she sees old Spraggon drawing upon him, Hangallows's flaming red jacket not far off, and several others nearer than she liked. Still the tail was beginning to form. Another fence, and that a big one, draws it out. A striped jacket is down, and the horse, after a vain effort to rise, sinks lifeless on the ground. On they go all the same! Loud yells of exciting betting burst from the spectators, and Buckram gets well on for the cross. There are now five in front--Sponge, Spraggon, Hangallows, Boville, and another; and already the pace begins to tell. It wasn't possible to run it at the rate they started. Spraggon makes a desperate effort to get the lead; and Sponge, seeing Boville handy, pulls his horse, and lets the light-weight make play over a rough, heavy fallow with the chestnut. Jack spurs and flogs, and grins and foams at the mouth. Thus they get half round the oval course. They are now directly in front of the hill, and the spectators gaze with intense anxiety;--now vociferating the name of this horse, now of that; now shouting 'Red jacket!' now 'White!' while the blind fiddler perseveres with the old melody of--'The Devil among the Tailors.' 'Now they come to the brook!' exclaims Leather, who has been over the ground; and as he speaks, Lucy distinctly sees Mr. Sponge's gather an effort to clear it; and--oh, horror!--the horse falls--he's down--no, he's up!--and her lover's in his seat again; and she flatters herself it was her sherry that saved him. Splash!--a horse and rider duck under; three get over; two go in; now another clears it, and the rest turn tail. What splashing and screaming, and whipping and spurring, and how hopeless the chance of any of them to recover their lost ground. The race is now clearly between five. Now for the wall! It's five feet high, built of heavy blocks, and strong in the staked-out part. As he nears it, Jack sits well back, getting Daddy Longlegs well by the head, and giving him a refresher with the whip. It is Jack's last move! His horse comes, neck and croup over, rolling Jack up like a ball of worsted on the far side. At the same moment, Multum in Parvo goes at it full tilt; and, not rising an inch, sends Captain Boville flying one way, his saddle another, himself a third, and the stones all ways. Mr. Sponge then slips through, closely followed by Hangallows and a jockey in yellow, with a tail of three after them. They then put on all the steam they can raise over the twenty-acre pasture that follows. The white!--the red!--the yaller! The red!--the white!--the yaller! and anybody's race! A sheet would cover them!--crack! whack! crack! how they flog! Hercules springs at the sound. Many of the excited spectators begin hallooing, and straddling, and working their arms as if their gestures and vociferations would assist the race. Lord Scamperdale stands transfixed. He is staring through his silver spectacles at the awkwardly lying ball that represents poor Spraggon. 'By Heavens!' exclaims he, in an undertone to himself, 'I believe he's killed!' And thereupon he swung down the stand-stairs, rushed to his horse, and, clapping spurs to his sides, struck across the country to the spot. Long before he got there the increased uproar of the spectators announced the final struggle; and looking over his shoulder, he saw white jacket hugging his horse home, closely followed by red, and shooting past the winning-post. 'Dash that Mr. Sponge!' growled his lordship, as the cheers of the winners closed the scene. 'The brute's won, in spite of him!' gasped Buckram, turning deadly pale at the sight. CHAPTER LXIX HOW OTHER THINGS CAME OFF 'Twere hard to say whether Lucy's joy at Sponge's safety, or Lord Scamperdale's grief at poor Spraggon's death, was most overpowering. Each found relief in a copious flood of tears. Lucy sobbed and laughed, and sobbed and laughed again; and seemed as if her little heart would burst its bounds. The mob, ever open to sentiment--especially the sentiment of beauty--cheered and shouted as she rode with her lover from the winning to the weighing-post. 'A', she's a bonny un!' exclaimed a countryman, looking intently up in her face. 'She is that!' cried another, doing the same. 'Three cheers for the lady!' shouted a tall Shaggyford rough, taking off his woolly cap, and waving it. 'Hoo-ray! hoo-ray! hoo-ray!' shouted a group of flannel-clad navvies. 'Three for white jacket!' then roared a blue-coated butcher, who had won as many half-crowns on the race.--Three cheers were given for the unwilling winner. 'Oh, my poor dear Jack!' exclaimed his lordship, throwing himself off his horse, and wringing his hands in despair, as a select party of thimble-riggers, who had gone to Jack's assistance, raised him up, and turned his ghastly face, with his eyes squinting inside out, and the foam still on his mouth, full upon him. 'Oh, my poor dear Jack!' repeated his lordship, sinking on his knees beside him, and grasping his stiffening hand as he spoke. His lordship sank overpowered upon the body. The thimble-riggers then availed themselves of the opportunity to ease his lordship and Jack of their watches and the few shillings they had about them, and departed. When a lord is in distress, consolation is never long in coming; and Lord Scamperdale had hardly got over the first paroxysms of grief, and gathered up Jack's cap, and the fragments of his spectacles, ere Jawleyford, who had noticed his abrupt departure from the stand and scurry across the country, arrived at the spot. His lordship was still in the full agony of woe; still grasping and bedewing Jack's cold hand with his tears. 'Oh, my dear Jack! Oh, my dear Jawleyford! Oh, my dear Jack! 'sobbed he, as he mopped the fast-chasing tears from his grizzly cheeks with a red cotton kerchief. 'Oh, my dear Jack! Oh, my dear Jawleyford! Oh, my dear Jack! 'repeated he, as a fresh flood spread o'er the rugged surface. 'Oh, what a tr-reasure, what a tr--tr--trump he was. Shall never get such another. Nobody could s--s--lang a fi--fi--field as he could; no hu--hu--humbug 'bout him--never was su--su--such a fine natural bl--bl--blackguard'; and then his feelings wholly choked his utterance as he recollected how easily Jack was satisfied; how he could dine off tripe and cow-heel, mop up fat porridge for breakfast, and never grumbled at being put on a bad horse. The news of a man being killed soon reached the hill, and drew the attention of the mob from our hero and heroine, causing such a spread of population over the farm as must have been highly gratifying to Scourgefield, who stood watching the crashing of the fences and the demolition of the gates, thinking how he was paying his landlord off. Seeing the rude, unmannerly character of the mob, Jawleyford got his lordship by the arm, and led him away towards the hill, his lordship reeling, rather than walking, and indulging in all sorts of wild, incoherent cries and lamentations. 'Sing out, Jack! sing out!' he would exclaim, as if in the agony of having his hounds ridden over; then, checking himself, he would shake his head and say, 'Ah, poor Jack, poor Jack! shall never look upon his like again--shall never get such a man to read the riot act, and keep all square.' And then a fresh gush of tears suffused his grizzly face. The minor casualties of those few butchering spasmodic moments may be briefly dismissed, though they were more numerous than most sportsmen see out hunting in a lifetime. One horse broke his back, another was drowned, Multum in Parvo was cut all to pieces, his rider had two ribs and a thumb broken, while Farmer Slyfield's stackyard was fired by some of the itinerant tribe, and all its uninsured contents destroyed--so that his landlord was not the only person who suffered by the grand occasion. Nor was this all, for Mr. Numboy, the coroner, hearing of Jack's death, held an inquest on the body; and, having empanelled a matter-of-fact jury--men who did not see the advantage of steeple-chasing, either in a political, commercial, agricultural, or national point of view, and who, having surveyed the line, and found nearly every fence dangerous, and the wall and brook doubly so, returned a verdict of manslaughter against Mr. Viney for setting it out, who was forthwith committed to the county gaol of Limbo Castle for trial at the ensuing assizes, from whence let us join the benevolent clerk of arraigns in wishing him a good deliverance. Many of the hardy 'tips' sounded the loud trump of victory, proclaiming that their innumerable friends had feathered their nests through their agency; but Peeping Tom and Infallible Joe, and Enoch Wriggle, 'the offending soul,' &c, found it convenient to bolt from their respective establishments, carrying with them their large fire-screens, camp-stools, and boards for posting up their lists, and setting up in new names in other quarters; while the Hen Angel was shortly afterwards closed, and the presentation-tureen made into 'white soup.' So much for the 'small deer.' We will now devote a concluding chapter to the 'great guns' of our story. CHAPTER LXX HOW LORD SCAMPERDALE AND CO. CAME OFF Our noble master's nerves were so dreadfully shattered by the lamentable catastrophe to poor Jack, that he stepped, or rather was pushed, into Jawleyford's carriage almost insensibly, and driven from the course to Jawleyford Court. There he remained sufficiently long for Mrs. Jawleyford to persuade him that he would be far better married, and that either of her amiable daughters would make him a most excellent wife. His lordship, after very mature consideration, and many most scrutinizing stares at both of them through his formidable spectacles, wondering which would be the least likely to ruin him--at length decided upon taking Miss Emily, the youngest, though for a long time the victory was doubtful, and Amelia practised her 'Scamperdale' singing with unabated ardour and confidence up to the last. We believe, if the truth were known, it was a slight touch of rouge, that Amelia thought would clench the matter, that decided his lordship against her. Emily, we are happy to say, makes him an excellent wife, and has not got her head turned by becoming a countess. She has improved his lordship amazingly, got him smart new clothes, and persuaded him to grow bushy whiskers right down under his chin, and is now feeling her way to a pair of moustaches. Woodmansterne is quite another place. She has marshalled a proper establishment, and got him coaxed into the long put-a-way company rooms. Though he still indulges in his former cow-heel and other delicacies, they do not appear upon table; while he sports his silver-mounted specs on all occasions. The fruit and venison are freely distributed, and we have come in for a haunch in return for our attentions. Best of all, Lady Scamperdale has got his lordship to erect a handsome marble monument to poor Jack, instead of the cheap country stone he intended. The inscription states that it was erected by Samuel, Eighth Earl of Scamperdale, and Viscount Hardup, in the Peerage of Ireland, to the Memory of John Spraggon, Esquire, the best of Sportsmen, and the firmest of Friends. Who or what Jack was, nobody ever knew, and as he only left a hat and eighteen pence behind him, no next of kin has as yet cast up. Jawleyford has not stood the honour of the Scamperdale alliance quite so well as his daughter; and when our 'amaazin' instance of a pop'lar man,' instigated perhaps by the desire to have old Scamp for a brother-in-law, offered to Amelia, Jaw got throaty and consequential, hemmed and hawed, and pretended to be stiff about it. Puff, however, produced such weighty testimonials, as soon exercised their wonted influence. In due time Puff very magnanimously proposed uniting his pack with Lord Scamperdale's, dividing the expense of one establishment between them, to which his lordship readily assented, advising Puff to get rid of Bragg by giving him the hounds, which he did; and that great sporting luminary may be seen 's-c-e-u-s-e'-ing himself, and offering his service to masters of hounds any Monday at Tattersall's--though he still prefers a 'quality place.' Benjamin Buckram, the gentleman with the small independence of his own, we are sorry to say has gone to the 'bad.' Aggravated by the loss he sustained by his horse winning the steeple-chase, he made an ill-advised onslaught on the cash-box of the London and Westminster Bank; and at three score years and ten this distinguished 'turfite,' who had participated with impunity in nearly all the great robberies of the last forty years, was doomed to transportation. And yet we have seen this cracksman captain--for he, too, was a captain at times--jostling and bellowing for odds among some of the highest and noblest of the land! Leather has descended to the cab-stand, of which he promises to be a distinguished ornament. He haunts the Piccadilly stands, and has what he calls ''stablish'd a raw' on Mr. Sponge to the extent of three-and-six-pence a week, under threats of exposing the robbery Sponge committed on our friend Mr. Waffles. That volatile genius, we are happy to add, is quite well, and open to the attentions of any young lady who thinks she can tame a wild young man. His financial affairs are not irretrievable. And now for the hero and heroine of our tale. The Sponges--for our friend married Lucy shortly after the steeple-chase--stayed at Nonsuch House until the bailiffs walked in. Sir Harry then bolted to Boulogne, where he shortly afterwards died, and Bugles very properly married my lady. They are now living at Wandsworth; Mr. Bugles and Lady Scattercash, very 'much thought of'--as Bugles says. Although Mr. Sponge did not gain as much by winning the steeple-chase as he would have done had Hercules allowed him to lose it, he still did pretty well; and being at length starved out of Nonsuch House, he arrived at his old quarters, the Bantam, in Bond Street, where he turned his attention very seriously to providing for Lucy and the little Sponge, who had now issued its prospectus. He thought over all the ways and means of making money without capital, rejecting Australia and California as unfit for sportsmen and men fond of their _Moggs_. Professional steeple-chasing Lucy decried, declaring she would rather return to her flag-exercises at Astley's, as soon as she was able, than have her dear Sponge risking his neck that way. Our friend at length began to fear fortune-making was not so easy as he thought--indeed, he was soon sure of it. One day as he was staring vacantly out of the Bantam coffee-room window, between the gilt labels, 'Hot Soups' and 'Dinners,' he was suddenly seized with a fit of virtuous indignation at the disreputable frauds practised by unprincipled adventurers on the unwary public, in the way of betting offices, and resolved that he would be the St. George to slay this great dragon of abuse. Accordingly, after due consultation with Lucy, he invested his all in fitting up and decorating the splendid establishment in Jermyn Street, St. James's, now known as the SPONGE AND CIGAR BETTING ROOMS, whose richness neither pen nor pencil can do justice to. We must, therefore, entreat our readers to visit this emporium of honesty, where, in addition to finding lists posted on all the great events of the day, they can have the use of a _Mogg_ while they indulge in one of Lucy's unrivalled cigars; and noblemen, gentlemen, and officers in the household troops may be accommodated with loans on their personal security to any amount. We see by Mr. Sponge's last advertisements that he has £116,300 to lend at three and a half per cent.! 'What a farce,' we fancy we hear some enterprising youngster exclaim--'what a farce, to suppose that such a needy scamp as Mr. Sponge, who has been cheating everybody, has any money to lend, or to pay bets with if he loses!' Right, young gentleman, right; but not a bit greater farce than to suppose that any of the plausible money-lenders, or infallible 'tips' with whom you, perhaps, have had connection have any either, in case it's called for. Nay, bad as he is, we'll back old Soapey to be better than any of them,--with which encomium we most heartily bid him ADIEU. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [1] Query, 'snob'?--Printer's Devil. [2] The Poetical Recorder of the Doings of the Dublin Garrison dogs, in _Bell's Life_. [3] _Vide_ 'Barnwell and Alderson's Reports.' [4] 'S,' for Scamperdale, showing they were his lordship's. 
44822	----	provided by the Internet Archive �ASK MAMMA�, or THE RICHEST COMMONER IN ENGLAND By R. S. Surtees Illustrated by JOHN LEECH 001m _Original Size_ CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. CHAPTER I. OUR HERO AND CO.�A SLEEPING PARTNER. CHAPTER II. THE ROAD. CHAPTER III. THE ROAD RESUMED.�MISS PHEASANT-FEATHERS. CHAPTER IV. A GLASS COACH.�MISS WILLING (EN GRAND COSTUME) CHAPTER V. THE LADY�S BOUDOIR.�A DECLARATION. CHAPTER VI. THE HAPPY UNITED FAMILY.�CURTAIN CRESCENT. CHAPTER VII. THE EARL OF LADYTHORNE.�MISS DE GLANCEY. CHAPTER VIII. CUB-HUNTING. CHAPTER IX. A PUP AT WALK.�IMPERIAL JOHN. CHAPTER X. JEAN ROUGIER, OR JACK ROGERS. CHAPTER XI. THE OPENING DAY.�THE HUNT BREAKFAST. CHAPTER XII. THE MORNING FOX.�THE AFTERNOON FOX. CHAPTER XIII. GONE AWAY! CHAPTER XIV. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE. CHAPTER XV. MAJOR YAMMERTON�S COACH STOPS THE WAY. CHAPTER XVI. THE MAJOR�S MENAGE. CHAPTER XVII. ARRIVAL AT YAMMERTON GRANGE.�A FAMILY PARTY. CHAPTER XVIII. A LEETLE, CONTRETEMPS. CHAPTER XIX. THE MAJOR�S STUD. CHAPTER XX. CARDS FOR A SPREAD. CHAPTER XXI. THE GATHERING.�THE GRAND SPREAD ITSELF. CHAPTER XXII. A HUNTING MORNING.�UNKENNELING. CHAPTER XXIII. SHOWING A HORSE.�THE MEET. CHAPTER XXIV. THE WILD BEAST ITSELF. CHAPTER XXV. A CRUEL FINISH. CHAPTER XXVI. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE. CHAPTER XXVII. SIR MOSES MAINCHANCE. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE HIT-IM AND HOLD-IM SHIRE HOUNDS. CHAPTER XXIX. THE PANGBURN PARK ESTATE. CHAPTER XXX. COMMERCE AND AGRICULTURE. CHAPTER XXXI. SIR MOSES�S MENAGE.�DEPARTURE OF FINE BILLY. CHAPTER XXXII. THE BAD STABLE; OR, �IT�S ONLY FOR ONE NIGHT.� CHAPTER XXXIII. SIR MOSES�S SPREAD. CHAPTER XXXIV. GOING TO COVER WITH THE HOUNDS. CHAPTER XXXV. THE MEET. CHAPTER XXXVI. A BIRD�S EYE VIEW. CHAPTER XXXVII. TWO ACCOUNTS OF A RUN; OR, LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE SICK HORSE AND THE SICK MASTER. CHAPTER XXXIX. MR. PRINGLE SUDDENLY BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE H. H. H. CHAPTER XL. THE HUNT DINNER, CHAPTER XLI. THE HUNT TEA.�BUSHEY HEATH AND BARE ACRES. CHAPTER XLII. MR. GEORDEY GALLON. CHAPTER XLIII. SIR MOSES PERPLEXED�THE RENDEZVOUS FOR THE RACE. CHAPTER XLIV. THE RACE ITSELF. CHAPTER XLV. HENEREY BROWN & CO. AGAIN. CHAPTER XLVI. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE. CHAPTER XLVII. A CATASTROPHE.�A T�TE-�-T�TE DINNER CHAPTER XLVIII. ROUGIER�S MYSTERIOUS LODGINGS�THE GIFT HORSE. CHAPTER XLIX. THE SHAM DAY. CHAPTER L. THE SURPRISE. CHAPTER LI. MONEY AND MATRIMONY. CHAPTER LII. A NIGHT DRIVE. CHAPTER LIII. MASTER ANTHONY THOM. CHAPTER LIV. MR. WOTHERSPOON�S DEJEUNER � LA FOURCHETTE. CHAPTER LV. THE COUNCIL OF WAR.�POOR PUSS AGAIN! CHAPTER LVI. A FINE RUN!�THE MAINCHANCE CORRESPONDENCE. CHAPTER LVII. THE ANTHONY THOM TRAP. CHAPTER LVIII. THE ANTHONY THOM TAKE. CHAPTER LIX. ANOTHER COUNCIL OF WAR.�MR. GALLON AT HOME. CHAPTER LX. MR. CARROTY KEBBEL. CHAPTER LXI. THE HUNT BALL.�MISS DE GLANCEY�S REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER LXII. LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT.�CUPID�S SETTLING DAY. CHAPTER LXIII. A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT. PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. IT may be a recommendation to the lover of light literature to be told, that the following story does not involve the complication of a plot. It is a mere continuous narrative of an almost everyday exaggeration, interspersed with sporting scenes and excellent illustrations by Leech. March 31, 1858. CHAPTER I. OUR HERO AND CO.�A SLEEPING PARTNER. 017m _Original Size_ ONSIDERING that Billy Pringle, or Fine Billy, as his good-natured friends called him, was only an underbred chap, he was as good an imitation of a Swell as ever we saw. He had all the airy dreaminess of an hereditary high flyer, while his big talk and off-hand manner strengthened the delusion. It was only when you came to close quarters with him, and found that though he talked in pounds he acted in pence, and marked his fine dictionary words and laboured expletives, that you came to the conclusion that he was �painfully gentlemanly.� So few people, however, agree upon what a gentleman is, that Billy was well calculated to pass muster with the million. Fine shirts, fine ties, fine talk, fine trinkets, go a long way towards furnishing the character with many. Billy was liberal, not to say prodigal, in all these. The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one. Just as the man who is always talking about honour, morality, fine feeling, and so on never knows anything of these qualities but the name. Nature had favoured Billy�s pretensions in the lady-killing way. In person he was above the middle height, five feet eleven or so, slim and well-proportioned, with a finely-shaped head and face, fair complexion, light brown hair, laughing blue eyes, with long lashes, good eyebrows, regular pearly teeth and delicately pencilled moustache. Whiskers he did not aspire to. Nor did Billy abuse the gifts of Nature by disguising himself in any of the vulgar groomy gamekeepery style of dress, that so effectually reduce all mankind to the level of the labourer, nor adopt any of the �loud� patterns that have lately figured so conspicuously in our streets. On the contrary, he studied the quiet unobtrusive order of costume, and the harmony of colours, with a view of producing a perfectly elegant general effect. Neatly-fitting frock or dress coats, instead of baggy sacks, with trouser legs for sleeves, quiet-patterned vests and equally quiet-patterned trousers. If he could only have been easy in them he would have done extremely well, but there was always a nervous twitching, and jerking, and feeling, as if he was wondering what people were thinking or saying of him. In the dress department he was ably assisted by his mother, a lady of very considerable taste, who not only fashioned his clothes but his mind, indeed we might add his person, Billy having taken after her, as they say; for his father, though an excellent man and warm, was rather of the suet-dumpling order of architecture, short, thick, and round, with a neck that was rather difficult to find. His name, too, was William, and some, the good-natured ones again of course, used to say that he might have been called �Fine Billy the first,� for under the auspices of his elegant wife he had assumed a certain indifference to trade; and when in the grand strut at Ramsgate or Broadstairs, or any of his watering-places, if appealed to about any of the things made or dealt in by any of the concerns in which he was a �Co.,� he used to raise his brows and shrug his shoulders, and say with a very deprecatory sort of air, ��Pon my life, I should say you�re right,� or ��Deed I should say it was so,� just as if he was one of the other Pringles,�the Pringles who have nothing to do with trade,�and in noways connected with Pringle & Co.; Pringle & Potts; Smith, Sharp & Pringle; or any of the firms that the Pringles carried on under the titles of the original founders. He was neither a tradesman nor a gentleman. The Pringles�like the happy united family we meet upon wheels; the dove nestling with the gorged cat, and so on�all pulled well together when there was a common victim to plunder; and kept their hands in by what they called taking fair advantages of each other, that is to say, cheating each other, when there was not. Nobody knew the ins and outs of the Pringles. If they let their own right hands know what their left hands did, they took care not to let anybody else�s right hand know. In multiplicity of concerns they rivalled that great man �Co.,� who the country-lad coming to London said seemed to be in partnership with almost everybody. The author of �Who�s Who?� would be puzzled to post people who are Brown in one place, Jones in a second, and Robinson in a third. Still the Pringles were �a most respectable family,� mercantile morality being too often mere matter of moonshine. The only member of the family who was not exactly �legally honest,��legal honesty being much more elastic than common honesty,�was cunning Jerry, who thought to cover by his piety the omissions of his practice. He was a fawning, sanctified, smooth-spoken, plausible, plump little man, who seemed to be swelling with the milk of human kindness, anxious only to pour it out upon some deserving object. His manner was so frank and bland, and his front face smile so sweet, that it was cruel of his side one to contradict the impression and show the cunning duplicity of his nature. Still he smirked and smiled, and �bless-you, dear� and �hope-your-happy,� deared the women, that, being a bachelor, they all thought it best to put up with his �mistakes,� as he called his peculations, and sought his favour by frequent visits with appropriate presents to his elegant villa at Peckham Rye. Here he passed for quite a model man; twice to church every Sunday, and to the lecture in the evening, and would not profane the sanctity of the day by having a hot potato to eat with his cold meat. He was a ripe rogue, and had been jointly or severally, as the lawyers say, in a good many little transactions that would not exactly bear inspection; and these �mistakes� not tallying with the sanctified character he assumed, he had been obliged to wriggle out of them as best he could, with the loss of as few feathers as possible. At first, of course, he always tried the humbugging system, at which he was a great adept; that failing, he had recourse to bullying, at which he was not bad, declaring that the party complaining was an ill-natured, ill-conditioned, quarrelsome fellow, who merely wanted a peg to hang a grievance upon, and that Jerry, so far from defrauding him, had been the best friend he ever had in his life, and that he would put him through every court in the kingdom before he would be imposed upon, by him. If neither of these answered, and Jerry found himself pinned in a corner, he feigned madness, when his solicitor, Mr. Supple, appeared, and by dint of legal threats, and declaring that if the unmerited persecution was persisted in, it would infallibly consign his too sensitive client to a lunatic asylum, he generally contrived to get Jerry out of the scrape by some means or other best known to themselves. Then Jerry, of course, being clear, would inuendo his own version of the story as dexterously as he could, always taking care to avoid a collision with the party, but more than insinuating that he (Jerry) had been infamously used, and his well-known love of peace and quietness taken advantage of; and though men of the world generally suspect the party who is most anxious to propagate his story to be in the wrong, yet their number is but small compared to those who believe anything they are told, and who cannot put �that and that� together for themselves. So Jerry went on robbing and praying and passing for a very proper man. Some called him �cunning Jerry,� to distinguish him from an uncle who was Jerry also; but as this name would not do for the family to adopt, he was generally designated by them as �Want-nothin�-but-what�s-right Jerry,� that being the form of words with which he generally prefaced his extortions. In the same way they distinguished between a fat Joe and a thin one, calling the thin one merely �Joe,� and the fat one �Joe who can�t get within half a yard of the table;� and between two clerks, each bearing the not uncommon name of Smith, one being called Smith, the other �Head-and-shoulders Smith,��the latter, of course, taking his title from his figure. With this outline of the Pringle family, we will proceed to draw out such of its members as figure more conspicuously in our story. With Mrs. William Pringle�s (_née_ Willing) birth, parentage, and education, we would gladly furnish the readers of this work with some information, but, unfortunately, it does not lie in our power so to do, for the simple reason, that we do not know anything. We first find her located at that eminent Court milliner and dressmaker�s, Madame Adelaide Banboxeney, in Furbelow Street, Berkeley Square, where her elegant manners, and obliging disposition, to say nothing of her taste in torturing ribbons and wreaths, and her talent for making plain girls into pretty ones, earned for her a very distinguished reputation. She soon became first-hand, or trier-on, and unfortunately, was afterwards tempted into setting-up for herself, when she soon found, that though fine ladies like to be cheated, it must be done in style, and by some one, if not with a carriage, at all events with a name; and that a bonnet, though beautiful in Bond Street, loses all power of attraction if it is known to come out of Bloomsbury. Miss Willing was, therefore, soon sold up; and Madame Banboxeney (whose real name was Brown, Jane Brown, wife of John Brown, who was a billiard-table marker, until his wife�s fingers set him up in a gig), Madame Banboxeney, we say, thinking to profit by Miss Willing�s misfortunes, offered her a very reduced salary to return to her situation; but Miss Willing having tasted the sweets of bed, a thing she very seldom did at Madame Banboxeney�s, at least not during the season, stood out for more money; the consequence of which was, she lost that chance, and had the benefit of Madame�s bad word at all the other establishments she afterwards applied to. In this dilemma, she resolved to turn her hand to lady�s-maid-ism; and having mastered the science of hair-dressing, she made the rounds of the accustomed servant-shops, grocers, oilmen, brushmen, and so on, asking if they knew of any one wanting a perfect lady�s-maid. As usual in almost all the affairs of life, the first attempt was a failure. She got into what she thoroughly despised, an untitled family, where she had a great deal more to do than she liked, and was grossly �put upon� both by the master and missis. She gave the place up, because, as she said, �the master would come into the missis�s room with nothing but his night-shirt and spectacles on,� but, in reality, because the missis had some of her things made-up for the children instead of passing them on, as of right they ought to have been, to her. She deeply regretted ever having demeaned herself by taking such a situation. Being thus out of place, and finding the many applications she made for other situations, when she gave a reference to her former one, always resulted in the ladies declining her services, sometimes on the plea of being already suited, or of another �young person� having applied just before her, or of her being too young (they never said too pretty, though one elderly lady on seeing her shook her head, and said she �had sons�); and, being tired of living on old tea leaves, Miss Willing resolved to sink her former place, and advertise as if she had just left Madame Banboxeney�s. Accordingly she drew out a very specious advertisement, headed �_to the nobility_,� offering the services of a lady�s-maid, who thoroughly understood millinery, dress-making, hair-dressing, and getting up fine linen, with an address to a cheese shop, and made an arrangement to give Madame Banboxeney a lift with a heavy wedding order she was busy upon, if she would recommend her as just fresh from her establishment. This advertisement produced a goodly crop of letters, and Miss Willing presently closed with the Honourable Mrs. Cavesson, whose husband was a good deal connected with the turf, enjoying that certain road to ruin which so many have pursued; and it says much for Miss Willing�s acuteness, that though she entered Mrs. Cavesson�s service late in the day, when all the preliminaries for a smash had been perfected, her fine sensibilities and discrimination enabled her to anticipate the coming evil, and to deposit her mistress�s jewellery in a place of safety three-quarters of an hour before the bailiffs entered. This act of fidelity greatly enhanced her reputation, and as it was well known that �poor dear Mrs. Cavesson� would not be able to keep her, there were several great candidates for this �treasure of a maid.� Miss Willing had now nothing to do but pick and choose; and after some consideration, she selected what she called a high quality family, one where there was a regular assessed tax-paper establishment of servants, where the butler sold his lord�s wine-custom to the highest bidder, and the heads of all the departments received their �reglars� upon the tradesmen�s bills; the lady never demeaning herself by wearing the same gloves or ball-shoes twice, or propitiating the nurse by presents of raiment that was undoubtedly hers�we mean the maid�s. She was a real lady, in the proper acceptation of the term. This was the beautiful, and then newly married, Countess Delacey, whose exquisite garniture will still live in the recollection of many of the now bald-headed beaux of that period. For these delightful successes, the countess was mainly indebted to our hero�s mother, Miss Willing, whose suggestive genius oft came to the aid of the perplexed and exhausted milliner. It was to the service of the Countess Delacey that Miss Willing was indebted for becoming the wife of Mr. Pringle, afterwards �Fine Billy the first,��an event that deserves to be introduced in a separate chapter. CHAPTER II. THE ROAD. IT was on a cold, damp, raw December morning, before the emancipating civilisation of railways, that our hero�s father, then returning from a trading tour, after stamping up and down the damp flags before the Lion and Unicorn hotel and posting-house at Slopperton, waiting for the old True Blue Independent coach �comin� hup,� for whose cramped inside he had booked a preference seat, at length found himself bundled into the straw-bottomed vehicle, to a very different companion to what he was accustomed to meet in those deplorable conveyances. Instead of a fusty old farmer, or a crumby basket-encumbered market-woman, he found himself opposite a smiling, radiant young lady, whose elegant dress and ring-bedizened hand proclaimed, as indeed was then generally the case with ladies, that she was travelling in a coach �for the first time in her life.� This was our fair friend, Miss Willing. The Earl and Countess Delacey had just received an invitation to spend the Christmas at Tiara Castle, where the countess on the previous year had received if not a defeat, at all events had not achieved a triumph, in the dressing way, over the Countess of Honiton, whose maid, Miss Criblace, though now bribed to secrecy with a full set of very little the worse for wear Chinchilla fur, had kept the fur and told the secret to Miss Willing, that their ladyships were to meet again. Miss Willing was now on her way to town, to arrange with the Countess�s milliner for an annihilating series of morning and evening dresses wherewith to extinguish Lady Honiton, it being utterly impossible, as our fair friends will avouch, for any lady to appear twice in the same attire. How thankful men ought to be that the same rule does not prevail with them! Miss Willing was extremely well got up; for being of nearly the same size as the countess, her ladyship�s slightly-worn things passed on to her with scarcely a perceptible diminution of freshness, it being remarkable how, in even third and fourth-rate establishments, dresses that were not fit for the �missus� to be seen in come out quite new and smart on the maid. On this occasion Miss Willing ran entirely to the dark colours, just such as a lady travelling in her own carriage might be expected to wear. A black terry velvet bonnet with a single ostrich feather, a dark brown Levantine silk dress, with rich sable cuffs, muff, and boa, and a pair of well-fitting primrose-coloured kid gloves, which if they ever had been on before had not suffered by the act. Billy�old Billy that is to say�was quite struck in a heap at such an unwonted apparition, and after the then usual salutations, and inquiries how she would like to have the window, he popped the old question, �How far was she going?� with very different feelings to what it was generally asked, when the traveller wished to calculate how soon he might hope to get rid of his _vis-à-vis_ and lay up his legs on the seat. �To town,� replied the lady, dimpling her pretty cheeks with a smile. �And you?� asked she, thinking to have as good as she gave. �Ditto,� replied the delighted Billy, divesting himself of a great coarse blue and white worsted comforter, and pulling up his somewhat dejected gills, abandoning the idea of economising his Lincoln and Bennett by the substitution of an old Gregory�s mixture coloured fur cap, with its great ears tied over the top, in which he had snoozed and snored through many a long journey. Miss Willing then drew from her richly-buckled belt a beautiful Geneva watch set round with pearls, (her ladyship�s, which she was taking to town to have repaired), and Billy followed suit with his substantial gold-repeater, with which he struck the hour. Miss then ungloved the other hand, and passed it down her glossy brown hair, all smooth and regular, for she had just been scrutinising it in a pocket-mirror she had in her gold-embroidered reticule. Billy�s commercial soul was in ecstacies, and he was fairly over head and ears in love before they came to the first change of horses. He had never seen sich a sample of a hand before, no, nor sich a face; and he felt quite relieved when among the multiplicity of rings he failed to discover that thin plain gold one that intimates so much. Whatever disadvantages old stage coaches possessed, and their name certainly was legion, it must be admitted that in a case of this sort their slowness was a recommendation. The old True Blue Independent did not profess to travel or trail above eight miles an hour, and this it only accomplished under favourable circumstances, such as light loads, good roads, and stout steeds, instead of the top-heavy cargo that now ploughed along the woolly turnpike after the weak, jaded horses, that seemed hardly able to keep their legs against the keen careering wind. If, under such circumstances, the wretched concern made the wild-beast-show looking place in London, called an inn, where it put up, an hour or an hour and a half or so after its time, it was said to be all very well, �considering,��and this, perhaps, in a journey of sixty miles. Posterity will know nothing of the misery their forefathers underwent in the travelling way; and whenever we hear�which we often do�unreasonable grumblings about the absence of trifling luxuries on railways, we are tempted to wish the parties consigned to a good long ride in an old stage coach. Why the worst third class that ever was put next the engine is infinitely better than the inside of the best of them used to be, to say nothing of the speed. As to the outsides of the old coaches, with their roastings, their soakings, their freezings, and their smotherings with dust, one cannot but feel that the establishment of railways was a downright prolongation of life. Then the coach refreshments, or want of refreshments rather; the turning out at all hours to breakfast, dine, or sup, just as the coach reached the house of a proprietor �wot oss�d it,� and the cool incivility of every body about the place. Any thing was good enough for a coach passenger. On this auspicious day, though Miss Willing had her reticule full of macaroons and sponge biscuits, and Fine Billy the first had a great bulging paper of sandwiches in his brown overcoat pocket, they neither of them felt the slightest approach to hunger, ere the lumbering vehicle, after a series of clumsy, would-be-dash-cutting lurches and evolutions over the rough inequalities of the country pavement, pulled up short at the arched doorway of the Salutation Inn�we beg pardon, hotel�in Bramfordrig, and a many-coated, brandy-faced, blear-eyed guard let in a whole hurricane of wind while proclaiming that they �dined there and stopped half an hour.� Then Fine Billy the first had an opportunity of showing his gallantry and surveying the figure of his innamorata, as he helped her down the perilous mud-shot iron steps of the old Independent, and certainly never countess descended from her carriage on a drawing-room day with greater elegance than Miss Willing displayed on the present occasion, showing a lettle circle of delicate white linen petticoat as she protected her clothes from the mud-begrimed wheel, and just as much fine open-worked stocking above the fringed top of her Adelaide boots. On reaching the ground, which she did with a curtsey, she gave such a sweet smile as emboldened our Billy to offer his arm; and amid the nudging of outsiders, and staring of street-loungers, and �make way"-ing of inn hangers-on, our Billy strutted up the archway with all the dignity of a drum-major. His admiration increased as he now became sensible of the lady�s height, for like all little men he was an admirer of tall women. As he caught a glimpse of himself in the unbecoming mirror between the drab and red fringed window curtains of the little back room into which they were ushered, he wished he had had on his new blue coat and bright buttons, with a buff vest, instead of the invisible green and black spot swansdown one in which he was then attired. The outside passengers having descended from their eminences, proceeded to flagellate themselves into circulation, and throw off their husks, while Billy strutted consequentially in with the lady on his arm, and placed her in the seat of honour beside himself at the top of the table. The outsides then came swarming in, jostling the dish-bearers and seating themselves as they could. All seemed bent upon getting as much as they could for their money. Pork was the repast. Pork in varions shapes: roast at the top, boiled at the bottom, sausages on one side, fry on the other; and Miss Willing couldn�t eat pork, and, curious coincidence! neither could Billy. The lady having intimated this to Billy in the most delicate way possible, for she had a particular reason for not wishing to aggravate the new landlord, Mr. Bouncible, Billy gladly sallied forth to give battle as it were on his own account, and by way of impressing the household with his consequence, he ordered a bottle of Teneriffe as he passed the bar, and then commenced a furious onslaught about the food when he got into the kitchen. This reading of the riot act brought Bouncible from his �Times,� who having been in the profession himself took Billy for a nobleman�s gentleman, or a house-steward at least�a class of men not so easily put upon as their masters. He therefore, after sundry regrets at the fare not being �zactly to their mind, which he attributed to its being washing-day, offered to let them have the first turn at a very nice dish of hashed venison that was then simmering on the fire for Mrs. B. and himself, provided our travellers would have the goodness to call it hashed mutton, so that it might not be devoured by the outsiders, a class of people whom all landlords held in great contempt. To this proposition Billy readily assented, and returned triumphantly to the object of his adoration. He then slashed right and left at the roast pork, and had every plate but hers full by the time the hashed mutton made its appearance. He then culled out all the delicate tit-bits for his fair partner, and decked her hot plate with sweet sauce and mealy potatoes. Billy�s turn came next, and amidst demands for malt liquor and the arrival of smoking tumblers of brown brandy and water, clatter, patter, clatter, patter, became the order of the day, with an occasional suspicious, not to say dissatisfied, glance of a pork-eating passenger at the savoury dish at the top of the table. Mr. Bonncible, however, brought in the Teneriffe just at the critical moment, when Billy having replenished both plates, the pork-eaters might have expected to be let in; and walked off with the dish in exchange for the decanter. Our friends then pledged each other in a bumper of Cape. The pork was followed by an extremely large strong-smelling Cheshire cheese, in a high wooden cradle, which in its turn was followed by an extremely large strong-smelling man in a mountainous many-caped greatcoat, who with a bob of his head and a kick out behind, intimated that paying time was come for him. Growls were then heard of its not being half an hour, or of not having had their full time, accompanied by dives into the pockets and reticules for the needful�each person wondering how little he could give without a snubbing. 027m _Original Size_ Quite �optional� of course. Billy, who was bent on doing the magnificent, produced a large green-and-gold-tasseled purse, almost as big as a stocking, and drew therefrom a great five-shilling piece, which having tapped imposingly on his plate, he handed ostentatiously to the man, saying, �for this lady and me,� just as if she belonged to him; whereupon down went the head even with the table, with an undertoned intimation that Billy �needn�t �urry, for he would make it all right with the guard.� The waiter followed close on the heels of the coachman, drawing every body for half-a-crown for the dinner, besides what they had had to drink, and what they �pleased for himself,� and Billy again anticipated the lady by paying for both. Instead, however, of disputing his right so to do, she seemed to take it as a matter of course, and bent a little forward and said in a sort of half-whisper, though loud enough to be heard by a twinkling-eyed, clayey-complexioned she-outsider, sitting opposite, dressed in a puce-coloured cloth pelisse and a pheasant-feather bonnet, �I fear you will think me very troublesome, but do you think you could manage to get me a finger-glass?� twiddling her pretty taper fingers as she spoke. �Certainly!� replied Billy, all alacrity, �certainly.� �With a little tepid water,� continued Miss Willing, looking imploringly at Billy as he rose to fulfil her behests. �Such airs!� growled Pheasant-feathers to her next neighbour with an indignant toss of her colour-varying head. Billy presently appeared, bearing one of the old deep blue-patterned finger-glasses, with a fine damask napkin, marked with a ducal coronet�one of the usual perquisites of servitude. Miss then holding each pretty hand downwards, stripped her fingers of their rings, just as a gardener strips a stalk of currants of its fruit, dropping, however, a large diamond ring (belonging to her ladyship, which she was just airing) skilfully under the table, and for which fat Billy had to dive like a dog after an otter. �Oh, dear!� she was quite ashamed at her awkwardness and the trouble she had given, she assured Billy, as he rose red and panting from the pursuit. �Done on purpose to show her finery,� muttered Pheasant-feather bonnet, with a sneer. Miss having just passed the wet end of the napkin across her cherry lips and pearly teeth, and dipped her fingers becomingly in the warm water, was restoring her manifold rings, when the shrill _twang, twang, twang_ of the horn, with the prancing of some of the newly-harnessed cripples on the pavement as they tried to find their legs, sounded up the arch-way into the little room, and warned our travellers that they should be reinvesting themselves in their wraps. So declining any more Teneriffe, Miss Willing set the example by drawing on her pretty kid gloves, and rising to give the time to the rest. Up they all got. CHAPTER III. THE ROAD RESUMED.�MISS PHEASANT-FEATHERS. THE room, as we said before, being crammed, and our fair friend Miss Willing taking some time to pass gracefully down the line of chair-backs, many of whose late occupants were now swinging their arms about in all the exertion of tying up their mouths, and fighting their ways into their over-coats, Mr. Pringle, as he followed, had a good opportunity of examining her exquisite _tournure_, than which he thought he never saw anything more beautifully perfect. He was quite proud when a little more width of room at the end of the table enabled him to squeeze past a robing, Dutch-built British-lace-vending pack-woman, and reclaim his fair friend, just as a gentleman does his partner at the end of an old country dance. How exultingly he marched her through the line of inn hangers-on, hostlers, waiters, porters, post-boys, coachmen, and insatiable Matthews-at-home of an inn establishment, �Boots,� a gentleman who will undertake all characters in succession for a consideration. How thankful we ought to be to be done with these harpies! Bouncible, either mistaking the rank of his guests, or wanting to have a better look at the lady, emerged from his glass-fronted den of a bar, and salaam�d them up to the dirty coach, where the highly-fee�d coachman stood door in hand, waiting to perform the last act of attention for his money. In went Billy and the beauty, or rather the beauty and Billy, bang went the door, the outsiders scrambled up on to their perches and shelves as best they could. �_All right! Sit tight!_� was presently heard, and whip, jip, crack, cut, three blind �uns and a bolter were again bumping the lumbering vehicle along the cobble-stoned street, bringing no end of cherry cheeks and corkscrew ringlets to the windows, to mark that important epoch of the day, the coach passing by. 031m _Original Size_ Billy, feeling all the better for his dinner, and inspirited by sundry gulps of wine, proceeded to make himself comfortable, in order to open fire as soon as ever the coach got off the stones. He took a rapid retrospect of all the various angels he had encountered, those who had favoured him, those who had frowned, and he was decidedly of opinion that he had never seen anything to compare to the fair lady before him. He was rich and thriving and would please himself without consulting Want-nothin�-but-what�s-right Jerry, Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe, or any of them. It wasn�t like as if they were to be in Co. with him in the lady. She would never come into the balance sheets. No; she was to be all his, and they had no business with it. He believed Want-nothin�-but-what�s-right would be glad if he never married. Just then the coach glid from the noisy pavement on to the comparatively speaking silent macadamised road, and Billy and the lady opened fire simultaneously, the lady about the discomforts of coach-travelling, which she had never tried before, and Billy about the smack of the Teneriffe, which he thought very earthy. He had some capital wine at home, he said, as everybody has. This led him to London, the street conveniences or inconveniences as they then were of the metropolis, which subject he plied for the purpose of finding out as well where the lady lived as whether her carriage would meet her or not; but this she skilfully parried, by asking Billy where he lived, and finding it was Doughty Street, Russell Square, she observed, as in truth it is, that it was a very airy part of the town, and proceeded to expatiate on the beauty of the flowers in Covent Garden, from whence she got to the theatres, then to the opera, intimating a very considerable acquaintance as well with the capital as with that enchanted circle, the West-end, comprising in its contracted limits what is called the world. Billy was puzzled. He wished she mightn�t be a cut above him�such lords, such ladies, such knowledge of the court�could she be a maid-of-honour? Well, he didn�t care. No ask no have, so he proceeded with the pumping process again. �Did she live in town?� _Fair Lady_.��Part of the year.� _Billy_.��During the season I �spose?� _Fair Lady_.��During the sitting of parliament.� �There again!� thought Billy, feeling the expectation-funds fall ten per cent, at least. �Well, faint heart never won fair lady,� continued he to himself, considering how next he should sound her. She was very beautiful�what pretty pearly teeth she had, and such a pair of rosy lips�such a fair forehead too, and _such_ nice hair�he�d give a fipun note for a kiss!�he�d give a tenpun note for a kiss!�dashed if he wouldn�t give a fifty-pun for a kiss. Then he wondered what Head-and-shoulders Smith would think of her. As he didn�t seem to be making much progress, however, in the information way, he now desisted from that consideration, and while contemplating her beauty considered how best he should carry on the siege. Should he declare who and what he was, making the best of himself of course, and ask her to be equally explicit, or should he beat about the bush a little longer and try to fish out what he could about her. They had a good deal of day before them yet, dark though the latter part of it would be; which, however, on second thoughts, he felt might be rather favourable, inasmuch as she wouldn�t see when he was taken aback by her answers. He would beat about the bush a little longer. It was very pleasant sport. �Did you say you lived in Chelsea?� at length asked Billy, in a stupid self-convicting sort of way. �No,� replied the fair lady with a smile; �I never mentioned Chelsea.� �Oh, no; no more you did,� replied Billy, taken aback, especially as the lady led up to no other place. �Did she like the country?� at length asked he, thinking to try and fix her locality there, if he could not earth her in London. �Yes, she liked the country, at least out of the season�there was no place like London in the season,� she thought. Billy thought so too; it was the best place in summer, and the only place in winter. Well, the lady didn�t know, but if she had to choose either place for a permanency, she would choose London. This sent the Billy funds up a little. He forgot his intention of following her into the country, and began to expatiate upon the luxuries of London, the capital fish they got, the cod and hoyster sauce (for when excited, he knocked his h�s about a little), the cod and hoyster sauce, the turbot, the mackerel, the mullet, that woodcock of the sea, as he exultingly called it, thinking what a tuck-out he would have in revenge for his country inn abstinence. He then got upon the splendour of his own house in Doughty Street�the most agreeable in London. Its spacious entrance, its elegant stone staircase; his beautiful drawing-room, with its maroon and rose-coloured brocaded satin damask curtains, and rich Tournay carpet, its beautiful chandelier of eighteen lights, and Piccolo pianoforte, and was describing a most magnificent mirror�we don�t know what size, but most beautiful and becoming�when the pace of the vehicle was sensibly felt to relax; and before they had time to speculate on the cause, it had come to a stand-still. �Stopped,� observed Billy, lowering the window to look out for squalls. No sooner was the window down, than a head at the door proclaimed mischief. The _tête-à-tête_ was at an end. The guard was going to put Pheasant-feather bonnet inside. Open sesame _�W-h-i-s-h_. In came the cutting wind�oh dear what a day! �Rum for a leddy?� asked the guard, raising a great half-frozen, grog-blossomy face out of the blue and white coil of a shawl-cravat in which it was enveloped,��Git in� continued he, shouldering the leddy up the steps, without waiting for an answer, and in popped Pheasant-feathers; when, slamming-to the door, he cried �_right!_� to the coachman, and on went the vehicle, leaving the enterer to settle into a seat by its shaking, after the manner of the omnibus cads, who seem to think all they have to do is to see people past the door. As it was, the new-comer alighted upon Billy, who cannoned her off against the opposite door, and then made himself as big as he could, the better to incommode her. Pheasant-feathers, however, having effected an entrance, seemed to regard herself as good as her neighbours, and forthwith proceeded to adjust the window to her liking, despite the eyeing and staring of Miss Willing. Billy was indignant at the nasty peppermint-drop-smelling woman intruding between the wind and his beauty, and inwardly resolved he would dock the guard�s fee for his presumption in putting her there. Miss Willing gathered herself together as if afraid of contamination; and, forgetting her _role_, declared, after a jolt received in one of her seat-shiftings, that it was just the �smallest coach she had ever been in.� She then began to scrutinise her female companion�s attire. A cottage-bonnet, made of pheasant-feathers; was there ever such a frightful thing seen,�all the colours of the rainbow combined,�must be a poacher�s daughter, or a poulterer�s. Paste egg-coloured ribbons; what a cloth pelisse,�puce colour in some parts,�bath-brick colour in others,�nearly drab in others,�thread-bare all over. Dare say she thought herself fine, with her braided waist, up to her ears. Her glazy gloves might be any colour�black, brown, green, gray. Then a qualm shot across Miss Willing�s mind that she had seen the pelisse before. Yes, no, yes; she believed it was the very one she had sold to Mrs. Pickles� nursery governess for eighteen shillings. So it was. She had stripped the fur edging off herself, and there were the marks. Who could the wearer be? Where could she have got it? She could not recollect ever having seen her unwholesome face before. And yet the little ferrety, white-lashed eyes settled upon her as if they knew her. Who could she be? What, if she had lived fellow�(we�ll not say what)�with the creature somewhere. There was no knowing people out of their working clothes, especially when they set up to ride inside of coaches. Altogether, it was very unpleasant. Billy remarked his fair friend�s altered mood, and rightly attributed it to the intrusion of the nasty woman, whose gaudy headgear the few flickering rays of a December sun were now lighting up, making the feathers, so beautiful on a bird, look, to Billy�s mind, so ugly on a bonnet, at least on the bonnet that now thatched the frightful face beside him. Billy saw the fair lady was not accustomed to these sort of companions, and wished he had only had the sense to book the rest of the inside when the coach stopped to dine. However, it could not be helped now; so, having ascertained that Pheasant-feathers was going all the way to �Lunnnn,� as she called it, when the sun sunk behind its massive leadeen cloud, preparatory to that long reign of darkness with which travellers were oppressed,�for there were no oil-lamps to the roofs of stage-coaches,�Billy being no longer able to contemplate the beauties of his charmer, now changed his seat, for a little confidential conversation by her side. He then, after a few comforting remarks, not very flattering to Pheasant-feathers� beauty, resumed his expatiations about his splendid house in Doughty Street, Russell Square, omitting, of course, to mention that it had been fitted up to suit the taste of another lady, who had jilted him. He began about his dining-room, twenty-five feet by eighteen, with a polished steel fender, and �pictors� all about the walls; for, like many people, he fancied himself a judge of the fine arts, and, of course, was very frequently fleeced. This subject, however, rather hung fire, a dining-room being about the last room in a house that a lady cares to hear about, so she presently cajoled him into the more genial region of the kitchen, which, unlike would-be fine ladies of the present day, she was not ashamed to recognise. From the kitchen they proceeded to the store-room, which Billy explained was entered by a door at the top of the back stairs, six feet nine by two feet eight, covered on both sides with crimson cloth, brass moulded in panels and mortise latch. He then got upon the endless, but �never-lady-tiring,� subject of bed-rooms�his best bed-room, with a most elegant five-feet-three canopy-top, mahogany bedstead, with beautiful French chintz furniture, lined with pink, outer and inner valance, trimmed silk tassel fringe, &c., &c., &c. And so he went maundering on, paving the way most elaborately to an offer, as some men are apt to do, instead of getting briskly to the �ask-mamma� point, which the ladies are generally anxious to have them at. To be sure, Billy had been bowled over by a fair, or rather unfair one, who had appeared quite as much interested about his furniture and all his belongings as Miss Willing did, and who, when she got the offer, and found he was not nearly so well off as Jack Sanderson, declared she was never so surprised in her life as when Billy proposed; for though, as she politely said, every one who knew him must respect him, yet he had never even entered her head in any other light than that of an agreeable companion. This was Miss Amelia Titterton, afterwards Mrs. Sanderson. Another lady, as we said before (Miss Bowerbank), had done worse; for she had regularly jilted him, after putting him to no end of expense in furnishing his house, so that, upon the whole, Billy had cause to be cautious. A coach, too, with its jolts and its jerks, and its brandy-and-water stoppages, is but ill calculated for the delicate performance of offering, to say nothing of having a pair of nasty white-lashed, inquisitive-looking, ferrety eyes sitting opposite, with a pair of listening ears, nestling under the thatch of a pheasant-feather bonnet. All things considered, therefore, Billy may, perhaps, stand excused for his slowness, especially as he did not know but what he was addressing a countess. And so the close of a scarcely dawned December day, was followed by the shades of night, and still the jip, jip, jipping; whip, whip, whipping; creak, creak, creaking of the heavy lumbering coach, was accompanied by Billy�s maunderings about his noble ebony this, and splendid mahogany that, varied with, here and there, a judicious interpolation of an �indeed,� or a �how beautiful,� from Miss Willing, to show how interested she was in the recital; for ladies are generally good listeners, and Miss Willing was essentially so. The �demeanour of the witness� was lost, to be sure, in the chancery-like darkness that prevailed; and Billy felt it might be all blandishment, for nothing could be more marked or agreeable than the interest both the other ladies had taken in his family, furniture, and effects. Indeed, as he felt, they all took much the same course, for, for cool home-questioning, there is no man can compete with an experienced woman. They get to the �What-have-you-got, and What-will-you-do� point, before a man has settled upon the line of inquiry�very likely before he has got done with that interesting topic�the weather. At length, a sudden turn of the road revealed to our friends, who were sitting with their faces to the horses, the first distant curve of glow-worm-like lamps in the distance, and presently the great white invitations to �try warren�s,� or �day and martin�s blacking,� began to loom through the darkness of the dead walls of the outskirts of London. They were fast approaching the metropolis. The gaunt elms and leafless poplars presently became fewer, while castellated and sentry-box-looking summer-houses stood dark in the little paled-off gardens. At last the villas, and semi-detached villas, collapsed into one continuous gas-lit shop-dotted street. The shops soon became better and more frequent,�more ribbons and flowers, and fewer periwinkle stalls. They now got upon the stones. Billy�s heart jumped into his month at the jerk, for he knew not how soon his charmer and he might part, and as yet he had not even ascertained her locality. Now or never, thought he, rising to the occasion, and, with difficulty of utterance, he expressed a hope that he might have the pleasure of seeing her �ome. �Thank you, _no_,� replied Miss Willing, emphatically, for it was just the very thing she most dreaded, letting him see her reception by the servants. �Humph!� grunted Billy, feeling his funds fall five-and-twenty per cent.��Miss Titterton or Miss Bowerbank over again,� thought he. �Not but that I most fully appreciate your kindness,� whispered Miss Willing, in the sweetest tone possible, right into his ear, thinking by Billy�s silence that her vehemence had offended him; �but,� continued she, �I�m only going to the house of a friend, a long way from you, and I expect a servant to meet me at the Green Man in Oxford Street.� �Well, but let me see you to the��(puff, gasp)��Green Man,� ejaculated Billy, the funds of hope rising more rapidly than his words. �It�s very kind,� whispered Miss Willing, �and I feel it _very, very_ much, but�� �But if your servant shouldn�t come,� interrupted Billy, �you�d never find your way to Brompton in this nasty dense yellow fog,� for they had now got into the thick of a fine fat one. �Oh, but I�m not going to Brompton,� exclaimed Miss Willing, amused at this second bad shot of Billy�s at her abode. �Well, wherever you are going, I shall only be too happy to escort you,� replied Billy, �I know Lunnun well.� �So do I,� thought Miss Willing, with a sigh. And the coach having now reached that elegant hostelry, the George and Blue Badger, in High Holborn, Miss showed her knowledge of it by intimating to Billy that that was the place for him to alight; so taking off her glove she tendered him her soft hand, which Billy grasped eagerly, still urging her to let him see her home, or at all events to the Green Man, in Oxford Street. Miss, however, firmly but kindly declined his services, assuring him repeatedly that she appreciated his kindness, which she evinced by informing him that she was going to a friend�s at No. �, Grosvenor Square, that she would only be in town for a couple of nights; but that if he _really_ wished to see her again,��_really_ wished it,� she repeated with an emphasis, for she didn�t want to be trifled with,�she would be happy to see him to tea at eight o�clock on the following evening. �_Eight o�clock!_� gasped Billy. �No. ��, Gruvenor Square,� repeated he. �I knows it�I�ll be with you to a certainty�I�ll be with you to a��(puff)��certainty.� So saying, he made a sandwich of her fair taper-fingered hand, and then responded to the inquiry of the guard, if there was any one to �git oot there,� by alighting. And he was so excited that he walked off, leaving his new silk umbrella and all his luggage in the coach, exclaiming, as he worked his way through the fog to Doughty Street, �No.��, Gruvenor Square�eight o�clock�eight o�clock�No.��, Gruvenor Square�was there ever such a beauty!�be with her to a certainty, be with her to a certainty.� Saying which, he gave an ecstatic bound, and next moment found himself sprawling a-top of a murder!�crying apple-woman in the gutter. Leaving him there to get up at his leisure, let us return to his late companion in the coach. Scarcely was the door closed on his exit, ere a sharp shrill �_You don�t know me!�you don�t know me!_� sounded from under the pheasant-feather bonnet, and shot through Miss Willing like a thrill. �Yes, no, yes; who is it?� ejaculated she, thankful they were alone. �Sarey Grimes, to be sure,� replied the voice, in a semi-tone of exultation. �Sarah Grimes!� exclaimed Miss Willing, recollecting the veriest little imp of mischief that ever came about a place, the daughter of a most notorious poacher. �So it is! Why, Sarah, who would ever have thought of seeing you grown into a great big woman.� �I thought you didn�t know me,� replied Sarah; �I used often to run errands for you,� added she. �I remember,� replied Miss Willing, feeling in her reticule for her purse. Sarah had carried certain delicate missives in the country that Miss Willing would now rather have forgotten, how thankful she was that the creature had not introduced herself when her fat friend was in the coach. �What are you doing now?� asked Miss Willing, jingling up the money at one end of the purse to distinguish between the gold and the silver. Sarey explained that being now out of place (she had been recently dismissed from a cheesemonger�s at Lutterworth for stealing a copper coal-scoop, a pound of whitening, and a pair of gold spectacles, for which a donkey-travelling general merchant had given her seven and sixpence), the guard of the coach, who was her great-uncle, had given her a lift up to town to try what she could do there again; and Miss Willing�s quick apprehension seeing that there was some use to be made of such a sharp-witted thing, having selected a half-sovereign out of her purse, thus addressed her: �Well, Sarah, I�m glad to see you again. You are very much improved, and will be very good-looking. There�s half a sovereign for you,� handing it to her, �and if you�ll come to me at six o�clock to-morrow evening in Grosvenor Square, I dare say I shall be able to look out some things that may be useful to you.� �Thanke, mum; thanke!� exclaimed Sarey, delighted at the idea. �I�ll be with you, you may depend.� �You know Big Ben,� continued Miss Willing, �who was my lord�s own man; he�s hall-porter now, ring and tell him you come for me, and he�ll let you in at the door.� �Certainly, mum, certainly,� assented Pheasant-feathers, thinking how much more magnificent that would be than sneaking down the area. And the coach having now reached the Green Man, Miss Willing alighted and took a coach to Grosvenor Square, leaving Miss Grimes to pursue its peregrinations to the end of its journey. And Billy Pringle having, with the aid of the �pollis,� appeased the basket-woman�s wrath, was presently ensconced in his beautiful house in Doughty Street. So, _tinkle, tinkle, tinkle_,�down goes the curtain on this somewhat long chapter. CHAPTER IV. A GLASS COACH.�MISS WILLING (EN GRAND COSTUME) NEXT day our friend Billy was buried in looking after his lost luggage and burnishing up the gilt bugle-horn buttons of the coat, waist-coat, and shorts of the Royal Epping Archers, in which he meant to figure in the evening. Having, through the medium of his �Boyle,� ascertained the rank of the owner of the residence where he was going to be regaled, he ordered a glass-coach�not a coach made of glass, juvenile readers, in which we could see a gentleman disparting himself like a gold-fish in a glass bowl, but a better sort of hackney coach with a less filthy driver, which, by a �beautiful fiction� of the times, used to be considered the hirer�s �private carriage.� It was not the �thing� in those days to drive up to a gentleman�s door in a public conveyance, and doing the magnificent was very expensive: for the glass fiction involved a pair of gaunt raw-boned horses, which, with the napless-hatted drab-turned-up-with-grease-coated-coachman, left very little change out of a sovereign. How thankful we ought to be to railways and Mr. Fitzroy for being able to cut about openly at the rate of sixpence a mile. The first great man who drove up St. James�s Street at high tide in a Hansom, deserves to have his portrait painted at the public expense, for he opened the door of common sense and utility. What a follow-my-leader-world it is! People all took to street cabs simultaneously, just as they did to walking in the Park on a Sunday when Count D�Orsay set up his ��andsomest ombrella in de vorld,� being no longer able to keep a horse. But we are getting into recent times instead of attending Mr. Pringle to his party. He is supposed to have ordered his glass phenomenon. Now Mr. Forage, the job-master, in Lamb�s Conduit Street, with whom our friend did his magnificence, �performed funerals� also, as his yard-doors indicated, and being rather �full,� or more properly speaking, empty, he acted upon the principle of all coaches being black in the dark, and sent a mourning one, so there was a striking contrast between the gaiety of the Royal Epping Archers� uniform�pea-green coat with a blue collar, salmon-coloured vest and shorts�in which Mr. Pringle was attired, and the gravity of the vehicle that conveyed him. However, our lover was so intent upon taking care of his pumps, for the fog had made the flags both slippery and greasy, that he popped in without noticing the peculiarity, and his stuttering knock-knee�d hobble-de-hoy, yclept �Paul,� having closed the door and mounted up behind, they were presently jingling away to the west, Billy putting up first one leg and then the other on to the opposite seat to admire his white-gauze-silk-encased calves by the gas and chemists� windows as they passed. So he went fingering and feeling at his legs, and pulling and hauling at his coat,�for the Epping Archer uniform had got rather tight, and, moreover, had been made on the George-the-Fourth principle, of not being easily got into�along Oxford Street, through Hanover Square, and up Brook Street, to the spacious region that contained the object of his adoration. The coach presently drew up at a stately Italian-column porticoed mansion: down goes Paul, but before he gets half through his meditated knock, the door opens suddenly in his face, and he is confronted by Big Ben in the full livery,�we beg pardon,�uniform of the Delacey family, beetroot-coloured coat, with cherry-coloured vest and shorts, the whole elaborately bedizened with gold-lace. 043m _Original Size_ The unexpected apparition, rendered more formidable by the blazing fire in the background, throwing a lurid light over the giant, completely deprived little Paul of his breath, and he stood gaping and shaking as if he expected the monster to address him. �Who may you please to want?� at length demanded Ben, in a deep sonorous tone of mingled defiance and contempt. �P�p�p�please, wo�wo�wo�want,� stuttered little Paul, now recollecting that he had never been told who to ask for. �Yes, who do you wish to see?� demanded Ben, in a clear explanatory tone, for though he had agreed to dress up for the occasion on the reciprocity principle of course�Miss Willing winking at his having two nephews living in the house�he by no means undertook to furnish civility to any of the undergraduates of life, as he called such apologies as Paul. �I�I�I�ll ask,� replied Paul, glad to escape back to the coach, out of which the Royal Archer�s bull-head was now protruding, anxious to be emancipated. �Who�ho�ho am I to a�a�ask for, pa�pa�per�please?� stuttered Paul, trembling all over with fear and excitement, for he had never seen such a sight except in a show. �Ask for!� muttered Billy, now recollecting for the first time that the fair lady and he were mutually ignorant of each other�s names. �Ask for! What if it should be a hoax?� thought he; �how foolish he would look!� While these thoughts were revolving in Billy�s mind, Big Ben, having thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his cherry-coloured shorts, was contemplating the dismal-looking coach in the disdainful cock-up-nose sort of way that a high-life Johnny looks at what he considers a low-life equipage; wondering, we dare say, who was to be deceived by such a thing. Billy, seeing the case was desperate, resolved to put a bold face on the matter, especially as he remembered his person could not be seen in the glass coach; so, raising his crush hat to his face, he holloaed out, �_I say! is this the Earl of Delacey�s?_� �It is,� replied Ben, with a slight inclination of his gigantic person. �Then, let me out,� demanded Billy of Paul. And this request being complied with, Billy skipped smartly across the flags, and was presently alongside of Ben, whispering up into his now slightly-inclined ear, �_I say, was there a lady arrived here last night from the country?_� (He was going to say �by the coach,� but he checked himself when he got to the word country.) �There was, sir,� replied Ben, relaxing into something like condescension. �Then I�m come to see her,� whispered Billy, with a grin. �Your name, if you please, sir?� replied Ben, still getting up the steam of politeness. �Mr. Pringle�Mr. William Pringle!� replied Billy with firmness. �All right, sir,� replied the blood-red monster, pretending to know more than he did; and, motioning Billy onward into the black and white marble-flagged entrance hall, he was about to shut him in, when Billy, recollecting himself, holloaed, ��_Ome!_� to his coachman, so that he mightn�t be let in for the two days� hire. The door then closed, and he was in for an adventure. It will be evident to our fair friends that the Archer bold had the advantage over the lady, in having all his raiment in town, while she had all hers, at least all the pick of hers,�her first-class things,�in the country. Now every body knows that what looks very smart in the country looks very seedy in London, and though the country cousins of life do get their new things to take back with them there, yet regular town-comers have theirs ready, or ready at all events to try on against they arrive, and so have the advantage of looking like civilised people while they are up. London, however, is one excellent place for remedying any little deficiency of any sort, at least if a person has only either money or credit, and a lady or gentleman can soon be rigged out by driving about to the different shops. Now it so happened that Miss Willing had nothing of her own in town, that she felt she would be doing herself justice to appear before Billy in, and had omitted bringing her ladyship�s keys, whereby she might have remedied the deficiency out of that wardrobe; however, with such a commission as she held, there could be no difficulty in procuring the loan of whatever was wanted from her ladyship�s milliner. We may mention that on accepting office under Lady Delacey, Miss Willing, with the greatest spirit of fairness, had put her ladyship�s custom in competition among three distinguished modistes, viz. her old friend Madame Adelaide Banboxeney, Madame Celeste de Montmorency, of Dover Street, and Miss Julia Freemantle, of Cowslip Street, May Fair; and Miss Freemantle having offered the same percentage on the bill (£15) as the other two, and £20 a year certain money more than Madame Banboxeney, and £25 more than Madame Celeste de Montmorency, Miss Freemantle had been duly declared the purchaser, as the auctioneers say, and in due time (as soon as a plausible quarrel could be picked with the then milliner) was in the enjoyment of a very good thing, for though the Countess Delacey, in the Gilpin-ian spirit of the age, tried to tie Miss Freemantle down to price, yet she overlooked the extras, the little embroidery of a bill, if we may so call it, such as four pound seventeen and sixpence for a buckle, worth perhaps the odd silver, and the surreptitious lace, at no one knows what, so long as they were not all in one item, and were cleverly scattered about the bill in broken sums, just as the lady thought the ribbon dear at a shilling a yard, but took it when the counter-skipper replied, �S�pose, marm, then, we say thirteen pence��Miss Willing having had a consultation with Miss Freemantle as to the most certain means of quashing the Countess of Honiton, broached her own little requirements, and Miss Freemantle, finding that she only wanted the dress for one night, agreed to lend her a very rich emerald-green Genoa velvet evening-dress, trimmed with broad Valenciennes lace, she was on the point of furnishing for Alderman Boozey�s son�s bran-new wife; Miss Freemantle feeling satisfied, as she said, that Miss Willing would do it no harm; indeed, would rather benefit it by the sit her fine figure would give it, in the same way as shooters find it to their advantage to let their keepers have a day or two�s wear out of their new shoes in order to get them to go easy for themselves. The reader will therefore have the goodness to consider Miss Willing arrayed in Alderman Boozey�s son�s bran-new wife�s bran-new Genoa velvet dress, with a wreath of pure white camellias on her beautiful brown Madonna-dressed hair, and a massive true-lover�s-knot brooch in brilliants at her bosom. On her right arm she wears a magnificent pearl armlet, which Miss Freemantle had on sale or return from that equitable diamond-merchant, Samuel Emanuel Moses, of the Minories, the price ranging, with Miss Freemantle, from eighty to two hundred and fifty guineas, according to the rank and paying properties of the inquirer, though as between Moses and �Mantle,� the price was to be sixty guineas, or perhaps pounds, depending upon the humour Moses might happen to be in, when she came with the dear £. s. d. The reader will further imagine an elegant little boudoir with its amber-coloured silk fittings and furniture, lit up with the united influence of the best wax and Wallsend, and Miss Willing sitting at an inlaid centre-table, turning over the leaves of Heath�s �Picturesque Annual� of the preceding year. Opposite the fire are large white and gold folding-doors, opening we know not where, outside of which lurks Pheasant-feathers, placed there by Miss Willing on a service of delicacy. CHAPTER V. THE LADY�S BOUDOIR.�A DECLARATION. THIS way, sir,�please, sir,�yes, sir,� bowed the now obsequious Ben, guiding Billy by the light of a chamber candle through the intricacies of the half-lit inner entrance. �Take care, sir, there�s a step, sir,� continued he, stopping and showing where the first stumbling-block resided. Billy then commenced the gradual accent of the broad, gently-rising staircase, each step increasing his conviction of the magnitude of the venture, and making him feel that his was not the biggest house in town. As he proceeded he wondered what Nothin�-but-what�s-right Jerry, or Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe, above all Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table, would say if they could see him thus visiting at a nobleman�s house, it seemed more like summut in a book or a play than downright reality. Still there was no reason why a fine lady should not take a fancy to him�many deuced deal uglier fellows than he had married fine ladies, and he would take his chance along with the rest of them�so he laboured up after Ben, hoping he might not come down stairs quicker than he went up. The top landing being gained, they passed through lofty folding-doors into the suite of magnificent but now put-away drawing-rooms, whose spectral half collapsed canvas bags, and covered statues and sofas, threw a Kensal-Green-Cemetery sort of gloom over Billy�s spirits; speedily, however, to be dispelled by the radiance of the boudoir into which he was now passed through an invisible door in the gilt-papered wall. �Mr. William Pringle, ma�m,� whispered Ben, in a tone that one could hardly reconcile to the size of the monster: and Miss Willing having risen at the sound of the voice, bowing, Billy and she were presently locked hand in hand, smiling and teeth-showing most extravagantly. �I�ll ring for tea presently,� observed she to Ben, who seemed disposed to fuss and loiter about the room. �If you please, my lady,� replied Ben, bowing himself backwards through the panel. Happy Billy was then left alone with his charmer, save that beetroot-coloured Ben was now listening at one door on his own account, and Pheasant-feathers at the other on Miss Willing�s. Billy was quite taken aback. If he had been captivated in the coach what chance had he now, with all the aid of dress, scenery, and decorations. He thought he had never seen such a beauty�he thought he had never seen such a bust�he thought he had never seen such an arm! Miss Titterton�pooh!�wasn�t to be mentioned in the same century�hadn�t half such a waist. �Won�t you be seated?� at length asked Miss Willing, as Billy still stood staring and making a mental inventory of her charms. �Seat��(puff)��seat� (wheeze), gasped Billy, looking around at the shining amber-coloured magnificence by which he was surrounded, as if afraid to venture, even in his nice salmon-coloured shorts. At length he got squatted on a gilt chair by his charmer�s side, when taking to look at his toes, she led off the ball of conversation. She had had enough of the billing and cooing or gammon and spinach of matrimony, and knew if she could not bring him to book at once, time would not assist her. She soon probed his family circle, and was glad to find there was no �mamma� to �ask,� that dread parent having more than once been too many for her. She took in the whole range of connection with the precision of an auctioneer or an equity draftsman. There was no occasion for much diplomacy on her part, for Billy came into the trap just like a fly to a �Ketch-�em-alive O!� The conversation soon waxed so warm that she quite forgot to ring for the tea; and Ben, who affected early hours in the winter, being slightly asthmatical, as a hall-porter ought to be, at length brought it in of his own accord. Most polite he was; �My lady� and �Your ladyship-ing� Miss Willing with accidental intention every now and then, which raised Billy�s opinion of her consequence very considerably. And so he sat, and sipped and sipped, and thought what a beauty she would be to transfer to Doughty Street. Tea, in due time, was followed by the tray�Melton pie, oysters, sandwiches, anchovy toast, bottled stout, sherry and Seltzer water, for which latter there was no demand. A profane medicine-chest-looking mahogany case then made its appearance, which, being opened, proved to contain four cut-glass spirit-bottles, labelled respectively, �Rum,� �Brandy,� �Whiskey,� �Gin,� though they were not true inscriptions, for there were two whiskey�s and two brandy�s. A good old-fashioned black-bottomed kettle having next mounted a stand placed on the top bar, Miss intimated to Ben that if they had a few more coals, he need not �trouble to sit up;� and these being obtained, our friends made a brew, and then drew their chairs together to enjoy the feast of reason and the flow of soul; Miss slightly raising Alderman Boozey�s son�s bran-new wife�s bran-new emerald-green velvet dress to show her beautiful white-satin slippered foot, as it now rested on the polished steel fender. The awkwardness of resuming the interrupted addresses being at length overcome by sundry gulphs of the inspiring fluid, our friend Mr. Pringle was soon in full fervour again. He anathematised the lawyers and settlements, and delay, and was all for being married off-hand at the moment. Miss, on her part, was dignified and prudent. All she would say was that Mr. William Pringle was not indifferent to her,��No,� sighed she, �he wasn�t��but there were many, many considerations, and many, many points to be discussed, and many, many questions to be asked of each other, before they could even begin to _talk_ of such a thing as immediate��hem��(she wouldn�t say the word) turning away her pretty head. �_Ask away, then!_� exclaimed Billy, helping himself to another beaker of brandy�for he saw he was approaching the �Ketch-�em-alive O.� Miss then put the home-question whether his family knew what he was about, and finding they did not, she saw there was no time to lose; so knocking off the expletives, she talked of many considerations and points, the main one being to know how she was likely to be kept,�whether she was to have a full-sized footman, or an under-sized stripling, or a buttony boy of a page, or be waited upon by that greatest aversion to all female minds, one of her own sex. Not that she had the slightest idea of saying �No,� but her experience of life teaching her that all early grandeur may be mastered by footmen, she could very soon calculate what sort of a set down she was likely to have by knowing the style of her attendant. �Show me your footman, and I will tell you what you are,� was one of her maxims. Moreover, it is well for all young ladies to have a sort of rough estimate, at all events, of what they are likely to have,�which, we will venture to say, unlike estimates in general, will fall very far short of the reality. Our friend Billy, however, was quite in the promising mood, and if she had asked for half-a-dozen Big Bens he would have promised her them, canes, powder, and all. �Oh! she should have anything, everything she wanted! A tall man with good legs, and all right about the mouth,�an Arab horse, an Erard harp, a royal pianoforte, a silver tea-urn, a gold coffee-pot, a service of gold�_eat gold_, if she liked,� and as he declared she might eat gold if she liked, he dropped upon his salmon-coloured knees, and with his glass of brandy in one hand, and hers in the other, looked imploringly up at her, a beautiful specimen of heavy sentimentality; and Miss, thinking she had got him far enough, and seeing it was nearly twelve o�clock, now urged him to rise, and allow her maid to go and get him a coach. Saying which, she disengaged her hand, and slipping through the invisible door, was presently whispering her behests to the giggling Pheasant-feathers, on the other side of the folding ones. A good half-hour, however, elapsed before one of those drowsy vehicles could be found, during which time our suitor obtained the fair lady�s consent to allow him to meet her at her friend Mrs. Freemantle�s, as she called her, in Cowslip Street, May Fair, at three o�clock in the following afternoon; and the coach having at length arrived, Miss Willing graciously allowed Mr. Pringle to kiss her hand, and then accompanied him to the second landing of the staircase, which commanded the hall, in order to check any communication between Pheasant-feathers and him. The reader will now perhaps accompany us to this famed milliner, dress and mantle-maker�s, who will be happy to execute any orders our fair ones may choose to favour her with. Despite the anathemas of a certain law lord, match-forwarding is quite the natural prerogative and instinct of women. They all like it, from the duchess downwards, and you might as well try to restrain a cat from mousing as a woman from match-making. Miss Freemantle (who acted Mrs. on this occasion) was as fond of the pursuit as any one. She looked Billy over with a searching, scrutinising glance, thinking what a flat he was, and wondered what he would think of himself that time twelvemonths. Billy, on his part, was rather dumb-foundered. Talking before two women was not so easy as talking to one; and he did not get on with the immediate matrimony story half so well as he had done over-night. The ladies saw his dilemma, and Miss Willing quickly essayed to relieve him. She put him through his pleadings with all the skill of the great Serjeant Silvertougue, making Billy commit himself most irretrievably. �Mamma� (Miss Freemantle that is to say) then had her innings. She was much afraid it couldn�t be done off-hand�indeed she was. There was a place on the Border�Gretna Green�she dare say�d he�d heard of it; but then it was a tremendous distance, and would take half a lifetime to get to it. Besides, Miss p�raps mightn�t like taking such a journey at that time of year. Miss looked neither yes nor no. Mamma was more against it than her, Mamma feeling for the countess�s coming contest and her future favours. Other difficulties were then discussed, particularly that of publicity, which Miss dreaded more than the journey to Gretna. It must be kept secret, whatever was done. Billy must be sworn to secrecy, or Miss would have nothing to say to him. Billy was sworn accordingly. Mamma then thought the best plan was to have the banns put up in some quiet church, where no questions would be asked as to where they lived, and it would be assumed that they resided within the parish, and when they had been called out, they could just go quietly and get married, which would keep things square with the countess and everybody else. And this arrangement being perfected, and liberty given to Billy to write to his bride, whose name and address were now furnished him, he at length took his departure; and the ladies having talked him over, then resolved themselves into a committee of taste, to further the forthcoming tournament. And by dint of keeping all hands at work all night, Miss Willing was enabled to return to the countess with the first instalment of such a series of lady-killing garments as mollified her heart, and enabled her to sustain the blow that followed, which however was mitigated by the assurance that Mr. and Mrs. William Pringle were going to live in London, and that Madam�s taste would always be at her ladyship�s command. We wish we could gratify our lady readers with a description of the brilliant attire that so completely took the shine out of the Countess of Honiton as has caused her to hide her diminished head ever since, but our pen is unequal to the occasion, and even if we had had a John Leech to supply our deficiencies, the dresses of those days would look as nothing compared to the rotatory haystacks of the present one. What fair lady can bear the sight of her face painted in one of the old poke bonnets of former days? To keep things right, the bonnet ought to be painted to the face every year or two. But to the lovers. In due time �Mamma� (Miss Freemantle) presented her blooming daughter to the happy Billy, who was attended to the hymeneal alter by his confidential clerk, Head-and-shoulders Smith. Big Ben, who was dressed in a blue frock coat with a velvet collar, white kerseymere trousers, and varnished boots, looking very like one of the old royal dukes, was the only other person present at the interesting ceremony, save Pheasant-feathers, who lurked in one of the pews. The secret had been well kept, for the evening papers of that day and the morning ones of the next first proclaimed to the �great world,� that sphere of one�s own acquaintance, that William Pringle, Esquire, of Doughty Street, Russell Square, was married to Miss Emma Willing, of�the papers did not say where. CHAPTER VI. THE HAPPY UNITED FAMILY.�CURTAIN CRESCENT. 052m _Original Size_ THE PRINGLES of course were furious when they read the announcement of Billy�s marriage. Such a degradation to such a respectable family, and communicated in such a way. We need scarcely say that at first they all made the worst of it, running Mrs. William down much below her real level, and declaring that Billy though hard enough in money matters, was soft enough in love affairs. Then Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe, who up to that time had been the _belle_ of the family, essayed to pick her to pieces, intimating that she was much indebted to her dress�that fine feathers made fine birds�hoped that Billy would like paying for the clothes, and wondered what her figure would be like a dozen years thence. Mrs. Joe had preserved hers, never having indeed having been in the way of spoiling it. Joe looked as if he was to perpetuate the family name. By-and-by, when it became known that the Countess Delacey�s yellow carriage, with the high-stepping greys and the cocked-up-nose beet-root-and-cherry-coloured Johnnies, was to be seen astonishing the natives in Doughty Street, they began to think better of it; and though they did not stint themselves for rudeness (disguised as civility of course), they treated her less like a show, more especially when Billy was present. Still, though they could not make up their minds to be really civil to her, they could not keep away from her, just as the moth will be at the candle despite its unpleasant consequences. Indeed, it is one of the marked characteristics of Snobbism, that they won�t be cut. At least, if you do get a Snob cut, ten to one but he will take every opportunity of rubbing up against you, or sitting down beside you in public, or overtaking you on the road, or stopping a mutual acquaintance with you in the street, either to show his indifference or his independence, or in the hope of its passing for intimacy. There are people who can�t understand any coolness short of a kick. The Pringles were tiresome people. They would neither be in with Mrs. William, nor out with her. So there was that continual knag, knag, knagging going on in the happy united family, that makes life so pleasant and enjoyable. Mrs. William well knew, when any of them came to call upon her, that her sayings and doings would furnish recreation for the rest of the cage. It is an agreeable thing to have people in one�s house acting the part of spies. One day Mrs. Joe, who lived in Guildford Street, seeing the Countess�s carriage-horses cold-catching in Doughty Street, while her ladyship discussed some important millinery question with Mrs. William, could not resist the temptation of calling, and not being introduced to the Countess, said to Mis. William, with her best vinegar sneer, the next time they met. She ��oped she had told her fine friend that the vulgar woman she saw at her �ouse was no connection of her�s.� But enough of such nonsense. Let us on to something more pleasant. Well, then, of course the next step in our story is the appearance of our hero, the boy Billy��Fine Billy, aforesaid. Such a boy as never was seen! All other mammas went away dissatisfied with theirs, after they had got a peep of our Billy. If baby-shows had been in existence in those days, Mrs. Billy might have scoured the country and carried away all the prizes. Everybody was struck in a heap at the sight of him, and his sayings and doings were worthy of a place in Punch. So thought his parents, at least. What perfected their happiness, of course, operated differently with the family, and eased the minds of the ladies, as to the expediency of further outward civility to Mrs. William, who they now snubbed at all points, and prophesied all sorts of uncharitableness of. Mrs., on her side, surpassed them all in dress and good looks, and bucked Billy up into a very produceable-looking article. Though he mightn�t exactly do for White�s bay-window on a summer afternoon, he looked uncommonly well on ��Change,� and capitally in the country. Of course, he came in for one of the three cardinal sources of abuse the world is always so handy with, viz., that a man either behaves ill to his wife, is a screw, or is out-running the constable, the latter, of course, being Billy�s crime, which admitted of a large amount of blame being laid on the lady, though, we are happy to say, Billy had no trial of speed with the constable, for his wife, by whose permission men thrive, was a capital manager, and Billy slapped his fat thigh over his beloved balance-sheets every Christmas, exclaiming, as he hopped joyously round on one leg, snapping his finger and thumb, �_Our Billy shall be a gent! Our Billy shall be a gent!_� And he half came in to the oft-expressed wish of his wife, that he might live to see him united to a quality lady: Mr. and Lady Arabella Pringle, Mr. and Lady Sophia Pringle, or Mr. and Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Pringle, as the case might be. Vainglorious ambition! After an inordinate kidney supper, poor Billy was found dead in his chair. Great was the consternation among the Pringle family at the lamentable affliction. All except Jerry, who, speculating on his habits, had recently effected a policy on his life, were deeply shocked at the event. They buried him with all becoming pomp, and then, Jerry, who had always professed great interest in the boy Billy�so great, indeed, as to induce his brother (though with no great opinion of Jerry, but hoping that his services would never be wanted, and that it might ingratiate the nephew with the bachelor uncle,) to appoint him an executor and guardian�waited upon the widow, and with worlds of tears and pious lamentations, explained to her in the most unexplanatory manner possible, all how things were left, but begging that she would not give herself any trouble about her son�s affairs, for, if she would attend to his spiritual wants, and instil high principles of honour, morality, and fine feeling into his youthful mind, he would look after the mere worldly dross, which was as nothing compared to the importance of the other. �Teach him to want nothin� but what�s right,� continued Jerry, as he thought most impressively. �Teach him to want nothin� but what�s right, and when he grows up to manhood marry him to some nice, pious respectable young woman in his own rank of life, with a somethin� of her own; gentility is all very well to talk about, but it gets you nothin� at the market,� added he, forgetting that he was against the mere worldly dross. But Mrs. Pringle, who knew the value of the article, intimated at an early day, that she would like to be admitted into the money partnership as well, whereupon Jerry waxing wroth, said with an irate glance of his keen grey eyes, �My dear madam, these family matters, in my opinion, require to be treated not only in a business-like way, but with a very considerable degree of delicacy,� an undisputed dogma, acquiring force only by the manner in which it was delivered. So the pretty widow saw she had better hold her tongue, and hope for the best from the little fawning bully. 055m _Original Size_ The melancholy catastrophe with which we closed our last chapter found our hero at a preparatory school, studying for Eton, whither papa proposed sending him on the old principle of getting him into good society; though we believe it is an experiment that seldom succeeds. The widow, indeed, took this view of the matter, for her knowledge of high life caused her to know that though a �proud aristocracy� can condescend, and even worship wealth, yet that they are naturally clannish and exclusive, and tenacious of pedigree. In addition to this, Mrs. Pringle�s experience of men led her to think that the solemn pedantic �Greek and Latin ones,� as she called them, who know all about Julius Cæsar coming, �_summa diligentia_,� on the top of the diligence, were not half so agreeable as those who could dance and sing, and knew all that was going on in the present-day world; which, in addition to her just appreciation of the delicate position of her son, made her resolve not to risk him among the rising aristocracy at Eton, who, instead of advancing, might only damage his future prospects in life, but to send him to Paris, where, besides the three R�s,��reading, riting, and rithmetic,��he would acquire all the elegant accomplishments and dawn fresh upon the world an unexpected meteor. This matter being arranged, she then left Dirty Street, as she called Doughty Street, with all the disagreeable Pringle family espionage, and reminiscences, and migrated westward, taking up her abode in the more congenial atmosphere of Curtain Crescent, Pimlico, or Belgravia, as, we believe the owners of the houses wish to have it called. Here she established herself in a very handsome, commodious house, with porticoed doorway and balconied drawing-rooms�every requisite for a genteel family in short; and such a mansion being clearly more than a single lady required, she sometimes accommodated the less fortunate, through the medium of a house-agent, though both he and she always begged it to be distinctly understood that she did not let lodgings, but �apartments;� and she always requested that the consideration might be sent to her in a sealed envelope by the occupants, in the same manner as she transmitted them the bill. So she managed to make a considerable appearance at a moderate expense, it being only in the full season that her heart yearned towards the houseless, when of course a high premium was expected. There is nothing uncommon in people letting their whole houses; so why should there be anything strange in Mrs. Pringle occasionally letting a part of one? Clearly nothing. Though Mrs. Joe did say she had turned a lodging-house keeper, she could not refrain from having seven-and-sixpence worth of Brougham occasionally to see how the land lay. It is but justice to our fair friend to say that she commenced with great prudence. So handsome unprotected a female being open to the criticisms of the censorious, she changed her good-looking footman for a sedate elderly man, whose name, Properjohn, John Properjohn, coupled with the severe austerity of his manners, was enough to scare away intruders, and to keep the young girls in order, whom our friend had consigned to her from the country, in the hopes that her drilling and recommendation would procure them admission into quality families. 057m _Original Size_ Properjohn had been spoiled for high service by an attack of the jaundice, but his figure was stately and good, and she sought to modify his injured complexion by a snuff-coloured, Quaker-cut coat and vest, with claret-coloured shorts, and buckled shoes. Thus attired, with his oval-brimmed hat looped up with gold cord, and a large double-jointed brass-headed cane in his hand, he marched after his mistress, a damper to the most audacious. Properjohn, having lived in good families until he got spoiled by the jaundice, had a very extensive acquaintance among the aristocracy, with whom Mrs. Pringle soon established a peculiar intercourse. She became a sort of ultimate Court of Appeal, a _Cour de Cassation_, in all matters of taste in apparel,�whether a bonnet should be lilac or lavender colour, a dress deeply flounced or lightly, a lady go to a ball in feathers or diamonds, or both�in all those varying and perplexing points that so excite and bewilder the female mind: Mrs. Pringle would settle all these, whatever Mrs. Pringle said the fair applicants would abide by, and milliners and dress-makers submitted to her judgment. This, of course, let her into the privacies of domestic life. She knew what husbands stormed at the milliners� and dress-makers� bills, bounced at the price of the Opera-box, and were eternally complaining of their valuable horses catching cold. She knew who the cousin was who was always to be admitted in Lavender Square, and where the needle-case-shaped note went to after it had visited the toy-shop in Arcadia Street. If her own information was defective, Properjohn could supply the deficiency. The two, between them, knew almost everything. Nor was Mrs. Pringle�s influence confined to the heads of houses, for it soon extended to many of the junior members also. It is a well known fact that, when the gorgeous Lady Rainbow came to consult her about her daughter�s goings on with Captain Conquest, the Captain and Matilda saw Mamma alight from the flaunting hammer-clothed tub, as they stood behind the figured yellow tabaret curtains of Mrs. Pringle�s drawing-room window, whither they had been attracted by the thundering of one of the old noisy order of footmen. Blessings on the man, say we, who substituted bells for knockers�so that lovers may not be disturbed, or visitors unaccustomed to public knocking have to expose their incompetence. We should, however, state, that whenever Mrs. Pringle was consulted by any of the juveniles upon their love affairs, she invariably suggested that they had better �Ask Mamma,� though perhaps it was only done as a matter of form, and to enable her to remind them at a future day, if things went wrong, that she had done so. Many people make offers that they never mean to have accepted, but still, if they are not accepted, _they made them you know_. If they are accepted, why then they wriggle out of them the best way they can. But we are dealing in generalities, instead of confining ourselves to Mrs. Pringle�s practice. If the young lady or gentleman�for Mrs. Pringle was equally accessible to the sexes�preferred �asking� her to �Asking Mamma,� Mrs. Pringle was always ready to do what she could for them; and the fine Sèvres and Dresden china, the opal vases, the Bohemian scent-bottles, the beautiful bronzes, the or-molu jewel caskets, and Parisian clocks, that mounted guard in the drawing-room when it was not �in commission� (occupied as apartments), spoke volumes for the gratitude of those she befriended. Mrs. Pringle was soon the repository of many secrets, but we need not say that the lady who so adroitly concealed Pheasant Feathers on her own account was not likely to be entrapped into committing others; and though she was often waited upon by pleasant conversationalists on far-fetched errands, who endeavoured to draw carelessly down wind to their point, as well as by seedy and half-seedy gentlemen, who proceeded in a more business-like style, both the pleasant conversationalists and the seedy and the half-seedy gentlemen went away as wise as they came. She never knew anything; it was the first she had heard of anything of the sort. Altogether, Mrs. Pringle was a wonderful woman, and not the least remarkable trait in her character was that, although servants, who, like the rest of the world, are so ready to pull people down to their own level, knew her early professional career, yet she managed them so well that they all felt an interest in elevating her, from the Duke�s Duke, down to old quivering-calved Jeames de la Pluche, who sipped her hop champagne, and told all he heard while waiting at table�that festive period when people talk as if their attendants were cattle or inanimate beings. The reader will now have the goodness to consider our friend, Fine Billy, established with his handsome mother in Curtain Crescent�not Pimlico, but Belgravia�with all the airs and action described in our opening chapter. We have been a long time in working up to him, but the reader will not find the space wasted, inasmuch as it has given him a good introduction to �Madam,� under whose auspices Billy will shortly have to grapple with the �Ask Mamma� world. Moreover, we feel that if there has been a piece of elegance overlooked by novelists generally, it is the delicate, sensitive, highly-refined lady�s-maid. With these observations, we now pass on to the son He had exceeded, if possible, his good mother�s Parisian anticipations, for if he had not brought away any great amount of learning, if he did not know a planet from a fixed star, the difference of oratory between Cicero and Demosthenes, or the history of Cupid and the minor heathen deities, he was nevertheless an uncommonly good hand at a polka, could be matched to waltz with any one, and had a tremendous determination of words to the mouth. His dancing propensities, indeed, were likely to mislead him at starting; for, not getting into the sort of society Mrs. Pringle wished to see him attain, he took up with Cremorne and Casinos, and questionable characters generally. Mrs. Pringle�s own establishment, we are sorry to say, soon furnished her with the severest cause of disquietude; for having always acted upon the principle of having pretty maids�the difference, as she said, between pretty and plain ones being, that the men ran after the pretty ones, while the plain ones ran after the men�having always, we say, acted upon the principle of having pretty ones, she forgot to change her system on the return of her hopeful son; and before she knew where she was, he had established a desperate _liaison_ with a fair maid whose aptitude for breakage had procured for her the _sobriquet_ of Butter Fingers. Now, Butter Fingers, whose real name was Disher�Jane Disher�was a niece of our old friend, Big Ben, now a flourishing London hotel landlord, and Butter Fingers partook of the goodly properties and proportions for which the Ben family are distinguished. She was a little, plump, fair, round-about thing, with every quality of a healthy country beauty. Fine Billy was first struck with her one Sunday afternoon, tripping along in Knightsbridge, as she was making her way home from Kensington Gardens, when the cheap finery�the parasol, the profusely-flowered white gauze bonnet, the veil, the machinery laced cloak, the fringed kerchief, worked sleeves, &c., which she kept at Chickory the greengrocer�s in Sun Street, and changed there for the quiet apparel in which she left Mrs. Pringle�s house in Curtain Crescent�completely deceived him; as much as did the half-starting smile of recognition she involuntarily gave him on meeting. Great was his surprise to find that such a smart, neat-stepping, well-set-up, _bien chaussée_ beauty and he came from the same quarters. We need not say what followed: how Properjohn couldn�t see what everybody else saw; and how at length poor Mrs. Pringle, having changed her mind about going to hear Mr. Spurgeon, caught the two sitting together, on her richly carved sofa of chaste design, in the then non-commissioned put-away drawing room. There was Butter Fingers in a flounced book-muslin gown with a broad French sash, and her hair clubbed at the back _à la_ crow�s-nest. It was hard to say which of the three got the greatest start, though the blow was undoubtedly the severest on the poor mother, who had looked forward to seeing her son entering the rank of life legitimately in which she had occupied a too questionable position. The worst of it was, she did not know what to do�whether to turn her out of the house at the moment, and so infuriate the uncle and her son also, or give her a good scolding, and get rid of her on the first plausible opportunity. She had no one to consult. She knew what �Want-nothin�-but-what�s-right Jerry� would say, and that nothing would please Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe more than to read the marriage of Billy and Butter Fingers. Mrs. Pringle was afraid too of offending Big Ben by the abrupt dismissal of his niece, and dreaded if Butter Fingers had gained any ascendancy over William, that he too might find a convenient marrying place as somebody else had done. Altogether our fair friend was terribly perplexed. Thrown on the natural resources of her own strong mind, she thought, perhaps, the usual way of getting young ladies off bad matches, by showing them something better, might be tried with her son. Billy�s _début_ in the metropolis had not been so flattering as she could have wished, but then she could make allowances for town exclusiveness, and the pick and choice of dancing activity which old family connections and associations supplied. The country was very different; there, young men were always in request, and were taken with much lighter credentials. If, thought she, sweet William could but manage to establish a good country connection, there was no saying but he might retain it in town; at all events, the experiment would separate him from the artful Butter Fingers, and pave the way for her dismissal. To accomplish this desirable object, Mrs. Pringle therefore devoted her undivided attention. CHAPTER VII. THE EARL OF LADYTHORNE.�MISS DE GLANCEY. AMONG Mrs. Pringle�s many visitors was that gallant old philanthropist, the well-known Earl of Ladythorne, of Tantivy Castle, Featherbedfordshire and Belvedere House, London. His lordship had known her at Lady Delacey�s, and Mrs. Pringle still wore and prized a ruby ring he slipped upon her finger as he met her (accidentally of course) in the passage early one morning as he was going to hunt. His saddle-horses might often be seen of a summer afternoon, tossing their heads up and down Curtain Crescent, to the amusement of the inhabitants of that locality. His lordship indeed was a well-known general patron of all that was fair and fine and handsome in creation, fine women, fine houses, fine horses, fine hounds, fine pictures, fine statues, fine every thing. No pretty woman either in town or country ever wanted a friend if he was aware of it. He had long hunted Featherbedfordshire in a style of great magnificence, and though latterly his energies had perhaps been as much devoted to the pursuit of the fair as the fox, yet, as he found the two worked well together, he kept up the hunting establishment with all the splendour of his youth. Not that he was old: as he would say, �_far from it!_� Indeed, to walk behind him down St. James�s Street (he does not go quite so well up), his easy jaunty air, tall graceful figure, and elasticity of step, might make him pass for a man in that most uncertain period of existence the �prime of life,� and if uncivil, unfriendly, inexorable time has whitened his pow, his lordship carries it off with the aid of gay costume and colour. He had a great reputation among the ladies, and though they all laughed and shook their heads when his name was mentioned, from the pretty simpering Mrs. Ringdove, of Lime-Tree Grove, who said he was a �naughty man,� down to the buxom chambermaid of the Rose and Crown, who giggled and called him a �gay old gentleman,� they all felt pleased and flattered by his attentions. Hunting a country undoubtedly gives gay old gentlemen great opportunities, for, under pretence of finding a fox, they may rummage any where from the garret[1] to the cellar. [1] Ex. gra., As we say in the classics. �A Fox Run into a Lady�s Dressing-Room.�The Heythrop hounds met at Ranger�s Lodge, within about a mile of Charlbury, found in Hazell Wood, and went away through Great Cranwell, crossing the park of Cornbury, on by the old kennel to Live Oak, taking the side hill, leaving Leafield (so celebrated for clay-pipes) to his left, crossed the bottom by Five Ashes; then turned to the right, through King�s Wood. Smallstones, Knighton Copse, over the plain to Ranger�s Lodge, with the hounds close at his brush, where they left him in a mysterious manner. After the lapse of a little time he was discovered by a maid- servant in the ladies� dressing-room, from which he immediately bolted on the appearance of the petticoats, without doing the slightest damage to person or property."�Bell�s Life. What a gentlemanly fox! In this interesting pursuit, his lordship was ably assisted by his huntsman, Dicky Boggledike. Better huntsman there might be than Dicky, but none so eminently qualified for the double pursuit of the fox and the fine. He had a great deal of tact and manner, and looked and was essentially a nobleman�s servant. He didn�t come blurting open-mouthed with �I�ve seen a davilish,� for such was his dialect, �I�ve seen a davilish fine oss, my lord,� or �They say Mrs. Candle�s cow has gained another prize,� but he would take an opportunity of introducing the subject neatly and delicately, through the medium of some allusion to the country in which they were to be found, some cover wanting cutting, some poacher wanting trouncing, or some puppy out at walk, so that if his lordship didn�t seem to come into the humour of the thing, Dicky could whip off to the other scent as if he had nothing else in his mind. It was seldom, however, that his lordship was not inclined to profit by Dicky�s experience, for he had great sources of information, and was very careful in his statements. His lordship and Dicky had now hunted Featherbedfordshire together for nearly forty years, and though they might not be so punctual in the mornings, or so late in leaving off in the evenings, as they were; and though his lordship might come to the meet in his carriage and four with the reigning favourite by his side, instead of on his neat cover hack, and though Dicky did dance longer at his fences than he used, still there was no diminution in the scale of the establishment, or in Dicky�s influence throughout the country. Indeed, it would rather seem as if the now well-matured hunt ran to show instead of sport, for each succeeding year brought out either another second horseman (though neither his lordship nor Dicky ever tired one), or another man in a scarlet and cap, or established another Rose and Crown, whereat his lordship kept dry things to change in case he got wet. He was uncommonly kind to himself, and hated his heir with an intensity of hatred which was at once the best chance for longevity and for sustaining the oft-disappointed ambitious hopes of the fair. Now Mrs. Pringle had always had a very laudable admiration of fox-hunters. She thought the best introduction for a young man of fortune was at the cover side, and though Jerry Pringle (who looked upon them as synonymous) had always denounced �gamblin� and huntin�� as the two greatest vices of the day, she could never come in to that opinion, as far as hunting was concerned. She now thought if she could get Billy launched under the auspices of that distinguished sportsman, the Earl of Ladythorne, it might be the means of reclaiming him from Butter Fingers, and getting him on in society, for she well knew how being seen at one good place led to another, just as the umbrella-keepers at the Royal Academy try to lead people into giving them something in contravention of the rule above their heads, by jingling a few half-pence before their faces. Moreover, Billy had shown an inclination for equitation�by nearly galloping several of Mr. Spavin, the neighbouring livery-stable-keeper�s horses� tails off; and Mrs. Pringle�s knowledge of hunting not being equal to her appreciation of the sport, she thought that a master of hounds found all the gentlemen who joined his hunt in horses, just as a shooter finds them in dogs or guns, so that the thing would be managed immediately. Indeed, like many ladies, she had rather a confused idea of the whole thing, not knowing but that one horse would hunt every day in the week; or that there was any distinction of horses, further than the purposes to which they were applied. Hunters and racehorses she had no doubt were the same animals, working their ways honestly from year�s end to year�s end, or at most with only the sort of difference between them that there is between a milliner and a dressmaker. Be that as it may, however, all things considered, Mrs. Pringle determined to test the sincerity of her friend the Earl of Ladythorne: and to that end wrote him a gossiping sort of letter, asking, in the postscript, when his dogs would be going out, as her son was at home and would �_so like_� to see them. Although we introduced Lord Ladythorne as a philanthropist, his philanthropy, we should add, was rather lop-sided, being chiefly confined to the fair. Indeed, he could better stand a dozen women than one man. He had no taste or sympathy, for the hirsute tribe, hence his fields were very select, being chiefly composed of his dependents and people whom he could d�� and do what he liked with. Though the Crumpletin Railway cut right through his country, making it �varry contagious,� as Harry Swan, his first whip, said, for sundry large towns, the sporting inhabitants thereof preferred the money-griping propensities of a certain Baronet�Sir Moses Mainchance�whose acquaintance the reader will presently make, to the scot-free sport with the frigid civilities of the noble Earl. Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, Mrs. Pringle had made rather an unfortunate selection for her son�s _début_, but it so happened that her letter found the Earl in anything but his usual frame of mind. He was suffering most acutely for the hundred and twentieth time or so from one of Cupid�s shafts, and that too levelled by a hand against whose attacks he had always hitherto been thought impervious. This wound had been inflicted by the well-known�perhaps to some of our readers too well-known�equestrian coquette, Miss de Glancey of Half-the-watering-places-in-England-and-some-on-the-Continent, whose many conquests had caused her to be regarded as almost irresistible, and induced, it was said�with what degree of truth we know not�a party of England�s enterprising sons to fit her out for an expedition against the gallant Earl of Ladythorne under the Limited Liability Act. Now, none but a most accomplished, self-sufficient coquette, such as Miss de Glancey undoubtedly was, would have undertaken such an enterprise, for it was in direct contravention of two of the noble Earl�s leading principles, namely, that of liking large ladies (fine, coarse women, as the slim ones call them,) and of disliking foxhunting ones, the sofa and not the saddle being, as he always said, the proper place for the ladies; but Miss de Glancey prided herself upon her power of subjugating the tyrant man, and gladly undertook to couch the lance of blandishment against the hitherto impracticable nobleman. In order, however, to understand the exact position of parties, perhaps the reader will allow us to show how his lordship came to be seized with his present attack, and also how he treated it. Well, the ash was yellow, the beech was brown, and the oak ginger coloured, and the indomitable youth was again in cub-hunting costume�a white beaver hat, a green cut-away, a buff vest, with white cords and caps, attended by Boggledike and his whips in hats, and their last season�s pinks or purples, disturbing the numerous litters of cubs with which the country abounded, when, after a musical twenty minutes with a kill in Allonby Wood, his lordship joined horses with Dicky, to discuss the merits of the performance, as they rode home together. �Yas, my lord, yas,� replied Dicky, sawing away at his hat, in reply to his lordship�s observation that they ran uncommonly well; �yas, my lord, they did. I don�t know that I can ever remamber bein� better pleased with an entry than I am with this year�s. I really think in a few more seasons we shall get �em as near parfection as possible. Did your lordship notish that Barbara betch, how she took to runnin� to-day? The first time she has left my oss�s eels. Her mother, old Blossom, was jest the same. Never left my oss�s eels the first season, and everybody said she was fit for nothin� but the halter; but my!� continued he, shaking his head, �what a rare betch she did become.� �She did that,� replied his lordship, smiling at Dicky�s pronunciation. �And that reminds me,� continued Dicky, emboldened by what he thought the encouragement, �I was down at Freestone Banks yasterday, where Barbara was walked, a seein� a pup I have there now, and I think I seed the very neatest lady�s pad I ever set eyes on!��Dicky�s light-blue eyes settling on his lordship�s eagle ones as he spoke. �Aye! who�s was that?� asked the gay old gentleman, catching at the word �lady.� �Why, they say she belongs to a young lady from the south�a Miss Dedancey, I think they call her,� with the aptitude people have for mistaking proper names. �Dedancey,� repeated his lordship, �Dedancey; never heard of the name before�what�s set her here?� �She�s styin� at Mrs. Roseworth�s, at Lanecroft House, but her osses stand at the Spread Heagle, at Bush Dill�Old Sam �Utchison�s, you know.� _Indomitable Youth_. Horses! what, has she more than one? _Dicky_. Two, a bay and a gray,�it�s the bay that takes my fancy most:�the neatest stepper, with the lightest month, and fairest, freeest, truest action I ever seed. _Indomitable Youth_. What�s she going to do with them? _Dicky._ Ride them, ride them! They say she�s the finest oss-woman that ever was seen. �In-deed,� mused his lordship, thinking over the _pros_ and _cons_ of female equestrianism,�the disagreeableness of being beat by them,�the disagreeableness of having to leave them in the lurch,�the disagreeableness of seeing them floored,�the disagreeableness of seeing them all running down with perspiration;�the result being that his lordship adhered to his established opinion that women have no business out hunting. Dicky knew his lordship�s sentiments, and did not press the matter, but drew his horse a little to the rear, thinking it fortunate that all men are not of the same way of thinking. Thus they rode on for some distance in silence, broken only by the occasional flopping and chiding of Harry Swan or his brother whip of some loitering or refractory hound. His lordship had a great opinion of Dicky�s judgment, and though they might not always agree in their views, he never damped Dicky�s ardour by openly differing with him. He thought by Dicky�s way of mentioning the lady that he had a good opinion of her, and, barring the riding, his lordship saw no reason why he should not have a good opinion of her too. Taking advantage of the Linton side-bar now bringing them upon the Somerton-Longville road, he reined in his horse a little so as to let Dicky come alongside of him again. �What is this young lady like?� asked the indomitable youth, as soon as they got their horses to step pleasantly together again. �Well now,� replied Dicky, screwing up his mouth, with an apologetic touch of his hat, knowing that that was his weak point, �well now, I don�t mean to say that she�s zactly�no, not zactly, your lordship�s model,�not a large full-bodied woman like Mrs. Blissland or Miss Poach, but an elegant, _very_ elegant, well-set-up young lady, with a high-bred hair about her that one seldom sees in the country, for though we breeds our women very beautiful�uncommon �andsome, I may say�we don�t polish them hup to that fine degree of parfection that they do in the towns, and even if we did they would most likely spoil the �ole thing by some untoward unsightly dress, jest as a country servant spoils a London livery by a coloured tie, or goin� about with a great shock head of �air, or some such disfigurement; but this young lady, to my mind, is a perfect pictor, self, oss, and seat,�all as neat and perfect as can be, and nothing that one could either halter or amend. She is what, savin� your lordship�s presence, I might call the �pink of fashion and the mould of form!��Dicky sawing away at his hat as he spoke. �Tall, slim, and genteel, I suppose,� observed his lordship drily. �Jest so,� assented Dicky, with a chuck of the chin, making a clean breast of it, �jest so,� adding, �at least as far as one can judge of her in her �abit, you know.� �Thought so,� muttered his lordship. And having now gained one of the doors in the wall, they cut across the deer-studded park, and were presently back at the Castle. And his lordship ate his dinner, and quaffed his sweet and dry and twenty-five Lafitte without ever thinking about either the horse, or the lady, or the habit, or anything connected with the foregoing conversation, while the reigning favourite, Mrs. Moffatt, appeared just as handsome as could be in his eyes. CHAPTER VIII. CUB-HUNTING. 069m _Original Size_ THOUGH his lordship, as we said before, would stoutly deny being old, he had nevertheless got sufficiently through the morning of life not to let cub-hunting get him out of bed a moment sooner than usual, and it was twelve o�clock on the next day but one to that on which the foregoing conversation took place, that Mr. Boggledike was again to be seen standing erect in his stirrups, yoiking and coaxing his hounds into Crashington Gorse. There was Dicky, cap-in-hand, in the Micentre ride, exhorting the young hounds to dive into the strong sea of gorse. �_Y-o-o-icks! wind him! y-o-o-icks! pash him up!_� cheered the veteran, now turning his horse across to enforce the request. There was his lordship at the high corner as usual, ensconced among the clump of weather-beaten blackthorns�thorns that had neither advanced nor receded a single inch since he first knew them,�his eagle eye fixed on the narrow fern and coarse grass-covered dell down which Reynard generally stole. There was Harry Swan at one corner to head the fox back from the beans, and Tom Speed at the other to welcome him away over the corn-garnered open. And now the whimper of old sure-finding Harbinger, backed by the sharp �yap� of the terrier, proclaims that our friend is at home, and presently a perfect hurricane of melody bursts from the agitated gorse,�every hound is in the paroxysm of excitement, and there are five-and-twenty couple of them, fifty musicians in the whole! �_Tally-ho!_ there he goes across the ride!� �_Cub!_� cries his lordship. �_Cub!_� responded Dicky. �_Crack!_� sounds the whip. Now the whole infuriated phalanx dashed across the ride and dived into the close prickly gorse on the other side as if it were the softest, pleasantest quarters in the world. There is no occasion to coax, and exhort, and ride cap-in-hand to them now. It�s all fury and commotion. Each hound seems to consider himself personally aggrieved,�though we will be bound to say the fox and he never met in their lives,�and to be bent upon having immediate satisfaction. And immediate, any tyro would think it must necessarily be, seeing such preponderating influence brought to bear upon so small an animal. Not so, however: pug holds his own; and, by dint of creeping, and crawling, and stopping, and listening, and lying down, and running his foil, he brings the lately rushing, clamorous pack to a more plodding, pains-taking, unravelling sort of performance. Meanwhile three foxes in succession slip away, one at Speed�s corner, two at Swan�s; and though Speed screeched, and screamed, and yelled, as if he were getting killed, not a hound came to see what had happened. They all stuck to the original scent. �Here he comes again!� now cries his lordship from his thorn-formed bower, as the cool-mannered fox again steals across the ride, and Dicky again uncovers, and goes through the capping ceremony. Over come the pack, bristling and lashing for blood�each hound looking as if he would eat the fox single-handed. Now he�s up to the high corner as though he were going to charge his lordship himself, and passing over fresh ground the hounds get the benefit of a scent, and work with redoubled energy, making the opener gorse bushes crack and bend with their pressure. Pug has now gained the rabbit-burrowed bank of the north fence, and has about made up his mind to follow the example of his comrades, and try his luck in the open, when a cannonading crack of Swan�s whip strikes terror into his heart, and causes him to turn tail, and run the moss-grown mound of the hedge. Here he unexpectedly meets young Prodigal face to face, who, thinking that rabbit may be as good eating as fox, has got up a little hunt of his own, and who is considerably put out of countenance by the _rencontre_; but pug, not anticipating any such delicacy on the part of a pursuer, turns tail, and is very soon in the rear of the hounds, hunting them instead of their hunting him. The thing then becomes more difficult, businesslike, and sedate�the sages of the pack taking upon them to guide the energy of the young. So what with the slow music of the hounds, the yap, yap, yapping of the terriers, and the shaking of the gorse, an invisible underground sort of hunt is maintained�his lordship sitting among his blackthorn bushes like a gentleman in his opera-stall, thinking now of the hunt, now of his dinner, now of what a good thing it was to be a lord, with a good digestion and plenty of cash, and nobody to comb his head. At length pug finds it too hot to hold him. The rays of an autumnal sun have long been striking into the gorse, while a warm westerly wind does little to ventilate it from the steam of the rummaging inquisitive pack. Though but a cub, he is the son of an old stager, who took Dicky and his lordship a deal of killing, and with the talent of his sire, he thus ruminates on his uncomfortable condition. �If,� says he, �I stay here, I shall either be smothered or fall a prey to these noisy unrelenting monsters, who seem to have the knack of finding me wherever I go. I�d better cut my stick as I did the time before, and have fresh air and exercise at all events, in the open:� so saying he made a dash at the hedge near where Swan was stationed, and regardless of his screams and the cracks of his whip, cut through the beans and went away, with a sort of defiant whisk of his brush. What a commotion followed his departure! How the screeches of the men mingled with the screams of the hounds and the twangs of the horn! In an instant his lordship vacates his opera-stall and is flying over the ragged boundary fence that separates him from the beans; while Mr. Boggledike capers and prances at a much smaller place, looking as if he would fain turn away were it not for the observation of the men. Now Dicky is over! Swan and Speed take it in their stride, just as the last hound leaves the gorse and strains to regain his distant companions. A large grass field, followed by a rough bare fallow, takes the remaining strength out of poor pug; and, turning short to the left, he seeks the friendless shelter of a patch of wretched oats. The hounds overrun the scent, but, spreading like a rocket, they quickly recover it; and in an instant, fox, hounds, horses, men, are among the standing corn,�one ring in final destruction of the beggarly crop, and poor pug is in the hands of his pursuers. Then came the grand _finale_, the _who hoop!_ the baying, the blowing, the beheading, &c. Now Harry Swan, whose province it is to magnify sport and make imaginary runs to ground, exercises his calling, by declaring it was five-and-thirty minutes (twenty perhaps), and the finest young fox he ever had hold of. Now his lordship and Dicky take out their _tootlers_ and blow a shrill reverberating blast; while Swan stands straddling and yelling, with the mangled remains high above his head, ready to throw it into the sea of mouths that are baying around to receive it. After a sufficiency of noise, up goes the carcase; the wave of hounds breaks against it as it falls, while a half-ravenous, half-indignant, growling worry succeeds the late clamourous outcry. �Tear �im and eat �im!� cries Dicky. �Tear �im and eat �im!� shouts his lordship. �Tear �im and eat �im!� shrieks Speed. �_Hie worry! worry! worry!_� shouts Swan, trying to tantalize the young hounds with a haunch, which, however, they do not seem much to care about. 073m _Original Size_ The old hounds, too, seem as if they had lost their hunger with their anger; and Marmion lets Warrior run off with his leg with only a snap and an indignant rise of his bristles. Altogether the froth and effervescence of the thing has evaporated; so his lordship and Dicky turning their horses� heads, the watchful hounds give a bay of obedient delight as they frolic under their noses; and Swan having reclaimed his horse from Speed, the onward procession is formed to give Brambleton Wood a rattle by way of closing the performance of the day. His lordship and Dicky ride side by side, extolling the merits of the pack and the excellence of Crashington Gorse. Never was so good a cover. Never was a better pack. Mainchance�s! _pooh!_ Not to be mentioned in the same century. So they proceed, magnifying and complimenting themselves in the handsomest terms possible, down Daisyfield lane, across Hill House pastures, and on by Duston Mills to Broomley, which is close to Brambleton Wood. Most of our Featherbedfordshire friends will remember that after leaving Duston Mills the roads wind along the impetuous Lime, whose thorn and broom-grown banks offer dry, if not very secure, accommodation for master Reynard; and the draw being pretty, and the echo fine, his lordship thought they might as well run the hounds along the banks, not being aware that Peter Hitter, Squire Porker�s keeper, had just emerged at the east end as they came up at the west. However, that was neither here nor there, Dicky got his _Y-o-o-icks_, his lordship got his view, Swan and Speed their cracks and canters, and it was all in the day�s work. No fox, of course, was the result. �_Tweet, tweet, tweet_,� went the horns, his lordship taking a blow as well as Dicky, which sounded up the valley and lost itself among the distant hills. The hounds came straggling leisurely out of cover, as much as to say, �You know there never _is_ a fox there, so why bother us?� All hands being again united, the cavalcade rose the hill, and were presently on the Longford and Aldenbury turnpike. Here the Featherbedfordshire reader�s local knowledge will again remind him that the Chaddleworth lane crosses the turnpike at right angles, and just as old Ringwood, who, as usual, was trotting consequentially in advance of the pack, with the fox�s head in his mouth, got to the finger-post, a fair equestrian on a tall blood bay rode leisurely past with downcast eyes in full view of the advancing party. Though her horse whinnied and shied, and seemed inclined to be sociable, she took no more notice of the cause than if it had been a cart, merely coaxing and patting him with her delicate primrose-coloured kid gloves. So she got him past without even a sidelong look from herself. But though she did not look my lord did, and was much struck with the air and elegance of everything�her mild classic features�her black-felt, Queen�s-patterned, wide-awake, trimmed with lightish-green velvet, and green cock-feathered plume, tipped with straw-colour to match the ribbon that now gently fluttered at her fair neck,�her hair, her whip, her gloves, her _tout ensemble_. Her lightish-green habit was the quintessence of a fit, and altogether there was a high-bred finish about her that looked more like Hyde Park than what one usually sees in the country. �Who the deuce is that, Dicky?� asked his lordship, as she now got out of hearing. �That be _her_, my lord,� whispered Dicky, sawing away at his hat. �That be _her_,� repeated he with a knowing leer. �_Her!_ who d�ye mean?� asked his lordship, who had forgotten all Dicky�s preamble. �Well,�Miss�Miss�What�s her name�Dedancev, Dedancey,�the lady I told you about.� And the Earl�s heart smote him, for he felt that he had done injustice to Dicky, and moreover, had persevered too long in his admiration of large ladies, and in his repudiation of horsemanship. He thought he had never seen such a graceful seat, or such a piece of symmetrical elegance before, and inwardly resolved to make Dicky a most surprising present at Christmas, for he went on the principle of giving low wages, and of rewarding zeal and discretion, such as Dicky�s, profusely. And though he went and drew Brambleton Wood, he was thinking far more of the fair maid, her pensive, downcast look, her long eyelashes, her light silken hair, her graceful figure, and exquisite seat, than of finding a fox; and he was not at all sorry when he heard Dicky�s horn at the bridle-gate at the Ashburne end blowing the hounds out of cover. They then went home, and his lordship was very grumpy all that evening with his fat fair-and-forty friend, Mrs. Moffatt, who could not get his tea to his liking at all. We dare say most of our readers will agree with us, that when a couple want to be acquainted there is seldom much difficulty about the matter, even though there be no friendly go-between to mutter the cabalistic words that constitute an introduction; and though Miss de Glancey did ride so unconcernedly past, it was a sheer piece of acting, as she had long been waiting at Carlton Clumps, which commands a view over the surrounding country, timing herself for the exact spot where she met the too susceptible Earl and his hounds. No one knew better how to angle for admiration than this renowned young lady,�when to do the bold�when the bashful�when the timid�when the scornful and retiring, and she rightly calculated that the way to attract and win the young old Earl was to look as if she didn�t want to have anything to say to him. Her downcast look, and utter indifference to that fertile source of introduction, a pack of hounds, had sunk deeper into his tender heart than if she had pulled up to admire them collectively, and to kiss them individually. We all know how useful a dog can be made in matters of this sort�how the fair creatures can express their feelings by their fondness. And if one dog can be so convenient, by how much more so can a whole pack of hounds be made! CHAPTER IX. A PUP AT WALK.�IMPERIAL JOHN. N ext day his lordship, who was of the nice old Andlesey school of dressers, was to be seen in regular St. James�s Street attire, viz. a bright blue coat with gilt buttons, a light blue scarf, a buff vest with fawn-coloured leathers, and brass heel spurs, capering on a long-tailed silver dun, attended by a diminutive rosy-cheeked boy�known in the stables as Cupid-without-Wings�on a bay. He was going to see a pup he had at walk at Freestone Banks, of which the reader will remember Dicky had spoken approvingly on a previous day; and the morning being fine and sunny, his lordship took the bridle-road over Ashley Downs, and along the range of undulating Heathmoor Hills, as well for the purpose of enjoying the breeze as of seeing what was passing in the vale below. So he tit-up�d and tit-up�d away, over the sound green sward, on his flowing-tailed steed, his keen far-seeing eye raking all the roads as he went. There seemed to be nothing stirring but heavy crushing waggons, with doctor�s gigs and country carts, and here and there a slow-moving steed of the grand order of agriculture. When, however, he got to the broken stony ground where all the independent hill tracks join in common union to effect the descent into the vale, his hack pricked his ears, and looking a-head to the turn of the lane into which the tracks ultimately resolved themselves, his lordship first saw a fluttering, light-tipped feather, and then the whole figure of a horsewoman, emerge from the concealing hedge as it were on to the open space beyond. Miss, too, had been on the hills, as the Earl might have seen by her horse�s imprints, if he had not been too busy looking abroad; and she had just had time to effect the descent as he approached. She was now sauntering along as unconcernedly as if there was nought but herself and her horse in the world. His lordship started when he saw her, and a crimson flush suffused his healthy cheeks as he drew his reins, and felt his hack gently with his spur to induce him to use a little more expedition down the hill. Cupid-without-Wings put on also, to open the rickety gate at the bottom, and his lordship telling him, as he passed through, to �shut it gently,� pressed on at a well-in-hand trot, which he could ease down to a walk as he came near the object of his pursuit. Miss�s horse heard footsteps coming and looked round, but she pursued the even tenour of her way apparently indifferent to everything�even to a garotting. His lordship, however, was not to be daunted by any such coolness; so stealing quietly alongside of her, he raised his hat respectfully, and asked, in his mildest, blandest tone, if she had �seen a man with a hound in a string?� �_Hound! me! see!_� exclaimed Miss de Glancey, with a well feigned start of astonishment. �_No, sir, I have not,_� continued she haughtily, as if recovering herself, and offended by the inquiry. �I�m afraid my hounds startled your horse the other day,� observed his lordship, half inclined to think she didn�t know him. �Oh, no, they didn�t,� replied she with an upward curl of her pretty lip; �my horse is not so easily startled as that; are you, Cock Robin?� asked she, leaning forward to pat him. Cock Robin replied by laying back his ears, and taking a snatch at his lordship�s hack�s silver mane, which afforded him an opportunity of observing that Cock Robin was not very sociable. �_Not with strangers_,� pouted Miss de Glancey, with a flash of her bright hazel eyes. So saying, she touched her horse lightly with her gold-mounted whip, and in an instant she was careering away, leaving his lordship to the care of the now grinning Cupid-without-Wings. 079m _Original Size_ And thus the mynx held the sprightly youth in tow, till she nearly drove him mad, not missing any opportunity of meeting him, but never giving him too much of her company, and always pouting at the suggestion of _her_ marrying a �_mere fox-hunter._� The whole thing, of course, furnished conversation for the gossips, and Mr. Boggledike, as in duty bound, reported what he heard. She puzzled his lordship more than any lady he had ever had to do with, and though he often resolved to strike and be free, he had only to meet her again to go home more subjugated than ever. And so what between Miss de Glancey out of doors and Mrs. Moffatt in, he began to have a very unpleasant time of it. His hat had so long covered his family, that he hardly knew how to set about obtaining his own consent to marry; and yet he felt that he ought to marry if it was only to spite his odious heir�_old_ General Binks; for his lordship called him old though the General was ten years younger than himself; but still he would like to look about him a little longer. What he would now wish to do would be to keep Miss de Glancey in the country, for he felt interested in her, and thought she would be ornamental to the pack. Moreover, he liked all that was handsome, _piquant_, and gay, and to be joked about the Featherbedfordshire witches when he went to town. So he resolved himself into a committee of ways and means, to consider how the object was to be effected, without surrendering himself. That must be the last resource at all events, thought he. Now upon his lordship�s vast estates was a most unmitigated block-head called Imperial John, from his growing one of those chin appendages. His real name was Hybrid�John Hybrid, of Barley Hill Farm; but his handsome sister, �Imperial Jane,� as the wags called her, having attracted his lordship�s attention, to the danger as it was thought of old Binks, on leaving her furnishing seminary at Turnham Green, John had been taken by the hand, which caused him to lose his head, and make him set up for what he called �a gent.� He built a lodge and a portico to Barley Hill Farm, rough cast, and put a pine roof on to the house, and then advertised in the �Featherbedfordshire Gazette,� that letters and papers were for the future to be addressed to John Hybrid, Esquire, Barley Hill Hall, and not Farm as they had hitherto been. And having done so much for the place, John next revised his own person, which, though not unsightly, was coarse, and a long way off looking anything like that of a gentleman. He first started the imperial aforesaid, and not being laughed at as much as he expected for that, he was emboldened to order a red coat for the then approaching season. Mounting the pink is a critical thing, for if a man does not land in the front rank they will not admit him again into the rear, and he remains a sort of red bat for the rest of his life,�neither a gentleman nor a farmer. John, however, feeling that he had his lordship�s countenance, went boldly at it, and the first day of the season before that with which we are dealing, found him with his stomach buttoned consequentially up in a spic and span scarlet with fancy buttons, looking as bumptious as a man with a large balance at his banker�s. He sat bolt upright, holding his whip like a field-marshal�s bâton, on his ill-groomed horse, with a tight-bearing rein chucking the Imperial chin well in the air, and a sort of half-defiant �you�d better not laugh at me� look. And John was always proud to break a fence, or turn a hound, or hold a horse, or do anything his lordship bid him, and became a sort of hunting aide-de-camp to the great man. He was a boasting, bragging fool, always talking about m-o-y hall, and m-o-y lodge, and m-o-y plate in m-o-y drawing-room, for he had not discovered that plate was the appendage of a dining-room, and altogether he was very magnificent. Imperial Jane kept old Binks on the fret for some time, until another of his lordship�s tenants, young Fred Poppyfield, becoming enamoured of her charms, and perhaps wishing to ride in scarlet too, sought her fair hand, whereupon his lordship, acting with his usual munificence, set them up on a farm at so low a rent that it acquired the name of Gift Hall Farm. This arrangement set Barley Hall free so far as the petticoats were concerned, and his lordship little knowing how well she was �up� in the country, thought this great gouk of a farmer, with his plate in his drawing-room, might come over the accomplished Miss de Glancey,�the lady who sneered at himself as �a mere fox-hunter.� And the wicked monkey favoured the delusion, which she saw through the moment his lordship brought the pompous egotist up at Newington Gorse, and begged to be allowed to introduce his friend, Mr Hybrid, and she inwardly resolved to give Mr. Hybrid a benefit. Forsaking his lordship therefore entirely, she put forth her most seductive allurements at Imperial John, talked most amazingly to him, rode over whatever he recommended, and seemed quite smitten with him. And John, who used to boast that somehow the �gals couldn�t withstand him,� was so satisfied with his success, that he presently blundered out an offer, when Miss de Glancey, having led him out to the extreme length of his tether, gave such a start and shudder of astonishment as Fanny Kemble, or Mrs. Siddons herself, might have envied. �O, Mr. Hybrid! O, Mr. Hybrid!� gasped she, opening wide her intelligent eyes, as if she had but just discovered his meaning. �O, Mr. Hybrid!� exclaimed she for the third time, �_you�you�you_,� and turning aside as if to conceal her emotion, she buried her face in her laced-fringed, richly-cyphered kerchief. John, who was rather put out by some women who were watching him from the adjoining turnip-field, construing all this into the usual misfortune of the ladies not being able to withstand him, returned to the charge as soon as he got out of their hearing, when he was suddenly brought up by such a withering �_Si-r-r-r! do you mean to insult me?_� coupled with a look that nearly started the basket-buttons of his green cut-away, and convinced him that Miss de Glancey, at all events, could withstand him. So his Majesty slunk off, consoling himself with the reflection, that riding-habits covered a multitude of sins, and that if he was not much mistaken, she would want a deal of oil-cake, or cod liver oil, or summut o� that sort, afore she was fit to show. And the next time Miss met my lord (which, of course, she did by accident), she pouted and frowned at the �mere fox-hunter,� and intimated her intention of leaving the country�going home to her mamma, in fact. It was just at this juncture that Mrs. Pringle�s letter arrived, and his lordship�s mind being distracted between love on his own account, dread of matrimony, and dislike of old Binks, he caught at what he would in general have stormed at, and wrote to say that he should begin hunting the first Monday in November, and if Mrs. Pringle�s son would come down a day or two before, he would �put him up� (which meant mount him), and �do for him� (which meant board and lodge him), all, in fact, that Mrs. Pringle could desire. And his lordship inwardly hoped that Mr. Pringle might be more to Miss de Glancey�s liking than his Imperial Highness had proved. At all events, he felt it was but a simple act of justice to himself to try. Let us now return to Curtain Crescent. CHAPTER X. JEAN ROUGIER, OR JACK ROGERS. 083m _Original Size_ WE need not say that Mrs. Pringle was overjoyed at the receipt of the Earl�s letter. It was so kind and good, and so like him. He always said he would do her a good turn if he could: but there are so many fine-weather friends in this world that there is no being certain of any one. Happy are they who never have occasion to test the sincerity of their friends, say we. Mrs. Pringle was now all bustle and excitement, preparing Billy for the great event. His wardrobe, always grand, underwent revision in the undergarment line. She got him some magnificently embroidered dress shirts, so fine that the fronts almost looked as if you might blow them out, and regardful of the _rôle_ he was now about to play, she added several dozen with horses, dogs, birds, and foxes upon them, �suitable for fishing, shooting, boating, &c.,� as the advertisements said. His cambric kerchiefs were of the finest quality, while his stockings and other things were in great abundance, the whole surmounted by a splendid dressing-case, the like of which had ne�er been seen since the days of Pea-Green Haine. Altogether he was capitally provided, and quite in accordance with a lady�s-maid�s ideas of gentility. Billy, on his part, was active and energetic too, for though he had his doubts about being able to sit at the jumps, he had no objection to wear a red coat; and mysterious-looking boys, with blue bags, were constantly to be found seated on the mahogany bench, in the Curtain Crescent passage, waiting to try on his top boots; while the cheval glass up-stairs was constantly reflecting his figure in scarlet, _à la_ Old Briggs. The concomitants of the chase, leathers, cords, whips, spurs, came pouring in apace. The next thing was to get somebody to take care of them. It is observable that the heads of the various branches of an establishment are all in favour of �master� spending all his money on their particular department. Thus, the coachman would have him run entirely to carriages, the groom to horses, the cook to the _cuisine_, the butler to wines, the gardener to grapes, &c., and so on. Mrs. Pringle, we need hardly say, favoured lady�s-maids and valets. It has been well said, that if a man wants to get acquainted with a gentleman�s private affairs, he should either go to the lawyer or else to the valet that�s courting the lady�s-maid; and Mrs. Pringle was quite of that opinion. Moreover, she held that no man with an efficient, properly trained valet, need ever be catspawed or jilted, because the lady�s-maid would feel it a point of honour to let the valet know how the land lay, a compliment he would return under similar circumstances. To provide Billy with this, as she considered, most essential appendage to a gentleman, was her next consideration�a valet that should know enough and not too much�enough to enable him to blow his master�s trumpet properly, and not too much, lest he should turn restive and play the wrong tune. At length she fixed upon the Anglo-Frenchman, whose name stands at the head of this chapter�Jean Rougier, or Jack Rogers. Jack was the son of old Jack Rogers, so well known as the enactor of the Drunken Huzzar, and similar characters of Nutkins�s Circus; and Jack was entered to his father�s profession, but disagreeing with the clown, Tom Oliver, who used to give him sundry most unqualified cuts and cuffs in the Circus, Jack, who was a tremendously strong fellow, gave Oliver such a desperate beating one night as caused his life to be despaired off. This took place at Nottingham, from whence Jack fled for fear of the consequences; and after sundry vicissitudes he was next discovered as a post-boy, at Sittingbourne, an office that he was well adapted for, being short and stout and extremely powerful. No brute was ever too bad for Jack�s riding: he would tame them before the day was over. Somehow he got bumped down to Dover, when taking a fancy to go �foreign,� he sold his master�s horses for what they would fetch; and this being just about the time that the late Mr. Probert expiated a similar mistake at the Old Bailey, Jack hearing of it, thought it was better to stay where he was than give Mr. Calcraft any trouble. He therefore accepted the situation of boots to the Albion Hotel, Boulogne-sur-mer; but finding that he did not get on half so well as he would if he were a Frenchman, he took to acquiring the language, which, with getting his ears bored, letting his hair and whiskers grow, and adopting the French costume in all its integrity, coupled with a liberal attack of the small-pox, soon told a tale in favour of his fees. After a long absence, he at length returned at the Bill Smith Revolution; and vacillating for some time between a courier and a valet, finally settled down to what we now find him. We know not how it is, if valets are so essentially necessary, that there should always be so many out of place, but certain it is that an advertisment in a morning paper will always bring a full crop to a door. Perhaps, being the laziest of all lazy lives, any one can turn his hand to valeting, who to dig is unable, and yet to want is unwilling. Mrs. Pringle knew better than hold a levee in Curtain Crescent, letting all the applicants pump Properjohn or such of the maids as they could get hold of; and having advertised for written applications, stating full particulars of previous service, and credentials, to be addressed to F. P. at Chisel the baker�s, in Yeast Street, she selected some half-dozen of the most promising ones, and appointed the parties to meet her, at different hours of course, at the first-class waiting-room of the great Western Station, intimating that they would know her by a bunch of red geraniums she would hold in her hand. And the second applicant, Jean Rougier, looked so like her money, having a sufficient knowledge of the English language to be able to understand all that was said, and yet at the same time sufficiently ignorant of it to invite confidential communications to be made before him; that after glancing over the testimonials bound up in his little parchment-backed passport book, she got the name and address of his then master, and sought an interview to obtain Monsieur�s character. This gentleman, Sir Harry Bolter, happening to owe Jack three-quarters of a year�s wages, which he was not likely to pay, spoke of him in the highest possible terms, glossing over his little partiality for drink by saying that, like all Frenchmen, he was of a convivial turn; and in consequence of Sir Harry�s and Jack�s own recommendations, Mrs. Pringle took him. The reader will therefore now have the kindness to consider our hero and his valet under way, with a perfect pyramid of luggage, and Monsieur arrayed in the foraging cap, the little coatee, the petticoat trowsers, and odds and ends money-bag of his long adopted country, slung across his ample chest. Their arrival and reception at Tantivy Castle will perhaps be best described in the following letter from Billy to his mother:� Tantivy Castle. My dearest Mamma, _I write a line to say that I arrived here quite safe by the 5-30 train, and found the Earl as polite as possible. I should tell you that I made a mistake at starting, for it being dark when I arrived, and getting confused with a whole regiment of footmen, I mistook a fine gentleman who came forward to meet me for the Earl, and made him a most respectful bow, which the ass returned, and began to talk about the weather; and when the real Earl came in I took him for a guest, and was going to weather him. However he soon put all matters right, and introduced me to Mrs. Moffatt, a very fine lady, who seems to rule the roast here in grand style. They say she never wears the same dress twice._ _There are always at least half-a-dozen powdered footmen, in cerulean blue lined with rose-coloured silk, and pink silk stockings, the whole profusely illustrated with gold lace, gold aigulets, and I don�t know what, lounging about in the halls and passages, wailing for company which Rougier says never comes. This worthy seems to have mastered the ins and outs of the place already, and says, �my lor has an Englishman to cook his beef-steak for breakfast, a Frenchman to cook his dinner, and an Italian confectioner; every thing that a �my lord� ought to have� It is a splendid place,�as you will see by the above picture, * more like Windsor than anything I ever saw, and there seems to be no expense spared that could by any possibility be incurred. I�ve got a beautiful bedroom with warm and cold baths and a conservatory attached._ * Our friend was writing on Castle-paper, of course. _To-morrow is the first day of the season, and all the world and his wife will be there to a grand déjeuner à la Fourchette. The hounds meet before the Castle. His lordship says he will put me on a safe, steady hunter, and I hope he will, for I am not quite sure that I can sit at the jumps. However I�ll let you know how I come on. Meanwhile as the gong is sounding for dressing, believe me, my dearest mamma,_ _Ever your truly affectionate son,_ Wm. PRINGLE. Mrs. Pringle, Curtain Crescent, Belgrade Square, London. CHAPTER XI. THE OPENING DAY.�THE HUNT BREAKFAST. 087m _Original Size_ REVERSING the usual order of things, each first Monday in November saw the sporting inmates of Tantivy Castle emerge from the chrysalis into the butterfly state of existence. His lordship�s green-duck hunter and drab caps disappeared, and were succeeded by a spic-and-span span new scarlet and white top; Mr. Roggledike�s last year�s pink was replaced by a new one, his hat was succeeded by a cap; and the same luck attended the garments of both Swan and Speed. The stud-groom, the pad-groom, the sending-on groom, all the grooms down to our little friend, Cupid-without-Wings, underwent renovation in their outward men. The whole place smelt of leather and new cloth. The Castle itself on this occasion seemed to participate in the general festivity, for a bright sun emblazoned the quarterings of the gaily flaunting flag, lit up the glittering vanes of the lower towers, and burnished the modest ivy of the basements. Every thing was bright and sunny, and though Dicky Boggledike did not �zactly like� the red sunrise, he �oped the rine might keep off until they were done, �specially as it was a show day.� Very showy indeed it was, for all the gentlemen out of livery,�those strange puzzlers�were in full ball costume; while the standard footmen strutted like peacocks in their rich blue liveries with rose-coloured linings, and enormous bouquets under their noses, feeling that for once they were going to have something to do. The noble Earl, having got himself up most elaborately in his new hunting garments, and effected a satisfactory tie of a heart�s-ease embroidered blue satin cravat, took his usual stand before the now blazing wood and coal fire in the enormous grate in the centre of his magnificent baronial hall, ready to receive his visitors and pass them on to Mrs. Moffat in the banqueting room. This fair lady was just as fine as hands could make her, and the fit of her rich pale satin dress, trimmed with swan�s-down, reflected equal credit on her milliner and her maid. Looking at her as she now sat at the head of the sumptuously-furnished breakfast table, her plainly dressed hair surmounted by a diminutive point-lace cap, and her gazelle-like eye lighting up an intelligent countenance, it were hardly possible to imagine that she had ever been handsomer, or that beneath that quiet aspect there lurked what is politely called a �high spirit,� that is to say, a little bit of temper. That however is more the Earl�s look-out than ours, so we will return to his lordship at the entrance hall fire. Of course this sort of gathering was of rather an anomalous character,�some coming because they wanted something, some because they �dirsn�t� stay away, some because they did not know Mrs. Moffat would be there, some because they did not care whether she was or not. It was a show day, and they came to see the beautiful Castle, not Mrs. Anybody. The first to arrive were the gentlemen of the second class, the agents and dependents of the estate,�Mr. Cypher, the auditor, he who never audited; Mr. Easylease, the land agent; his son, Mr. John Easylease, the sucking land agent; Mr. Staple, the mining agent; Mr. James Staple, the sucking mining agent; Mr. Section, the architect; Mr. Pillerton, the doctor; Mr. Brick, the builder; &c., who were all very polite ard obsequious, �your lordship� and my �my lording� the Earl at every opportunity. These, ranging themselves on either side of the fire, now formed the nucleus of the court, with the Earl in the centre. Presently the rumbling of wheels and the grinding of gravel was succeeded by the muffled-drum sort of sound of the wood pavement of the grand covered portico, and the powdered footmen threw back the folding-doors as if they expected Daniel Lambert or the Durham Ox to enter. It was our old friend Imperial John, who having handed his pipeclayed reins to his ploughman-groom, descended from his buggy with a clumsy half buck, half hawbuck sort of air, and entered the spacious portals of the Castle hall. Having divested himself of his paletot in which he had been doing �the pride that apes humility,� he shook out his red feathers, pulled up his sea-green-silk-tied gills, finger-combed his stiff black hair, and stood forth a sort of rough impersonation of the last year�s Earl. His coat was the same cut, his hat was the same shape, his boots and breeches were the same colour, and altogether there was the same sort of resemblance between John and the Earl that there is between a cart-horse and a race-horse. Having deposited his whip and paletot on the table on the door-side of a tall, wide-spreading carved oak screen, which at once concealed the enterers from the court, and kept the wind from that august assembly, John was now ready for the very obsequious gentleman who had been standing watching his performances without considering it necessary to give him any assistance. This bland gentleman, in his own blue coat with a white vest, having made a retrograde movement which cleared himself of the screen, John was presently crossing the hall, bowing and stepping and bowing and stepping as if he was measuring off a drain. His lordship, who felt grateful for John�s recent services, and perhaps thought he might require them again, advanced to meet him and gave him a very cordial shake of the hand, as much as to say, �Never mind Miss de Glancey, old fellow, we�ll make it right another time.� They then fell to conversing about turnips, John�s Green Globes having turned out a splendid crop, while his Swedes were not so good as usual, though they still might improve. A more potent wheel-roll than John�s now attracted his lordship�s attention, and through the far windows he saw a large canary-coloured ark of a coach, driven by a cockaded coachman, which he at once recognised as belonging to his natural enemy Major Yammerton, �five-and-thirty years master of haryers,� as the Major would say, �without a subscription.� Mr. Boggledike had lately been regaling his lordship with some of the Major�s boastings about his �haryars� and the wonderful sport they showed, which he had had the impudence to compare with his lordship�s fox hounds. Besides which, he was always disturbing his lordship�s covers on the Roughborough side of the country, causing his lordship to snub him at all opportunities. The Major, however, who was a keen, hard-bitten, little man, not easily choked off when he wanted anything, and his present want being to be made a magistrate, he had attired himself in an antediluvian swallow-tailed scarlet, with a gothic-arched collar, and brought his wife and two pretty daughters to aid in the design. Of course the ladies were only coming to see the Castle. The cockaded coachman having tied his reins to the rail of the driving-box, descended from his eminence to release his passengers, while a couple of cerulean-blue gentlemen looked complacently on, each with half a door in his hand ready to throw open as they approached, the party were presently at the hall table, where one of those indispensable articles, a looking-glass, enabled the ladies to rectify any little derangement incidental to the joltings of the journey, while the little Major run a pocket-comb through a fringe of carroty curls that encircled his bald head, and disposed of a cream-coloured scarf cravat to what he considered the best advantage. Having drawn a doeskin glove on to the left hand, he offered his arm to his wife, and advanced from behind the screen with his hat in his ungloved right hand ready to transfer it to the left should occasion require. �Ah Major Yammerton!� exclaimed the Earl, breaking off in the middle of the turnip dialogue with Imperial John. �Ah, Major Yammerton, I�m delighted to see you� (getting a glimpse of the girls). �Mrs. Yammerton, this is indeed extremely kind,� continued he, taking both her hands in his; �and bringing your lovely daughters,� continued he, advancing to greet them. Mrs. Yammerton here gave the Major a nudge to remind him of his propriety speech. �The gi�gi�girls and Mrs. Ya�Ya�Yammerton,� for he always stuttered when he told lies, which was pretty often; �the gi�gi�girls and Mrs. Ya�Ya�Yammerton have done me the honour�� Another nudge from Mrs. Yammerton. �I mean to say the gi�gi�girls and Mrs. Ya�Ya�Yammerton,� observed he, with a stamp of the foot and a shake of the head, for he saw that his dread enemy, Imperial John, was laughing at him, �have done themselves the honour of co�co�coming, in hopes to be allowed the p�p�p�pleasure of seeing your mama�magnificent collection of pi�pi�pictors.� the Major at length getting out what he had been charged to say. 091m _Original Size_ �By all means!� exclaimed the delighted Earl, �by all means; but first let me have the pleasure of conducting you to the refreshment-room;� saying which his lordship offered Mrs. Yammerton his arm. So passing up the long gallery, and entering by the private door, he popped her down beside Mrs. Moffatt before Mrs. Yammerton knew where she was. Just then our friend Billy Pringle, who, with the aid of Rougier, had effected a most successful _logement_ in his hunting things, made his appearance, to whom the Earl having assigned the care of the young ladies, now beat a retreat to the hall, leaving Mrs. Yammerton lost in astonishment as to what her Mrs. Grundy would say, and speculations as to which of her daughters would do for Mr. Pringle. Imperial John, who had usurped the Earl�s place before the fire, now shied off to one side as his lordship approached, and made his most flexible obeisance to the two Mr. Fothergills and Mr. Stot, who had arrived during his absence. These, then, gladly passed on to the banqueting-room just as the Condor-like wings of the entrance hall door flew open and admitted Imperial Jane, now the buxom Mrs. Poppyfield. She came smiling past the screen, magnificently attired in purple velvet and ermine, pretending she had only come to warm herself at the ��All fire while Pop looked for the groom, who had brought his �orse, and who was to drive her �ome;� but hearing from the Earl that the Yammertons were all in the banqueting-room, she saw no reason why she shouldn�t go too; so when the next shoal of company broke against the screen, she took Imperial John�s arm, and preceded by a cloud of lackeys, cerulean-blue and others, passed from the hall to the grand apartment, up which she sailed majestically, tossing her plumed head at that usurper Mrs. Moffatt; and then increased the kettle of fish poor Mrs. Yammerton was in by seating herself beside her. �Impudent woman,� thought Mrs. Yammerton, �if I�d had any idea of this I wouldn�t have come;� and she thought how lucky it was she had put the Major up to asking to see the �pictors.� It was almost a pity he was so anxious to be a magistrate. Thought he might be satisfied with being Major of such a fine regiment as the Featherbedfordshire Militia. Nor were her anxieties diminished by the way the girls took the words out of each other�s mouths, as it were, in their intercourse with Billy Pringle, thus preventing either from making any permanent impression. The great flood of company now poured into the hall, red coats, green coats, black coats, brown coats, mingled with variously-coloured petticoats. The ladies of the court, Mrs. Cypher, Mrs. Pillerton, Mrs. and the Misses Easylease, Mrs. Section, and others, hurried through with a shivering sort of step as if they were going to bathe. Mr. D�Orsay Davis, the �we� of the Featherbedfordshire Gazette, made his bow and passed on with stately air, as a ruler of the roast ought to do. The Earl of Stare, as Mr. Buckwheat was called, from the fixed protuberance of his eyes�a sort of second edition of Imperial John, but wanting his looks, and Gameboy Green, the hard rider of the hunt, came in together; and the Earl of Stare, sporting scarlet, advanced to his brother peer, the Earl, who, not thinking him an available card, turned him over to Imperial John who had now returned from his voyage with Imperial Jane, while his lordship commenced a building conversation with Mr. Brick. A lull then ensuing as if the door had done its duty, his lordship gave a wave of his hand, whereupon the trained courtiers shot out into horns on either side, with his lordship in the centre, and passed majestically along to the banqueting-room. The noble apartment a hundred feet long, and correspondingly proportioned, was in the full swing of hospitality when the Earl entered. The great influx of guests for which the Castle was always prepared, had at length really arrived, and from Mrs. Moffatt�s end of the table to the door, were continuous lines of party-coloured eaters, all engaged in the noble act of deglutition. Up the centre was a magnificent avenue of choice exotics in gold, silver, and china vases, alternating with sugar-spun Towers, Temples, Pagodas, and Rialtos, with here and there the more substantial form of massive plate, _èpergnes_, testimonials, and prizes of different kinds. It was a regular field day for plate, linen, and china. The whole force of domestics was now brought to bear upon the charge, and the cerulean-blue gentlemen vied with the gentlemen out of livery in the assiduity of their attentions. Soup, game, tea, coffee, chocolate, ham, eggs, honey, marmalade, grapes, pines, melons, ices, buns, cakes, skimmed and soared, and floated about the room, in obedience to the behests of the callers. The only apparently disengaged person in the room, was Monsieur Jean Rougier, who, in a blue coat with a velvet collar and bright buttons, a rolling-collared white vest, and an amplified lace-tipped black Joinville, stood like a pouter pigeon behind Mr. Pringle�s chair, the _beau ideal_ of an indifferent spectator. And yet he was anything but an indifferent spectator; for beneath his stubbly hair were a pair of little roving, watchful eyes, and his ringed ears were cocked for whatever they could catch. The clatter, patter, clatter, patter of eating, which was slightly interrupted by the entrance of his lordship was soon in full vigour again, and all eyes resumed the contemplation of the plates. Presently, the �fiz, pop, bang� of a champagne cork was heard on the extreme right, which was immediately taken up on the left, and ran down either side of the table like gigantic crackers. Eighty guests were now imbibing the sparkling fluid, as fast as the footmen could supply it. And it was wonderful what a volubility that single glass a-piece (to be sure they were good large ones) infused into the meeting; how tongue-tied ones became talkative, and awed ones began to feel themselves sufficiently at home to tackle with the pines and sugar ornaments of the centre. Grottoes and Pyramids and Pagodas and Rialtos began to topple to their fall, and even a sugar Crystal Palace, which occupied the post of honour between two flower-decked Sèvres vases, was threatened with destruction. The band and the gardeners were swept away immediately, and an assault on the fountains was only prevented by the interference of Mr. Beverage, the butler. And now a renewed pop-ponading commenced, more formidable, if possible, than the first, and all glasses were eagerly drained, and prepared to receive the salute. All being ready, Lord Ladythorne rose amid the applause so justly due to a man entertaining his friends, and after a few prefatory remarks, expressive of the pleasure it gave him to see them all again at the opening of another season, and hoping that they might have many more such meetings, he concluded by giving as a toast, �Success to fox-hunting!��which, of course, was drunk upstanding with all the honours. All parties having gradually subsided into their seats after this uncomfortable performance, a partial lull ensued, which was at length interrupted by his lordship giving Imperial John, who sat on his left, a nod, who after a loud throat-clearing _hem!_ rose bolt upright with his imperial chin well up, and began, �Gentlemen and Ladies!� just as little weazeley Major Yammerton commenced �Ladies and gentlemen!� from Mrs. Moffatt�s end of the table. This brought things to a stand still�some called for Hybrid, some for Yammerton, and each disliking the other, neither was disposed to give way. The calls, however, becoming more frequent for Yammerton, who had never addressed them before, while Hybrid had, saying the same thing both times, the Earl gave his Highness a hint to sit down, and the Major was then left in that awful predicament, from which so many men would be glad to escape, after they have achieved it, namely,�the possession of the meeting. However, Yammerton had got his speech well off, and had the heads of it under his plate; so on silence being restored, he thus went away with it:� �Ladies and gentlemen,�(cough)�ladies and gentlemen,�(hem) I rise, I assure you�(cough)�with feelings of considerable trepidation�(hem)�to perform an act�(hem)�of greater difficulty than may at first sight appear�(hem, hem, haw)�for let me ask what it is I am about to do? (�You know best,� growled Imperial John, thinking how ill he was doing it.) I am going to propose the health of a nobleman�(applause)�of whom, in whose presence, if I say too much, I may offend, and if I say too little, I shall most justly receive your displeasure (renewed applause). But, ladies and gentlemen, there are times when the �umblest abilities become equal to the occasion, and assuredly this is one�(applause). To estimate the character of the illustrious nobleman aright, whose health I shall conclude by proposing, we must regard him in his several capacities�(applause)�as Lord-Lieutenant of the great county of Featherbedford, as a great and liberal landlord, as a kind and generous neighbour, and though last, not least, as a brilliant sportsman�(great applause, during which Yammerton looked under his plate at his notes.)�As Lord-Lieutenant,� continued he, �perhaps the greatest praise I can offer him, the �ighest compliment I can pay him, is to say that his appointments are so truly impartial as not to disclose his own politics�(applause)�as a landlord, he is so truly a pattern that it would be a mere waste of words for me to try to recommend him to your notice,�(applause)�as a neighbour, he is truly exemplary in all the relations of life,�(applause)�and as a sportsman, having myself kept haryers five-and-thirty years without a subscription, I may be permitted to say that he is quite first-rate,�(laughter from the Earl�s end of the table, and applause from Mrs. Moffatt�s.)�In all the relations of life, therefore, ladies and gentlemen,��continued the Major, looking irately down at the laughers��I beg to propose the bumper toast of health, and long life to our �ost, the noble Earl of Ladythorne!� Whereupon the little Major popped down on his chair, wondering whether he had omitted any thing he ought to have said, and seeing him well down, Imperial John, who was not to be done out of his show-off, rose, glass in hand, and exclaimed in a stentorian voice, �Gentlemen and Ladies! Oi beg to propose that we drink this toast up standin� with all the honours!�Featherbedfordshire fire!� upon which there was a great outburst of applause, mingled with demands for wine, and requests from the ladies, that the gentlemen would be good enough to take their chairs off their dresses, or move a little to one side, so that they might have room to stand up; Crinoline, we should observe, being very abundant with many of them. A tremendous discharge of popularity then ensued, the cheers being led by Imperial John, much to the little Major�s chagrin, who wondered how he could ever have sat down without calling for them. Now, the Earl, we should observe, had not risen in the best of moods that morning, having had a disagreeable dream, in which he saw old Binks riding his favourite horse Valiant, Mazeppa fashion, making a drag of his statue of the Greek slave, enveloped in an anise-seeded bathing-gown; a vexation that had been further increased when he arose, by the receipt of a letter from his �good-natured friend� in London, telling him how old Binks had been boasting at Boodle�s that he was within an ace of an Earldom, and now to be clumsily palavered by Yammerton was more than he could bear. He didn�t want to be praised for anything but his sporting propensities, and Imperial John knew how to do it. Having, however, a good dash of satire in his composition, when the applause and the Crinoline had subsided, he arose as if highly delighted, and assured them that if anything could enhance the pleasure of that meeting, it was to have his health proposed by such a sportsman as Major Yammerton, a gentleman who he believed had kept harriers five-and-thirty years, a feat he believed altogether unequalled in the annals of sporting�(laughter and applause)�during which the little Major felt sure he was going to conclude by proposing his health with all the honours, instead of which, however, his lordship branched off to his own department of sport, urging them to preserve foxes most scrupulously, never to mind a little poultry damage, for Mr. Boggledike would put all that right, never to let the odious word Strychnine be heard in the country, and concluded by proposing a bumper to their next merry meeting, which was the usual termination of the proceedings. The party then rose, chairs fell out of line, and flying crumpled napkins completed the confusion of the scene. CHAPTER XII. THE MORNING FOX.�THE AFTERNOON FOX. 097m _Original Size_ THE day was quite at its best, when the party-coloured bees emerged from the sweets of Tantivy Castle, to taint the pure atmosphere with their nasty cigars, and air themselves on the terrace, letting the unadmitted world below see on what excellent terms they were with an Earl. Then Imperial John upbraided Major. Yammerton for taking the words out of his mouth, as it were, and the cockey Major turned up his nose at the �farmer fellow� for presuming to lector him. Then the emboldened ladies strolled through the picture-galleries and reception-rooms, regardless of Mrs. Moffatt or any one else, wondering where this door led to and where that. The hounds had been basking and loitering on the lawn for some time, undergoing the inspection and criticisms of the non-hunting portion of the establishment, the gardeners, the gamekeepers, the coachmen, the helpers, the housemaids, and so on. They all pronounced them as perfect as could be, and Mr. Hoggledike received their compliments with becoming satisfaction, saying, with a chuck of his chin, �Yas, Yas, I think they�re about as good as can be! Parfaction. I may say!� Having abused the cigars, we hope our fair friends will now excuse us for saying that we know of few less agreeable scenes than a show meet with fox-hounds. The whole thing is opposed to the wild nature of hunting. Some people can eat at any time, but to a well-regulated appetite, having to undergo even the semblance of an additional meal is inconvenient; while to have to take a _bonâ fide_ dinner in the morning, soup, toast, speeches and all, is perfectly suicidal of pleasure. On this occasion, the wine-flushed guests seemed fitted for Cremorne or Foxhall, as they used to pronounce Vauxhall, than for fox-hunting. Indeed, the cigar gentry swaggered about with a very rakish, Regent Street air. His lordship alone seemed impressed with the importance of the occasion; but his anxiety arose from indecision, caused by the Binks� dream and letter, and fear lest the Yammerton girls might spoil Billy for Miss de Glancey, should his lordship adhere to his intention of introducing them to each other. Then he began to fidget lest he might be late at the appointed place, and Miss de Glancey go home, and so frustrate either design. �_To horse! to horse!_� therefore exclaimed he, now hurrying through the crowd, lowering his Imperial Jane-made hat-string, and drawing on his Moffatt-knit mits. �_To horse! to horse!_� repeated he, flourishing his cane hunting-whip, causing a commotion among the outer circle of grooms. His magnificent black horse, Valiant (the one he had seen old Binks bucketing), faultless in shape, faultless in condition, faultless every way, stepped proudly aside, and Cupid-without-Wings dropping himself off by the neck, Mr. Beanley, the stud groom, swept the coronetted rug over the horse�s bang tail, as the superb and sensible animal stepped forward to receive his rider, as the Earl came up. With a jaunty air, the gay old gentleman vaulted lightly into the saddle, saying as he drew the thin rein, and felt the horse gently with his left leg, �Now get Mr. Pringle his horse.� His lordship then passed on a few paces to receive the sky-scraping salutes of the servants, and at a jerk of his head the cavalcade was in motion. Our friend Billy then became the object of attention. The dismounted Cupid dived into the thick of the led horses to seek his, while Mr. Beanley went respectfully up to him, and with a touch of his flat-brimmed hat, intimated that �his oss was at �and.� �What sort of an animal is it?� asked the somewhat misgiving Billy, now bowing his adieus to the pretty Misses Yammerton. �A very nice oss, sir,� replied Mr. Beanley, with another touch of hat; �yes, sir, a very nice oss�a perfect �unter�nothin� to do but sit still, and give �im �is �ead, he�ll take far better care o� you than you can of �im.� So saying, Mr. Beanley led the way to a very sedate-looking, thorough-bred bay, with a flat flapped saddle, and a splint boot on his near foreleg, but in other respects quite unobjectionable. He was one of Swan�s stud, but Mr. Beanley, understanding from the under butler, who had it from Jack Rogers�we beg his pardon,�Monsieur Rougier himself, that Mr. Pringle was likely to be a good tip, he had drawn it for him. The stirrups, for a wonder, being the right length, Billy was presently astride, and in pursuit of his now progressing lordship, the gaping crowd making way for the young lord as they supposed him to be�for people are all lords when they visit at lords. Pop, pop, bob, bob, went the black caps of the men in advance, indicating the whereabouts of the hounds, while his lordship ambled over the green turf on the right, surrounded by the usual high-pressure toadies. Thus the cavalcade passed through the large wood-studded, deer-scattered park, rousing the nearer herds from their lairs, frightening the silver-tails into their holes, and causing the conceited hares to scuttle away for the fern-browned, undulating hills, as if they had the vanity to suppose that this goodly array would condescend to have anything to do with them. Silly things! Peppercorn, the keeper, had a much readier way of settling their business. The field then crossed the long stretch of smooth, ornamental water, by the old gothic-arched bridge, and passed through the beautiful iron gates of the south lodge, now wheeled back by grey-headed porters, in cerulean-blue plush coats, and broad, gold-laced hats. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the accustomed hunt was indicated by a lengthening line of pedestrians and small cavalry, toiling across the park by Duntler the watcher�s cottage and the deer sheds, to the door in the wall at the bottom of Crow-tree hill, from whence a bird�s-eye view of the surrounding country is obtained. The piece had been enacted so often, the same company, the same day, the same hour, the same find, the same finish, that one might almost imagine it was the same fox On this particular occasion, however, as if out of pure contradiction, Master Reynard, by a series of successful manoeuvres, lying down, running a wall, popping backwards and forwards between Ashley quarries and Warmley Gorse, varied by an occasional trip to Crow-tree hill, completely baffled Mr. Boggledike, so that it was afternoon before he brought his morning fox to hand, to the great discomfort of the Earl, who had twice or thrice signaled Swan to �who hoop� him to ground, when the tiresome animal popped up in the midst of the pack. At length Boggledike mastered him; and after proclaiming him a �cowardly, short-running dastardly traitor, no better nor a �are,� he chucked him scornfully to the hounds, decorating Master Pillerton�s pony with the brush, while Swan distributed the pads among others of the rising generation. The last act of the �show meet� being thus concluded, Mr. Boggledike and his men quickly collected their hounds, and set off in search of fresh fields and pastures new. The Earl, having disposed of his show-meet fox�a bagman, of course�now set up his business-back, and getting alongside of Mr. Boggledike, led the pack at as good a trot as the hounds and the state of the line would allow. The newly laid whinstone of the Brittleworth road rather impeded their progress at first; but this inconvenience was soon overcome by the road becoming less parsimonious in width, extending at length to a grass siding, along which his lordship ambled at a toe in the stirrup trot, his eagle-eye raking every bend and curve, his mind distracted with visions of Binks, and anxiety for the future. He couldn�t get over the dream, and the letter had anything but cheered him. �Very odd,� said he to himself, �very odd,� as nothing but drab-coated farmers and dark-coated grooms lounging leisurely �on,� with here and there a loitering pedestrian, broke the monotony of the scene. �Hope she�s not tired, and gone home,� thought he, looking now at his watch, and now back into the crowd, to see where he had Billy Pringle. There was Billy riding alongside of Major Yammerton�s old flea-bitten grey, whose rider was impressing Billy with a sense of his consequence, and the excellence of his �haryers,� paving the way for an invitation to Yammerton Grange. �_D-a-ash_ that Yammerton,� growled his lordship, thinking how he was spoiling sport at both ends; at the Castle by his uninvited eloquence, and now by his fastening on to the only man in the field he didn�t want him to get acquainted with. And his lordship inwardly resolved that he would make Easylease a magistrate before he would make the Major one. So settling matters in his own mind, he gave the gallant Valiant a gentle tap on the shoulder with his whip, and shot a few paces ahead of Dicky, telling the whips to keep the crowd off the hounds�meaning off himself. Thus he ambled on through the quiet little village of Strotherdale, whose inhabitants all rushed out to see the hounds pass, and after tantalising poor Jonathan Gape, the turnpike-gate man, at the far end, who thought he was going to get a grand haul, he turned short to the left down the tortuous green lane leading to Quarrington Gorse. �There�s a footmark,� said his lordship to himself, looking down at the now closely eaten sward. �Ah! and there�s a hat and feather,� added he as a sudden turn of the lane afforded a passing glimpse. Thus inspirited, he mended his pace a little, and was presently in sight of the wearer. There was the bay, and there was the wide-awake, and there was the green trimming, and there was the feather; but somehow, as he got nearer, they all seemed to have lost _caste_. The slender waist and graceful upright seat had degenerated into a fuller form and lazy slouch; the habit didn�t look like her habit, nor the bay horse like her bay horse, and as he got within speaking distance, the healthy, full-blown face of Miss Winkworth smiled upon him instead of the mild, placid features of the elegant de Glancey. �Ah, my dear Miss Winkworth!� exclaimed his half-disgusted, half-delighted lordship, raising his hat, and then extending the right-hand of fellowship; �Ah, my dear Miss Winkworth, I�m charmed to see you� (inwardly wondering what business women had out hunting). �I hope you are all well at home,� continued he (most devoutly wishing she was there); and without waiting for an answer, he commenced a furious assault upon Benedict, who had taken a fancy to follow him, a performance that enabled General Boggledike to come up with that army of relief, the pack, and engulf the lady in the sea of horsemen in the rear. �If that had been _her_,� said his lordship to himself, �old Binks would have had a better chance;� and he thought what an odious thing a bad copy was. Another bend of the land and another glimpse, presently put all matters right. The real feather now fluttered before him. There was the graceful, upright seat, the elegant air, the well-groomed horse, the _tout ensemble_ being heightened, if possible, by the recent contrast with the coarse, country attired Miss Winkworth. The Earl again trotted gently on, raising his hat most deferentially as he came along side of her, as usual, unaverted head. �Good morning, my Lord!� exclaimed she gaily, as if agreeably surprised, tendering for the first time her pretty, little, primrose-coloured kid-gloved hand, looking as though she would condescend to notice a �mere fox-hunter.� The gay old gentleman pressed it with becoming fervour, thinking he never saw her looking so well before. They then struck up a light rapid conversation. Miss perhaps never did look brighter or more radiant, and as his lordship rode by her side, he really thought if he could make up his mind to surrender his freedom to any woman, it would be to her. There was a something about her that he could not describe, but still a something that was essentially different to all his other flames. He never could bear a riding-woman before, but now he felt quite proud to have such an elegant, piquant attendant on his pack.�Should like, at all events, to keep her in the country, and enjoy her society.�Would like to add her to the collection of Featherbedfordshire witches of which his friends joked him in town.��Might have done worse than marry Imperial John,� thought his lordship. John mightn�t be quite her match in point of manner, but she would soon have polished him up, and John must be doing uncommonly well as times go�cattle and corn both selling prodigiously high, and John with his farm at a very low rent. And the thought of John and his beef brought our friend Billy to the Earl�s mind, and after a sort of random compliment between Miss de Glancey and her horse, he exclaimed, �By the way! I�ve got a young friend out I wish to introduce to you,� so rising in his saddle and looking back into the crowd he hallooed out, �Pringle!� a name that was instantly caught up by the quick-eared Dicky, a �Mister� tacked to it and passed backward to Speed, who gave it to a groom; and Billy was presently seen boring his way through the opening crowd, just as a shepherd�s dog bores its way through a flock of sheep. �Pringle,� said his lordship, as the approach of Billy�s horse caused Valiant to lay back his ears, �Pringle! I want to introduce you to Miss de Glancey, Miss de Glancey give me leave to introduce my friend Mr. Pringle,� continued he, adding _soto voce_, as if for Miss de Glancey�s ear alone, �young man of very good family and fortune�_richest Commoner, in England, they say_.� But before his lordship got to the richest Commoner part of his speech, a dark frown of displeasure had overcast the sweet smile of those usually tranquil features, which luckily, however, was not seen by Billy; and before he got his cap restored to his head after a sky scraping salute, Miss de Glancey had resumed her wonted complacency,�inwardly resolving to extinguish the �richest Commoner,� just as she had done his lordship�s other �friend Mr. Hybrid.� Discarding the Earl, therefore, she now opened a most voluble battering on our good-looking Billy who, to do him justice, maintained his part so well, that a lady with less ambitious views might have been very well satisfied to be Mrs. Pringle. Indeed, when his lordship looked at the two chattering and ogling and simpering together, and thought of that abominable old Binks and the drag, and the letter from the Boodleite, his heart rather smote him for what he had done; for young and fresh as he then felt himself, he knew that age would infallibly creep upon him at last, just as he saw it creeping upon each particular friend when he went to town, and he questioned that he should ever find any lady so eminently qualified to do the double duty of gracing his coronet and disappointing the General. Not but that the same thought had obtruded itself with regard to other ladies; but he now saw that he had been mistaken with respect to all of them, and that this was the real, genuine, no mistake, �right one.� Moreover, Miss de Glancey was the only lady who according to his idea had not made up to him�rather snubbed him in fact. Mistaken nobleman! There are, many ways of making up to a man. But as with many, so with his lordship, the last run was always the finest, and the last lady always the fairest�the most engaging. With distracting considerations such as these, and the advantage of seeing Miss de Glancey play the artillery of her arts upon our young friend, they reached the large old pasture on the high side of Quarrington Gorse, a cover of some four acres in extent, lying along a gently sloping bank, with cross rides cut down to the brook. Mr. Boggledike pulled up near the rubbing-post in the centre of the field, to give his hounds a roll, while the second-horse gentlemen got their nags, and the new comers exchanged their hacks for their hunters. Judging by the shaking of hands, the exclamations of �halloo! old boy is that you?� �I say! where are you from?� and similar inquiries, there were a good many of the latter�some who never went to the Castle, some who thought it too far, some who thought it poor fun. Altogether, when the field got scattered over the pasture, as a shop-keeper scatters his change on the counter, or as an old stage coachman used to scatter his passengers on the road with an upset, there might be fifty or sixty horsemen, assmen, and gigmen. Most conspicuous was his lordship�s old eye-sore, Hicks, the flying hatter of Hinton (Sir Moses Mainchance�s �best man�), who seemed to think it incumbent upon him to kill his lordship a hound every year by his reckless riding, and who now came out in mufti, a hunting-cap, a Napoleon-grey tweed jacket, loose white cords, with tight drab leggings, and spurs on his shoes, as if his lordship�s hounds were not worth the green cut-a-way and brown boots he sported with Sir Moses. He now gave his cap-peak a sort of rude rap with his fore-finger, as his lordship came up, as much as to say, �I don�t know whether I�ll speak to you or not,� and then ran his great raking chestnut into the crowd to get at his old opponent Gameboy Green, who generally rode for the credit of the Tantivy hunt. As these sort of cattle always hunt in couples, Hicks is followed by his shadow, Tom Snowdon, the draper�or the Damper, as he is generally called, from his unhappy propensity of taking a gloomy view of everything. To the right are a knot of half-horse, half-pony mounted Squireen-looking gentlemen, with clay pipes in their mouths, whose myrtle-green coats, baggy cords, and ill-cleaned tops, denote as belonging to the Major�s �haryers.� And mark how the little, pompons man wheels before them, in order that Pringle may see the reverence they pay to his red coat. He raises his punt hat with all the dignity of the immortal Simpson of Vauxhall memory, and passes on in search of further compliments. His lordship has now settled himself into the �Wilkinson and Kidd� of Rob Roy, a bay horse of equal beauty with Valiant, but better adapted to the country into which they are now going, Imperial John has drawn his girths with his teeth, D�Orsay Davis has let down his hat-string, Mr. John Easylease has tightened his curb, Mr. Section drawn on his gloves, the Damper finished his cigar, and all things are approximating a start. �_Elope, lads! Elope!_� cries Dicky Boggledike to his hounds, whistling and waving them together, and in an instant the rollers and wide-spreaders are frolicking and chiding under his horse�s nose. �_G-e-e-ntly_, lads! _g-e-ently!_� adds he, looking the more boisterous ones reprovingly in the face��gently lads, gently,� repeats he, �or you�ll be rousin� the gem�lman i� the gos.� This movement of Dicky and the hounds has the effect of concentrating the field, all except our fair friend and Billy, who are still in the full cry of conversation, Miss putting forth her best allurements the sooner to bring Billy to book. At a chuck of his lordship�s chin, Dicky turns his horse towards the gorse, just as Billy, in reply to Miss de Glancey�s question, if he is fond of hunting, declares, as many a youth has done who hates it, that he �doats upon it!� A whistle, a waive, and a cheer, and the hounds are away. They charge the hedge with a crash, and drive into the gorse as if each hound had a bet that he would find the fox himself. Mr. Boggledike being now free of his pack, avails himself of this moment of ease, to exhibit his neat, newly clad person of which he is not a little proud, by riding along the pedestrian-lined hedge, and requesting that �you fut people,� as he calls them, �will have the goodness not to �alloa, but to �old up your �ats if you view the fox;� and having delivered his charge in three several places, he turns into the cover by the little white bridle-gate in the middle, which Cupid-without-Wings is now holding open, and who touches his hat as Dicky passes. The scene is most exciting. The natural inclination of the land affords every one a full view of almost every part of the sloping, southerly-lying gorse, while a bright sun, with a clear, rarified atmosphere, lights up the landscape, making the distant fences look like nothing. Weak must be the nerves that would hesitate to ride over them as they now appear. Delusive view! Between the gorse and yonder fir-clad hills are two bottomless brooks, and ere the dashing rider reaches Fairbank Farm, whose tall chimney stands in bold relief against the clear, blue sky, lies a tract of country whose flat surface requires gulph-like drains to carry off the surplus water that rushes down from the higher grounds. To the right, though the country looks rougher, it is in reality easier, but foxes seem to know it, and seldom take that line; while to the left is a strongly-fenced country, fairish for hounds, but very difficult for horses, inasmuch as the vales are both narrow and deep. But let us find our fox and see what we can do among them. And as we are in for a burst, let us do the grand and have a fresh horse. CHAPTER XIII. GONE AWAY! SEE! a sudden thrill shoots through the field, though not a hound has spoken; no, not even a whimper been heard. It is Speed�s new cap rising from the dip of the ground at the low end of the cover, and now having seen the fox �right well away,� as he says, he gives such a ringing view halloa as startles friend Echo, and brings the eager pack pouring and screeching to the cry� �_Tweet! tweet! tweet!_� now goes cantering Dicky�s superfluous horn, only he doesn�t like to be done out of his blow, and thinks the �fut people� may attribut� the crash to his coming. All eyes are now eagerly strained to get a view of old Reynard, some for the pleasure of seeing him, others to speculate upon whether they will have to take the stiff stake and rise in front, or the briar-tangled boundary fence below, in order to fulfil the honourable obligation of going into every field with the hounds. Others, again, who do not acknowledge the necessity, and mean to take neither, hold their horses steadily in hand, to be ready to slip down Cherry-tree Lane, or through West Hill fold-yard, into the Billinghurst turnpike, according as the line of chase seems to lie. �_Talli-ho!_� cries the Flying Hatter, as he views the fox whisking his brush as he rises the stubble-field over Fawley May Farm, and in an instant he is soaring over the boundary-fence to the clamorous pack just as his lordship takes it a little higher up, and lands handsomely in the next field. Miss de Glancey then goes at it in a canter, and clears it neatly, while Billy Pringle�s horse, unused to linger, after waiting in vain for an intimation from his rider, just gathers himself together, and takes it on his own account, shooting Billy on to his shoulder. �He�s off! no, he�s on; he hangs by the mane!� was the cry of the foot people, as Billy scrambled back into his saddle, which he regained with anything but a conviction that he could sit at the jumps. Worst of all, he thought he saw Miss de Glancey�s shoulders laughing at his failure. The privileged ones having now taken their unenviable precedence, the scramble became general, some going one way, some another, and the recent frowning fences are soon laid level with the fields. A lucky lane running parallel with the line, along which the almost mute pack were now racing with a breast-high scent, relieved our friend Billy from any immediate repetition of the leaping inconvenience, though he could not hear the clattering of horses� hoofs behind him without shuddering at the idea of falling and being ridden over. It seemed very different he thought to the first run, or to Hyde Park; people were all so excitcd, instead of riding quietly, or for admiration, as they do in the park. Just as Billy was flattering himself that the leaping danger was at an end, a sudden jerk of his horse nearly chucked him into Imperial John�s pocket, who happened to be next in advance. The fox had been headed by the foot postman between Hinton and Sambrook; and Dicky Boggledike, after objurgating the astonished man, demanding, �What the daval business he had there?� had drawn his horse short across the lane, thus causing a sudden halt to those in the rear. The Flying Hatter and the Damper pressing close upon the pack as usual, despite the remonstrance of Gameboy Green and others, made them shoot up to the far-end of the enclosure, where they would most likely have topped the fence but for Swan and Speed getting round them, and adding the persuasion of their whips to the entreaties of Dicky�s horn. The hounds sweep round to the twang, lashing and bristling with excitement. �_Yo doit!_� cries Dicky, as Sparkler and Pilgrim feather up the lane, trying first this side, then that. Sparkler speaks! �He�s across the lane.� �_Hoop! hoop! tallio! tallio!_� cries Dicky cheerily, taking off his cap, and sweeping it in the direction the fox has gone, while his lordship, who has been bottling up the vial of his wrath, now uncorks it as he gets the delinquents within hearing. �Thank you, Mr. Hicks, for pressing on my hounds! Much obleged to you, Mr. Hicks, for pressing on my hounds! Hang you, Mr. Hicks, for pressing on my hounds!� So saying, his lordship gathered Rob Roy together, and followed Mr. Boggledike through a very stiff bullfinch that Dicky would rather have shirked, had not the eyes of England been upon him. _S-w-ic-h!_ Dicky goes through, and the vigorous thorns close again like a rat-trap. �Allow me, my lord!� exclaims Imperial John from behind, anxious to be conspicuous. �Thank �e, no,� replied his lordship, carelessly thinking it would not do to let Miss de Glancey too much into the secrets of the hunting field. �Thank �e, no,� repeated he, and ramming his horse well at it, he gets through with little more disturbance of the thorns than Dicky had made. Miss de Glancey comes next, and riding quietly up the bank, she gives her horse a chuck with the curb and a touch with the whip that causes him to rise well on his haunches and buck over without injury to herself, her hat, or her habit. Imperial John was nearly offering his services to break the fence for her, but the �_S-i-r-r!_ do you mean to insult me?� still tingling in his ears, caused him to desist. However he gives Billy a lift by squashing through before him, whose horse then just rushed through it as before, leaving Billy to take care of himself. A switched face was the result, the pain, however, being far greater than the disfigurement. While this was going on above, D�Orsay Davis, who can ride a spurt, has led a charge through a weaker place lower down; and when our friend had ascertained that his eyes were still in his head, he found two distinct lines of sportsmen spinning away in the distance as if they were riding a race. Added to this, the pent-up party behind him having got vent, made a great show of horsemanship as they passed. �Come along!� screamed one. �Look alive!� shouted another. �Never say die!� cried a third, though they were all as ready to shut up as our friend. Billy�s horse, however, not being used to stopping, gets the bit between his teeth, and scuttles away at a very overtaking pace, bringing him sufficiently near to let him see Gameboy Green and the Flying Hatter leading the honourable obligation van, out of whose extending line now a red coat, now a green coat, now a dark coat drops in the usual �had enough� style. In the ride-cunning, or know-the-country detachment, Miss de Glancey�s flaunting habit, giving dignity to the figure and flowing elegance to the scene, might be seen going at perfect ease beside the noble Earl, who from the higher ground surveys Gameboy Green and the Hatter racing to get first at each fence, while the close-packing hounds are sufficiently far in advance to be well out of harm�s way. �C�a�a�tch �em, if you can!� shrieks his lordship, eyeing their zealous endeavours. �C�a�a�tch �em, if you can!� repeats he, laughing, as the pace gets better and better, scarce a hound having time to give tongue. �Yooi, over he goes!� now cries his lordship, as a spasmodic jerk of the leading hounds, on Alsike water meadow, turns Trumpeter�s and Wrangler�s heads toward the newly widened and deepened drain-cut, and the whole pack wheel to the left. What a scramble there is to get over! Some clear it, some fall back, while some souse in and out. Now Gameboy, seeing by the newly thrown out gravel the magnitude of the venture, thrusts down his hat firmly on his brow, while Hicks gets his chesnut well by the head, and hardening their hearts they clear it in stride, and the Damper takes soundings for the benefit of those who come after. What a splash he makes! And now the five-and-thirty years master of �haryers� without a subscription coming up, seeks to save the credit of his quivering-tailed grey by stopping to help the discontented Damper out of his difficulty, whose horse coming out on the wrong side affords them both a very fair excuse for shutting up shop. The rest of the detachment, unwilling to bathe, after craning at the cut, scuttle away by its side down to the wooden cattle-bridge below, which being crossed, the honourable obligationers and the take-care-of-their-neckers are again joined in common union. It is, however, no time to boast of individual feats, or to inquire for absent friends, for the hounds still press on, though the pace is not quite so severe as it was. They are on worse soil, and the scent does not serve them so well. It soon begins to fail, and at length is carried on upon the silent system, and looks very like failing altogether. Mr. Boggledike, who has been riding as cunning as any one, now shows to the front, watching the stooping pack with anxious eye, lest he should have to make a cast over fences that do not quite suit his convenience. �G�e�ntly, urryin�! gently!� cries he, seeing that a little precipitancy may carry them off the line. �Yon cur dog has chased the fox, and the hounds are puzzled at the point where he has left him.� �Ah, sarr, what the daval business have you out with a dog on such an occasion as this?� demands Dicky of an astonished drover who thought the road was as open to him as to Dicky. �O, sar! sar! you desarve to be put i� the lock-up,� continues Dicky, as the pack now divide on the scent. �O, sar! sar! you should be chaasetised!� added he, shaking his whip at the drover, as he trotted on to the assistance of the pack. The melody of the majority however recalls the cur-ites, and saves Dicky from the meditated assault. While the brief check was going on, his lordship was eyeing Miss de Glancey, thinking of all the quiet captivating women he had ever seen, she was the most so. Her riding was perfection, and he couldn�t conceive how it was that he had ever entertained any objection to sports-women. It must have been from seeing some clumsy ones rolling about who couldn�t ride; and old Binks�s chance at that moment was not worth one farthing. �Where�s Pringle?� now asked his lordship, as the thought of Binks brought our hero to his recollection. �Down,� replied Miss de Glancey carelessly, pointing to the ground with her pretty amethyst-topped whip. �Down, is he!� smiled the Earl, adding half to himself and half to her, �thought he was a mull�.� Our friend indeed has come to grief. After pulling and hauling at his horse until he got him quite savage, the irritated animal, shaking his head as a terrier shakes a rat, ran blindfold into a bullfinch, shooting Billy into a newly-made manure-heap beyond. The last of the �harryer� men caught his horse, and not knowing who he belonged to, just threw the bridle-rein over the next gatepost, while D�Orsay Davis, who had had enough, and was glad of an excuse for stopping, pulls up to assist Billy out of his dirty dilemma. Augh, what a figure he was! But see! Mr. Boggledike is hitting off the scent, and the astonished drover is spurring on his pony to escape the chasetisement Dicky has promised him. At this critical moment, Miss de Glancey�s better genius whispered her to go home. She had availed herself of the short respite to take a sly peep at herself in a little pocket-mirror she carried in her saddle, and found she was quite as much heated as was becoming or as could be ventured upon without detriment to her dress. Moreover, she was not quite sure but that one of her frizettes was coming out. So now when the hounds break out in fresh melody, and the Flying Hatter and Gameboy Green are again elbowing to the front, she sits reining in her steed, evidently showing she is done. �Oh, come along!� exclaimed the Earl, looking back for her. �Oh, come along,� repeated he, waving her onward, as he held in his horse. There was no resisting the appeal, for it was clear he would come back for her if she did, so touching her horse with the whip, she is again cantering by his side. �I�d give the world to see you beat that impudent ugly hatter,� said he, now pointing Hicks out in the act of riding at a stiff newly-plashed fence before his hounds were half over. And his lordship spurred his horse as he spoke with a vigour that spoke the intensity of his feelings. The line of chase then lay along the swiftly flowing Arrow banks and across Oxley large pastures, parallel with the Downton bridle-road, along which Dicky and his followers now pounded; Dicky hugging himself with the idea that the fox was making for the main earths on Bringwood moor, to which he knew every yard of the country. And so the fox was going as straight and as hard as ever he could, but as ill luck would have it, young Mr. Nailor, the son of the owner of Oxley pastures, shot at a snipe at the west corner of the large pasture just as pug entered at the east, causing him to shift his line and thread Larchfield plantations instead of crossing the pasture, and popping down Tillington Dean as he intended. Dicky had heard the gun, and the short turn of the hounds now showing him what had happened, he availed himself of the superiority of a well-mounted nobleman�s huntsman in scarlet over a tweed-clad muffin-capped shooter, for exclaiming at the top of his voice as he cantered past, horn in hand, �O ye poachin� davil, what business �ave ye there!� �O ye nasty sneakin� snarin� ticket-o�-leaver, go back to the place from whance you came!� leaving the poor shooter staring with astonishment. A twang of the horn now brings the hounds�who have been running with a flinging catching side-wind scent on to the line, and a full burst of melody greets the diminished field, as they strike it on the bright grass of the plantation. �For�rard! for�rard!� is the cry, though there isn�t a hound but what is getting on as best as he can. The merry music reanimates the party, and causes them to press on their horses with rather more freedom than past exertions warrant. Imperial John�s is the first to begin wheezing, but his Highness feeling him going covers a retreat of his hundred-and-fifty-guineas-worth, as he hopes he will be, under shelter of the plantation. **** �I think the �atter�s oss has about �ad enough,� now observes Dicky to his lordship, as he holds open the bridle-gate at the end of the plantation into the Benington Lane for his lordship and Miss de Glancey to pass. �Glad of it,� replied the Earl, thinking the Hatter would not be able to go home and boast how he had cut down the Tantivy men and hung them up to dry. �Old �ard, one moment!� now cries Dicky, raising his right hand as the Hatter comes blundering through the quickset fence into the hard lane, his horse nearly alighting on his nose. �Old �ard, please!� adds he, as the Hatter spurs among the road-stooping pack. �Hooick to Challenger! Hooick to Challenger!� now holloas Dicky, as Challenger, after sniffing up the grassy mound of the opposite hedge, proclaims that the fox is over; and Dicky getting his horse short by the head, slips behind the Hatter�s horse�s tail for his old familiar friend the gap in the corner, while the Hatter gathers his horse together to fulfil the honourable obligation of going with the hounds. �C�u�r�m up!� cries he, with an _obligato_ accompaniment of the spur rowels, which the honest beast acknowledges by a clambering flounder up the bank, making the descent on his head on the field side that he nearly executed before. The Hatter�s legs perform a sort of wands of a mill evolution. �Not hurt, I hope!� holloas the Earl, who with Miss de Glancey now lands a little above, and seeing the Hatter rise and shake himself he canters on, giving Miss de Glancey a touch on the elbow, and saying with a knowing look, �_That�s capital!_ get rid of him, leggings and all!� His lordship having now seen the last of his tormentors, has time to look about him a little. �Been a monstrous fine run,� observes he to the lady, as they canter together behind the pace-slackening pack. �Monstrous,� replies the lady, who sees no fun in it at all. �How long has it been?� asks his lordship of Swan, who now shows to the front as a whip-aspiring huntsman is wont to do. �An hour all but five minutes, my lord,� replies the magnifier, looking at his watch. �No�no�an hour �zactly, my lord,� adds he, trotting on�restoring his watch to his fob as he goes. �An hour best pace with but one slight check�can�t have come less than twelve miles,� observes his lordship, thinking it over. �Indeed,� replied Miss de Glancey, wishing it was done. �Grand sport fox-hunting, isn�t it?� asked his lordship, edging close up to her. �Charming!� replied Miss de Glancey, feeling her failing frizette. The effervescence of the thing is now about over, and the hounds are reduced to a very plodding pains-taking pace. The day has changed for the worse, and heavy clouds are gathering overhead. Still there is a good holding scent, and as the old saying is, a fox so pressed must stop at last, the few remaining sportsmen begin speculating on his probable destination, one backing him for Cauldwell rocks, another for Fulford woods, a third for the Hawkhurst Hills. ��Awk�urst �ills for a sovereign!� now cries Dicky, hustling his horse, as, having steered the nearly mute pack along Sandy-well banks, Challenger and Sparkler strike a scent on the track leading up to Sorryfold Moor, and go away at an improving pace. ��Awk�urst �ills for a fi�-pun note!� adds he, as the rest of the pack score to cry. �Going to have rine!� now observes he, as a heavy drop beats upon his up-turned nose. At the same instant a duplicate drop falls upon Miss de Glancey�s fair cheek, causing her to wish herself anywhere but where she was. Another, and another, and another, follow in quick succession, while the dark, dreary moor offers nothing but the inhospitable freedom of space. The cold wind cuts through her, making her shudder for the result. �He�s for the hills!� exclaims Gameboy Green, still struggling on with a somewhat worse-for-wear looking steed. �He�s for the hills!� repeats he, pointing to a frowning line in the misty distance. At the same instant his horse puts his foot in a stone-hole, and Gameboy and he measure their lengths on the moor. �That comes of star-gazing,� observed his lordship, turning his coat-collar up about his ears. �That comes of star-gazing,� repeats he, eyeing the loose horse scampering the wrong way. �We�ll see no more of him,� observed Miss de Glancey, wishing she was as well out of it as Green. �Not likely, I think,� replied his lordship, seeing the evasive rush the horse gave, as Speed, who was coming up with some tail hounds, tried to catch him. The heath-brushing fox leaves a scent that fills the painfully still atmosphere with the melody of the hounds, mingled with the co-beck�co-beck�co-beck of the startled grouse. There is a solemn calm that portends a coming storm. To Miss de Clancey, for whom the music of the hounds has no charms, and the fast-gathering clouds have great danger, the situation is peculiarly distressing. She would stop if she durst, but on the middle of a dreary moor how dare she. An ominous gusty wind, followed by a vivid flash of lightning and a piercing scream from Miss de Glancey, now startled the Earl�s meditations. �Lightning!� exclaimed his lordship, turning short round to her assistance. �Lightning in the month of November�never heard of such a thing!� But ere his lordship gets to Miss de Glancey�s horse, a most terrific clap of thunder burst right over head, shaking the earth to the very centre, silencing the startled hounds, and satisfying his lordship that it _was_ lightning. Another flash, more vivid if possible than the first, followed by another pealing crash of thunder, more terrific than before, calls all hands to a hurried council of war on the subject of shelter. �We must make for the Punch-bowl at Rockbeer,� exclaims General Boggledike, flourishing his horn in an ambiguous sort of way, for he wasn�t quite sure he could find it. �_You_ know the Punch-bowl at Rockbeer!� shouts he to Harry Swan, anxious to have some one on whom to lay the blame if he went wrong. �I know it when I�m there,� replied Swan, who didn�t consider it part of his duty to make imaginary runs to ground for his lordship. �Know it when you�re there, man,� retorted Dicky in disgust; �why any����� the remainder of his sentence being lost in a tremendously illuminating flash of lightning, followed by a long cannonading, reverberating roll of thunder. Poor Miss de Glancey was ready to sink into the earth. 113m _Original Size_ �_Elope, hounds! elope!_� cried Dicky, getting his horse short by the head, and spurring him into a brisk trot. �_Elope, hounds! elope!_� repeated he, setting off on a speculative cast, for he saw it was no time for dallying. And now, �From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage; Till in the furious elemental war Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass, Unbroken floods and solid torrents pour.� Luckily for Dicky, an unusually vivid flash of lightning so lit up the landscape as to show the clump of large elms at the entrance to Rockbeer; and taking his bearings, he went swish swash, squirt spurt, swish swash, squirt spurt, through the spongy, half land, half water moor, at as good a trot as he could raise. The lately ardent, pressing hounds follow on in long-drawn file, looking anything but large or formidable. The frightened horses tucked in their tails, and looked fifty per cent. worse for the suppression. The hard, driving rain beats downways, and sideways, and frontways, and backways�all ways at once. The horses know not which way to duck, to evade the storm. In less than a minute Miss de Glancey is as drenched as if she had taken a shower-bath. The smart hat and feathers are annihilated; the dubious frizette falls out, down comes the hair; the bella-donna-inspired radiance of her eyes is quenched; the Crinoline and wadding dissolve like ice before the fire; and ere the love-cured Earl lifts her off her horse at the Punch-bowl at Rockbeer, she has no more shape or figure than an icicle. Indeed she very much resembles one, for the cold sleet, freezing as it fell, has encrusted her in a rich coat of ice lace, causing her saturated garments to cling to her with the utmost pertinacity. A more complete wreck of a belle was, perhaps, never seen. �_What an object!_� inwardly ejaculated she, as Mrs. Hetherington, the landlady, brought a snivelling mould candle into the cheerless, fireless little inn-parlour, and she caught a glimpse of herself in the�at best�most unbecoming mirror. What would she have given to have turned back! And as his lordship hurried up stairs in his water-logged boots, he said to himself, with a nervous swing of his arm, �I was right!�women _have_ no business out hunting.� And the Binks chance improved amazingly. The further _denouement_ of this perishing day will be gleaned from the following letters. CHAPTER XIV. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE. MR WILLIAM TO HIS MAMMA. �Tantivy Castle, November. �My dearest Mamma, _�Though I wrote to you only the other day, I take up my pen, stiff and sore as I am and scarcely able to sit, to tell you of my first day�s hunt, which, I assure you, was anything but enjoyable. In fact, at this moment I feel just as if I had been thumped by half the pugilists in London and severely kicked at the end. To my fancy, hunting is about the most curious, unreasonable amusement that ever was invented. The first fox was well enough, running backwards and forwards in an agreeable manner, though they all abused him and called him a cowardly beggar, though to my mind it was far pluckier to do what he did, with fifty great dogs after him, than to fly like a thief as the next one did. Indeed I saw all the first run without the slightest inconvenience or exertion, for a very agreeable gentleman, called Major Hammerton, himself an old keeper of hounds, led me about and showed me the country._ _�I don�t mean to say that he led my horse, but he showed me the way to go, so as to avoid the jumps, and pointed out the places where I could get a peep of the fox. I saw him frequently. The Major, who was extremely polite, asked me to go and stay with him after I leave here, and I wouldn�t mind going if it wasn�t for the hounds, which, however, he says are quite as fine as his lordship�s, without being so furiously and inconveniently fast. For my part, however, I don�t see the use of hunting an animal that you can shoot, as they do in France. It seems a monstrous waste of exertion. If they were all as sore as I am this morning, I�m sure they wouldn�t try it again in a hurry. I really think racing, where you pay people for doing the dangerous for you, is much better fun, and prettier too, for you can choose any lively colour you like for your jacket, instead of having to stick to scarlet or dark clothes._ _�But I will tell you about fox No. 2. I was riding with a very pretty young lady, Miss de Glancey, whom the Earl had just introduced me to, when all of a sudden everybody seemed to be seized with an uncontrollable galloping mania, and set off as hard as ever their horses could lay legs to the ground. My horse, who they said was a perfect hunter, but who, I should say, was a perfect brute, partook of the prevailing epidemic, and, though he had gone quite quietly enough before, now seized the bit between his teeth, and plunged and reared as though he would either knock my teeth down my throat, or come back over upon me. �Drop your hand!� cried one. �Ease his head!� cried another, and what was the consequence? He ran away with me and, dashing through a flock of turkeys, nearly capsized an old sow._ _�Then the people, who had been so civil before, all seemed to be seized with the rudes. It was nothing but �g-u-u-r along, sir! g-u-u-r along! Hang it! don�t you see the hounds are running!� just as if I had made them run, or as if I could stop them. My good friend, the Major, seemed to be as excited as any body: indeed, the only cool person was Miss de Glancey, who cantered away in a most unconcerned manner. I am sorry to say she came in for a desperate ducking. It seems that after I had had as much as I wanted, and pulled up to come home, they encountered a most terrific thunder-storm in crossing some outlandish moor, and as his lordship, who didn�t get home till long after dark, said she all at once became a dissolving view, and went away to nothing. Mrs. Moffatt, who is stout and would not easily dissolve, seemed amazingly tickled with the joke, and said she supposed she would look like a Mermaid�which his lordship said was exactly the case. When the first roll of thunder was heard here, the Earl�s carriage and four was ordered out, with dry things, to go in quest of him; but they tried two of his houses of call before they fell in with him. It then had to return to take the Mermaid to her home, who had to borrow the publican�s wife�s Sunday clothes to travel in._ _�After dinner, the stud-groom came in to announce the horses for to-day; and hearing one named for me, I begged to decline the honour, on the plea of having a great many letters to write, so Mrs. Moffatt accompanied his lordship to the meet, some ten miles north of this, in his carriage and four, from whence she has just returned, and says they went away with a brilliant scent from Foxlydiate Gorse, meaning, I presume, with another such clatter as we had yesterday. I am glad I didn�t go, for I don�t think I could have got on to a horse, let alone sit one, especially at the jumps, which all the Clods in the country seem to have clubbed their ideas to concoct. Rougier says people are always stiff after the first day�s hunting; but if I had thought I should be as sore and stiff as I am, I don�t think I would ever have taken a day, because Major Hammerlon says it is not necessary to go out hunting in the morning to entitle one to wear the dress uniform in the evening�which is really all I care for._ _�The servants here seem to live like fighting-cocks, from Rougier�s account; breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, teas, and suppers. They sit down, ten or a dozen at the second table, and about thirty or so in the hall, besides which there are no end of people out of doors. Rougier says they have wine at the second table, and eau de vie punch at night at discretion, of which, I think, he takes more than is discreet, for he came swaggering into my room at day-break this morning, in his evening dress, with his hat on, and a great pewter inkstand in his hand, which he set down on the dressing-table, and said, �dere, sir, dere is your shavin� water!� Strange to say, the fellow speaks better English when he�s drunk than he does when he�s sober. However, I suppose I must have a valet, otherwise I should think it would be a real kindness to give the great lazy fellows here something to do, other than hanging about the passages waylaying the girls, I�ll write you again when I know what I�m going to do, but I don�t think I shall stay here much longer, if I�m obliged to risk my neck after these ridiculous dogs. Ever, my dearest Mamma your most affectionate, but excruciatingly sore, son._ �Wm. PRINGLE.� The following is Mrs. Pringle�s answer; who, it will be seen, received Billy�s last letter while she was answering his first one:� �25, Curtain Crescent, �Belgrave Square, London. �My own dearest William, _�I was overjoyed, my own darling, to receive your kind letter, and hear that you had arrived safe, and found his lordship so kind and agreeable. I thought you had known him by sight, or I would have prevented your making the mistake by describing him to you. However, there is no harm done. In a general way, the great man of the place is oftentimes the least.�The most accessible, that is to say. The Earl is an excellent, kind-hearted man, and it will do you great good among your companions to be known to be intimate with him, for I can assure you it is not every one he takes up with. Of course, there are people who abuse him, and say he is this and that, and so on; but you must take people�especially great ones�as you find them in this world; and he is quite as good as his whites of their eyes turning-up neighbours. Don�t, however presume on his kindness by attempting to stay beyond what he presses you to do, for two short visits tell better than one long one, looking as though you had been approved of. You can easily find out from the butler or the groom of the chambers, or some of the upper servants, how long you are expected to stay, or perhaps some of the guests can tell you how long they are invited for._ _�I had written thus far when your second welcome letter arrived, and I can�t tell you how delighted I am to hear you are safe and well, though I�m sorry to hear you don�t like hunting, for I assure you it is the best of all possible sports, and there is none that admits of such elegant variety of costume._ _�Look at a shooter,�what a ragamuffin dress his is, hardly distinguishable from a keeper; and yachters and cricketers might be taken for ticket-of-leave men. I should be very sorry indeed if you were not to persevere in your hunting; for a red coat and leathers are quite your become, and there is none, in my opinion, in which a gentleman looks so well, or a snob so ill. Learning to hunt can�t be more disagreeable than learning to sail or to smoke, and see how many hundreds�thousands I may say�overcome the difficulty every year, and blow their clouds, as they call them, on the quarterdeck, as though they had been born sailors with pipes in their mouths. Remember, if you can�t manage to sit your horse, you�ll be fit for nothing but a seat in Parliament along with Captain Catlap and the other incurables. I can�t think there can be much difficulty in the matter, judging from the lumpy wash-balley sort of men one hears talking about it. I should think if you had a horse of your own, you would be able to make better out. Whatever you do, however, have nothing to do with racing. It�s only for rogues and people who have more money than they know what to do with, and to whom it doesn�t matter whether they win or they lose. We musn�t have you setting up a confidential crossing-sweeper with a gold eyeglass. No gentleman need expect to make money on the turf, for if you were to win they wouldn�t pay you, whereas, if you lose it�s quite a different thing. One of the beauties of hunting is that people have no inducement to poison each other; whereas in racing, from poisoning horses they have got to poisoning men, besides which one party must lose if the other is to win. Mutual advantage is impossible. Another thing, if you were to win ever so, the trainer would always keep his little bill in advance of your gains, or he would be a very bad trainer._ _�I hope Major Hammerton is a gentleman of station, whose acquaintance will do you good, though the name is not very aristocratic�Hamilton would have been better. Are there any Miss H�s? Remember there are always forward people in the world, who think to advance themselves by taking strangers by the hand, and that a bad introduction is far worse than none. Above all, never ask to be introduced to a great man. Great people have their eyes and ears about them just as well as little ones, and if they choose to know you, they will make the advance. Asking to be introduced only prejudices them against you, and generally insures a cut at the first opportunity._ _�Beware of Miss de Glancey. She is a most determined coquette, and if she had fifty suitors, wouldn�t be happy if she saw another woman with one, without trying to get him from her. She hasn�t a halfpenny. If you see her again, ask her if she knows Mr. Hotspur Smith, or Mr. Enoch Benson, or Mr. Woodhorn, and tell me how she looks. What is she doing down there? Surely she hasn�t the vanity to think she can captivate the Earl. You needn�t mention me to Mrs. Moffatt, but I should like to know what she has on, and also if there are any new dishes for dinner. Indeed, the less you talk about your belongings the better; for the world has but two ways, that of running people down much below their real level, or of extolling them much beyond their deserts. Remember, well-bred people always take breeding for granted, �one of us,� as they say in others when they find them at good houses, and as you have a good name, you have nothing to do but hold your tongue, and the chances are they will estimate you at far more than your real worth._ _�A valet is absolutely indispensable for a young gentleman. Bless you! you would be thought nothing of among the servants if you hadn�t one. They are their masters� trumpeters. A valet, especially a French one, putting on two clean shirts a day, and calling for Burgundy after your cheese, are about the most imposing things in the lower regions. In small places, giving as much trouble as possible, and asking for things you think they haven�t got, is very well; but this will not do where you now are. In a general way, it is a bad plan taking servants to great houses, for, as they all measure their own places by the best they have ever seen, and never think how many much worse ones there are, they come back discontented, and are seldom good for much until they have undergone a quarter�s starving or so, out of place. It is a good thing when the great man of a country sets an example of prudence and economy, for then all others can quote him, instead of having the bad practices of other places raked up as authority for introducing them into theirs. The Earl, however, would never be able to get through half his income if he was not to wink at a little prodigality, and the consumption of wine in great houses would be a mere nothing if it was not for the assistance of the servants. Indeed, the higher you get into society, the less wine you get, until you might expect to see it run out to nothing at a Duke�s. I dare say Rougier will be fond of drink, and the English servants will perhaps be fond of plying him with it; but, so long as he does not get incompetent, a little jollity on his part will make them more communicative before him, and it is wonderful what servants can tell. They know everything in the kitchen�nothing in the parlour. His lordship, I believe, doesn�t allow strange servants to wait except upon very full occasions, otherwise it might be well to put Rougier under the surveillance of Beverage, the butler, lest he should come into the room drunk and incompetent, which would be very disagreeable._ _�I enclose you a gold fox-head pin to give Mr. Boggledike, who doesn�t take money, at least nothing under £5, and this only costs 18s. He is a favourite with his lordship, and it will be well to be in with him. You had better give the men who whip the hounds a trifle, say 10s. or half-a-sovereign each�gold looks better than silver. If you go to Major Hammertons you must let me know; but perhaps you will inquire further before you fix. And now, hoping that you will stick to your hunting, and be more successful on another horse after a quieter fox, believe me ever, my own dearest William, your most truly and sincerely affectionate mother,_ _ �Emma Pringle. _ _�P.S.�Don�t forget the two clean shirts._ _�P.S.�When you give Dicky Boggledike the pin, you can compliment him on his talents as a huntsman (as Mr. Redpath did the actor); and as they say he is a very bad one, he will be all the more grateful for it._ _�P.S.�I have just had another most pressing letter from your uncle Jerry, urging me to go and look through all the accounts and papers, as he says it is not fair throwing such a heavy responsibility upon him. Poor man! He need not be so pressing. He little knows how anxious I am to do it. I hope now we shall get something satisfactory, for as yet I know no more than I did before your poor father died._ _�P.S.�Don�t forget to tell me if there are any Miss H.�s, and whatever you do, take care of Dowb, that is, yourself.�_ But somehow Billy forgot to tell his Mamma whether there were any Miss H.�s or not, though he might have said �No,� seeing they were Miss �Y.�s.� And now, while our hero is recovering from his bruises, let us introduce the reader further to his next host, Major Y. CHAPTER XV. MAJOR YAMMERTON�S COACH STOPS THE WAY. MAJOR Yammerton was rather a peculiar man, inasmuch as he was an Ass, without being a Fool. He was an Ass for always puffing and inflating himself, while as regarded worldly knowledge, particularly that comprised in the magic letters £. s. d., few, if any, were his equals. In the former department, he was always either on the strut or the fret, always either proclaiming the marked attention he had met with, or worrying himself with the idea that he had not had enough. At home, instead of offering people freely and hospitably what he had, he was continually boring them with apologies for what he had not. Just as if all men were expected to have things alike, or as if the Major was an injured innocent who had been defrauded of his rights. If he was not boring and apologising, then he was puffing or praising everything indiscriminately�depending, of course, upon who he had there�a great gun or a little one. He returned from his Tantivy Castle hunt, very much pleased with our Billy, who seemed to be just the man for his money, and by the aid of his Baronetage he made him out to be very highly connected. Mrs. Yammerton and the young ladies were equally delighted with him, and it was unanimously resolved that he should be invited to the Grange, for which purpose the standing order of the house �never to invite any one direct from a great house to theirs,� was suspended. A very salutary rule it is for all who study appearances, seeing that what looks very well one way may look very shady the other; but this being perhaps a case of �now or never,� the exception would seem to have been judiciously made. The heads of the house had different objects in view; Mamma�s, of course, being matrimonial, the Major�s, the laudable desire to sell Mr. Pringle a horse. And the mention of Mamma�s object leads us to the young ladies. These, Clara, Flora, and Harriet, were very pretty, and very highly educated�that is to say, they could do everything that is useless�play, draw, sing, dance, make wax-flowers, bead-stands, do decorative gilding, and crochet-work; but as to knowing how many ounces there are in a pound of tea, or how many pounds of meat a person should eat in a day, they were utterly, entirely, and most elegantly ignorant. Towards the close of the last century, and at the beginning of the present one, ladies ran entirely to domesticity, pickling, preserving, and pressing people to eat. Corded petticoats and patent mangles long formed the staple of a mid life woman�s conversation. Presently a new era sprang up, which banished everything in the shape of utilitarianism, and taught the then rising generation that the less they knew of domestic matters the finer ladies they would be, until we really believe the daughters of the nobility are better calculated for wives, simply because they are generally economically brought up, and are not afraid of losing _caste_, by knowing what every woman ought to do. No man thinks the worse of a woman for being able to manage her house, while few men can afford to marry mere music-stools and embroidery frames. Mrs. Yammerton, however, took a different view of the matter. She had been brought up in the patent mangle and corded petticoat school, and inwardly resolved that her daughters should know nothing of the sort�should be �real ladies,� in the true kitchen acceptation of the term. Hence they were mistresses of all the little accomplishments before enumerated, which, with making calls and drinking tea, formed the principal occupation of their lives. Not one of them could write a letter without a copy, and were all very uncertain in their spelling�though they knew to a day when every King and Queen began to reign, and could spout all the chief towns in the kingdom. Now this might have been all very well, at least bearable, if the cockey Major had had plenty of money to give them, but at the time they were acquiring them, the �contrary was the case,� as the lawyers say. The Major�s grandfather (his father died when he was young) had gone upon the old annexation principle of buying land and buying land simply because �it joined,� and not always having the cash to pay for it with, our Major came into an estate (large or small, according as the reader has more or less of his own) saddled with a good, stout, firmly setting mortgage. Land, however, being the only beast of burthen that does not show what it carries, our orphan�orphan in top-boots to be sure�passed for his best, and was speedily snapped up by the then beautiful, Italian�like Miss Winnington, who consoled herself for the collapse of his fortune, by the reflection that she had nothing of her own. Perhaps, too, she had made allowance for the exaggeration of estimates, which generally rate a man at three or four times his worth. The Winningtons, however, having made a great �crow� at the �catch,� the newly-married couple started at score as if the estate had nothing to carry but themselves. 123m _Original Size_ In due time the three graces appeared,�Clara, very fair, with large languishing blue eyes and light hair; Flora, with auburn hair and hazel eyes; and Harriet, tall, clear, and dark, like Mamma. As they grew up, and had had their heads made into Almanacs at home, they were sent to the celebrated Miss Featherey�s finishing and polishing seminary at Westbourne Grove, who for £200 a-year, or as near £200 as she could get, taught them all the airs and graces, particularly how to get in and out of a carriage properly, how to speak to a doctor, how to a counter-skipper, how to a servant, and so on. The Major, we may state, had his three daughters taken as two. Well, just as Miss Harriet was supplying the place of Miss Clara (polished), that great agricultural revolution, the repeal of the corn laws, took place, and our Major, who had regarded his estate more with an eye to its hunting and shooting capabilities than to high farming, very soon found it slipping away from him, just as Miss de Glancey slipped away from her dress in the thunder-storm. Up to that time, his easy-minded agent, Mr. Bullrush, a twenty stone man of sixty years of age, had thought the perfection of management was not to let an estate go back, but now the Major�s seemed likely to slip through its girths altogether. To be sure, it had not had any great assistance in the advancing line, and was just the same sour, rush-grown, poachy, snipe-shooting looking place that it was when the Major got it; but this was not his grandfather�s fault, who had buried as many stones in great gulf-like drains, as would have carried off a river and walled the estate all round into the bargain; but there was no making head against wet land with stone drains, the bit you cured only showing the wetness of the rest. The blotchy March fallows looked as if they had got the small pox, the pastures were hardly green before Midsummer, and the greyhound-like cattle that wandered over them were evidently of Pharaoh�s lean sort, and looked as if they would _never_ be ready for the butcher. Foreign cattle, too, were coming in free, and the old cry of �down corn, down horn,� frightened the fabulously famed �stout British farmer� out of his wits. Then those valuable documents called leases�so binding on the landlord, were found to be wholly inoperative on the tenants, who threw up their farms as if there were no such things in existence. If the Major wouldn�t take their givings up, why then he might just do his �warst;� meanwhile, of course, they would �do their warst,� by the land. With those who had nothing (farming and beer-shop keeping being about the only trades a man can start with upon nothing), of course, it was of no use persisting, but the awkward part of the thing was, that this probing of pockets showed that in too many cases the reputed honesty of the British farmer was also mere fiction; for some who were thought to be well off, now declared that their capital was their aunt�s, or their uncle�s, or their grandmother�s, or some one else�s, so that the two classes, the have-somethings, and the have-nothings, were reduced to a level. This sort of thing went on throughout the country, and landlords who could not face the difficulty by taking their estates in hand, had to submit to very serious reductions of rent, and rent once got down, is very difficult to get up again, especially in countries where they value by the rate-book, or where a traditionary legend attaches to land of the lowest rent it has ever been let for. Our Major was sorely dispirited, and each market-day, as he returned from Mr. Bullrush�s with worse and worse news than before, he pondered o�er his misfortunes, fearing that he would have to give up his hounds and his horses, withdraw his daughters from Miss Featherey�s, and go to Boulogne, and as he contemplated the airy outline of their newly-erected rural palace of a workhouse, he said it was lucky they had built it, for he thought they would all very soon be in it. Certainly, things got to their worst in the farming way, before they began to mend, and such land as the Major�s�good, but �salivated with wet,� as the cabman said of his coat�was scarcely to be let at any price. In these go-a-head days of farming, when the enterprising sons of trade are fast obliterating the traces of the heavy-heel�d order of easy-minded Hodges who, ���held their farms and lived content While one year paid another�s rent,� without ever making any attempt at improvement, it may be amusing to record the business-like offer of some of those indolent worthies who would bid for a pig in a poke. Thus it runs:�It should have been dated April 1, instead of 21:� TO MAJOR YAMMERTON. �Onard Sir, _�Hobnail Hill, April 21. _ �Wheas We have considered we shall give you for Bonnyrig�s farme the som £100 25 puns upon condishinds per year if you should think it to little we may perhaps advance a little as we have not looked her carefully over her and for character Mr. Sowerby will give you every information as we are the third giniration that�s been under the Sowerbys. _�Yours sincerely,_ �Henerey Brown, �Homfray Brown�Co. �_If you want anye otes I could sell you fifteen bowels of verye fine ones._� Now the �som £100 25 puns� being less than half what the Major�s grandfather used to get for the farm:�viz. �£200 63 puns,��our Major was considerably perplexed; and as �Henerey and Homfray��s offer was but a sample of the whole, it became a question between Boulogne and Bastile, as those once unpopular edifices, the workhouses, were then called. And here we may observe, that there is nothing perhaps, either so manageable or so unmanageable as land�nothing easier to keep right than land in good order, and nothing more difficult to get by the head, and stop, than land that has run wild; and it may be laid down as an infallible rule, that the man who has no taste for land or horses should have nothing to do with either. He should put his money in the funds, and rail or steam when he has occasion to travel. He will be far richer, far fatter, and fill the bay window of his club far better, than by undergoing the grinding of farmers and the tyranny of grooms. Land, like horses, when once in condition is easily kept so, but once let either go down, and the owner becomes a prey to the scratchers and the copers. If, however, a man likes a little occupation better than the eternal gossip, and �_who�s that?_� of the clubs, and prefers a smiling improving landscape to a barren retrograding scene, he will find no pleasanter, healthier, or more interesting occupation than improving his property. And a happy thing it was for this kingdom, that Prince Albert who has done so much to refine and elevate mankind, should have included farming in the list of his amusements,�bringing the before despised pursuit into favour and fashion, so that now instead of land remaining a prey to the �Henerey Browns & Co.� of life, we find gentlemen advertising for farms in all directions, generally stipulating that they are to be on the line of one or other of the once derided railways. But we are getting in advance of the times with our Major, whom we left in the slough of despond, consequent on the coming down of his rents. Just when things were at their worst, the first sensible sunbeam of simplicity that ever shone upon land, appeared in the shape of the practical, easy-working Drainage Act, an act that has advanced agriculture more than all previous inventions and legislation put together. But our gallant friend had his difficulties to contend with even here. Mr. Bullrush was opposed to it. He was fat and didn�t like trouble, so he doubted the capacity of such a pocket companion as a pipe to carry off the superfluous water, then he doubted the ability of the water to get into the pipe at such a depth, above all he doubted the ability of the tenants to pay drainage interests. �How could they if they couldn�t pay their rents?� Of course, the tenants adopted this view of the matter, and were all opposed to making what they called �experiences,� at their own expense; so upon the whole, Mr. Bullrush advised the Major to have nothing to do with it. It being, however, a case of necessity with the Major, he disregarded Mr. Bullrush�s advice which led to a separation, and being now a free agent, he went boldly at the government loan, and soon scared all the snipes and half the tenants off his estate. The water poured off in torrents; the plump juicy rushes got the jaundice, and Mossington bog, over which the Major used to have to scuttle on foot after his �haryers,� became sound enough to carry a horse. Then as Mr. Bullrush rode by and saw each dreary swamp become sound ground, he hugged himself with the sloven�s consolation that it �wouldn�t p-a-a-y.� Pay, however, it did, for our Major next went and got some stout horses, and the right sort of implements of agriculture, and soon proved the truth of the old adage, that it is better to follow a sloven than a scientific farmer. He worked his land well, cleaned it well, and manured it well; in which three simple operations consists the whole science of husbandry, and instead of growing turnips for pickling, as his predecessors seemed to do, he got great healthy Swedes that loomed as large as his now fashionable daughter�s dresses. He grew as many �bowels� of oats upon one acre of land as any previous tenant had done upon three. So altogether, our Major throve, and instead of going to Boulogne, he presently set up the Cockaded Coach in which we saw him arrive at Tantivy Castle. Not that he went to a coachmaker�s and said, �Build me a roomy family coach regardless of expense,� but, finding that he couldn�t get an inside seat along with the thirty-six yard dresses in the old chariot, he dropped in at the sale of the late Squire Trefoil�s effects, who had given some such order, and, under pretence of buying a shower-bath, succeeded in getting a capital large coach on its first wheels for ten pounds,�scarcely the value of the pole. As a contrast to Henerey Brown and Co.�s business-like offer for the farm, and in illustration of the difference between buying and selling, we append the verbose estimate of this ponderous affair. Thus it runs� HENRY TREFOIL, ESQ. To CHALKER AND CHARGER COACHMAKERS, BY APPOINTMENT, TO THE EMPEROR OF CHINA, Emperor of Morocco, the King of Oude, the King of the Cannibal Islands, &c., &c., &c., &c. _Long Acre, London_. (Followed by all the crowns, arms, orders, flourish, and flannel, peculiar to aristocratic tradesmen.) 128m _Original Size_ Three hundred and ninety pounds! And to think that the whole should come to be sold for ten sovereigns. Oh, what a falling off was there, my coachmakers! Surely the King of the Cannibal Islands could never afford to pay such prices as those! Verily, Sir Robert Peel was right when he said that there was no class of tradespeople whose bills wanted reforming so much as coachmakers. What ridiculous price they make wood and iron assume, and what absurd offers they make when you go to them to sell! CHAPTER XVI. THE MAJOR�S MENAGE. 129m _Original Size_ AND first about the �haryers!� �Five-and-thirty years master of haryers without a subscription!� This, we think, is rather an exaggeration, both as regards time and money, unless the Major reckons an undivided moiety he had in an old lady-hound called �Lavender� along with the village blacksmith of Billinghurst when he was at school. If he so calculates, then he would be right as to time, but wrong as to money, for the blacksmith paid his share of the tax, and found the greater part of the food. For thirty years, we need hardly tell the reader of sporting literature, that the Major had been a master of harriers�for well has he blown the horn of their celebrity during the whole of that long period�never were such harriers for finding jack hares, and pushing them through parishes innumerable, making them take rivers, and run as straight as railways, putting the costly performances of the foxhounds altogether to the blush. Ten miles from point to point, and generally without a turn, is the usual style of thing, the last run with this distinguished pack being always unsurpassed by any previous performance. Season after season has the sporting world been startled with these surprising announcements, until red-coated men, tired of blanks and ringing foxes, have almost said, �Dash my buttons, if I won�t shut up shop here and go and hunt with these tremendous harriers,� while other currant-jelly gentlemen, whose hares dance the fandango before their plodding pack, have sighed for some of these wonderful �Jacks� that never make a curve, or some of the astonishing hounds that have such a knack at making them fly. Well, but the reader will, perhaps, say it�s the blood that does it�the Major has an unrivalled, unequalled strain of harrier blood that nobody else can procure. Nothing of the sort! Nothing of the sort! The Major�s blood is just anything he can get. He never misses a chance of selling either a single hound or a pack, and has emptied his kennel over and over again. But then he always knows where to lay hands on more; and as soon as ever the new hounds cross his threshold they become the very �best in the world��better than any he ever had before. They then figure upon paper, just as if it was a continuous pack; and the field being under pretty good command, and, moreover, implicated in the honour of their performances, the thing goes on smoothly and well, and few are any the wiser. There is nothing so popular as a little fuss and excitement, in which every man may take his share, and this it is that makes scratch packs so celebrated. Their followers see nothing but their perfections. They are �To their faults a little blind, And to their virtues ever kind.� At the period of which we are writing, the Major�s pack was rather better than usual, being composed of the pick of three packs,��cries of dogs� rather�viz., the Corkycove harriers, kept by the shoemakers of Waxley; the Bog-trotter harriers (four couple), kept by some moor-edge miners; the Dribbleford dogs, upon whom nobody would pay the tax; and of some two or three couple of incurables, that had been consigned from different kennels on condition of the Major returning the hampers in which they came. The Major was open to general consignments in the canine line�Hounds, Pointers, Setters, Terriers, &c.�not being of George the Third�s way of thinking, who used to denounce all �presents that eat.� He would take anything; anything, at least, except a Greyhound, an animal that he held in mortal abhorrence. What he liked best was to get a Lurcher, for which he soon found a place under a pear-tree. The Major�s huntsman, old Solomon, was coachman, shepherd, groom, and gamekeeper, as well as huntsman, and was the cockaded gentleman who drove the ark on the occasion of our introduction. In addition to all this, he waited at table on grand occasions, and did a little fishing, hay-making, and gardening in the summer. He was one of the old-fashioned breed of servants, now nearly extinct, who passed their lives in one family and turned their hands to whatever was wanted. The Major, whose maxim was not to keep any cats that didn�t catch mice, knowing full well that all gentlemen�s servants can do double the work of their places, provided they only get paid for it, resolved, that it was cheaper to pay one man the wages of one-and-a-half to do the work of two men, than to keep two men to do the same quantity; consequently, there was very little hissing at bits and curb-chains in the Major�s establishment, the hard work of other places being the light work, or no work at all, of his. Solomon was the _beau idéal_ of a harrier huntsman, being, as the French say, _d�un certain age_, quiet, patient, and a pusillanimous rider. Now about the subscription. It is true that the Major did not take a subscription in the common acceptation of the term, but he took assistance in various ways, such as a few days ploughing from one man, a few �bowels� of seed-wheat from another, a few �bowels� of seed-oats from a third, a lamb from a fourth, a pig from a fifth, added to which, he had all the hounds walked during the summer, so that his actual expenses were very little more than the tax. This he jockeyed by only returning about two-thirds the number of hounds he kept; and as twelve couple were his hunting maximum, his taxing minimum would be about eight�eight couple�or sixteen hounds, at twelve shillings a-piece, is nine pound twelve, for which sum he made more noise in the papers than the Quorn, the Belvoir, and the Cottesmore all put together. Indeed the old adage of �great cry and little wool,� applies to packs as well as flocks, for we never see hounds making a great �to-do� in the papers without suspecting that they are either good for nothing, or that the fortunate owner wants to sell them. With regard to horses, the Major, like many people, had but one sort�the best in England�though they were divided into two classes, viz., hunters and draught horses. Hacks or carriage horses he utterly eschewed. Horses must either hunt or plough with him; nor was he above putting his hunters into the harrows occasionally. Hence he always had a pair of efficient horses for his carriage when he wanted them, instead of animals that were fit to jump out of their skins at starting, and ready to slip through them on coming home. Clothing he utterly repudiated for carriage horses, alleging, that people never get any work out of them after they are once clothed. The hunters were mostly sedate, elderly animals, horses that had got through the �morning of life� with the foxhounds, and came to the harriers in preference to harness. The Major was always a buyer or an exchanger, or a mixer of both, and would generally �advance a little� on the neighbouring job-master�s prices. Then having got them, he recruited the veterans by care and crushed corn, which, with cutting their tails, so altered them, that sometimes their late groom scarcely knew them again. Certainly, if the animals could have spoken, they would have expressed their surprise at the different language the Major held as a buyer and as a seller; as a buyer, when like Gil Blas� mule, he made them out to be all faults, as a seller when they suddenly seemed to become paragons of perfection. He was always ready for a deal, and would accommodate matters to people�s convenience�take part cash, part corn, part hay, part anything, for he was a most miscellaneous barterer, and his stable loft was like a Marine Store-dealer�s shop. Though always boasting that his little white hands were not �soiled with trade,� he would traffic in anything (on the sly) by which he thought he could turn a penny. His last effort in the buying way had nearly got him into the County Court, as the following correspondence will show, as also how differently two people can view the same thing. Being in town, with wheat at 80s. and barley and oats in proportion, and consequently more plethoric in the pocket than usual, he happened to stray into a certain great furniture mart where two chairs struck him as being cheap. They were standing together, and one of them was thus ticketed: No. 8205. 2 Elizabethan chairs. India Japanned. 43 s. The Major took a good stare at them, never having seen any before. Well, he thought they could not be dear at that; little more than a guinea each. Get them home for fifty shillings, say. There was a deal of gold, and lacker, and varnish about them. Coloured bunches of flowers, inlaid with mother of pearl, Chinese temples, with �insolent pig-tailed barbarians,� in pink silk jackets, with baggy blue trowsers, and gig whips in their hands, looking after the purple ducks on the pea-grcen lake�all very elegant. He�d have them, dashed if he wouldn�t! Would try and swap them for Mrs. Rocket Larkspur�s Croydon basket-carriage that the girls wanted. Just the things to tickle her fancy. So he went into the office and gave his card most consequentially, with a reference to Pannell, the sadler in Spur Street, Leicestor-square, desiring that the chairs might be most carefully packed and forwarded to him by the goods train with an invoice by post. When the invoice came, behold! the 43s. had changed into 86s. �Hilloa!� exclaimed the astonished Major. This won�t do! 86s. is twice 43s.; and he wrote off to say they had made a mistake. This brought the secretary of the concern, Mr. Badbill, on to the scene. He replied beneath a copious shower of arms, orders, flourish, and flannel, that the mistake was the Major�s�that they, �never marked their goods in pairs,� to which the Major rejoined, that they had in this instance, as the ticket which he forwarded to Pannell for Badbill�s inspection showed, and that he must decline the chairs at double the price they were ticketed for. Badbill, having duly inspected the ticket, retorted that he was surprised at the Major�s stupidity, that two meant one, in fact, all the world over. The Major rejoined, that he didn�t know what the Reform Bill might have done, but that two didn�t mean one when he was at school; and added, that as he declined the chairs at 86s. they were at Badhill�s service for sending for. Badbill wrote in reply� �_We really cannot understand how it is possible, for any one to make out that a ticket on an article includes the other that may stand next it. Certainly the ticket you allude to referred only to the chair on which it was placed_.� And in a subsequent letter he claimed to have the chairs repacked at the Major�s expense, as it was very unfair saddling them with the loss arising entirely from the Major�s mistake. To which our gallant friend rejoined, �that as he would neither admit that the mistake was his, nor submit to the imputation of unfairness, he would stick to the chairs at the price they were ticketed at.� Badbill then wrote that this declaration surprised them much�that they did not for a moment think he �intentionally misunderstood the ticket as referring to a pair of chairs, whereas it only gave the price of one chair,� and again begged to have them back; to which the Major inwardly responded, he �wished they might get them,� and sent them an order for the 43s. This was returned with expressions of surprise, that after the explanation given, the Major should persevere in the same �course of error,� and hoped that he would, without further delay, favour the Co. with the right amount, for which Badbill said they �anxiously waited,� and for which the Major inwardly said, they �might wait.� In due time came a lithographed circular, more imposingly flourished and flanneled than ever, stating the terms of the firm were �cash on delivery;� and that unless the Major remitted without further delay, he would be handed over to their solicitor, &c.; with an intimation at the bottom, that that was the �third application��of which our gallant friend took no notice. Next came a written, �Sir, �_I am desired by this firm to inform you, that unless we hear from you by return of post respecting the payment of our account, we shall place the matter in the hands of our solicitors without further notice, and regret you should have occasioned us so much trouble through your own misunderstanding_.� Then came the climax. The Major�s solicitor went, ticket in hand, and tendered the 43s., when the late bullying Badbill was obliged to write as follows:� �_It appears you are quite correct rejecting the ticket, and we are in error. Our ticketing clerk had placed the figure in the wrong part of the card, the figure �two� referring to the number of chairs in stock, and not as understood to signifying chairs for 43s.;_� and Badbill humorously concluded by expressing a hope that the Major would return the chairs and continue his custom�two very unlikely events, as we dare say the reader will think, to happen. Such, then, was the knowing gentleman who now sought the company of Fine Billy; and considering that he is to be besieged on both sides, we hope to be excused for having gone a little into his host and hostess� pedigree and performances. The Major wrote Billy a well-considered note, saying, that when he could spare a few days from his lordship and the foxhounds, it would afford Mrs. Yammerton and himself great pleasure if he would come and pay them a visit at Yammerton Grange, and the Major would be happy to mount him, and keep his best country for him, and show him all the sport in his power, adding, that they had been having some most marvellous runs lately�better than any he ever remembered. Now, independently of our friend Billy having pondered a good deal on the beauty of the young lady�s eyes, he could well spare a few days from the foxhounds, for his lordship, being quite de Glancey-cured, and wishing to get rid of him, had had him out again, and put him on to a more fractious horse than before, who after giving him a most indefinite shaking, had finally shot him over his head. The Earl was delighted, therefore, when he heard of the Major�s invitation, and after expressing great regret at the idea of losing our Billy, begged he would �come back whenever it suited him:� well knowing that if he once got him out of the house, he would be very sly if he got in again. And so Billy, who never answered Mamma�s repeated inquiries if there were any �Miss H�s� engaged himself to Yammerton Grange, whither the reader will now perhaps have the kindness to accompany him. CHAPTER XVII. ARRIVAL AT YAMMERTON GRANGE.�A FAMILY PARTY. 135m _Original Size_ AILWAYS have taken the starch out of country magnificence, as well as out of town. Time was when a visitor could hardly drive up to a great man�s door in the country in a po�chav�now it would be considered very magnificent�a bliss, or a one-oss fly being more likely the conveyance. The Richest Commoner in England took his departure from Tantivy Castle in a one-horse fly, into which he was assisted by an immense retinue of servants. It was about time for him to be gone for Mons. Jean Rougier had been what he called �boxaing� with the Earl�s big watcher, Stephen Stout, to whom having given a most elaborate licking, the rest of the establishment were up in arms, and would most likely have found a match for Monsieur among them. Jack�that is to say, Mons. Jean�now kissed his hand, and grinned, and bowed, and _bon-jour�d_ them from the box of the fly, with all the affability of a gentleman who has had the best of it. Off then they ground at as good a trot as the shaky old quadruped could raise. It is undoubtedly a good sound principle that Major and Mrs. Yammerton went upon, never to invite people direct from great houses to theirs; it dwarfs little ones so. A few days ventilation at a country inn with its stupid dirty waiters, copper-showing plate, and wretched cookery, would be a good preparation, only no one ever goes into an inn in England that can help it. Still, coming down from a first-class nobleman�s castle to a third-class gentleman�s house, was rather a trial upon the latter. Not that we mean to say anything disrespectful of Yammerton Grange, which, though built at different times, was good, roomy, and rough-cast, with a man-boy in brown and yellow livery, who called himself the �Butler,� but whom the women-servants called the �Bumbler.� The above outline will give the reader a general idea of the �style of thing,� as the insolvent dandy said, when he asked his creditors for a �wax candle and eau-de-Cologne� sort of allowance. Everything at the Grange of course was now put into holiday garb, both externally and internally�gravel raked, garden spruced, stables strawed, &c. All the Major�s old sheep-caps, old hare-snares, old hang-locks, old hedging-gloves, pruning-knives, and implements of husbandry were thrust into the back of the drawer of the passage table, while a mixed sporting and military trophy, composed of whips, swords and pistols, radiated round his Sunday hat against the wall above it. The drawing-room, we need not say, underwent metamorphose, the chairs and sofas suddenly changing from rather dirty print to pea-green damask, the druggeted carpet bursting into cornucopias of fruit and gay bouquets, while a rich cover of many colours adorned the centre table, which, in turn, was covered with the proceeds of the young ladies� industry. The room became a sort of exhibition of their united accomplishments. The silver inkstand surmounted a beautiful unblemished blotting-book, fresh pens and paper stood invitingly behind, while the little dictionary was consigned, with other �sundries,� to the well of the ottoman. As the finishing preparations were progressing, the Major and Mrs. Yammerton carried on a broken discussion as to the programme of proceedings, and as, in the Major�s opinion, �There�s nothing can compare, To hunting of the hare,� he wanted to lead off with a _gallope_, to which Mrs. Yammerton demurred. She thought it would be a much better plan to have a quiet day about the place�let the girls walk Mr. Pringle up to Prospect Hill to see the view from Eagleton Rocks, and call on Mrs. Wasperton, and show him to her ugly girls, in return for their visit with Mr. Giles Smith. The Major, on the contrary, thought if there was to be a quiet day about the place, he would like to employ it in showing Billy a horse he had to sell; but while they were in the midst of the argument the click of front gate sneck, followed by the vehement bow-wow-wow-wow-wow bark of the Skye terrier, Fury, announced an arrival, and from behind a ground-feathering spruce, emerged the shaky old horse, dragging at its tail the heavily laden cab. Then there was such a scattering of crinoline below, and such a gathering of cotton above, to see the gentleman alight, and such speculations as to his Christian name, and which of the young ladies he would do for. �I say his name�s Harry!� whispered Sally Scuttle, the housemaid, into Benson�s�we beg pardon�Miss Benson�s, the ladies�-maid�s ear, who was standing before her, peeping past the faded curtains of the chintz-room. �I say it�s John!� replied Miss Benson, now that Mr. Pringle�s head appeared at the window. �I say it�s Joseph!� interposed Betty Bone, the cook, who stood behind Sally Scuttle, at which speculation they all laughed. �Hoot, no! he�s not a bit like Joseph,� replied Sally, eyeing Billy as he now alighted. �Lauk! he�s quite a young gent,� observed Bone. �_Young!_ to be sure!� replied Miss Henson; �you don�t s�pose we want any old�uns here.� �He�ll do nicely for Miss;� observed Sally. �And why not for Miss F.?� asked Henson, from whom she had just received an old gown. �Well, either,� rejoined Sally; �only Miss had the last chance.� �Oh, curates go for nothin�!� retorted Benson; �if it had been a captin it would have been something like.� �Well, but there�s Miss Harriet; you never mention Miss Harriet, why shouldn�t Miss Harriet have a chance?� interposed the cook. �Oh. Miss Harriet must wait her turn. Let her sisters be served first. They can�t all have him, you know, so it�s no use trying.� Billy having entered the house, the ladies� attention was now directed to Monsieur. �What a thick, plummy man he is!� observed Benson, looking down on Rougier�s broad shoulders. �He looks as if he got his vittles well,� rejoined Bone, wondering how he would like their lean beef and bacon fare. �Where will he have to sleep?� asked Sally Scuttle. �O, with the Bumbler to be sure,� replied Bone. �Not _he!_� interposed Miss Benson, with disdain. �You don�t s�pose a reg�lar valley-de-chambre �ill condescend to sleep with a footman! You don�t know them�if you think that.� �He�s got mouse catchers,� observed Sally Scuttle, who had been eyeing Monsieur intently. �Ay, and a beard like a blacking brush,� whispered Bone. �He�s surely a foreigner,� whispered Benson, as Monsieur�s, �_I say!_ take _vell_ care of her!�_lee_aft her down j-e-a-ntly� (alluding to his own carpet bag, in which he had a bottle of rum enveloped in swaddling clothes of dirty linen) to the cabman, sounded upstairs. �So he is,� replied Benson, adding, after a pause, �Well, anybody may have him for me;��saying which she tripped out of the room, quickly followed by the others. Our Major having, on the first alarm, rushed off to his dirty Sanctum, and crowned himself with a drab felt wide-a-wake, next snatched a little knotty dog-whip out of the trophy as he passed, and was at the sash door of the front entrance welcoming our hero with the full spring tide of hospitality as he alighted from his fly. The Major was overjoyed to see him. It was indeed kind of him, leaving the castle to �come and visit them in their �umble abode.� The Major, of course, now being on the humility tack. �Let me take your cloak!� said he; �let me take your cap!� and, with the aid of the Bumbler, who came shuffling himself into his brown and yellow livery coat, Billy was eased of his wrapper, and stood before the now thrown-open drawing-room door, just as Mrs. Yammerton having swept the last brown holland cover off the reclining chair, had stuffed it under the sofa cushion. She, too, was delighted to see Billy, and thankful she had got the room ready, so as to be able presently to subside upon the sofa, �Morning Post� in hand, just as if she had been interrupted in her reading. The young ladies then dropped in one by one; Miss at the passage door, Miss Flora at the one connecting the drawing-room with the Sanctum, and Miss Harriet again at the passage door, all divested of their aprons, and fresh from their respective looking-glasses. The two former, of course, met Billy as an old acquaintance, and as they did not mean to allow Misa Harriet to participate in the prize, they just let her shuffle herself into an introduction as best she could. Billy wasn�t quite sure whether he had seen her before or he hadn�t. At first he thought he had; then he thought he hadn�t; but whether he had or he hadn�t, he knew there would be no harm in bowing, so he just promiscuated one to her, which she acknowledged with a best Featherey curtsey. A great cry of conversation, or rather of random observation, then ensued; in the midst of which the Major slipped out, and from his Sanctum he overheard Monsieur getting up much the same sort of entertainment in the kitchen. There was such laughing and giggling and �_he-hawing_� among the maids, that the Major feared the dinner would be neglected. The Major�s dining-room, though small, would accommodate a dozen people, or incommode eighteen, which latter number is considered the most serviceable-sized party in the country where people feed off their acquaintance, more upon the debtor and creditor system, than with a view to making pleasant parties, or considering who would like to meet. Even when they are what they call �alone,� they can�t be �alone,� but must have in as many servants as they can raise, to show how far the assertion is from the truth. Though the Yammertons sat down but six on the present occasion, and there were the two accustomed dumb-waiters in the room, three live ones were introduced, viz., Monsieur, the Bumbler, and Solomon, whose duty seemed to consist in cooling the victuals, by carrying them about, and in preventing people from helping themselves to what was before them, by taking the dishes off the steady table, and presenting them again on very unsteady hands. No one is ever allowed to shoot a dish sitting if a servant can see it. How pleasant it would be if we were watched in all the affairs of life as we are in eating! Monsieur, we may observe, had completely superseded the Bumbler, just as a colonel supersedes a captain on coming up. �Oi am Colonel Crushington of the Royal Plungers,� proclaims the Colonel, stretching himself to his utmost altitude. �And I am Captain Succumber, of the Sugar-Candy Hussars,� bows the Captain with the utmost humility; whereupon the Captain is snuffed out, and the Colonel reigns in his stead. �I am Monsieur Jean Rougier, valet-de-chambre to me lor Pringle, and I sail take in de potage,�de soup,� observed Rougier, coming down stairs in his first-class clothes, and pushing the now yellow-legged Bumbler aside. 141m _Original Size_ And these hobble-de-hoys never being favourites with the fair, the maids saw him reduced without remorse. So the dinner got set upon the table without a fight and though Monsieur allowed the Bumbler to announce it in the drawing-room, it was only that he might take a suck of the sherry while he was away. But he was standing as bolt upright as a serjeant-major on parade when �me lor� entered the dining-room with Mrs. Yammerton on his arm, followed by the Graces, the Major having stayed behind to blow out the composites. They were soon settled in their places, grace said, and the assault commenced. The Major was rather behind Imperial John in magnificence, for John had got his plate in his drawing-room, while the Major still adhered to the good old-fashioned blue and red, and gold and green crockery ware of his youth. Not but that both Mamma and the young ladies had often represented to him the absolute necessity of having plate, but the Major could never fall in with it at his price�that of German silver, or Britannia metal perhaps. We dare say Fine Billy would never have noticed the deficiency, if the Major had not drawn attention to it by apologising for its absence, and fearing he would not be able to eat his dinner without; though we dare say, if the truth were known our readers�our male readers at least�will agree with us, that a good, hot well-washed china dish is a great deal better than a dull, lukewarm, hand-rubbed silver one. It�s the �wittles� people look to, not the ware. Then the Major was afraid his wine wouldn�t pass muster after the Earl�s, and certainly his champagne was nothing to boast of, being that ambiguous stuff that halts between the price of gooseberry and real; in addition to which, the Major had omitted to pay it the compliment of icing it, so that it stood forth in all its native imperfection. However, it hissed, and fizzed, and popped, and banged, which is always something exciting at all events; and as the Major sported needle-case-shaped glasses which he had got at a sale (very cheap we hope), there was no fear of people getting enough to do them any harm. Giving champagne is one of those things that has passed into custom almost imperceptibly. Twenty, or five-and-twenty years ago, a mid-rank-of-life person giving champagne was talked of in a very shake-the-head, solemn, �I wish-it-may-last,� style; now everybody gives it of some sort or other. We read in the papers the other day of ninety dozen, for which the holder had paid £400, being sold for 13s. 6d. a doz.! What a chance that would have been for our Major. We wonder what that had been made of. It was a happy discovery that giving champagne at dinner saved other wine after, for certainly nothing promotes the conviviality of a meeting so much as champagne, and there is nothing so melancholy and funereal as a dinner party without it. Indeed, giving champagne may be regarded as a downright promoter of temperance, for a person who drinks freely of champagne cannot drink freely of any other sort of wine after it: so that champagne may be said to have contributed to the abolition of the old port-wine toping wherewith our fathers were wont to beguile their long evenings. Indeed, light wines and London clubs have about banished inebriety from anything like good society. Enlarged newspapers, too, have contributed their quota, whereby a man can read what is passing in all parts of the world, instead of being told whose cat has kittened in his own immediate neighbourhood.�With which philosophical reflections, let us return to our party. Although youth is undoubtedly the age of matured judgment and connoisseurship in everything, and Billy was quite as knowing as his neighbours, he accepted the Major�s encomiums on his wine with all the confidence of ignorance, and, what is more to the purpose, he drank it. Indeed, there was nothing faulty on the table that the Major didn�t praise, on the old horse-dealing principle of lauding the bad points, and leaving the good ones to speak for themselves. So the dinner progressed through a multiplicity of dishes; for, to do the ladies justice, they always give good fare:�it is the men who treat their friends to mutton-chops and rice puddings. Betty Bone, too, was a noble-hearted woman, and would undertake to cook for a party of fifty,�roasts, boils, stews, soups, sweets, savouries, sauces, and all! And so what with a pretty girl along side of him, and two sitting opposite, Billy did uncommonly well, and felt far more at home than he did at Tantivy Castle with the Earl and Mrs. Moffatt, and the stiff dependents his lordship brought in to dine. The Major stopped Billy from calling for Burgundy after his cheese by volunteering a glass of home-brewed ale, �bo-bo-bottled,� he said, �when he came of age,� though, in fact, it had only arrived from Aloes, the chemist�s, at Hinton, about an hour before dinner. This being only sipped, and smacked, and applauded, grace was said, the cloth removed, the Major was presently assuring Billy, in a bumper of moderate juvenile port, how delighted he was to see him, how flattered he felt by his condescension in coming to visit him at his �umble abode, and how he �oped to make the visit agreeable to him. This piece of flummery being delivered, the bottles and dessert circulated, and in due time the ladies retired, the Misses to the drawing-room, Madam to the pantry, to see that the Bumbler had not pocketed any of the cheese-cakes or tarts, for which, boy-like, he had a propensity. * * * * The Major, we are ashamed to say, had no mirror in his drawing-room, wherein the ladies could now see how they had been looking; so, of course, they drew to that next attraction�the fire, which having duly stirred, Miss Yammerton and Flora laid their heads together, with each a fair arm resting on the old-fashioned grey-veined marble mantel-piece, and commenced a very laughing, whispering conversation. This, of course, attracted Miss Harriet, who tried first to edge in between them, and then to participate at the sides; but she was repulsed at all points, and at length was told by Miss Yammerton to �_get away!_� as she had �nothing to do with what they were talking about.� �Yes I have,� pouted Miss Harriet, who guessed what the conversation was about. �No, you haven�t,� retorted Miss Flora. �It�s between Flora and me,� observed Miss Yammerton dryly, with an air of authority. �Well, but that�s not fair!� exclaimed Miss Harriet. �Yes it is!� replied Miss Yammerton, throwing up her head. �Yes it _is!_� asserted Miss Flora, supporting her elder sister�s assertion. �No, it�s _not!_� retorted Miss Harriet. �You weren�t there at the beginning,� observed Miss Yammerton, alluding to the expedition to Tantivy Castle. �That was not my fault,� replied Miss Harriet, firmly; �Pa would go in the coach.� �Never mind, you were _not_ there,� replied Miss Yammerton tartly. �Well, but I�ll _ask mamma_ if that�s fair?� rejoined Miss Harriet, hurrying out of the room. CHAPTER XVIII. A LEETLE, CONTRETEMPS. THE Major having inducted his guest into one of those expensive articles of dining-room furniture, an easy chair�expensive, inasmuch as they cause a great consumption of candles, by sending their occupants to sleep,�now set a little round table between them, to which having transferred the biscuits and wine, he drew a duplicate chair to the fire for himself, and, sousing down in it, prepared for a _tête-à-tête_ chat with our friend. He wanted to know what Lord Ladythorne said of him, to sound Billy, in fact, whether there was any chance of his making him a magistrate. He also wanted to find out how long Billy was going to stay in the country, and see whether there was any chance of selling him a horse; so he led up to the points, by calling upon Billy to fill a bumper to the �Merry haryers,� observing casually, as he passed the bottle, that he had now kept them �five-and-thirty years without a subscription, and was as much attached to the sport as ever.� This toast was followed by the foxhounds and Lord Ladythorne�s health, which opened out a fine field for general dissertation and sounding, commencing with Mr. Boggledike, who, the Major not liking, of course, he condemned; and Mrs. Pringle having expressed an adverse opinion of him too, Billy adopted their ideas, and agreed that he was slow, and ought to be drafted. With his magisterial inquiry the Major was not so fortunate, his lordship being too old a soldier to commit himself before a boy like Billy; and the Major, after trying every meuse, and every twist, and every turn, with the proverbial patience and pertinacity of a hare-hunter, was at length obliged to whip off and get upon his horses. When a man gets upon his horses, especially after dinner, and that man such an optimist as the Major, there is no help for it but either buying them in a lump or going to sleep; and as we shall have to endeavour to induce the reader to accompany us through the Major�s stable by-and-bye, we will leave Billy to do which he pleases, while we proceed to relate what took place in another part of the house. For this purpose, it will be necessary to �_ease_ her�_back_ her,� as the Thames steamboat boys say, our story a little to the close of the dinner. Monsieur Jean Rougier having taken the general bearings of the family as he stood behind �me lor Pringle�s� chair, retired from active service on the coming in of the cheese, and proceeded to Billy�s apartment, there to arrange the toilette table, and see that everything was _comme il faut_. Billy�s dirty boots, of course, he took downstairs to the Bumbler to clean, who, in turn, put them off upon Solomon. Very smart everything in the room was. The contents of the gorgeous dressing-case were duly displayed on the fine white damask cloth that covered the rose-colour-lined muslin of the gracefully-fringed and festooned toilette cover, whose flowing drapery presented at once an effectual barrier to the legs, and formed an excellent repository for old crusts, envelopes, curlpapers, and general sweepings. Solid ivory hair-brushes, with tortoiseshell combs, cosmetics, curling fluids, oils and essences without end, mingled with the bijouterie and knick-nacks of the distinguished visitor. Having examined himself attentively in the glass, and spruced up his bristles with Billy�s brushes, Jack then stirred the fire, extinguished the toilette-table candle, which he had lit on coming in, and produced a great blue blouse from the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, in which, having enveloped himself in order to prevent his fine clothes catching dust, he next crawled backwards under the bed. He had not lain there very long ere the opening and shutting of downstairs doors, with the ringing of a bell, was followed by the rustling of silks, and the light tread of airy steps hurrying along the passage, and stopping at the partially-opened door. Presently increased light in the apartment was succeeded by less rustle and tip-toe treads passing the bed, and making up to the looking-glass. The self-inspection being over, candles were then flashed about the room in various directions; and Jack having now thrown all his energies into his ears, overheard the following hurried _sotto voce_ exclamations:� First Voice. �Lauk! what a little dandy it is!� Second Voice. �Look, I say! look at his boots�one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten: ten pair, as I live, besides jacks and tops.� 145m _Original Size_ First Voice. �And shoes in proportion,� the speaker running her candle along the line of various patterned shoes. Second Voice. (Advancing to the toilette-table). �Let�s look at his studs. Wot an assortment! Wonder if those are diamonds or paste he has on.� First Voice. �Oh, _diamonds_ to be sure� (with an emphasis on diamonds). �You don�t s�pose such a little swell as that would wear paste. See! there�s a pearl and diamond ring. Just fits me, I do declare,� added she, trying it on. Second Voice. �What beautiful carbuncle pins!� First Voice. �Oh. what studs!� Second Voice. �Oh. what chains!� First Voice. �Oh, what pins!� Second Voice. �Oh, what a love of a ring!� And so the ladies continued, turning the articles hastily over. �Oh, how happy he _must_ be,� sighed a languishing voice, as the inspection proceeded. �See! here�s his little silver shaving box,� observed the first speaker, opening it. �Wonder what _he_ wants with a shaving box,�got no more beard than I have,� replied the other, taking up Billy�s badger-hair shaving-brush, and applying it to her own pretty chin. �Oh! smell what delicious perfume!� now exclaimed the discoverer of the shaving-box. �Essence of Rondeletia, I do believe! No, extrait de millefleurs,� added she, scenting her �kerchief with some. Then there was a hurried, frightened �_hush!_� followed by a �Take care that ugly man of his doesn�t come.� �Did you ever _see_ such a monster!� ejaculated the other earnestly. �Kept his horrid eyes fixed upon me the whole dinner,� observed the first speaker. �Frights they are,� rejoined the other. �He must keep him for a foil,� suggested the first. �Let�s go, or we�ll be caught!� replied the alarmist; and forthwith the rustling of silks was resumed, the candles hurried past, and the ladies tripped softly out of the room, leaving the door ajar, with Jack under the bed to digest their compliments at his leisure. * * * * But Monsieur was too many for them. Miss had dropped her glove at the foot of the bed, which Jack found on emerging from his hiding place, and waiting until he had the whole party reassembled at tea, he walked majestically into the middle of the drawing-room with it extended on a plated tray, his �horrid eyes� combining all the venom of a Frenchman with the _hauteur_ of an Englishman, and inquired, in a loud and audible voice, �Please, has any lady or shentleman lost its glo-o-ve?� �Yes, I have!� replied Miss, hastily, who had been wondering where she had dropped it. �Indeed, marm,� replied Monsieur, bowing and presenting it to her on the tray, adding, in a still louder voice, �I found it in Monsieur Pringle�s bed-room.� And Jack�s flashing eye saw by the brightly colouring girls which were the offenders. Very much shocked was Mamma at the announcement; and the young ladies were so put about, that they could scarcely compose themselves at the piano, while Miss Harriet�s voice soared exultingly as she accompanied herself on her harp. CHAPTER XIX. THE MAJOR�S STUD. MRS. Yammerton carried the day, and the young ladies carried paper-booted Billy, or rather walked him up to Mrs. Wasperton�s at Prospect Hill, and showed him the ugly girls, and also the beautiful view from Eagleton Rocks, over the wide-spreading vale of Vernerley beyond, which, of course, Billy enjoyed amazingly, as all young gentlemen do enjoy views under such pleasant circumstances. Perhaps he might have enjoyed it more, if two out of three of the dear charmers had been absent, but then things had not got to that pass, and Mamma would not have thought it proper�at least, not unless she saw her way to a very decided preference�which, of course, was then out of the question. Billy was a great swell, and the �chaws� who met him stared with astonishment at such an elegant parasol�d exquisite, picking his way daintily along the dirty, sloppy, rutty lanes. Like all gentlemen in similar circumstances, he declared his boots �wouldn�t take in wet.� Of course, Mamma charged the girls not to be out late, an injunction that applied as well to precaution against the night air, as to the importance of getting Billy back by afternoon stable time, when the Major purposed treating him to a sight of his stud, and trying to lay the foundation of a sale. Perhaps our sporting readers would like to take a look into the Major�s stable before he comes with his victim, Fine Billy. If so, let them accompany us; meanwhile our lady friends can skip the chapter if they do not like to read about horses�or here; if they will step this way, and here comes the Dairymaid, they can look at the cows: real Durham short-horns, with great milking powers and most undeniable pedigrees. Ah, we thought they would tickle your fancy. The cow is to the lady, what the horse is to the gentleman, or, on the score of usefulness, what hare-hunting is to fox-hunting�or shooting to hunting. Master may have many horses pulled backwards out of his stable without exciting half the commiseration among the fair, that the loss of one nice quiet milk-giving cushy cow affords. Cows are friendly creatures. They remember people longer than almost any other animal, dogs not excepted. Well, here are four of them, Old Lily, Strawberry Cream, Red Rose, and Toy; the house is clean and sweet, and smells of milk, and well-made hay, instead of the nasty brown-coloured snuff-smelling stuff that some people think good enough for the poor cow. The Major is proud of his cows, and against the whitewashed wall he has pasted the description of a perfect one, in order that people may compare the originals with the portrait. Thus it runs:� She�s long in the face, she�s fine in the horn, She�ll quickly get fat without cake or corn; She�s clean in her jaws, and full in her chine, She�s heavy in flank, and wide in her loin; She�s broad in her ribs, and long in her rump, A straight and flat back without ever a hump; She�s wide in her hips, and calm in her eyes, She�s fine in her shoulders, and thin in her thighs; She�s light in her neck, and small in her tail, She�s wide at the breast, and good at the pail. She�s fine in her bone and silky of skin. She�s a grazier�s without, and a butcher�s within. Now for the stable; this way, through the saddle-room, and mind the whitening on the walls. Stoop yonr head, for the Major being low himself, has made the door on the principle of all other people being low too. There, there you are, you see, in a stable as neat and clean as a London dealer�s; a Newmarket straw plait, a sanded floor with a roomy bench against the wall on which the Major kicks his legs and stutters forth the merits of his steeds. They are six in number, and before he comes we will just run the reader through the lot, with the aid of truth for an accompaniment. This grey, or rather white one next the wall, White Surrey, as he calls him, is the old quivering tailed horse he rode on the de Glancey day, and pulled up to save, from the price-depressing inconvenience of being beat. He is eighteen years old, the Major having got him when he was sixteen, in a sort of part purchase, part swap, part barter deal. He gave young Mr. Meggison of Spoonbill Park thirteen pounds ten shillings, an old mahogany Piano-Forte, by Broadwood, six and a half octaves, a Squirrel Cage, two Sun-blinds, and a very feeble old horse called Nonpareil, that Tom Rivett the blacksmith declared it would be like robbing Meggison to put new shoes on to, for him. He is a game good shaped old horse, but having frequently in the course of a chequered career, been in that hardest of all hard places, the hands of young single horse owners, White Surrey has done the work of three or four horses. He has been fired and blistered, and blistered and fired, till his legs are as round and as callous as those of a mahogany dining-table; still it is wonderful how they support him, and as he has never given the Major a fall, he rides him as if he thought he never would. His price is sometimes fifty, sometimes forty, sometimes thirty, and there are times when he might be bought for a little less�two sovereigns, perhaps, returned out of the thirty. The next one to him�the white legged brown,�is of the antediluvian order too. He is now called Woodpecker, but he may be traced by half-a-dozen aliases through other stables�Buckhunter, Captain Tart, Fleacatcher, Sportsman, Marc Anthony, &c. He is nearly, if not quite thorough bred, and the ignoble purposes to which he has been subjected, false start making, steeple chasing, flat and hurdle racing, accounts for the number of his names. The Major got him from Captain Caret, of the Apple-pie huzzars, when that gallant regiment was ordered out to India,�taking him all away together, saddle, bridle, clothing, &c., for twenty-three pounds, a strong iron-bound chest, fit for sea purposes, as the Major described it, and a spying glass. This horse, like all the rest of them, indeed, is variously priced, depending upon the party asking, sometimes fifty, sometimes five-and-twenty would buy him. The third is a mare, a black mare, called Star, late the property of Mr. Hazey, the horse-dealing master of the Squeezington hounds. Hazey sold her in his usual course of horse-dealing cheating to young Mr. Sprigginson, of Marygold Lodge, for a hundred and twenty guineas (the shillings back), Hazey�s discrimination enabling him to see that she was turning weaver, and Sprigginson not liking her, returned her on the warranty; when, of course, Hazey refusing to receive her, she was sent to the Eclipse Livery and Bait Stables at Hinton, where, after weaving her head off, she was sold at the hammer to the Major for twenty-nine pounds. Sprig then brought an action against Hazey for the balance, bringing half-a-dozen witnesses to prove that she wove when she came; Hazey, of course, bringing a dozen to swear that she never did nothin� �o the sort with him, and must have learnt it on the road; and the jury being perplexed, and one of them having a cow to calve, another wanting to see his sweetheart, and the rest wanting their dinners, they just tossed up for it, �Heads!� for Sprig; �Tails!� for Hazey, and Sprig won. There she goes, you see, weaving backwards and forwards like a caged panther in a den. Still she is far from being the worst that the Major has; indeed, we are not sure that she is not about the best, only, as Solomon says, with reference to her weaving, she gets the �langer the warser.� Number four is a handsome whole coloured bright bay horse, �Napoleon the Great,� as the Major calls him, in hopes that his illustrious name will sell him, for of all bad tickets he ever had, the Major thinks Nap is the worst. At starting, he is all fire, frisk, and emulation, but before he has gone five miles, he begins to droop, and in hunting knocks up entirely before he has crossed half-a-dozen fields. He is a weak, watery, washy creature, wanting no end of coddling, boiled corn, and linseed tea. One hears of two days a-week horses, but Napoleon the Great is a day in two weeks one. The reader will wonder how the Major came to get such an animal, still more how he came to keep him; above all, how he ever came to have him twice. The mystery, however, is explained on the old bartering, huckstering, half-and-half system. The Major got him first from Tom Brandysneak, a low public-house-keeping leather-plater, one of those sporting men, not sportsmen, who talk about supporting the turf, as if they did it like the noblemen of old, upon principle, instead of for what they can put into their own pockets; and the Major gave Sneak an old green dog-cart, a melon frame, sixteen volumes of the �Racing Calendar,� bound in calf, a ton of seed-hay, fifty yards of Croggon�s asphalt roofing felt, and three �golden sovereigns� for him. Nap was then doing duty under the title of Johnny Raw, his calling being to appear at different posts whenever the cruel conditions of a race required a certain number of horses to start in order to secure the added money; but Johnny enacted that office so often for the benefit of the �Honourable Society of Confederated Legs,� that the stewards of races framed their conditions for excluding him; and Johnny�s occupation being gone, he came to the Major in manner aforesaid. Being, however, a horse of prepossessing appearance, a good bay, with four clean black legs, a neat well set-on head, with an equally neat set-on tail, a flowing mane, and other &c�s, he soon passed into the possession of young Mr. Tabberton, of Green Linnet Hill, whose grandmamma had just given him a hundred guineas wherewith to buy a good horse�a _real_ good one he was to be�a hundred-guinea-one in fact. Tabberton soon took all the gay insolence out of Johnny�s tail, and brought him back to the Major, sadly dilapidated�a sad satire upon his former self. Meanwhile the Major had filled up his stall with a handsome rich-coloured brown mare, with a decidedly doubtful fore-leg; and the Major, all candour and affability, readily agreed to exchange, on condition of getting five-and-twenty pounds to boot. The mare presently went down to exercise, confirming the Major�s opinion of the instability of her leg, and increasing his confidence in his own judgment. Napoleon the Great, late Johnny Raw, now reigns in her stead, and very well he looks in the straw. Indeed, that is his proper place; and as many people only keep their horses to look at, there is no reason why Napoleon the Great should remain in the Major�s stables. He certainly won�t if the Major can help it. Number five is a vulgar looking little dun-duck-et-y mud-coloured horse, with long white stockings, and a large white face, called Bull-dog, that Solomon generally rides. Nobody knows how old he is, or how many masters he has had, or where he came from, or who his father was, or whether he had a grandfather, or anything whatever about him. The Major got him for a mere nothing�nine pounds�at Joe Seton�s, the runaway Vet�s sale, about five years ago, and being so desperately ugly and common looking, no one has ever attempted to deprive the Major of him either in the way of barter or sale. Still Bully is a capital slave, always ready either to hunt, or hack, or go in harness, and will pass anything except a public-house, being familiarly and favourably known at the doors of every one in the county. Like most horses, he has his little peculiarity; and his consists of a sort of rheumatic affection of the hind leg, which causes him to catch it up, and sends him limping along on three legs, like a lame dog, but still he never comes down, and the attack soon goes off. Solomon and he look very like their work together. The next horse to Bull-dog, and the last in the stable, is Golden-drop, a soft, mealy chestnut�of all colours the most objectionable. He is a hot, pulling, hauling, rushing, rough-actioned animal, that gives a rider two days� exercise in one. The worst of him is, he has the impudence to decline harness; for though he doesn�t �mill,� as they call it, he yet runs backwards as fast as forwards, and would crash through a plate-glass window, a gate, a conservatory, or anything else that happened to be behind. As a hack he is below mediocrity, for in his walk he digs his toes into the ground about every tenth step, and either comes down on his nose, or sets off at score for fear of a licking, added to which, he shies at every heap of stones and other available object on the road, whereby he makes a ten miles� journey into one of twelve. The Major got him of Mr. Brisket, the butcher, at Hinton, being taken with the way in which his hatless lad spun him about the ill-paved streets, with the meat-basket on his arm�the full trot, it may be observed, being the animal�s pace�but having got him home, the more the Major saw of him the less he liked him. He had a severe deal for him too, and made two or three journeys over to Hinton on market-days, and bought a pennyworth of whipcord of one saddler, a set of spur-leathers of another, a pot of harness-paste of a third, in order to pump them about the horse ere he ventured to touch. He also got Mr. Paul Straddler, the disengaged gentleman of the place, whose greatest pleasure is to be employed upon a deal, to ferret out all he could about him, who reported that the horse was perfectly sound, and a capital feeder, which indeed he is, for he will attack anything, from a hayband down to a hedge-stake. You see he�s busy on his bedding now. Brisket knowing his man, and that the Major killed his own mutton, and occasionally beef, in the winter, so that there was no good to be got of him in the meat way, determined to ask a stiff price, viz., £25 (Brisket having given £14, which the Major having beat down to £23 commenced on the mercantile line, which Brisket�s then approaching marriage favoured, and the Major ultimately gave a four-post mahogany bedstead, with blue damask furniture, palliasse and mattress to match; a mahogany toilet-mirror, 23 inches by 28: a hot-water pudding-dish, a silver-edged cake-basket, a bad barometer, a child�s birch-wood crib, a chess-board, and £2 10 s. in cash for him, the £2 10 s.. being, as the Major now declares (to himself, of course,) far more than his real worth. However, there the horse stands; and though he has been down twice with the Major, and once with the Humbler, these little fore paws (_faux pas_) as the Major calls them, have been on the soft, and the knees bear no evidence of the fact. Such is our friend�s present stud, and such is its general character. But stay! We are omitting the horse in this large family-pew-looking box at the end, whose drawn curtains have caused us to overlook him. He is another of the Major�s bad tickets, and one of which he has just become possessed in the following way:� Having�in furtherance of his character of a �thorrer sportsman,� and to preserve the spirit of impartiality so becoming an old master of �haryers��gone to Sir Moses Mainchance�s opening day, as well as to my Lord�s, Sir Moses, as if in appreciation of the compliment, had offered to give the horse on which his second whip was blundering among the blind ditches. The Major jumped at the offer, for the horse looked well with the whip on him; and, as he accepted, Sir Moses increased the stream of his generosity by engaging the Major to dine and take him away. Sir Moses had a distinguished party to meet him, and was hospitality itself. He plied our Major with champagne, and hock, and Barsac, and Sauterne, and port, and claret, and compliments, but never alluded to the horse until about an hour after dinner, when Mr. Smoothley, the jackal of the hunt, brought him on the _tapis_. �Ah!� exclaimed Sir Moses, as if in sudden recollection, �that�s true! Major, you�re quite welcome to �Little-bo-peep,� (for so he had christened him, in order to account for his inquisitive manner of peering). Your _quite_ welcome to �Little-bo-peep,� and I hope he�ll be useful to you.� �Thank�e, Sir Moses, thank�e!� bobbed the grateful Major, thinking what a good chap the baronet was. �_Not a bit!_� replied Sir Moses, chucking up his chin, just as if he was in the habit of giving a horse away every other day in the week. �_Not a bit!_ Keep him as long as you like�all the season if you please�and send him back when you are done.� Then, as if in deprecation of any more thanks, he plied the wine again, and gave the Major and his �harriers� in a speech of great gammonosity. The Major was divided between mortification at the reduction of the gift into a loan, and gratification at the compliment now paid him, but was speedily comforted by the flattering reception his health, and the stereotyped speech in which he returned thanks, met at the hands of the company. He thought he must be very popular. Then, when they were all well wined, and had gathered round the sparkling fire with their coffee or their Curaçoa in their hands, Sir Moses button-holed the Major with a loud familiar, �I�ll tell ye what, Yammerton! you�re a devilish good feller, and there shall be no obligation between us�you shall just give me forty puns for �Little-bo-peep,� and that�s making you a present of him for it�s a hundred less than I gave.� ��Ah! that�s the way to do it!� exclaimed Mr. Smoothley, as if delighted at Sir Moses having dropped upon the right course. �Ah! _that�s_ the way to do it!� repented he, swinging himself gaily round on his toe, with a loud snap of his finger and thumb in the air. And Sir Moses said it in such a kind, considerate, matter-of-course sort of way, before company too, and Smoothley clenched it so neatly, that our wine-flushed Major, acute as he is, hadn�t presence of mind to say �No.� So he was saddled with �Little-bo-peep,� who has already lost one eye from cataract, which is fast going with the other. But see! Here comes Solomon followed by the Bumbler in fustian, and the boy from the farm, and we shall soon have the Major and Billy, so let us step into Bo-peep�s box, and I hear the Major�s description of his stud. * * * * Scarcely have the grooms dispersed the fast-gathering gloom of a November afternoon, by lighting the mould candles in the cord-suspended lanterns slung along the ceiling, and began to hiss at the straw, when the Major entered, with our friend Billy at his heels. The Bumbler and Chaw then put on extra activity, and the stable being presently righted, heads were loosened, water supplied, and the horses excited by Solomon�s well-known peregrination to the crushed corn-bin. All ears were then pricked, eyes cast back, and hind-quarters tucked under to respond gaily to the �come over� of the feeder. 155m _Original Size_ The late watchful whinnying restlessness is succeeded by gulping, diving, energetic eating. Our friend having passed his regiment of horses in silent review, while the hissing was going on, now exchanges a few confidential words with the stud groom, as if he left everything to him, and then passes upwards to where he started from. Solomon having plenty to do elsewhere, presently retires, followed by his helpers, and the Major and Billy seat themselves on the bench. After a few puffs and blows of the cheeks and premonitory jerks of the legs, the Major nods an approving �nice �oss, that,� to Napoleon the Great, standing opposite, who is the first to look up from his food, being with it as with his work, always in a desperate hurry to begin, and in an equally great one to leave off. �Nice �oss, that,� repeats the Major, nodding again. �Yarse, he looks like a nice �orse;� replied Billy, which is really as much as any man can say under the circumstances. �That �oss should have won the D-d-d-derby in Nobbler�s year,� observed the Major; �only they d-d-drugged him the night before starting, and he didn�t get half round the c-c-co-course,� which was true enough, only it wasn�t owing to any drugging, for he wasn�t worth the expense. �That �oss should be in Le-le-le-leieestershire,� observed the Major. �He has all the commandin� s-s-s-statur requisite to make large fences look s-s-s-small, and the s-s-s-smoothest, oiliest action i-ma-ma-maginable.� �Yarse;� replied Billy, wondering what pleasure there was in looking at a lot of blankets and hoods upon horses�which was about all he could see. �He should be at Me-me-melton,� observed the Major; still harping on Napoleon��wasted upon haryers,� added he. �Yarse,� replied Billy, not caring where he was. The Major then took a nod at the Weaver, who, as if in aid of her master�s design, now stood bolt upright, listening, as it were, instead of reeling from side to side. �That�s a sw-sw-swe-e-t mare,� observed the Major, wishing he was rid of her. �I don�t know whether I would rather have her or the horse (Nap);� which was true enough, though he knew which he would like to sell Billy. �You�ll remember the g-g-gray, the whi-white,� continued he; looking on at the old stager against the wall. �That�s the �oss I rode with the Peer, on the Castle day, and an undeniable g-g-good one he is;� but knowing that he was not a young man�s horse�moreover, not wanting to sell him, he returned to Napoleon, whose praises he again sounded considerably. Billy, however, having heard enough about him, and wanting to get into the house to the ladies, drew his attention to Bull-dog, now almost enveloped in blankets and straw; but the Major, not feeling inclined to waste any words on him either, replied, �That he was only a servant�s �oss.� He, however, spoke handsomely of Golden-drop, declaring he was the fastest trotter in England, perhaps in Europe, perhaps in the world, and would be invaluable to a D-d-doctor, or any man who wanted to get over the ground. And then, thinking he had said about enough for a beginning, it all at once occurred to him that Billy�s feet must be wet, and though our friend asserted most confidently that they were not, as all townsmen do assert who walk about the country in thin soles, the Major persisted in urging him to go in and change, which Billy at length reluctantly assented to do. CHAPTER XX. CARDS FOR A SPREAD. 158m _Original Size_ THE Major�s ménage not admitting of two such great events as a hunt and a dinner party taking place on the same day, and market interfering as well, the hunt again had to be postponed to the interests of the table. Such an event as a distinguished stranger�the friend of an Earl, too�coming into the country could not but excite convivial expectations, and it would ill become a master of hounds and a mother of daughters not to parade the acquisition. Still, raising a party under such circumstances, required a good deal of tact and consideration, care, of course, being taken not to introduce any matrimonial competitor, at the same time to make the gathering sufficiently grand, and to include a good bellman or two to proclaim its splendour over the country. The Major, like a county member with his constituents, was somewhat hampered with his hounds, not being able to ask exactly who he liked, for fear of being hauled over the coals, viz. warned off the land of those who might think they ought to have been included, and altogether, the party required a good deal of management. Inclination in these matters is not of so much moment, it being no uncommon thing in the country for people to abuse each other right well one day, and dine together the next. The �gap� which the Major prized so much with his hounds, he strongly objected to with his parties. Stopping gaps, indeed, sending out invitations at all in the country, so as not to look like stopping gaps, requires circumspection, where people seem to have nothing whatever to do but to note their neighbours� movements. Let any one watch the progress of an important trial, one for murder say, and mark the wonderful way in which country people come forward, long after the event, to depose to facts, that one would imagine would never have been noticed�the passing of a man with a cow, for instance, just as they dropped their noses upon their bacon plates, the suspension of payment by their clock, on that morning, or the post messenger being a few minutes late with the letters on that day, and so on. What then is there to prevent people from laying that and that together, where John met James, or Michael saw Mary, so as to be able to calculate, whether they were included in the first, second, or third batch of invitations? Towns-people escape this difficulty, as also the equally disagreeable one of having it known whether their �previous engagements� are real or imaginary; but then, on the other hand, they have the inconvenience of feeling certain, that as sure as ever they issue cards for a certain day, every one else will be seized with a mania for giving dinners on the same one. No one can have an idea of the extent of London hospitality�who has not attempted to give a dinner there. Still, it is a difficult world to please, even in the matter of mastication, for some people who abuse you if you don�t ask them to dine, abuse you quite as much if you do. Take the Reverend Mr. Tightlace, the rector, and his excellent lady, for instance. Tightlace was always complaining, at least observing, that the Yammertons never asked them to dine�wondered �_why_ the Yammertons never asked them to dine, was very odd they never asked them to dine,� and yet, when Miss Yammerton�s best copper-plate handwriting appeared on the highly-musked best cream-laid satin note-paper, �requesting, &c.� Tightlace pretended to be quite put out at the idea of having to go to meet that wild sporting youth, who, �he�d be bound to say, could talk of nothing but hunting.� Indeed, having most reluctantly accepted the invitation, he found it necessary to cram for the occasion, and having borrowed a copy of that veteran volume, the �British Sportsman,� he read up all the long chapter on racing and hunting, how to prepare a horse for a hunting match or plate; directions for riding a hunting match or plate; of hunting the hare, and hunting the fox, with directions for the choice of a hunter, and the management of a hunter; part of which latter consisted in putting him to grass between May and Bartholomew-tide, and comforting his stomach before going out to hunt with toasted bread and wine, or toasted bread and ale, and other valuable information of that sort�all of which Tightlace stored in his mind for future use�thinking to reduce his great intellect to the level of Billy�s capacity. Mr. and Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, of Ninian Green, were also successfully angled for and caught; indeed, Mrs. Larkspur would have been much disappointed if they had not been invited, for she had heard of Billy�s elegant appearance from her maid, and being an aspiring lady, had a great desire to cultivate an acquaintance with high life, in which Billy evidently moved. Rocket was a good slow sort of gentleman-farmer, quite a contrast to his fast wife, who was all fire, bustle, and animation, wanting to manage everybody�s house and affairs for them. He had married her, it was supposed, out of sheer submission, because she had made a dead set at him, and would not apparently be said �nay� to. It is a difficult thing to manouvre a determined woman in the country, where your habits are known, and they can assail you at all points�church, streets, fields, roads, lanes, all are open to them; or they can even get into your house under plea of a charity subscription, if needs be. Mrs. and Miss Dotherington, of Goney Garth, were invited to do the Morning Post department, and because there was no fear of Miss Dotherington, who was �very amiable,� interfering with our Billy. Mrs. Dotherington�s other _forte_, besides propagating parties, consisted in angling for legacies, and she was continually on the trot looking after or killing people from whom she had, or fancied she had, expectations. �I�ve just been to see poor Mrs. Snuff,� she would say, drawing a long face; �she�s looking _wretchedly_ ill, poor thing; fear she�s not long for this world;� or, with a grin, �I suppose you�ve heard old Mr. Wheezington has had another attack in the night, which nearly carried him off.� Nothing pleased her so much as being told that any one from whom she had expectations was on the wane. She could ill conceal her satisfaction. So far so good; the party now numbered twelve, six of themselves and six strangers, and nobody to interfere with Fine Billy. The question then arose, whether to ask the Blurkinses, or the Faireys, or the Crickletons, and this caused an anxious deliberation. Blurkins was a landowner, over whose property the Major frequently hunted; but then on the other hand, he was a most disagreeable person, who would be sure to tread upon every body�s corns before the evening was over. Indeed, the Blurkins� family, like noxious vermin, would seem to have been sent into the world for some inscrutable purpose, their mission apparently being to take the conceit out of people by telling them home truths. �Lor� bless us! how old you have got! why you�ve lost a front tooth! declare I shouldn�t have known you!� or �Your nose and your chin have got into fearful proximity,� was the sort of salute Blurkins would give an acquaintance after an absence. Or if the �Featherbedfordshire Gazette,� or the �Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald� had an unflattering paragraph respecting a party�s interference at the recent elections, or on any other subject, Blurkins was the man who would bring it under his notice. �There, sir, there; see what they say about you!� he would say, coming up in the news-room, with the paper neatly folded to the paragraph, and presenting it to him. The Faireys of Yarrow Court were the most producible people, but then Miss was a beauty, who had even presumed to vie with the Yammertons, and they could not ask the old people without her. Besides which, it had transpired that a large deal box, carefully covered with glazed canvas, had recently arrived at the Rosedale station, which it was strongly suspected contained a new dinner dress from Madame Glace�s in Hanover Street; and it would never do to let her sport it at Yammerton Grange against their girl�s rather soiled�but still by candle-light extremely passable�watered silk ones. So, after due deliberation, the Faireys were rejected. The Crickletons� claims were then taken into consideration. Crick was the son of Crickleton, the late eminent chiropodist of Bolton Row, whom many of our readers will remember parading about London on his piebald pony, with a groom in a yellow coat, red plush breeches, and boots; and the present Crickleton was now what he called �seeking repose� in the country, which, in his opinion, consisted in setting all his neighbours by the ears. He rented Lavender Lodge and farm, and being a thorough Cockney, with a great inclination for exposing his ignorance both in the sporting and farming way, our knowing Major was making rather a good thing of him. At first there was a little rivalry between them, as to which was the greater man: Crickleton affirming that his father might have been knighted; the Major replying, that as long as he wasn�t knighted it made no matter. The Major, however, finding it his interest to humour his consequence, compromised matters, by always taking in Mrs. Crickleton, a compliment that Crick returned by taking in Mrs. Yammerton. Though the Major used, when in the running-down tack, to laugh at the idea of a knight�s son claiming precedence, yet, when on the running-up one, he used to intimate that his friend�s father might have been knighted, and even sometimes assigned the honour to his friend himself. So he talked of him to our Billy. The usual preponderating influence setting in in favour of acceptances, our host and hostess were obliged to play their remaining card with caution. There were two sets of people with equal claims�the Impelows of Buckup Hill, and the Baskyfields of Lingworth Lawn; the Impelows, if anything, having the prior claim, inasmuch as the Yammertons had dined with them last; but then, on the other hand, there was a very forward young Impelow whom they couldn�t accommodate, that is to say, didn�t want to have; while, as regarded the Baskyfields, old Basky and Crickleton were at daggers drawn about a sow Basky had sold him, and they would very likely get to loggerheads about it during the evening. A plan of the table was drawn up, to see if it was possible to separate them sufficiently, supposing people would only have the sense to go to their right places, but it was found to be impracticable to do justice to their consequence, and preserve the peace as well; so the idea of having the Baskyfields was obliged to be relinquished. This delay was fatal to the Impelows, for John Giles, their man-of-all-work, having seen Solomon scouring the country on horseback with a basket, in search of superfluous poultry, had reported the forthcoming grand spread at the Grange to his �Missis�; and after waiting patiently for an invitation, it at length came so late as to be an evident convenience, which they wouldn�t submit to; so after taking a liberal allowance of time to answer, in order to prevent the Yammertons from playing the same base trick upon any one else, they declined in a stiff, non-reason-assigning note. This was the first check to the hitherto prosperous current of events, and showed our sagacious friends that the time was past for stopping gaps with family people, and threw them on the other resources of the district. The usual bachelor stop-gaps of the neighbourhood were Tom Hetherington, of Bearbinder Park, and Jimmy Jarperson, of Fothergill Burn, both of whom had their disqualifications; Jarperson�s being an acute nerve-shaking sort of laugh, that set every one�s teeth on edge who heard it, and earned for him the title of the Laughing Hyæna; the other�s misfortune being, that he was only what may be called an intermediate gentleman, that is to say, he could act the gentleman up to a pint of wine or so, after which quantity nature gradually asserted her supremacy, and he became himself again. Our friend Paul Straddler, of Hinton, at one time had had the call of them both, but the Major, considering that Straddler had not used due diligence in the matter of Golden-drop, was not inclined to have him. Besides which, Straddler required a bed, which the Major was not disposed to yield, a bed involving a breakfast, and perhaps a stall for his horse, to say nothing of an out-of-place groom Straddler occasionally adopted, and who could eat as much as any two men. So the Laughing Hyæna and Hetherington were selected. And now, gentle reader, if you will have the kindness to tell them off on your fingers as we call them over, we will see if we have got country, and as many as ever the Major can cram into his diningroom. Please count:� Major, Mrs., three Misses Yammerton and Fine Billy...6 The Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Tightlace......................2 Mr. and Mrs. Rocket Larkspur.........................2 Mrs. and Miss Dotherington...........................2 Mr. and Mrs. Blurkins................................2 Mr. and Mrs. Crickleton..............................2 The Hyæna, and Hetherington..........................2 18 All right! eighteen; fourteen for dining-room chairs, and four for bedroom ones. There are but twelve Champagne needle-cases, but the deficiency is supplied by half-a-dozen ale glasses at the low end of the table, which the Major says will �never be seen.� So now, if you please, we will go and dress�dinner being sharp six, recollect. CHAPTER XXI. THE GATHERING.�THE GRAND SPREAD ITSELF. IF a dinner-party in town, with all the aids and appliances of sham-butlers, job-cooks, area-sneak-entrés, and extraneous confectionary, causes confusion in an establishment, how much more so must a party in the country, where, in addition to the guests, their servants, their horses, and their carriages, are to be accommodated. What a turning-out, and putting-up, and make-shifting, is there! What a grumbling and growling at not getting into the best stable, or at not having the state-vehicle put into the coach-house. If Solomon had not combined the wisdom of his namesake, with the patience of Job, he would have succumbed to the pressure from without. As it was, he kept persevering on until having got the last shandry-dan deposited under the hay house, he had just time to slip up-stairs to �clean himself,� and be ready to wait at dinner. But what a commotion the party makes in the kitchen! Everybody is in a state of stew, from the gallant Betty Bone down to the hind�s little girl from Bonnyriggs Farm, whom they have �got in� for the occasion. Nor do their anxieties end with the dishing-up of the dinner; for no sooner is it despatched, than that scarcely less onerous entertainment, the supper for the servants, has to be provided. Then comes the coffee, then the tea, then the tray, and then the carriages wanted, then good night, good night, good night; most agreeable evening; no idea it was so late; and getting away. But the heat, and steam, and vapour of the kitchen overpowers us, and we gladly seek refuge in the newly �done-up� drawing-room. In it behold the Major!�the Major in all the glory of the Yammerton harrier uniform, a myrtle-green coat, with a gold embroidered hare on the myrtle-green velvet collar, and puss with her ears well back, striding away over a dead gold surface, with a raised burnished rim of a button, a nicely-washed, stiffly-starched, white vest, with a yellow silk one underneath, black shorts, black silk stockings, and patent leather pumps. He has told off his very rare and singularly fine port wine, his prime old Madeira, matured in the West Indies; his nutty sherry, and excellently flavoured claret, all recently bought at the auction mart, not forgetting the ginger-pop-like champagne,�allowing the liberal measure of a pint for each person of the latter, and he is now trying to cool himself down into the easy-minded, unconcerned, every-day-dinner-giving host. Mrs. Yammerton too, on whom devolves the care of the wax and the modérateurs, is here superintending her department�seeing that the hearth is properly swept, and distributing the Punches, and Posts, and �Ask Mamma�s� judiciously over the fine variegated table-cover. She is dressed in a rich silvery grey�with a sort of thing like a silver cow tie, with full tassels, twisted and twined serpent-like into her full, slightly streaked, dark hair. The illumination being complete, she seats herself fan in hand on the sofa, and a solemn pause then ensues, broken only by Billy�s and Monsieur�s meanderings over-head, and the keen whistle of the November wind careering among the hollies and evergreens which the Major keeps interpreting into wheels. Then his wife and he seek to relieve the suspense of the moment by speculating on who will come first. �Those nasty Tightlaces for a guinea,� observed the Major, polishing his nails, while Mrs. Yammerton predicted the Larkspurs. �No, the Tights,� reiterated the Major, jingling his silver; �Tights always comes first�thinks to catch one unprepared�� At length the furious bark of the inhospitable terrier, who really seemed as if he would eat horses, vehicle, visitors, and all, was followed by a quick grind up to the door, and such a pull at the bell as made the Major fear would cause it to suspend payment for good�_ring-ring-ring-ring-ring_ it went, as if it was never going to stop. �Pulled the bell out of the socket, for a guinea,� exclaimed the Major, listening for the letting down of steps, iron or recessed�recessed had it. �Mrs. D.� said the Major�figuring her old Landaulet in his mind. �_Ladies_ evidently,� assented Mrs. Yammerton, as the rustle of silks on their way to the put-to-rights Sanctum, sounded past the drawing-room door. The Major then began speculating as to whether they would get announced before another arrival took place, or not. **** Presently a renewed rustle was succeeded by the now yellow-legged, brown-backed Bumbler, throwing open the door and exclaiming in a stentorian voice, as if he thought his master and mistress had turned suddenly deaf, �Mrs. and Miss Dotherington!� and in an instant the four were hugging, and grinning, and pump-handling each other�s arms as if they were going into ecstacies, Mrs. Dotherington interlarding her gymnastics with Mrs. Yammerton, with sly squeezes of the hand, suited to _soto voce_ observations not intended for the Major�s ears, of �so _�appy_ to ear it! so glad to congratulate you! _So nice!_� with an inquisitive whisper of��_which is it? which is it?_ Do tell me!� **** _Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow_ went the clamorous Fury again; _Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring_ went the aggravated bell, half drowning Mrs. Yammerton�s impressive �O dear! nothin� of the sort�nothin� of the sort, only a fox-hunting acquaintance of the Major�s�only a fox-hunting acquaintance of the Major�s.� And then the Major came to renew his affectionate embraces, with inquiries about the night, and the looks of the moon�was it hazy, or was it clear, or how was it? �Mr. and Mrs. Rocket Larkspur!� exclaimed the Bumbler, following up the key-note in which he had pitched his first announcement and forthwith the hugging and grinning was resumed with the new comers, Mrs. Larkspur presently leading Mrs. Yammerton off sofawards, in order to poke her inquiries unheard by the Major, who was now opening a turnip dialogue with Mr. Rocket�yellow bullocks, purple tops, and so on. �Well, tell me�_which is it?_� ejaculated Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, looking earnestly, in Mrs. Yammerton�s expressive eyes��_which is it,_� repeated she, in a determined sort of take-no-denial tone. �Oh dear! nothin� of the sort�nothin� of the sort, I assure you!� whispered Mrs. Yammerton anxiously, well knowing the danger of holloaing before you are out of the wood. �Oh, _tell me�tell me_,� whispered Mrs. Rocket, coaxingly; �I�m not like Mrs.����um there, looking at Mrs. Dotherington, who would blab it all over the country.� �_Really_ I have nothing to tell,� replied Mrs. Yammerton serenely. �Why, do you mean to say he�s not after one of the����um�s?� demanded Mrs. Rocket eagerly. �I don�t know what you mean,� laughed Mrs. Yammerton. 167m _Original Size_ _Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow_ went the terrier again, giving Mrs. Yammerton an excuse for sidling off to Mrs. �um,� who with her daughter were lost in admiration at a floss silk cockatoo, perched on an orange tree, the production of Miss Flora. �Oh, it was so beautiful! Oh, what a love of a screen it would make; what would she give if her Margaret could do such work,� inwardly thinking how much better Margaret was employed making her own�we will not say what. _Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow_ went Fury again, the proceeds of this bark being Mr. and Mrs. Tightlace, who now entered, the former ��oping they weren�t late,� as he smirked, and smiled, and looked round for the youth on whom he had to vent his �British Sportsman� knowledge�the latter speedily drawing Mrs. Yammerton aside�to the ladies know what. But it was �no go� again. Mrs. Yammerton really didn�t know what Mrs. Tightlace meant. No; she _really_ didn�t. Nor did Mrs. Tightlace�s assurance that it was �the talk of the country,� afford any clue to her meaning�but Mrs. Tightlace�s large miniature brooch being luckily loose, Mrs. Yammerton essayed to fasten it, which afforded her an opportunity of bursting into transports of delight at its beauty, mingled with exclamations as to its �_wonderful_ likeness to Mr. T.,� though in reality she was looking at Mrs. Tightlace�s berthe, to see whether it was machinery lace, or real. Then the grand rush took place; and Fury�s throat seemed wholly inadequate to the occasion, as first Blurkins�s Brougham, then Jarperson�s Gig, next the corn-cutter�s _calèche_, and lastly, Hetherington�s Dog-cart whisked up to the door, causing a meeting of the highly decorated watered silks of the house, and the hooded enveloped visitors hurrying through the passage to the cloak-room. By the time the young ladies had made their obeisances and got congratulated on their looks, the now metamorphosed visitors came trooping in, flourishing their laced kerchiefs, and flattening their _chapeaux mèchaniques_ as they entered. Then the full chorus of conversation was established; moon, hounds, turnips, horses. Parliament, with the usual��Oi see by the papers that Her Majesty is gone to Osborne,� or, �Oi see by the papers that the Comet is coming;� while Mrs. Rocket Larkspur draws Miss Yammerton aside to try what she can fish out of her. But here comes Fine Billy, and if ever hero realised an author�s description of him, assuredly it is our friend, for he sidles as unconcernedly into the room as he would into a Club or Casino, with all the dreamy listlessness of a thorough exquisite, apparently unconscious of any change having taken place in the party. But if Billy is unconscious of the presence of strangers, his host is not, and forthwith he inducts him into their acquaintance�Hetherington�s, Hyæna�s, and all. It is, doubtless, very flattering of great people to vote all the little ones �one of us,� and not introduce them to anybody, but we take leave to say, that society is considerably improved by a judicious presentation. We talk of our advanced civilisation, but manners are not nearly so good, or so �at-ease-setting,� as they were with the last generation of apparently stiffer, but in reality easier, more affable gentlemen of the old school. But what a note of admiration our Billy is! How gloriously he is attired. His naturally curling hair, how gracefully it flows; his elliptic collar, how faultlessly it stands; his cravat, how correct; his shirt, how wonderfully fine; and, oh! how happy he must be with such splendid sparkling diamond studs�such beautiful amethyst buttons at his wrists�and such a love of a chain disporting itself over his richly embroidered blood-stone-buttoned vest. Altogether, such a first-class swell is rarely seen beyond the bills of mortality. He looks as if he ought to be kept under a glass shade. But here comes the Bumbler, and now for the agony of the entertainment. The Major, who for the last few minutes has been fidgetting about pairing parties off according to a written programme he has in his waistcoat pocket, has just time to assign Billy to Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, to assuage her anguish at not being taken in before Mrs. Crickleton, when the Bumbler�s half-fledged voice is heard proclaiming at its utmost altitude��dinner is sarved!� Then there is such a bobbing and bowing, and backing of chairs, and such inward congratulations, that the ��orrid �alf�our� is over, and hopes from some that they may not get next the fire�while others wish to be there. Though the Major could not, perhaps, manage to get twenty thousand men out of Hyde Park, he can, nevertheless, manouvre a party out of his drawing-room into his dining-room, and forthwith he led the way, with Mrs. Crickleton under his arm, trusting to the reel winding off right at the end. And right it would most likely have wound off had not the leg-protruding Bumbler�s tongue-buckle caught the balloon-like amplitude of Mrs. Rocket Larkspur�s dress and caused a slight stoppage�in the passage,�during which time two couples slipped past and so deranged the entire order of the table. However, there was no great harm done, as far as Mrs. Larkspur�s consequence was concerned, for she got next Mr. Tightlace, with Mr. Pringle between her and Miss Yammerton, whom Mrs. Larkspur had just got to admit, that she wouldn�t mind being Mrs. P����, and Miss having been thus confidential, Mrs. was inclined, partly out of gratitude,�partly, perhaps, because she couldn�t help it�to befriend her. She was a great mouser, and would promote the most forlorn hope, sooner than not be doing. We are now in the dining-room, and very smart everything is. In the centre of the table, of course, stands the Yammerton testimonial,�a �Savory� chased silver plated candelabrum, with six branches, all lighted up, and an ornamental centre flower-basket, decorated with evergreens and winter roses, presented to our friend on his completing his �five and twentieth year as master of harriers,� and in gratitude for the unparalleled sport he had uniformly shown the subscribers. Testimonialising has become quite a mania since the Major got his, and no one can say whose turn it may be next. It is not everybody who, like Mr. Daniel Whittle Harvey with the police force one, can nip them in the bud; but Inspector Field, we think, might usefully combine testimonial-detecting with his other secret services. He would have plenty to do�especially in the provinces. Indeed London does not seem to be exempt from the mania, if we may judge by Davis the Queen�s huntsman�s recent attempt to avert the intended honour; neatly informing the projectors that �their continuing to meet him in the hunting field would be the best proof of their approbation of his conduct.� However, the Major got his testimonial; and there it stands, flanked by two pretty imitation Dresden vases decorated with flowers and evergreens also. And now the company being at length seated and grace said, the reeking covers are removed from the hare and mock turtle tureens, and the confusion of tongues gradually subsides into sip-sip-sipping of soup. And now Jarperson, having told his newly caught footman groom to get him hare soup instead of mock turtle, the lad takes the plate of the latter up to the tureen of the former, and his master gets a mixture of both�which he thinks very good. And now the nutty sherry comes round, which the Major introduces with a stuttering exordium that would induce anyone who didn�t know him to suppose it cost at least 80s. a-dozen, instead of 36s. (bottles included); and this being sipped and smacked and pronounced excellent, �two fishes� replace the two soups, and the banquet proceeds, Mr. Tightlace trying to poke his sporting knowledge at Billy between heats, but without success, the commoner not rising at the bait, indeed rather shirking it. A long-necked green bottle of what the Bumbler called �bluecellas,� then goes its rounds; and the first qualms of hunger being appeased, the gentlemen are more inclined to talk and listen to the luncheon-dining ladies. Mrs. Rocket Larkspur has been waiting most anxiously for Billy�s last mouthful, in order to interrogate him, as well as to London fashion, as to his opinions of the Miss �ums.� Of course with Miss �um� sitting just below Billy, the latter must be done through the medium of the former,�so she leads off upon London. �She supposed he�d been very gay in London?� �Yarse,� drawled Billy in the true dandified style, drawing his napkin across his lips as he spoke. Mrs. Rocket wasn�t so young as she had been, and Billy was too young to take up with what he profanely called �old ladies.� �He�d live at the west-end, she s�posed?� �Yarse,� replied Billy, feeling his amplified tie. �Did he know Billiter Square?� �Yarse,� replied he, running his ringed fingers down his studs. �Was it fashionable?� asked Mrs. Rocket. (She had a cousin lived there who had asked her to go and see her.) �Y-a-a-rse, I should say it is,� drawled Billy, now playing with a bunch of trinkets, a gold miniature pistol, a pearl and diamond studded locket, a gold pencil-case, and a white cornelian heart, suspended to his watch-chain. �Y-a-a-rse, I should say it is,� repeated he; adding �not so fashionable as Belgrave.� �Sceuse me, sare,� interrupted Monsieur Jean Rougier from behind his master�s chair, �Sceuse me, it is not fashionable, sare,�it is not near de Palace or de Park of Hyde, sare, bot down away among those dem base mechanics in de east�beyond de Mansion �Ouse, in fact.� �Oh, ah, y-a-a-rse, true,� replied Billy, not knowing where it was, but presuming from Mrs. Larkspur�s inquiry that it was some newly sprung-up square on one of the western horns of the metropolis. Taking advantage of the interruption, Mr. Tightlace again essayed to edge in his �British Sportsman� knowledge beginning with an inquiry if �the Earl of Ladythorne had a good set of dogs this season?� but the Bumbler soon cut short the thread of his discourse by presenting a bottle of brisk gooseberry at his ear. The fizzing stuff then went quickly round, taxing the ingenuity of the drinkers to manoeuvre the frothy fluid out of their needlecase-shaped glasses. Then as conversation was beginning to be restored, the door suddenly flew open to a general rush of returning servants. There was Soloman carrying a sirloin of beef, followed by Mr. Crickleton�s gaudy red-and-yellow young man with a boiled turkey, who in turn was succeeded by Mr. Rocket Larkspur�s hobbledehoy with a ham, and Mr. Tightlace�s with a stew. Pâtés and côtelettes, and minces, and messes follow in quick succession; and these having taken their seats, immediately vacate them for the Chiltern-hundreds of the hand. A shoal of vegetables and sundries alight on the side table, and the feast seems fairly under weigh. But see! somehow it prospers not! People stop short at the second or third mouthful, and lay down their knives and forks as if they had had quite enough. Patties, and cutlets, and sausages, and side-dishes, all share the same fate! �Take round the champagne,� says the Major, with an air, thinking to retrieve the character of his kitchen with the solids. The juicy roast beef, and delicate white turkey with inviting green stulling, and rich red ham, and turnip-and-carrot-adorned stewed beef then made their progresses, but the same fate attends them also. People stop at the second or third mouthful;�some send their plates away slily, and ask for a little of a different dish to what they have been eating, or rather tasting. That, however, shares the same fate. �Take round the champagne,� again says the Major, trying what another cheerer would do. Then he invites the turkey-eaters�or leavers, rather�to eat beef; and the beef eaters�or leavers�to eat turkey: but they all decline with a thoroughly satisfied �no-more-for-me� sort of shake of the head. �Take away!� at length says the Major, with an air of disgust, following the order with an invitation to Mrs. Rocket Larkspur to take wine. The guests follow the host�s example, and a momentary rally of liveliness ensues. Mrs. Rocket Larkspur and Mr. Tightlace contend for Fine Billy�s ear; but Miss Yammerton interposing with a sly whisper supersedes them both. Mrs. Rocket construes that accordingly. A general chirp of conversation is presently established, interspersed with heavy demands upon the breadbasket by the gentlemen. Presently the door is thrown open, and a grand procession of sweets enters�jellies, blancmanges, open tarts, shut tarts, meringues, plum pudding, maccaroni, black puddings,�we know not what besides: and the funds of conviviality again look up. The rally is, however, but of momentary duration. The same evil genius that awaited on the second course seems to attend on the third. People stop at the second or third mouthful and send away the undiminished plates slily, as before. Some venture on other dishes�but the result is the same�the plate vanishes with its contents. There is, however, a great run upon the cheese�Cheshire and Gloucester; and the dessert suffers severely. All the make-weight dishes, even, disappear; and when the gentlemen rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room they attack the tea as if they had not had any dinner. At length a �most agreeable evening� is got through; and as each group whisks away, there is a general exclamation of �What a most extraordinary taste everything had of������ What do you think, gentle reader? �Can�t guess! can�t you?� �What do you think, Mrs. Brown?� �What do you think, Mrs. Jones? �What do you, Mrs. Robinson?� �What! none of you able to guess! And yet everybody at table hit off directly!� �All give it up?� Brown, Jones, and Robinson? �Yes�yes�yes.� �Well then, we�ll tell you�:� �Everything tasted of Castor oil!� �_Castor oil!_� exclaims Mrs. Brown. �Castor oil!� shrieks Mrs. Jones. �Castor oil!� shudders Mrs. Robinson. �O-o-o-o! how nasty!� �But how came it there?� asks Mrs. Brown. �We�ll tell you that, too�� The Major�s famous cow Strawberry-cream�s calf was ill, and they had tapped a pint of fine �cold-drawn� for it, which Monsieur Jean Rougier happening to upset, just mopped it up with his napkin, and chucking it away, it was speedily adopted by the hind�s little girl in charge of the plates and dishes, who imparted a most liberal castor oil flavour to everything she touched. And that entertainment is now known by the name of the �Castor Oil Dinner.� CHAPTER XXII. A HUNTING MORNING.�UNKENNELING. WHAT a commotion there was in the house the next morning! As great a disturbance as if the Major had been going to hunt an African Lion, a royal Bengal Tiger, or a Bison itself. _Ring-ring-ring-ring_ went one bell, _tinkle-tinkle-tinkle_ went another, _ring-ring-ring_ went the first again, followed by exclamations of �There�s master�s bell again!� with such a running down stairs, and such a getting up again. Master wanted this, master wanted that, master had carried away the buttons at his knees, master wanted his other pair of White what-do-they-call-ems�not cords, but moleskins�that treacherous material being much in vogue among masters of harriers. Then master�s boots wouldn�t do, he wanted his last pair, not the newly-footed ones, and they were on the trees, and the Bumbler was busy in the stable, and Betty Bone could not skin the trees, and altogether there was a terrible hubbub in the house. His overnight exertions, though coupled with the castor oil catastrophe, seemed to have abated none of his ardour in pursuit of the hare. Meanwhile our little dandy, Billy, lay tumbling and tossing in bed, listening to the dread preparations, wishing he could devise an excuse for declining to join him. The recollection of his bumps, and his jumps, and his falls, arose vividly before him, and he would fain have said �no� to any more. He felt certain that the Major was going to give him a startler, more dreadful perhaps than those he had had with his lordship. Would that he was well out of it! What pleasure could there be in galloping after an animal they could shoot? In the midst of these reflections Mons. Rougier entered the apartment and threw further light on the matter by opening the shutters. �You sall get up, sare, and pursue the vild beast of de voods�de Major is a-goin� to hont.� �Y-a-r-se,� replied Billy, turning over. �I sal get out your habit verd, your green coat, dat is to say.� �_No! no!_� roared Billy; �_the red! the red!_� �_De red!_� exclaimed Monsieur in astonishment, �de red Not for de soup dogs! you only hont bold reynard in de red.� �Oh, yes, you do,� retorted Billy, �didn�t the Major come to the carstle in red?� �Because he came to hont de fox,� replied Monsieur; �if he had com� for to hont poor puss he would �ave �ad on his green or his grey, or his some other colour.� Billy now saw the difference, and his mortification increased. �Well, I�ll breakfast in red at all events,� said he, determined to have that pleasure. �Vell, sare, you can pleasure yourself in dat matter; but it sall be moch ridicule if you pursue de puss in it.� �But why not?� asked Billy, �hunting�s hunting, all the world over.� �I cannot tell you vy, sir; but it is not _etiquette_, and I as a professor of garniture, toggery vot you call, sid lose _caste_ with my comrades if I lived with a me lor vot honted poor puss in de pink.� �_Humph!_� grunted Billy, bouncing out of bed, thinking what a bore it was paying a man for being his master. He then commenced the operations of the occasion, and with the aid of Monsieur was presently attired in the dread costume. He then clonk, clonk, clonked down stairs with his Jersey-patterned spurs, toes well out to clear the steps, most heartily wishing he was clonking up again on his return from the hunt. 175m _Original Size_ Monsieur was right. The Major is in his myrtle-green coat�a coat, not built after the fashion of the scanty swallow-tailed red in which he appears at page 65 of this agreeable work, but with the more liberal allowance of cloth peculiar to the period in which we live. A loosely hanging garment, and not a strait-waistcoat, in fact, a fashion very much in favour of bunglers, seeing that anybody can make a sack, while it takes a tailor to make a coat. The Major�s cost him about two pounds five, the cloth having been purchased at a clothier�s and made up at home, by a three shilling a day man and his meat. We laugh at the ladies for liking to be cheated by their milliners; but young gentlemen are quite as accommodating to their tailors. Let any man of forty look at his tailor�s bill when he was twenty, and see what a liberality of innocence it displays. And that not only in matters of taste and fashion, which are the legitimate loopholes of extortion, but in the sober articles of ordinary requirement. We saw a once-celebrated west-end tailor�s bill the other day, in which a plain black coat was made to figure in the following magniloquent item:� �A superfine black cloth coat, lappels sewed on� (we wonder if they are usually pinned or glued) �lappels sewed on, cloth collar, cotton sleeve linings, velvet handfacings,� (most likely cotton too,) �embossed edges and fine wove buttons��how much does the reader think? four guineas? four pound ten? five guineas? No, five pound eighteen and sixpence! An article that our own excellent tailor supplies for three pounds fifteen! In a tailor�s case that was recently tried, a party swore that fourteen guineas was a fair price for a Taglioni, when every body knows that they are to be had for less than four. But boys will be boys to the end of the chapter, so let us return to our sporting Major. He is not so happy in his nether garments as he is in his upper ones; indeed he has on the same boots and moleskins that Leech drew him in at Tantivy Castle, for these lower habiliments are not so easy of accomplishment in the country as coats, and though most people have tried them there, few wear them out, they are always so ugly and unbecoming. As, however, our Major doesn�t often compare his with town-made ones, he struts about in the comfortable belief that they are all right�very smart. He is now in a terrible stew, and has been backwards and forwards between the house and the stable, and in and out of the kennel, and has called Solomon repeatedly from his work to give him further instructions and further instructions still, until the Major has about confused himself and every body about him. As soon as ever he heard by his tramp overhead that Billy had got into his boots, he went to the bottom of the stairs and holloaed along the passage towards the kitchen. �Betty! Betty! Betty! send in breakfast as soon as ever Mr. Pringle comes down!�� �Ah, dere is de Majur.� observed Monsieur, pausing from Billy�s hair-arranging to listen��him kick up dc deval�s own dost on a huntin� mornin�.� �What�s happened him?� asked Billy. �Don�t know�but von vould think he was going to storm a city�take Sebastopol himself,� replied Monsieur, shrugging his broad shoulders. He then resumed his valeting operations, and crowned the whole by putting Billy into his green cut-away, without giving him even a peep of the pink. Meanwhile, Mrs. Yammerton has been holding a court of inquiry in the kitchen and larder, as to the extent of the overnight mischief, smelling at this dish and that, criticising the spoons, and subjecting each castor-oily offender to severe ablution in boiling water. Of course no one could tell in whose hands the bottle of �cold drawn� had come �in two,� and Monsieur was too good a judge to know anything about it; so as the mischief couldn�t be repaired, it was no use bewailing it farther than to make a knot in her mind to be more careful of such dangerous commodities in future. Betty Bone had everything�tea, coffee, bread, cakes, eggs, ham (fried so as to hide the spurious flavour), honey, jam, &c., ready for Miss Benson, who had been impressed into the carrying service, _vice_ the Bumbler turned whip, to take in as soon as Mr. Pringle descended, a fact that was announced to the household by the Major�s uproarious greeting of him in the passage. He was overjoyed to see him! He hoped he was none the worse for his over-night festivities; and without waiting for an answer to that, he was delighted to say that it was a fine hunting morning, and as far as human judgment could form an opinion, a good scenting one; but after five-and-thirty years� experience as a master of �haryers,� he could conscientiously say that there was nothing so doubtful or ticklish as scent, and he made no doubt Mr. Pringle�s experience would confirm his own, that many days when they might expect it to be first-rate, it was bad, and many days when they might expect it to be bad, it was first-rate; to all which accumulated infliction Billy replied with his usual imperturbable �Yarse,� and passed on to the more agreeable occupation of greeting the young ladies in the dining-room. Very glad they all were to see him as he shook hands with all three. The Major, however, was not to be put off that way; and as he could not get Billy to talk about hunting, he drew his attention to breakfast, observing that they had a goodish trot before them, and that punctuality was the politeness of princes. Saying which, he sat down, laying his great gold watch open on a plate beside him, so that its noisy ticking might remind Billy of what they had to do. The Major couldn�t make it out how it was that the souls of the young men of the present day are so difficult to inflame about hunting. Here was he, turned of����, and as eager in the pursuit as ever. �Must be that they smoke all their energies out,� thought he; and then applied himself vigorously to his tea and toast, looking up every now and then with irate looks at his wife and daughters, whose volubility greatly retarded Billy�s breakfast proceedings. He, nevertheless, made sundry efforts to edge in a hunting conversation himself, observing that Mr. Pringle mustn�t expect such an establishment as the Peer�s, or perhaps many that he was accustomed to�that they would have rather a shortish pack out, which would enable them to take the field again at an early day, and so on; all of which Billy received with the most provoking indifference, making the Major wish he mightn�t be a regular crasher, who cared for nothing but riding. At length, tea, toast, eggs, ham, jam, all had been successively taxed, the Major closed and pocketed his noisy watch, and the doomed youth rose to perform the dread penance with the pack. �Good byes,� �good mornings,� �hope you�ll have good sport,� followed his bowing spur-clanking exit from the room. A loud crack of the Major�s hammer-headed whip now announced their arrival in the stable-yard, which was at once a signal for the hounds to raise a merry cry, and for the stable-men to loosen their horses� heads from the pillar-reins. It also brought a bevy of caps and curl-papers to the back windows of the house to see the young Earl, for so Rougier had assured them his master was�(heir to the Earldom of Ladythorne)�mount. At a second crack of the whip the stable-door flew open, and as a shirt-sleeved lad receded, the grey-headed, green-coated sage Solomon advanced, leading forth the sleek, well-tended, well-coddled, Napoleon the Great. Amid the various offices filled by this Mathews-at-home of a servant, there was none perhaps in which he looked better or more natural than in that of a huntsman. Short, spare, neat, with a bright black eye, contrasting with the sobered hue of his thin grey hair, no one would suppose that the calfless little yellow and brown-liveried coachman of the previous night was the trim, neatly-booted, neatly-tied huntsman now raising his cap to the Richest Commoner in England, and his great master Major Yammerton�Major of the Featherbedfordshire Militia, master of �haryers,� and expectant magistrate. �Well, Solomon,� said the Major, acknowledging his salute, as though it was their first meeting of the morning, �well, Solomon, what do you think of the day?� �Well, sir, I think the day�s well enough,� replied Solomon, who was no waster of words. �I think so too,� said the Major, drawing on his clean doeskin gloves. The pent-up hounds then raised another cry. �That�s pretty!� exclaimed the Major listening �That�s _beautiful!_� added he, like an enthusiastic admirer of music at the opera. Imperturbable Billy spoke not. �Pr�aps you�d like to see them unkenneled?� said the Major, thinking to begin with the first act of the drama. �Yarse,� replied Billy, feeling safe as long as he was on foot. The Major then led the way through a hen-house-looking door into a little green court-yard, separated by peeled larch palings from a flagged one beyond, in which the expectant pack were now jumping and frisking and capering in every species of wild delight. �Ah, you beauties!� exclaimed the Major, again cracking his whip. He then paused, thinking there would surely be a little praise. But no; Billy just looked at them as he would at a pen full of stock at a cattle show. �Be-be-beauties, ar�n�t they?� stuttered the Major. �Yarse,� replied Billy; thinking they were prettier than the great lounging, slouching foxhounds. �Ca-ca-capital hounds,� observed the Major. No response from Billy. �Undeniable b-b-blood,� continued our friend. No response again. �F-f-foxhounds in mi-mi-miniature,� observed the Major. �Yarse,� replied Billy, who understood that. �Lovely! Lovely! Lovely! there�s a beautiful bitch,� continued the Major, pointing to a richly pied one that began frolicking to his call. �Bracelet! Bracelet! Bracelet!� holloaed he to another; �pretty bitch that�pure Sir Dashwood King�s blood, just the right size for a haryer�shouldn�t be too large. I hold with So-so-somerville,� continued the Major, waxing warm, either with his subject, or at Billy�s indifference, �that one should �A di-di-different hound for every chase Select with judgment; nor the timorous hare, O�ermatch�d, destroy; but leave that vile offence To the mean, murderous, coursing crew, intent On blood and spoil.�� �Yarse,� replied Billy, turning on his heel as though he had had enough of the show. At this juncture, the Major drew the bolt, open flew the door, and out poured the pack; Ruffler and Bustler dashing at Billy, and streaking his nice cream-coloured leathers down with their dirty paws, while Thunder and Victim nearly carried him off his legs with the couples. Billy was in a great fright, never having been in such a predicament before. The Major came to the rescue, and with the aid of his whip and his voice, and his �for shame, Ruffler! for shame, Bustler!� with cuts at the coupled ones, succeeded in restoring order. �Let�s mount,� said he, thinking to get Billy out of further danger; so saying he wheeled about and led the way through the outer yard with the glad pack gamboling and frisking around him to the stables. The hounds raise a fresh cry of joy as they see Solomon with his horse ready to receive them. CHAPTER XXIII. SHOWING A HORSE.�THE MEET. THE Bumbler, like our Mathews-at-home of a huntsman, is now metamorphosed, and in lieu of a little footman, we have a capped and booted whip. Not that he _is_ a whip, for Solomon carries the couples as well as the horn, and also a spare stirrup-leather slung across his shoulder; but our Major has an eye as well to show as to business, and thinks he may as well do the magnificent, and have a horse ready to change with Billy as soon as Napoleon the Great seems to have had enough. To that end the Bumbler now advances with the Weaver which he tenders to Billy, with a deferential touch of his cap. �Ah, that�s _your_ horse!� exclaimed the Major, making for White Surrey, to avoid the frolics and favours of his followers; adding, as he climbed on, �you�ll find her a ca-ca-capital hack and a first-rate hunter. Here, _elope, hounds, elope!_� added he, turning his horse�s head away to get the course clear for our friend to mount unmolested. Billy then effects the ascent of the black mare, most devoutly wishing himself safe off again. The stirrups being adjusted to his length, he gives a home thrust with his feet in the irons, and gathering the thin reins, feels his horse gently with his left leg, just as Solomon mounts Napoleon the Great and advances to relieve the Major of his charge. The cavalcade then proceed; Solomon, with the now clustering hounds, leading; the Major and Billy riding side by side, and the Bumbler on Bulldog bringing up the rear. Caps and curl-papers then disappear to attend to the avocations of the house, the wearers all agreeing that Mr. Pringle is a very pretty young gentleman, and quite worthy of the pick of the young ladies. Crossing Cowslip garth at an angle they get upon Greenbat pasture, where the first fruits of idleness are shown by Twister and Towler breaking away at the cows. �_Yow, yow!_� they go in the full enjoyment of the chase. It�s a grand chance for the Bumbler, who, adjusting his whip-thong, sticks spurs into Bulldog and sets off as hard as ever the old horse can lay legs to the ground. �Get round them, man! get round them,� shouts the Major, watching Bully�s leg-tied endeavours, the old horse being a better hand at walking than galloping. At length they are stopped and chided and for shamed, and two more fields land our party in Hollington lane, which soon brings them into the Lingytine and Ewehurst-road, whose liberal width and ample siding bespeaks the neighbourhood of a roomier region. Solomon at a look from the Major now takes the grass siding with his hounds, while the gallant master just draws his young friend alongside of them on the road, casting an unconcerned eye upon the scene, in the hope that his guest will say something handsome at last. But no, Billy doesn�t. He is fully occupied with his boots and breeches, whose polish and virgin purity he still deplores. There�s a desperate daub down one side. The Major tries to engage his attention by coaxing and talking to the hounds. �Cleaver, good dog! Cleaver! Chaunter, good dog! Chaunter!� throwing them bits of biscuit, but all his efforts are vain. Billy plods on at the old post-boy pace, apparently thinking of nothing but himself. Meanwhile Solomon ambles cockily along on Napoleon, with a backward and forward move of his leg to the horse�s action, who ducks and shakes his head and plays good-naturedly with the hounds, as if quite delighted at the idea of what they are going to do. He shows to great advantage. He has not been out for a week, and the coddling and linseeding have given a healthy bloom to his bay coat, and he has taken a cordial ball with a little catechu, and ten grains of opium, to aid his exertions. Solomon, too, shows him off well. Though he hasn�t our friend Dicky Boggledike�s airified manner, like him he is little and light, sits neatly in his saddle, while his long coat-lap partly conceals the want of ribbing home of the handsome but washy horse. His boots and breeehes, drab cords and brown tops, are good, so are his spurs, also his saddle and bridle. There is a difference of twenty per cent, between the looks of a horse in a good, well-made London saddle, and in one of those great, spongy, pulby, puddingy things we see in the country. Again, what a contrast there is between a horse looking through a nice plain-fronted, plain-buckled, thin-reined, town-made bridle, and in one of those gaudy-fronted things, all over buckles, with reins thick enough for traces to the Lord Mayor�s coach. All this adornment, however, is wasted upon fine Billy, who hasn�t got beyond the mane and tail beauties of a horse. Action, strength, stamina, symmetry, are as yet sealed subjects to him. The Major was the man who could enlighten him, if Billy would only let him do it, on the two words for himself and one for Billy principle. Do it he would, too, for he saw it was of no use waiting for Billy to begin. 181m _Original Size_ �Nice �oss that,� now observed the Major casually, nodding towards Nap. �Yarse,� replied Billy, looking him over. �That�s the o-o-oss I showed you in the stable.� �Is it?� observed Billy, who didn�t recognize him. �Ought to be at M-m-melton, that oss,� observed the Major. �Why isn�t he?� asked Billy, in the innocence of his heart. �Don�t know,� replied the Major carelessly, with a toss of his head; �don�t know. The fact is, I�m idle�no one to send with him�too old to go myself�haryers keep me at home�year too short to do all one has to do�see what a length he is�ord bless us he�d go over Ashby p-p-pastures like a comet.� Billy had now got his eyes well fixed upon the horse, which the Major seeing held his peace, for he was a capital seller, and had the great gift of knowing when he had said enough. He was not the man to try and bore a person into buying, or spoil his market by telling a youngster that the horse would go in harness, or by not asking enough. So with Solomon still to and froing with his little legs, the horse still lively and gay, the hounds still frisking and playing, the party proceeded through the fertility-diminishing country, until the small fields with live fences gradually gave way to larger, drabber enclosures with stone walls, and Broadstruther hill with its heath-burnt summit and quarry broken side at length announces their approach to the moors. The moors! Who does not feel his heart expand and his spirit glow as he comes upon the vast ocean-like space of moorland country? Leaving the strife, the cares, the contentions of a narrow, elbow-jostling world for the grand enjoyment of pure unrestricted freedom! The green streak of fertile soil, how sweet it looks, lit up by the fitful gleam of a cloud-obscured sun, the distant sky-touching cairn, how tempting to reach through the many intricacies of mountain ground�so easy to look at, so difficult to travel. The ink rises gaily in our pen at the thought, and pressing on, we cross the rough, picturesque, stone bridge over the translucent stream, so unlike the polished, chiseled structures of town art, where nothing is thought good that is not expensive; and now, shaking off the last enclosure, we reach the sandy road below the watcher�s hill-ensconced hut, and so wind round into the panorama of the hills within. �Ah! there we are!� exclaimed the Major, now pointing out the myrtle-green gentlemen with their white cords, moving their steeds to and fro upon the bright sward below the grey rocks of Cushetlaw hill. �There we are,� repeated he, eyeing them, trying to make out who they were, so as to season his greetings accordingly. There was farmer Rintoul on the white, and Godfrey Faulder, the cattle jobber, on the grey; and Caleb Bennison, the horse-breaker, in his twilled-fustian frock, ready to ride over a hound as usual; and old Duffield, the horse-leech, in his low-crowned hat, black tops, and one spur; and Dick Trail, the auctioneer, on his long-tailed nag; and Bonnet, the billiard-table keeper of Hinton, in his odious white hat, grey tweed, and collar-marked screw; but who the cluster of men are on the left the Major can�t for the life of him make out. He had hoped that Crickleton might have graced the meet with his presence, but there is no symptom of the yellow-coated groom, and Paul Straddler would most likely be too offended at not being invited to dine and have gone to Sir Moses�s hounds at the Cow and Calf on the Fixton and Primrose-bank road. Still there were a dozen or fourteen sportsmen, with two or three more coming over the hill, and distance hiding the deficiencies as well of steeds as of costume, the whole has a very lively and inspiriting effect. At the joyous, well-known �here they come!� of the lookers out, a move is perceptible among the field, who forthwith set off to meet the hounds, and as the advancing parties near, the Major has time to identify and appropriate their faces and their persons. First comes Captain Nabley, the chief constable of Featherbeds, who greets our master with the friendliness of a brother soldier, �one of us� in arms, and is forthwith introduced to our Billy. Next is fat farmer Nettlefold, who considers himself entitled to a shake of the hand in return for the Major�s frequent comings over his farm at Carol-hill green, which compliment being duly paid the great master then raises his hat in return for the salutes of Faulder, Rennison, and Trail, and again stops to shake hands with an aged well-whiskered dandy in mufty, one Mr. Wotherspoon, now farming or starving a little property he purchased with his butlerage savings under the great Duke of Thunderdownshire. Wotherspoon apes the manners of high life with the brandified face of low, talks parliament, and takes snuff from a gold box with a George-the-Fourthian air. He now offers the Major a pinch, who accepts it with graceful concession. The seedy-looking gentleman in black, on the too palpable three and sixpence a sider, is Mr. Catoheside, the County Court bailiff, with his pocket full of summonses, who thinks to throw a round with the Major into the day�s hire of his broken-knee�d chestnut, and the greasy-haired, shining-faced youth with him, on the longtailed white pony, is Ramshaw, the butcher�s boy, on the same sort of speculation. Then we have Mr. Meggison�s coachman availing himself of his master�s absence to give the family horse a turn with the hounds instead of going to coals, as he ought; and Mr. Dotherington�s young man halting on his way to the doctor�s with a note. He will tell his mistress the doctor was out and he had to wait ever so long till he came home. The four truants seem to herd together on the birds-of-a-feather principle. And now the reinforced party reach the meet below the grey ivy-tangled rocks, and Solomon pulls up at the accustomed spot to give his hounds a roll, and let the Major receive the encomiums of the encircling field. Then there is a repetition of the kennel scene: �Lovely! Lovely! Lovely!�beautiful bitch that�Chaunter. Chaunter! Chaunter!�there�s a handsome hound�Bustler, good dog!� Only each man has his particular favourite or hound that he has either bred or walked, or knows the name of, and so most of the pack come in for more or less praise. It is agreed on all hands that they never looked better, or the establishment more complete. �Couldn�t be better if it had cost five thousand a-year!� Most grateful were their commendations to the Major after the dry, monotonous �yarses� of Billy, who sits looking unconcernedly on, a regular sleeping partner in the old established firm of �Laudation and Co.� The Major inwardly attributes his indifference to conceited fox-hunting pride. �Looks down upon haryers.� The field, however, gradually got the steam of praise up to a very high pitch. Indeed, had not Mr. Wotherspoon, who was only an air-and-exercise gentleman, observed, after a pompous pinch of snuff, that he saw by the papers that the House of Lords, of which he considered himself a sort of supernumerary member, were going to do something or not to do something, caused a check in the cry, there is no saying but they might altogether have forgotten what they had come out about. As it was, the mention of Mr. Wotherspoon�s favourite branch of the legislature, from which they had all suffered more or less severely, operated like the hose of a fire-engine upon a crowd, sending one man one way, another another, until Wotherspoon had only Solomon and the hounds to finish off before. �Indeed, sir,� was all the encouragement he got from Solomon. But let us get away from the insufferable Brummagem brandy-faced old bore by supposing Solomon transferred from Napoleon the Great to Bulldog, Billy mounted on the washy horse instead of the weaving mare, the Major�s girths drawn, clay pipes deposited in the breast pockets of the owners, and thongs unloosened to commence the all-important operation of thistle-whipping. At a nod from the Major, Solomon gives a wave of his hand to the hounds, and putting his horse on, the tide of sportsmen sweep after, and Cushetlaw rocks are again left in their pristine composure. Despite Billy�s indifference, the Major is still anxious to show to advantage, not knowing who Billy may relate his day�s sport to, and has therefore arranged with Solomon not to cast off until they get upon the more favourable ground of Sunnylaws moor. This gives Billy time to settle in his new saddle, and scrape acquaintance with Napoleon, whom he finds a very complacent, easy-going horse. He has a light, playful mouth, and Billy doesn�t feel afraid of him. Indeed, if it wasn�t for the idea of the jumps, he would rather enjoy it. His mind, however, might have been easy on that score, for they are going into the hills instead of away from them, and the Major has scuttled over the ground so often that he knows every bog, and every crossing, and every vantage-taking line; where to view the hare, and where to catch up his hounds, to a nicety. At length they reached a pretty, amphitheatreish piece of country, encircled by grassy hills, folding gracefully into each other, with the bolder outline of the Arkenhill moors for the background. A silvery stream meanders carelessly about the lowland, occasionally lost to view by sand wreaths and gravel beds thrown up by impetuous torrents rushing down from the higher grounds. The field is here reinforced by Tom Springer, the generally out-of-place watcher, and his friend Joe Pitfall, the beer-shop keeper of Wetten hill, with their tenpenny wide-awakes, well-worn, baggy-pocketed shooting-coats, and strong oak staffs, suitable either for leaping or poking poles. The Major returns their salute with a lowering brow, for he strongly suspects they are there on their own account, and not for the sake of enjoying a day with his unrivalled hounds. However, as neither of them have leave over the ground, they can neither of them find fault, and must just put up with each other. So the Major, addressing Springer, says �I�ll give you a shillin� if you�ll find me a hare,� as he turns to the Bumbler and bids him uncouple Billy�s old friends Ruffler and Bustler. This done, the hounds quickly spread to try and hit off the morning scent, while the myrtle-greeners and others distribute themselves, cracking, Hopping, and hissing, here, there, and everywhere. Springer and Pitfall go poke, poke, tap, tap, peep, peep, at every likely bush and tuft, but both the Major and they are too often over the ground to allow of hares being very plentiful. When they do find them they are generally well in wind from work. Meanwhile, Mr. Wotherspoon, finding that Billy Pringle is a friend of Lord Ladythorne�s, makes up to him, and speaks of his lordship in the kind, encouraging way, so becoming a great man speaking of a lesser one. �Oh, he knew his lordship well, excellent man he was, knew Mrs. Moffatt, too��andsome woman she was. Not so �andsome, p�raps, as Mrs. Spangles, the actress, but still a v-a-a-ry �andsome woman. Ah, he knew Mrs. Spangles, poor thing, long before she came to Tantivy�when she was on the stage, in fact.� And here the old buck, putting his massive, gold-mounted riding-whip under his arm, heaved a deep sigh, as though the mention of her name recalled painful recollections, and producing his gold snuff-box, after offering it to Billy, he consoled himself with a long-drawn respiration from its contents. He then flourished his scarlet, attar-of-rose-scented bandana, and seemed lost in contemplation of the stripes down his trowsers and his little lacquered-toe�d boots. Billy rode silently on with him, making no doubt he was a very great man�just the sort of man his Mamma would wish him to get acquainted with. 187m _Original Size_ CHAPTER XXIV. THE WILD BEAST ITSELF. JUST as the old buck was resuming the thread of his fashionable high-life narrative, preparatory to sounding Billy about the Major and his family, the same sort of electric thrill shot through the field that characterised the terrible �g-n-r along�don�t you see the hounds are running?� de Glancey day with the Earl. Billy felt all over he-didn�t-know-how-ish�very wish-he-was-at-home-ish. The horse, too, began to caper. The thrill is caused by a shilling�s-worth of wide-awake on a stick held high against the sky-line of the gently-swelling hill on the left, denoting that the wild beast is found, causing the Major to hold up his hat as a signal of reply, and all the rest of the field to desist from their flopping and thistle-whipping, and rein in their screws for the coming conflict. �Now s-s-sir!� exclaims the stuttering Major, cantering up to our Billy all flurry and enthusiasm. �Now, s-s-sir! we ha-ha-have her, and if you�ll fo-fo-follow me, I�ll show you her,� thinking he was offering Billy the greatest treat imaginable. So saying the Major drops his hands on White Surrey�s neck, rises in his stirrups, and scuttles away, bounding over the gorse bushes and broom that intervened between him and the still stick-hoisted tenpenny. **** �_Where is she?_� demands the Major. �_Where is she!_� repeats he, coming up. �A Major, he mun gi� us halfe-croon ony ho� this time,� exclaims our friend Tom Springer, whose head gear it is that has been hoisted. �Deed mun ye!� asserts Pitfall, who has now joined his companion. �_No, no!_� retorts the Major angrily, �I said a shillin��a shillin�s my price, and you know it.� �Well, but consider what a time we�ve been a lookin� for her, Major,� replied Springer, mopping his brow. �Well, but consider that you are about to partake of the enjoyments as well as myself, and that I find the whole of this expensive establishment,� retorted the Major, looking back for his hounds. �Not a farthin� subscription.� �Say two shillin�s, then,� replied Springer coaxingly. �No, no,� replied the Major, �a shillin�s plenty.� �Make it eighteen-pence then,� said Pitfall, �and oop she goes for the money.� �Well, come,� snapped the Major hurriedly, as Billy now came elbowing up. �Where is she? Where is she?� demanded he. �A, she�s not here�she�s not here, but I see her in her form thonder,� replied Springer, nodding towards the adjoining bush-dotted hill. �Go to her, then,� said the Major, jingling the eighteen-pence in his hand, to be ready to give him on view of the hare. The man then led the way through rushes, brambles, and briars, keeping a steady eye on the spot where she sate. At length he stopped. �There she�s, see!� said he, _sotto voce_, pointing to the green hill-side. �I have her!� whispered the Major, his keen eyes sparkling with delight. �Come here,� said he to Billy, �and I�ll show her to you. There,� said he, �there you see that patch of gorse with the burnt stick stumps, at the low end�well, carry your eye down the slope of the land, past the old willow-tree, and you have her as plain as a pike-staff.� Billy shook his head. He saw nothing but a tuft or two of rough grass. �O yes, you see her large eyes watching us,� continued the Major, �thinking she sees us without our seeing her. �No,� our friend didn�t. �Very odd,� laughed the Major, �very odd,� with the sort of vexation a man feels when another can�t be made to see the object he does. �Will you give them a view now?� asked Springer, �or put her away quietly?� �Oh, put her away quietly,� replied the Major, �put her away quietly; and let them get their noses well down to the scent;� adding��I�ve got some strange hounds out, and I want to see how they work.� The man then advanced a few paces, and touching one of the apparently lifeless tufts with his pole, out sprang puss and went stotting and dotting away with one ear back and the other forward, in a state of indignant perturbation. �Buck!� exclaims Pitfall, watching her as she goes. �Doubt it,� replied the Major, scrutinising her attentively. �Nay look at its head and shoulders; did you iver see sic red shoulders as those on a doe?� asked Springer. �Well,� said the Major, �there�s your money,� handing Springer the eighteen-pence, �and I hope she�ll be worth it; but mind, for the futur� a shillin�s my price.� After scudding up the hill, puss stopped to listen and ascertain the quality of her pursuers. She had suffered persecution from many hands, shooters, coursers, snarers, and once before from the Major and his harriers. That, however, was on a bad scenting day, and she had not had much difficulty in beating them. Meanwhile Solomon has been creeping quietly on with his hounds, encouraging such to hunt as seemed inclined that way, though the majority were pretty well aware of the grand discovery and lean towards the horsemen in advance. Puss however had slipped away unseen by the hounds, and Twister darts at the empty form thinking to save all trouble by a chop. Bracelet then strikes a scent in advance. Ruffler and Chaunter confirm it, and after one or two hesitating rashes and flourishes, increasing in intensity each time, a scent is fairly established, and away they drive full cry amid exclamations of �Beautiful! beautiful! never saw anything puttier!� from the Major and the field�the music of the hounds being increased and prolonged by the echoes of the valleys and adjacent hills. The field then fall into line, Silent Solomon first, the Major of course next. Fine Billy third, with Wotherspoon and Nettlefold rather contending for his company. Nabley, Duffield, Bonnet, Reunison. Fanlder, Catcheside, truants, all mixed up together in heterogeneous confusion, jostling for precedence as men do when there are no leaps. So they round Hawthorn hill, and pour up the pretty valley beyond, each man riding a good deal harder than his horse, the hounds going best pace, which however is not very great. �Give me,�� inwardly prays the Major, cantering consequentially along with his thong-gathered whip held up like a sword, �give me five and twenty minutes, the first fifteen a burst, then a fault well hit off�, and the remaining ten without a turn,� thinking to astonish the supercilious foxhunter. Then he takes a sly look to see how Napoleon is faring, it being by no means his intention to let Fine Billy get to the bottom of him. On, on, the hounds press, for now is the time to enjoy the scent with a hare, and they have run long enough together to have confidence in their leaders. Now Lovely has the scent, now Lilter, now Ruffler flings in advance, and again is superseded by Twister. They brush through the heathery open with an increasing cry, and fling at the cross-road between Birwell Mill and Capstone with something like the energy of foxhounds; Twister catches it up beyond the sandy track, and hurrying over it, some twenty yards further on is superseded by Lovely, who hits it off to the left. Away she goes with the lead. �Beautiful! beautiful!� exclaims the Major, hoping the fox-hunter sees it. �Beautiful! beautiful!� echoes Nettlefold, as the clustering pack drop their sterns to the scent and push forward with renewed velocity. The Major again looks for our friend Billy, who is riding in a very careless slack-rein sort of style, not at all adapted for making the most of his horse. However it is no time for remonstrance, and the music of the hounds helps to make things pleasant. On, on they speed; up one hill, down another, round a third, and so on. One great advantage of hunting in a strange country undoubtedly is, that all runs are straight, with harriers as well as foxhounds, with some men, who ride over the same ground again and again without knowing that it is the same, and Billy was one of this sort. Though they rounded Hawthorn hill again, it never occurred to him that it was the second time of asking; indeed he just cantered carelessly on like a man on a watering-place hack, thinking when his hour will be out, regardless of the beautiful hits made by Lovely and Lilter or any of them, and which almost threw the Major and their respective admirers into ecstacies. Great was the praise bestowed upon their performances, it being the interest of every man to magnify the run and astonish the stranger. Had they but known as much of the Richest Commoner as the reader does, they would not have given themselves the trouble. Away they pour over hill and dale, over soft ground and sound, through reedy rushes and sedgy flats, and over the rolling stones of the fallen rocks. Then they score away full cry on getting upon more propitious ground. What a cry they make! and echo seemingly takes pleasure to repeat the sound! Napoleon the Great presently begins to play the castanets with his feet, an ominous sound to our Major, who looks back for the Bumbler, and inwardly wishes for a check to favour his design of dismounting our hero. Half a mile or so further on, and the chance occurs. They get upon a piece of bare heather burnt ground, whose peaty smell baffles the scent, and brings the hounds first to a check, then to a stand-still. Solomon�s hand in the air beckons a halt, to which the field gladly respond, for many of the steeds are eating new oats, and do not get any great quantity of those, while some are on swedes, and others only have hay. Altogether their condition is not to be spoken of. The Major now all hurry scurry, just like a case of �second horses! second horses! where�s my fellow with my second horse?� at a check in Leicestershire, beckons the Bumbler up to Billy; and despite of our friend�s remonstrance, who has got on such terms with Napoleon as to allow of his taking the liberty of spurring him, and would rather remain where he is, insists upon putting him upon the mare again, observing, that he couldn�t think of taking the only spare �orse from a gen�lman who had done him the distinguished honour of leaving the Earl�s establishment for his �umble pack; and so, in the excitement of the moment, Billy is hustled off one horse and hurried on to another, as if a moment�s hesitation would be fatal to the fray. The Major then, addressing the Bumbler in an undertone, says, �Now walk that �orse quietly home, and get him some linseed tea, and have him done up by the time we get in.� He then spurs gallantly up to the front, as though he expected the hounds to be off again at score. There was no need of such energy, for puss has set them a puzzle that will take them some time to unravel; but it saved an argument with Billy, and perhaps the credit of the bay. He now goes drooping and slouching away, very unlike the cock-horse he came out. Meanwhile, the hounds have shot out and contracted, and shot out and contracted�and tried and tested, and tried and tested�every tuft and every inch of burnt ground, while Solomon sits motionless between them and the head mopping chattering field. �Must be on,� observes Caleb Rennison, the horse-breaker, whose three-year-old began fidgetting and neighing. �Back, I say,� speculated Bonnet, whose domicile lay to the rear. �Very odd,� observed Captain Nabley, �they ran her well to here.� �Hares are queer things,� said old Duffield, wishing he had her by the ears for the pot. �Far more hunting with a hare nor a fox,� observed Mr. Rintoul, who always praised his department of the chase. �Must have squatted,� observes old �Wotherspoon, taking a pinch of snuff, and placing his double gold eye-glasses on his nose to reconnoitre the scene. �Lies very close, if she has,� rejoins Godfrey Faulder, flopping at a furze-bush as he spoke. �Lost her, I fear,� ejaculated Mr. Trail, who meant to beg her for a christening dinner if they killed. The fact is, puss having, as we said before, had a game at romps with her pursuers on a bad scenting day, when she regulated her speed by their pace, has been inconveniently pressed on the present occasion, and feeling her strength fail, has had recourse to some of the many arts for which hares are famous. After crossing the burnt ground she made for a greasy sheep-track, up which she ran some fifty yards, and then deliberately retracing her steps, threw herself with a mighty spring into a rushy furze patch at the bottom of the hill. She now lies heaving and panting, and watching the success of her stratagem from her ambush, with the terror-striking pack full before her. 191m _Original Size_ And now having accommodated Mr. Pringle with a second horse, perhaps the reader will allow us to take a fresh pen and finish the run in another Chapter. CHAPTER XXV. A CRUEL FINISH. EVERY hound having at length sniffed and snuffed, and sniffed and snuffed, to satiety, Solomon now essays to assist them by casting round the flat of smoke-infected ground. He makes the �head good first, which manouvre hitting off the scent, he is hailed and applauded as a conqueror. Never was such a huntsman as Solomon! First harrier huntsman in England! Worth any money is a huntsman! The again clamorous pack bustle up the sheep-path, at such a pace as sends the leaders hurrying far beyond the scent. Then the rear rush to the front, and a general spread of bewildered, benighted, confusion ensues. �Where _has_ she got to?� is the question. �Doubled!� mutters the disappointed Major, reining in his steed. �Squatted!� exclaims Mr. Rintoul, who always sported an opinion. �Hold hard!� cries Mr. Trail, though they were all at a standstill; but then he wished to let them know he was there. The leading hounds retrace their steps, and again essay to carry the scent forward. The second effort is attended with the same result as the first. They cannot get it beyond the double. �Cunning animal!� mutters the Major, eyeing their endeavours. �Far more hunt with a hare nor a fox,� now observes Mr. Bonnet, raising his white hat to cool his bald head. �Far!� replies Mr. Faulder, thinking he must be off. �If it weren�t for the red coats there wouldn�t be so many fox-hunters,� chuckles old Duffield, who dearly loves roast hare. Solomon is puzzled; but as he doesn�t profess to be wiser than the hounds, he just lets them try to make it out for themselves. If they can�t wind her, he can�t: so the old sage sits like a statue. At length the majority give her up. And now Springer and Pitfall, and two or three other pedestrians who have been attracted from their work by the music of the hounds, and have been enjoying the panorama of the chase with their pipes from the summit of an inside hill, descend to see if they can either prick her or pole her. Down go their heads as if they were looking for a pin.�The hounds, however, have obliterated all traces of her, and they soon have recourse to their staves. _Bang, bang, bang_, they beat the gorse and broom and juniper bushes with vigorous sincerity. Crack, flop, crack, go the field in aid of their endeavours. Solomon leans with his hounds to the left, which is lucky for puss, for though she withstood the downward blow of Springer�s pole on her bush, a well-directed side thrust sends her flying out in a state of the greatest excitement. What an outburst of joy the sight of her occasioned! Hounds, horses, riders, all seemed to participate in the common enthusiasm! How they whooped, and halloo�d and shouted! enough to frighten the poor thing out of her wits. Billy and the field have a grand view of her, for she darts first to the right, then to the left, then off the right and again to the left, ere she tucks her long legs under her and strides up Kleeope hill at a pace that looks quite unapproachable. Faulder alone remains where he is, muttering �fresh har� as she goes. The Major and all the rest of the field hug their horses and tear along in a state of joyous excitement, for they see her life is theirs. They keep the low ground and jump with the hounds at the bridlegate between Greenlaw sheep-walks and Hindhope cairn just as Lovely hits the scent off over the boundary wall, and the rest of the pack endorse her note. They are now on fresh ground, which greatly aids the efforts of the hounds, who push on with a head that the Major thinks ought to procure them a compliment from Billy. Our friend, however, keeps all his compliments for the ladies, not being aware that there is anything remarkable in the performance, which he now begins to wish at an end. He has ridden as long as he likes, quite as much as Mr. Spavin, or any of the London livery stable-keepers, would let him have for half-a-guinea. Indeed he wishes he mayn�t have got more than is good for him. The Major meanwhile, all energy and enthusiasm, rides gallantly forward, for though he is no great hand among the enclosures, he makes a good fight in the hills, especially when, as now, he knows every yard of the country. Many�s the towl he�s had over it, though to look at his excited face one would think this was his first hunt. He�ll now �bet half-a-crown they kill her!� He�ll �bet a guinea they kill her!� He�ll �bet a fi-pun note they kill her!� He�ll �bet half the national debt they kill her!� as Dainty, and Lovely, and Bustler, after dwelling and hesitating over some rushy ground, at length proclaim the scent beyond. Away they all sweep like the careering wind. On follow the field in glorious excitement. A flock of black-faced sheep next foil the ground�sheep as wild, if not wilder, than the animal the hounds are pursuing. We often think, when we see these strong-scented animals scouring the country, that a good beast of chase has been overlooked for the stag. Why shouldn�t an old wiry black-faced tup, with his wild sparkling eyes and spiral horns, afford as good a run as a home-fed deer? Start the tup in his own rough region, and we will be bound to say he will give the hounds and their followers a scramble. The Major now denounces the flying flock��Oh, those nasty muttons!� exclaims he, �bags of bone rather, for they won�t be meat these five years. Wonder how any sane people can cultivate such animals.� The hounds hunt well through the difficulty, or the Major would have been more savage still. On they go, yapping and towling, and howling as before, the Major�s confidence in a kill increasing at every stride. The terror-striking shouts that greeted poor puss�s exit from the bush, have had the effect as well of driving her out of her country as of pressing her beyond her strength; and she has no sooner succeeded in placing what she hopes is a comfortable distance between herself and her pursuers, than she again has recourse to those tricks with which nature has so plentifully endowed her. Sinking the hill she makes for the little enclosed allotments below, and electing a bare fallow�bare, except in the matter of whicken grass�she steals quietly in, and commences her performances on the least verdant part of it. First she described a small circle, then she sprung into the middle of it and squatted. Next she jumped up and bounded out in a different direction to the one by which she had entered. She then ran about twenty yards up a furrow, retracing her steps backwards, and giving a roll near where she started from. Then she took three bounding springs to the left, which landed her on the hard headland, and creeping along the side of the wall she finally popped through the water-hole, and squeezed into an incredibly small space between the kerbstone and the gate-post. There she lay with her head to the air, panting and heaving, and listening for her dread pursuers coming. O what agony was hers! Presently the gallant band came howling and towling over the hill, in all the gay delirium of a hunt without leaps�the Major with difficulty restraining their ardour as he pointed out the brilliance of the performance to Billy��Most splendid running! most capital hunting! most superb pack!� with a sly �_pish_� and �_shaw_� at foxhounds in general, and Sir Mosey�s in particular. The Major hadn�t got over the Bo-peep business, and never would. The pack now reached the scene of Puss�s frolics, and the music very soon descended from a towering tenour to an insignificant whimper, which at length died out altogether. Soloman and Bulldog were again fixtures, Solomon as usual with his hand up beckoning silence. He knew how weak the scent must be, and how important it was to keep quiet at such a critical period; and let the hounds hit her off if they could. Puss had certainly given them a Gordian knot to unravel, and not all the hallooing and encouragement in the world could drive them much beyond the magic circle she had described. Whenever the hunt seemed likely to be re-established, it invariably resulted in a return to the place from whence they started. They couldn�t get forward with it at all, and poked about, and tested the same ground over and over again. It was a regular period or full stop. �Very rum,� observed Caleb Rennison, looking first at his three-year-old, then at his watch, thinking that it was about pudding-time. �She�s surely a witch,� said Mr. Wotherspoon, taking a prolonged pinch of snuff. ��We�ll roast her for one at all events,� laughed Mr. Trail, the auctioneer, still hoping to get her. �First catch your hare, says Mrs. Somebody,� responded Captain Nabley, eyeing the sorely puzzled pack. �O ketch her! we�re sure to ketch her,� observed Mr. Nettlefold, chucking up his chin and dismounting. �Not so clear about that,� muttered Mr. Rintoul, as Lovely, and Bustler, and Lilter, again returned to repeat the search. �If those hounds can�t own her, there are no hounds in England can,� asserted the Major, anxious to save the credit of his pack before the�he feared�too critical stranger. At this depressing moment, again come the infantry, and commence the same system of peering and poking that marked their descent on the former occasion. And now poor puss being again a little recruited, steals out of her hiding-place, and crosses quietly along the outside of the wall to where a flock of those best friends to a hunted hare, some newly-smeared, white-faced sheep, were quietly nibbling at the halfgrass, half-heather, of the little moor-edge farm of Mossheugh-law, whose stone-roofed buildings, washed by a clear mountain stream, and sheltered by a clump of venerable Scotch firs, stand on a bright green patch, a sort of oasis in the desert. The sheep hardly deign to notice the hare, far different to the consternation bold Reynard carries into their camp, when they go circling round like a squadron of dragoons, drawing boldly up to charge when the danger�s past. So poor, weary, foot sore, fur-matted puss, goes hobbling and limping up to the farm-buildings as if to seek protection from man against his brother man. Now it so happened that Mrs. Kidwell, the half-farmer, half-shepherd�s pretty wife, was in the fold-yard, washing her churn, along with her little chubby-faced Jessey, who was equally busy with her Mamma munching away at a very long slice of plentifully-buttered and sugar�d bread; and Mamma chancing to look up from the churn to see how her darling progressed, saw puss halting at the threshold, as if waiting to be asked in. 199m _Original Size_ �It�s that mad old Major and his dogs!� exclaimed Mrs. Kidwell, catching up the child lest its red petticoat might scare away the visitor, and popping into the dairy, she saw the hare, after a little demur, hobble into the cow-house. Having seen her well in, Mrs. Kidwell emerged from her hiding-place, and locking the door, she put the key in her pocket, and resumed her occupation with her churn. Presently the familiar melody�the yow, yow, yap, yap, yow, yow of the hounds broke upon her ear, increasing in strength as she listened, making her feel glad she was at hand to befriend the poor hare. The hunt was indeed revived. The hounds, one and all, having declared their inability to make any thing more of it. Solomon had set off on one of his cruises, which resulted in the yeomen prickers and he meeting at the gate, where the hare had squatted, when Lovely gave tongue, just as Springer, with his eyes well down, exclaimed, �_here she�s!_� Bustler, and Bracelet, and Twister, and Chaunter, confirmed Lovely�s opinion, and away they went with the feeble scent peculiar to the sinking animal. Their difficulties are further increased by the sheep, it requiring Solomon�s oft-raised hand to prevent the hounds being hurried over the line�as it is, the hunt was conducted on the silent system for some little distance. The pace rather improved after they got clear of the smear and foil of the muttons, and the Major pulled up his gills, felt his tie, and cocked his hat jauntily, as the hounds pointed for the pretty farm-house, the Major thinking to show off to advantage before Mrs. Kidwell. They presently carried the scent up to the still open gates of the fold-yard. Lovely now proclaims where puss has paused. Things look very critical. �Good mornin�, Mrs. Kidwell,� exclaimed the gallant Major, addressing her; �pray how long have you been at the churn?� �O, this twenty minutes or more, Major,� replied Mrs. Kidwell, gaily. �You haven�t got the hare in it, have you?� asked he. �Not that I know of; but you can look if you like,� replied Mrs. Kidwell, colouring slightly. �Why, no; we�ll take your word for it,� rejoined the Major gallantly. �Must be on, Solomon; must be on,� said he�nodding his huntsman to proceed. Solomon is doubtful, but �master being master,� Solomon holds his hounds on past the stable, round the lambing-sheds and stackyard, to the front of the little three windows and a doored farm-house, without eliciting a whimper, no, not even from a babbler. Just at this moment a passing cloud discharged a gentle shower over the scene, and when Solomon returned to pursue his inquiries in the fold-yard, the last vestige of scent had been effectually obliterated. Mrs. Kidwell now stood watching the inquisitive proceedings if the party, searching now the hen-house, now the pigstye, now the ash-hole; and when Solomon tried the cow-house door, she observed carelessly: �Ah, that�s locked;� and he passed on to examine the straw-shed adjoining. All places were overhauled and scrutinized. At length, even Captain Nabley�s detective genius failed in suggesting where puss could be. �Where did you see her last?� asked Mrs. Kidwell, with well-feigned ignorance. �Why, we�ve not seen her for some time; but the hounds hunted her up to your very gate,� replied the Major. �Deary me, how strange! and you�ve made nothin� of her since?� observed she. �Nothin�,� assented the Major, reluctantly. �Very odd,� observed Mr. Catcheside, who was anxious for a kill. �Never saw nothin� like it,� asserted Mr. Rintoul, looking again into the pigstye. �She must have doubled back,� suggested Mr. Nettlefold. �Should have met her if she had,� observed old Duffield. �She must be somewhere hereabouts,� observes Mr. Trail, dismounting, and stamping about on foot among the half-trodden straw of the fold-yard. No puss there. �Hard upon the hounds,� observes Mr. Wotherspoon, replenishing his nose with a good charge of snuff. �_Cruel_, indeed,� assented the Major, who never gave them more than entrails. �Never saw a hare better hunted!� exclaimed Captain Nabley, lighting a cigar. �Nor I,� assented fat Mr. Nettleford, mopping his brow. �How long was it?� asked Mr. Rintoul. �An hour and five minutes,� replied the Major, looking at his watch (five-and-forty minutes in reality). �V-a-a-ry good running,� elaborates old dandy Wortherspoon. �I see by the _Post_, that��� �Well, I s�pose we must give her up,� interrupted the Major, who didn�t want to have the contents of his own second-hand copy forestalled. �Pity to leave her,� observes Mr. Trail, returning to his horse. �What can you do?� asked the Major, adding, �it�s no use sitting here.� �None,� assents Captain Nabley, blowing a cloud. At a nod from the Major, Solomon now collects his hounds, and passing through the scattered group, observes with a sort of Wellingtonian touch of his cap, in reply to their condolence, �Yes, sir, but it takes a _slee_ chap, sir, to kill a moor-edge hare, sir!� So the poor Major was foiled of his fur, and when the cows came lowing down from the fell to be milked, kind Mrs. Kidwell opened the door and out popped puss, as fresh and lively as ever; making for her old haunts, where she was again to be found at the end of a week. CHAPTER XXVI. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE. THE reader will perhaps wonder what our fair friend Mrs. Pringle is about, and how there happens to be no tidings from Curtain Crescent. Tidings there were, only the Tantivy Castle servants were so oppressed with work that they could never find time to redirect her effusions. At length Mr. Beverage, the butler, seeing the accumulation of letters in Mr. Packwood, the house-steward�s room, suggested that they might perhaps be wanted, whereupon Mr. Packwood huddled them into a fresh envelope, and sent them to the post along with the general consignment from the Castle. Very pressing and urgent the letters were, increasing in anxiety with each one, as no answer had been received to its predecessor. Were it not that Mrs. Pringle knew the Earl would have written, she would have feared her Billy had sustained some hunting calamity. The first letter merely related how Mrs. Pringle had gone to uncle Jerry�s according to appointment to have a field-day among the papers, and how Jerry had gone to attend an anti-Sunday-band meeting, leaving seed-cake, and sponge-cake, and wine, with a very affectionate three-cornered note, saying how deeply he deplored the necessity, but how he hoped to remedy the delay by another and an early appointment. This letter enclosed a very handsome large coat-of-arms seal, made entirely out of Mrs. Pringle�s own head�containing what the heralds call assumptive arms�divided into as many compartments as a backgammon board, which she advised Billy to use judiciously, hinting that Major H. (meaning our friend Major Y.) would be a fitter person to try it upon than Lord L. The next letter, among many other things of minor importance, reminded Billy that he had not told his Mamma what Mrs. Moffatt had on, or whether they had any new dishes for dinner, and urging him to write her full particulars, but to be careful not to leave either his or her letters lying about, and hoping that he emptied his pockets every night instead of leaving that for Rougier to do, and giving him much other good and wholesome advice. The third letter was merely to remind him that she had not heard from him in answer to either of her other two, and begging him just to drop her a single line by return of post, saying he was well, and so on. The next was larger, enclosing him a double-crest seal, containing a lion on a cap of dignity, and an eagle, for sealing notes in aid of the great seal, and saying that she had had a letter from uncle Jerry, upbraiding her for not keeping her appointment with him, whereas she had never made any, he having promised to make one with her, and again urging Billy to write to her, if only a single line, and when he had time to send her a full account of what Mrs. Moffatt had on every day, and whether they had any new dishes for dinner, and all the news, sporting and otherwise, urging him as before to take care of Dowb (meaning himself), and hoping he was improving in his hunting, able to sit at the jumps, and enjoying himself generally.. The fifth, which caused the rest to come, was a mere repetition of her anxieties and requests for a line, and immediately produced the following letter:� MR. WILLIAM TO HIS MAMMA. �Yammerton Grange. �My dearest Mamma, �Your letters have all reached me at once, for though both Rougier and I especially charged the butler and another fine fellow, and gave them heads to put on, to send all that came immediately, they seem to have waited for an accumulation so as to make one sending do. It is very idle of them. �The seals are beautiful, and I am very much obliged to you for them. I will seal this letter with the large one by way of a beginning. It seems to be uncommonly well quartered�quite noble. �I will now tell you all my movements. �I have been here at Major Yammerton�s,�not Hammerton�s as you called him�for some days enjoying myself amazingly, for the Major has a nice pack of harriers that go along leisurely, instead of tearing away at the unconscionable pace the Earl�s do. Still, a canter in the Park at high tide in my opinion is a much better thing with plenty of ladies looking on. Talking of cantering reminds me I�ve bought a horse of the Major�s,�bought him all except paying for him, so you had better send me the money, one hundred guineas; for though the Major says I may pay for him when I like, and seems quite easy about it, they say horses are always ready money, so I suppose I must conform to the rule. It is a beautiful bay with four black legs, and a splendid mane and tail�very blood-like and racing; indeed the Major says if I was to put him into some of the spring handicaps I should be sure to win a hatful of money with him, or perhaps a gold cup or two. The Major is a great sportsman and has kept hounds for a great number of years, and altogether he is very agreeable, and I feel more at home here than I did at the Castle, where, though everything was very fine, still there was no fun and only Mrs. Moffatt to talk to, at least in the lady way, for though she always professed to be expecting lady callers, none ever came that I saw or heard of. �I really forget all about the dinners there, except that they were very good and lasted a long time. We had a new dish here the other night, which if you want a novelty, you can introduce, namely, to flavour the plates with castor oil; you will find it a very serviceable one for saving your meat, as nobody can eat it. Mrs. Moffatt was splendidly dressed every day, sometimes in blue, sometimes in pink, sometimes in green, sometimes in silk, sometimes in satin, sometimes in velvet with a profusion of very lovely lace and magnificent jewelry. Rougier says, �she makes de hay vile the son does shine.� �I don�t know how long I shall stay here, certainly over Friday, and most likely until Monday, after which I suppose I shall go back to the Castle. The Major says I must have another day with his hounds, and I don�t care if I do, provided he keeps in the hills and away from the jumps, as I can manage the galloping well enough. It�s the jerks that send me out of my saddle. A hare is quite a different animal to pursue to a fox, and seems to have some sort of consideration for its followers. She stops short every now and then and jumps up in view, instead of tearing away like an express train on a railway. �The girls here are very pretty�Miss Yammerton extremely so,�fair, with beautiful blue eyes, and such a figure; but Rougier says they are desperately bad-tempered, except the youngest one, who is dark and like her Mamma; but I shouldn�t say Monsieur is a particular sweet-tempered gentleman himself. He is always grumbling and grouting about what he calls his �grob� and declares the Major keeps his house on sturdied mutton and stale beer. But he complained at the Castle that there was nothing but port and sherry, and composite candles to go to bed with, which he declared was an insult to his station, which entitles him to wax. �You can�t, think how funny and small this place looked after the Castle. It seemed just as if I had got into a series of closets instead of rooms. However, I soon got used to it, and like it amazingly. But here comes Monsieur with my dressing things, so I must out with the great seal and bid you good bye for the present, for the Major is a six o�clock man, and doesn�t like to be kept waiting for his dinner, so now, my dearest Mamma, believe me to remain ever your most truly affectionate son, �Wm. Pringle,� To which we need scarcely say the delighted Mrs. Pringle replied by return of post, writing in the following loving and judicious strain. �25, Curtain Crescent, �Belgrave Square. �My own Beloved Darling, �I was so overjoyed you can�t imagine, to receive your most welcome letter, for I really began to be uneasy about you, not that I feared any accident out hunting, but I was afraid you might have caught cold or be otherwise unwell�mind, if ever you feel in the slightest degree indisposed send for the doctor immediately. There is nothing like taking things in time. It was very idle of the servants at Tantivy Castle to neglect your instructions so, but for the future you had better always write a line to the post-master of the place where you are staying, giving him your next address to forward your letters to; for it is the work for which they are paid, and there is no shuffling it off on to anybody else�s shoulders. The greatest people are oftentimes the worst served, not because the servants have any particular objection to them personally�but because they are so desperately afraid of being what they call put upon by each other, that they spend double the time in fighting off doing a thing that it would take to do it. This is one of the drawbacks upon rank. Noblemen must keep a great staff of people, whom in a general way they cannot employ, and who do nothing but squabble and fight with each other who is to do the little there is, the greatest man among servants being he who does the least. However, as you have got the letters at last we will say no more about it. �I hope your horse is handsome, and neighs and paws the ground prettily; you should be careful, however, in buying, for few people are magnanimous enough to resist cheating a young man in horses;�still, I am glad you have bought one if he suits you, as it is much better and pleasanter to ride your own horse than be indebted to other people for mounts. Nevertheless, I would strongly advise you to stick to either the fox or the stag, with either of which you can sport pink and look smart. Harriers are only for bottle-nosed old gentlemen with gouty shoes. I can�t help thinking, that a day with a milder, more reasonable fox than the ones you had with Lord Ladythorne, would convince you of the superiority of fox-hounds over harriers. I was asking Mr. Ralph Rasper, who called here the other day, how little Tom Stott of the Albany managed with the Queen�s, and he said Tom always shoes his horses with country nails, and consequently throws a shoe before he has gone three fields, which enables him to pull up and lament his ill luck. He then gets it put on, and has a glorious ride home in red�landing at the Piccadilly end of the Albany about dusk. He then goes down to the Acacia or some other Club, and having ordered his dinner, retires to one of the dressing-rooms to change�having had, to his mind, a delightful day. �Beware of the girls!�There�s nothing so dangerous as a young man staying in a country house with pretty girls. He is sure to fall in love with one or other of them imperceptibly, or one or other of them is sure to fall in love with him; and then when at length he leaves, there is sure to be a little scene arranged, Miss with her red eye-lids and lace fringed kerchief, Mamma with her smirks and smiles, and hopes that he�ll _soon return,_ and so on. There are more matches made up in country houses than in all the west-end London ones put together,�indeed, London is always allowed to be only the cover for finding the game in, and the country the place for running it down. Just as you find your fox in a wood and run him down in the open. Be careful therefore what you are about. �It is much easier to get entangled with a girl than to get free again, for though they will always offer to set a young man free, they know better than do it, unless, indeed, they have secured something better,�above all, never consult a male friend in these matters. �The stupidest woman that ever was born, is better than the cleverest man in love-affairs. In fact, no man is a match for a woman until he�s married,�not all even then. The worst of young men is, they never know their worth until it is too late�they think the girls are difficult to catch, whereas there is nothing so easy, unless, as I said before, the girls are better engaged. Indeed, a young man should always have his Mamma at his elbow, to guard him against the machinations of the fair. As, however, that cannot be, let me urge you to be cautious what you are about, and as you seem to have plenty of choice, Don�t be more attentive to one sister than to another, by which means you will escape the red eye-lids, and also escape having Mamma declaring you have trifled with Maria or Sophia�s feelings, and all the old women of the neighbourhood denouncing your conduct and making up to you themselves for one of their own girls. Some ladies ask a man�s intentions before he is well aware that he has any himself, but these are the spoil-sport order of women. Most of them are prudent enough to get a man well hooked before they hand him over to Papa. It is generally a case of �Ask Mamma� first. Beware of brothers!�I have known undoubted heiresses crumpled up into nothing by the appearance (after the catch) of two or three great heavy dragooners. Rougier will find all that out for you. �Be cautious too about letter-writing. There is no real privacy about love-letters, any more than there is about the flags and banners of a regiment, though they occasionally furl and cover them up. The love letters are a woman�s flags and banners, her trophies of success, and the more flowery they are, the more likely to be shown, and to aid in enlivening a Christmas tea-party. Then the girls� Mammas read them, their sisters read them, their maids read them, and ultimately, perhaps, a boisterous energetic barrister reads them to an exasperated jury, some of whose daughters may have suffered from simitar effusions themselves. Altogether, I assure you, you are on very ticklish ground, and I make no doubt if you could ascertain the opinion of the neighbourhood, you are booked for one or other of the girls, so again I say, my dearest boy, beware what you are about, for it is much easier to get fast than to get free again;�get a lady of rank, and not the daughter of a little scrubby squire; and whatever you do, don�t leave this letter lying about, and mind, empty your pockets at nights, and don�t leave it for Rougier to find. �Now, about your movements. I think I wouldn�t go back to Lord L.�s unless he asks you, or unless he named a specific day for your doing so when you came away. Mere general invitations mean nothing; they are only the small coin of good society. �Sorry you�re going. Hope we shall soon meet again. Hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing you to dinner some day,� is a very common mean-nothing form of politeness. �Indeed, I question that your going to a master of harriers from Tantivy Castle would be any great recommendation to his Lordship; for masters of foxhounds and masters of harriers are generally at variance. Altogether, I think I would pause and consider before you decided on returning. I would not talk much about his Lordship where you now are, as it would look as if you were not accustomed to great people. You�ll find plenty of friends ready to bring him in for you, just as Mr. Handycock brings in Lord Privilege in Peter Simple. We all like talking of titles. Remember, all noblemen under the rank of dukes are lords in common conversation. No earls or marquises then. �It just occurs to me, that as you are in the neighbourhood, you might take advantage of the opportunity for paying a visit to Yawnington Hot Wells, where you will find a great deal of good society assembled at this time of year, and where you might pickup some useful and desirable acquaintances. Go to the best hotel whatever it is, and put Rougier on board wages, which will get rid of his grumbling. It is impertinent, no doubt, but still it carries weight in a certain quarter. �As you have got a hunting horse, you will want a groom, and should try to get a nice-looking one. He should not be knocknee�d; on the contrary, bow-legged,�the sort of legs that a pig can pop through. Look an applicant over first, and if his appearance is against him. just put him off quietly by taking his name and address, and say that there are one or two before him, and that you will write to him if you are likely to require his services. �You will soon have plenty to choose from, but it is hard to say whether the tricks of the town ones, or the gaucheries of the country ones are most objectionable. The latter never put on their boots and upper things properly. A slangy, slovenly-looking fellow should be especially avoided. Also men with great shock heads of hair. If they can�t trim themselves, there will not be much chance of their trimming their horses. In short, I believe a groom�a man who really knows and cares anything about horses�is a very difficult person to get. There are plenty who can hiss and fuss, and be busy upon nothing, but very few who can both dress a horse, and dress themselves. �I know Lord Ladythorne makes it a rule never to take one who has been brought up in the racing-stable, for he says they are all hurry and gallop, and for putting two hours� exercise into one. Whatever you do, don�t take one without a character, for however people may gloss over their late servant�s faults and imperfections, and however abject and penitent the applicants may appear, rely upon it, nature will out, and as soon as ever they get up their condition, as they call it, or are installed into their new clothes, they begin to take liberties, and ultimately relapse into their old drunken dissolute habits. It is fortunate for the world that most of them carry their characters in their faces. Besides, it isn�t fair to respectable servants to bring them in contact with these sort of profligates. �Whatever you do, don�t let him find his own clothes. There isn�t one in twenty who can be trusted to do so, and nothing looks worse than the half-livery, half-plain, wholly shabby clothes some of them adopt. �It is wonderful what things they will vote good if they have to find others themselves, things that they would declare were not fit to put on, and they couldn�t be seen in if master supplied them. The best of everything then is only good enough for them. �Some of them will grumble and growl whatever you give them; declare this man�s cloth is bad, and another�s boots inferior, and recommend you to go to Mr. Somebody else, who Mr. This, or Captain That, employs, Mr. This, or Captain That, having, in all probability, been recommended to this Mr. Somebody by some other servant. The same with the saddlers and tradespeople generally. If you employ a saddler who does not tip them, there will be nothing bad enough for his workmanship, or they will declare he does not do that sort of work, only farmer�s work�cart-trappings, and such like things. �The remedy for this is to pay your own bills, and give the servants to understand at starting that you mean to be master. They are to be had on your own terms, if you only begin as you mean to go on. If the worst comes to the worst, a month�s notice, or a month�s pay, settles all differences, and it is no use keeping and paying a servant that doesn�t suit you. Perhaps you will think Rougier trouble enough, but he would be highly offended if you were to ask him to valet a horse. I will try if I can hear of anything likely to suit you, but the old saying, �who shall counsel a man in the choice of a wife, or a horse,� applies with equal force to grooms. �And now, my own dearest boy, having given you all the advice and assistance in my power, I will conclude by repeating what joy the arrival of your letter occasioned me, and also my advice to beware of the girls, and request that you will not leave this letter in your pockets, or lying about, by signing myself ever, my own dearest son, your most truly loving and affectionate Mamma, �Emma Pringle. �_P.S.�I will enclose the halves of two fifty-pound notes for the horse, the receipt of which please to acknowledge by return of post, when I will send the other halves._ �P.S.�Mind the red eyelids! There�s nothing so infectious CHAPTER XXVII. SIR MOSES MAINCHANCE. OUR friend Billy, as the foregoing letter shows, was now very comfortably installed in his quarters, and his presence brought sundry visitors, as well to pay their respects to him and the family, as to see how matters were progressing. Mr. and Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, Mrs. Blurkins, and Mrs. Dotherington, also Mrs. Crickleton came after their castor-oil entertainment, and Mrs. and Miss Wasperton, accompanied by their stiff friend Miss Freezer, who had the reputation of being very satirical. Then there were Mr. Tight and Miss Neate, chaperoned by fat Mrs. Plumberry, of Hollingdale Lodge, and several others. In fact Billy had created a sensation in the country, such godsends as a London dandy not being of every-day occurrence in the country, and everybody wanted to see the great �catch.� How they magnified him! His own mother wouldn�t have known him under the garbs he assumed; now a Lord�s son, now a Baronet�s, now the Richest Commoner in England; with, oh glorious recommendation! no Papa to consult in the matter of a wife. Some said not even a Mamma, but there the reader knows they were wrong. In proportion as they lauded Billy they decried Mrs. Yammerton; she was a nasty, cunning, designing woman, always looking after somebody. Mrs. Wasperton, alluding to Billy�s age, declared that it was just like kidnapping a child, and she inwardly congratulated herself that she had never been guilty of such meanness. Billy, on his part, was airified and gay, showing off to the greatest advantage, perfectly unconscious that he was the observed of all observers. Like Mrs. Moffatt he never had the same dress on twice, and was splendid in his jewelry. Among the carriage company who came to greet him was the sporting Baronet, Sir Moses Mainchance, whose existence we have already indicated, being the same generous gentleman that presented Major Yammerton with a horse, and then made him pay for it. Sir Moses had heard of Billy�s opulence, and being a man of great versatility, he saw no reason why he should not endeavour to partake of it. He now came grinding up in his dog cart, with his tawdry cockaded groom (for he was a Deputy-Lieutenant of Hit-im and Holt-im shire), to lay the foundation of an invitation, and was received with the usual _wow, wow, wow, wow_, of Fury, the terrier, and the coat shuffling of the Bumbler. If the late handsome Recorder of London had to present this ugly old file to the Judges as one of the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, he would most likely introduce him in such terms as the following:� �My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships� (hem) notice Sir Moses Mainchance, (cough) Baronet, and (hem) foxhunter, who has been unanimously chosen by the (hem) livery of London to fill the high and important (cough) office of Sheriff of that ancient and opulent city. My Lords, Sir Moses, as his name indicates, is of Jewish origin. His great-grandfather, Mr. Moses Levy, I believe dealt in complicated penknives, dog-collars, and street sponges. His grandfather, more ambitious, enlarged his sphere of action, and embarked in the old-clothes line. He had a very extensive shop in the Minories, and dealt in rhubarb and gum arabic as well. He married a lady of the name of Smith, not an uncommon one in this country, who inheriting a large fortune from her uncle, Mr. Mainchance, Mr. Moses Levy embraced Christianity, and dropping the name of Levy became Mr. Mainchance, Mr. Moses Mainchance, the founder of the present most important and distinguished family. His son, the Sheriff elect�s father, also carried on the business in the Minories, adding very largely to his already abundant wealth, and espousing a lady of the name of Brown. �In addition to the hereditary trade he opened a curiosity shop in the west end of London, where, being of a highly benevolent disposition, he accommodated young gentlemen whose parents were penurious,�unjustly penurious of course,�with such sums of money as their stations in life seemed likely to enable them to repay. �But, my Lords, the usury laws, as your Lordships will doubtless recollect, being then in full operation, to the great detriment of heirs-at-law, Mr. Mainchance, feeling for the difficulties of the young, introduced an ingenious mode of evading them, whereby _some_ article of _vertu_�generally a picture or something of that sort�was taken as half, or perhaps three-quarters of the loan, and having passed into the hands of the borrower was again returned to Mr. Mainchance at its real worth, a Carlo Dolce, or a Coal Pit, as your Lordships doubtless know, being capable of representing any given sum of money. This gentleman, my Lords, the Sheriff elect�s father, having at length paid the debt of nature�the only debt I believe that he was ever slow in discharging�the opulent gentleman who now stands at my side, and whom I have the honour of presenting to the Court, was enabled through one of those monetary transactions to claim the services of a distinguished politician now no more, and obtain that hereditary rank which he so greatly adorns. On becoming a baronet Sir Moses Mainchance withdrew from commercial pursuits, and set up for a gentleman, purchasing the magnificent estate of Pangburn Park, in Hit-im and Hold-im shire, of which county he is a Deputy-Lieutenant, getting together an unrivalled pack of foxhounds�second to none as I am instructed�and hunting the country with great circumspection; and he requests me to add, he will be most proud and happy to see your Lordships to take a day with his hounds whenever it suits you, and also to dine with him this evening in the splendid Guildhall of the ancient and renowned City of London.�� The foregoing outline, coupled with Sir Moses� treatment of the Major, will give the reader some idea of the character of the gentleman who had sought the society of our hero. In truth, if nature had not made him the meanest, Sir Moses would have been the most liberal of mankind, for his life was a continual struggle between the magnificence of his offers and the penury of his performances. He was perpetually forcing favours upon people, and then backing out when he saw they were going to be accepted. It required no little face to encounter the victim of such a recent �do� as the Major�s, but Sir Moses was not to be foiled when he had an object in view. Telling his groom to stay at the door, and asking in a stentorian voice if Mr. Pringle is at home, so that there may be no mistake as to whom he is calling upon, the Baronet is now ushered into the drawing-room, where the dandified Billy sits in all the dangerous proximity of three pretty girls without their Mamma. Mrs. Yammerton knew when to be out. �Good morning, young ladies!� exclaims Sir Moses gaily, greeting them all round��Mr. Pringle,� continued he, turning to Billy, �allow me to introduce myself�I believe I have the pleasure of addressing a nephew of my excellent old friend Sir Jonathan Pringle, and I shall be most happy if I can contribute in any way to your amusement while in this neighbourhood. Tell me now,� continued he, without waiting for Billy�s admission or rejection of kindred with Sir Jonathan, �tell me now, when you are not engaged in this delightful way,� smiling round on the beauties, �would you like to come and have a day with my hounds?� Billy shuddered at the very thought, but quickly recovering his equanimity, he replied, �Yarse, he should like it very much. �Oh, Mr. Pringle�s a mighty hunter!� exclaimed Miss Yammerton, who really thought he was.��Very good!� exclaimed Sir Moses, �very good! Then I�ll tell you what we�ll do. We meet on Monday at the Crooked Billet on the Bushmead Road�Tuesday at Stubbington Hill�Thursday, Woolerton, by Heckfield�Saturday, the Kennels. S�pose now you come to me on Sunday, I would have said Saturday, only I�m engaged to dine with Lord Oilcake, but you wouldn�t mind coming over on a Sunday, I dare say, would you?� and without waiting for an answer he went on to say, �Come on Sunday, I�ll send my dogcart for you, the thing I have at the door, we�ll then hunt Monday and Tuesday, dine at the Club at Hinton on Wednesday, where we always have a capital dinner, and a party of excellent fellows, good singing and all sorts of fun, and take Thursday at Woolerton, in your way home�draw Shawley Moss, the Withy beds at Langton, Tangleton Brake, and so on, but sure to find before we get to the Brake, for there were swarms of foxes on the moss the last time we were there, and capital good ones they are. Dom�d if they aren�t. So know I think you couldn�t be better Thursday, and I�ll have a two-stalled stable ready for you on Sunday, so that�s a bargain�ay, young ladies, isn�t it?� appealing to our fair friends. And now fine Billy, who had been anxiously waiting to get a word in sideways while all this dread enjoyment was paraded, proceeded to make a vigorous effort to deliver himself from it. He was very much obliged to this unknown friend of his unknown uncle, Sir Jonathan, but he had only one horse, and was afraid he must decline. �Only one horse!� exclaimed Sir Moses, �only one horse!� who had heard he had ten, �ah, well, never mind,� thinking he would sell him one. �I�ll tell you what I�ll do, I�ll mount you on the Tuesday�I�ll mount you on the Tuesday�dom�d if I won�t�and that�ll make it all right�and that�ll make all right.� So extending his hand he said, �Come on Sunday then, come on Sunday,� and, bowing round to the ladies, he backed out of the room lest his friend the Major might appear and open his grievance about the horse. Billy then accompanied him to the door, where Sir Moses, pointing to the gaudy vehicle, said, �Ah, there�s the dog-cart you see, there�s the dog-cart, much at your service, much at your service,� adding, as he placed his foot upon the step to ascend, �Our friend the Major here I make no doubt will lend you a horse to put in it, and between ourselves,� concluded he in a lower tone, �you may as well try if you can�t get him to lend you a second horse to bring with you.� So saying, Sir Moses again shook hands most fervently with his young friend, the nephew of Sir Jonathan, and mounting the vehicle soused down in his seat and drove off with the air of a Jew bailiff in his Sunday best. 213m _Original Size_ Of course, when Billy returned to the drawing-room the young ladies were busy discussing the Baronet, aided by Mamma, who had gone up stairs on the sound of wheels to reconnoitre her person, and was disappointed on coming down to find she had had her trouble for nothing. If Sir Moses had been a married man instead of a widower, without incumbrance as the saying is, fine Billy would have been more likely to have heard the truth respecting him, than he was as matters stood. As it was, the ladies had always run Sir Moses up, and did not depart from that course on the present occasion. Mrs. Yammerton, indeed, always said that he looked a great deal older than he really was, and had no objection to his being talked of for one of her daughters, and as courtships generally go by contraries, the fair lady of the glove with her light sunny hair, and lambent blue eyes, rather admired Sir Moses� hook-nose and clear olive complexion than otherwise. His jewelry, too, had always delighted her, for he had a stock equal to that of any retired pawnbroker. So they impressed Billy very favourably with the Baronet�s pretensions, far more favourably the reader may be sure than the Recorder did the Barons of the Court of Exchequer. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE HIT-IM AND HOLD-IM SHIRE HOUNDS. DESCENDING Long Benningborough Hill on the approach from the west, the reader enters the rich vale of Hit-im and Hold-im shire, rich in agricultural productions, lavish of rural beauties, and renowned for the strength and speed of its foxes. As a hunting country Hit-im and Hold-im shire ranks next to Featherbedfordshire, and has always been hunted by men of wealth and renown. The great Mr. Bruiser hunted it at one time, and was succeeded by the equally great Mr. Customer, who kept it for upwards of twenty years. He was succeeded by Mr. Charles Crasher, after whom came the eminent Lord Martingal, who most materially improved its even then almost perfect features by the judicious planting of gorse covers on the eastern or Droxmoor side, where woodlands are deficient. It was during Lord Martingal�s reign that Hit-im and Hold-im shire may be said to have attained the zenith of its fame, for he was liberal in the extreme, not receiving a farthing subscription, and maintaining the Club at the Fox and Hounds Hotel at Hinton with the greatest spirit and popularity. He reigned over Hit-im and Hold-im shire for the period of a quarter of a century, his retirement being at length caused by a fall from his horse, aggravated by distress at seeing his favourite gorses Rattleford and Chivington cut up by a branch-line of the Crumpletin railway. On his lordship�s resignation, the country underwent the degradation of passing into the hands of the well-known Captain Flasher, a gentleman who, instead of keeping hounds, as Lord Martingal had done, expected the hounds to keep him. To this end he organised a subscription�a difficult thing to realise even when men have got into the habit of paying, or perhaps promising one�but most difficult when, as in this case, they had long been accustomed to have their hunting for nothing. It is then that the beauties of a free pack are apparent. The Captain, however, nothing daunted by the difficulty, applied the screw most assiduously, causing many gentlemen to find out that they were just going to give up hunting, and others that they must go abroad to economise. This was just about the gloomy time that our friend the Major was vacillating between Boulogne and Bastille; and it so happened that Mr. Plantagenet Brown, of Pangburn Park, whose Norman-conquest family had long been pressing on the vitals of the estate, taking all out and putting nothing in, suddenly found themselves at the end of their tether. The estate had collapsed. Then came the brief summing-up of a long career of improvidence in the shape of an auctioneer�s advertisement, offering the highly valuable freehold property, comprising about two thousand five hundred acres in a ring fence, with a modern mansion replete with every requisite for a nobleman or gentleman�s seat, for sale, which, of course, brought the usual train of visitors, valuers, Paul-Pryers, and so on�some lamenting the setting, others speculating on the rising sun. At the sale, a most repulsive, poverty-stricken looking little old Jew kept protracting the biddings when everybody else seemed done, in such a way as to cause the auctioneer to request an _imparlance_, in order that he might ascertain who his principal was; when the Jew, putting his dirty hands to his bearded mouth, whispered in the auctioneer�s ear, �Shir Moshes Mainchance,� whereupon the languid biddings were resumed, and the estate was ultimately knocked down to the Baronet. Then came the ceremony of taking possession�the carriage-and-four, the flags, the band of music, the triumphal arch, the fervid address and heartfelt reply, amid the prolonged cheers of the wretched pauperised tenantry. That mark of respect over, let us return to the hounds. Captain Flasher did not give satisfaction, which indeed was not to be expected, considering that he wanted a subscription. No man would have given satisfaction under the circumstances, but the Captain least of all, because he brought nothing into the common stock, nothing, at least, except his impudence, of which the members of the hunt had already a sufficient supply of their own. The country was therefore declared vacant at the end of the Captain�s second season, the Guarantee Committee thinking it best to buy him off the third one, for which he had contracted to hunt it. This was just about the time that Sir Moses purchased Pangburn Park, and, of course, the country was offered to him. A passion for hunting is variously distributed, and Sir Moses had his share of it. He was more than a mere follower of hounds, for he took a pleasure in their working and management, and not knowing much about the cost, he jumped at the offer, declaring he didn�t want a farthing subscription, no, not a farthing: he wouldn�t even have a cover fund�no, not even a cover fund! He�d pay keepers, stoppers, damage, everything himself,�dom�d if he wouldn�t. Then when he got possession of the country, he declared that he found it absolutely indispensable for the promotion of sport, and the good of them all, that there should be a putting together of purses�every man ought to have a direct interest in the preservation of foxes, and, therefore, they should all pay five guineas,�just five guineas a-year to a cover fund. It wasn�t fair that he should pay all the cost�dom�d if it was. He wouldn�t stand it�dom�d if he would. Then the next season he declared that five guineas was all moonshine�it would do nothing in the way of keeping such a country as Hit-im and Hold-im shire together�it must be ten guineas, and that would leave a great balance for him to pay. Well, ten guineas he got, and emboldened by his success, at the commencement of the next season he got a grand gathering together, at a hand-in-the-pocket hunt dinner at the Fox and Hounds Hotel at Hinton, to which he presented a case of champagne, when his health being drunk with suitable enthusiasm, he got up and made them a most elaborate speech on the pleasures and advantages of fox-hunting, which he declared was like meat, drink, washing and lodging to him, and to which he mainly attributed the very excellent health which they had just been good enough to wish him a continuance of in such complimentary terms, that he was almost overpowered by it. He was glad to see that he was not a monopoliser of the inestimable blessings of health, for, looking round the table, he thought he never saw such an assemblage of cheerful contented countenances�(applause)�and it was a great satisfaction to him to think that he in any way contributed to make them so�(renewed applause). He had been thinking since he came into the room whether it was possible to increase in any way the general stock of prosperity�(great applause)�and considering the success that had already marked his humble endeavours, he really thought that there was nothing like sticking to the same medicine, and, if possible, increasing the dose; for�(the conclusion of this sentence was lost in the general applause that followed). Having taken an inspiriting sip of wine, he thus resumed, �He now hunted the country three days a-week,� he said, �and, thanks to their generous exertions, and the very judicious arrangement they had spontaneously made of having a hunt club, he really thought it would stand four days.��(Thunders of applause followed this announcement, causing the glasses and biscuits to dance jigs on the table. Sir Moses took a prolonged sip of wine, and silence being at length again restored, he thus resumed):��It had always stood four in old Martingal�s time, and why shouldn�t it do so in theirs?�(applause). Look at its extent! Look at its splendid gorses! Look at its magnificent woodlands! He really thought it was second to none!� And so the company seemed to think too by the cheering that followed the announcement. �Well then,� said Sir Moses, drawing breath for the grand effort, �there was only one thing to be considered�one leetle difficulty to be overcome�but one, which after the experience he had had of their gameness and liberality, he was sure they would easily surmount.��(A murmur of �O-O-O�s,� with Hookey Walkers, and fingers to the nose, gradually following the speaker.) �That _leetle_ difficulty, he need hardly say, was their old familiar friend £ s. d.! who required occasionally to be looked in the face.��(Ironical laughter, with _sotto voce_ exclamations from Jack to Tom and from Sam to Harry, of�) �I say! _three_ days are _quite_ enough�_quite_ enough. Don�t you think so?� With answers of �Plenty! plenty!� mingled with whispers of, �I say, this is what he calls hunting the country for nothing!� �Well, gentlemen,� continued Sir Moses, tapping the table with his presidential hammer, to assert his monopoly of noise, �Well, gentlemen, as I said before, I have no doubt we can overcome any difficulty in the matter of money�what�s the use of money if it�s not to enjoy ourselves, and what enjoyment is there equal to fox-hunting? (applause). None! none!� exclaimed Sir Moses with emphasis. �Well then, gentlemen, what I was going to say was this: It occurred to me this morning as I was shaving myself��� �That you would shave us,� muttered Mr. Paul Straddler to Hicks, the flying hatter, neither of whom ever subscribed. ��It occurred to me this morning, as I was shaving myself, that for a very little additional outlay�say four hundred a year�and what�s four hundred a-year among so many of us? we might have four days a-week, which is a great deal better than three in many respects, inasmuch as you have two distinct lots of hounds, accustomed to hunt together, instead of a jumble for one day, and both men and horses are in steadier and more regular work; and as to foxes, I needn�t say we have plenty of them, and that they will be all the better for a little more exercise.�(Applause from Sir Moses� men, Mr. Smoothley and others). Well, then, say four hundred a-year, or, as hay and corn are dear and likely to continue so, suppose we put it at the worst, and call it five�five hundred�what�s five hundred a-year to a great prosperous agricultural and commercial country like this? Nothing! A positive bagatelle! I�d be ashamed to have it known at the �Corner� that we had ever haggled about such a sum.� �You pay it, then,� muttered Mr. Straddler. �Catch him doing that,� growled Hicks. Sir Moses here took another sip of sherry, and thus resumed:� �Well, now, gentlemen, as I said before, it only occurred to me this morning as I was shaving, or I would have been better prepared with some definite proposal for your consideration, but I�ve just dotted down here, on the back of one of Grove the fishmonger�s cards (producing one from his waistcoat pocket as he spoke), the names of those who I think ought to be called upon to contribute;�and, waiter!� exclaimed he, addressing one of the lanky-haired order, who had just protruded his head in at the door to see what all the eloquence was about, �if you�ll give me one of those mutton fats,�and your master ought to be kicked for putting such things on the table, and you may tell him I said so,�I�ll just read the names over to you.� Sir Moses adjusting his gold double eye glasses on his hooked nose as the waiter obeyed his commands. �Well, now,� said the Baronet, beginning at the top of the list, �I�ve put young Lord Polkaton down for fifty.� �But my Lord doesn�t hunt, Sir Moses!� ejaculated Mr. Mossman, his Lordship�s land-agent, alarmed at the demand upon a very delicate purse. �Doesn�t hunt!� retorted Sir Moses angrily. �No; but he might if he liked! If there were no hounds, how the deuce could he? It would do him far more good, let me tell him, than dancing at casinos and running after ballet girls, as he does. I�ve put him down for fifty, however,� continued Sir Moses, with a jerk of his head, �and you may tell him I�ve done so.� �Wish you may get it,� growled Mr. Mossman, with disgust. �Well, then,� said the Baronet, proceeding to the next name on the list, �comes old Lord Harpsichord. He�s good for fifty, too, I should say. At all events, I�ve put him down for that sum;� adding, �I�ve no notion of those great landed cormorants cutting away to the continent and shirking the obligations of country life. I hold it to be the duty of every man to subscribe to a pack of fox-hounds. In fact, I would make a subscription a first charge upon land, before poor-rate, highway-rate, or any sort of rate. I�d make it payable before the assessed taxes themselves��(laughter and applause, very few of the company being land-owners). �Two fifties is a hundred, then,� observed Sir Moses, perking up; �and if we can screw another fifty out of old Lady Shortwhist, so much the better; at all events. I think she�ll be good for a pony; and then we come to the Baronets. First and foremost is that confounded prosy old ass, Sir George Persiflage, with his empty compliments and his fine cravats. I�ve put him down for fifty, though I don�t suppose the old sinner will pay it, though we may, perhaps, get half, which we shouldn�t do if we were not to ask for more. Well, we�ll call the supercilious old owls five-and-twenty for safety,� added Sir Moses. �Then there�s Sir Morgan Wildair; I should think we may say five-aud-twenty for him. What say you, Mr. Squeezely?� appealing to Sir Morgan�s agent at the low end of the table. �I�ve no instructions from Sir Morgan on the subject, Sir Moses,� replied Mr. Squeezely, shaking his head. �Oh, but he�s a young man, and you must tell him that it�s right�_necessary_, in fact,� replied Sir Moses. �You just pay it, and pass it through his accounts�that�s the shortest way. It�s the duty of an agent to save his principal trouble. I wouldn�t keep an agent who bothered me with all the twopenny-halfpenny transactions of the estate�dom�d if I would,� said Sir Moses, resuming his eye-glass reading. He then went on through the names of several other parties, who he thought might be coaxed or bullied out of subscriptions, he taking this man, another taking that, and working them, as he said, on the fair means first, and foul means principle afterwards. �Well, then, now you see, gentlemen,� said Sir Moses, pocketing his card and taking another sip of sherry prior to summing up; �it just amounts to this. Four days a-week, as I said before, is a dom�d deal better than three, and if we can get the fourth day out of these shabby screws, why so much the better; but if that can�t be done entirely, it can to a certain extent, and then it will only remain for the members of the club and the strangers�by the way, we shouldn�t forget them�it will only remain for the members of the club and the strangers to raise any slight deficiency by an increased subscription, and according to my plan of each man working his neighbour, whether the club subscription was to be increased to fifteen, or seventeen, or even to twenty pounds a-year will depend entirely upon ourselves; so you see, gentlemen, we have all a direct interest in the matter, and cannot go to work too earnestly or too strenuously; for believe me, gentlemen, there�s nothing like hunting, it promotes health and longevity, wards off the gout and sciatica, and keeps one out of the hands of those dom�d doctors, with their confounded bills�no offence to our friend Plaister, there,� alluding to a doctor of that name who was sitting about half-way down the table��so now,� continued Sir Moses, �I think I cannot do better than conclude by proposing as a bumper toast, with all the honours, Long life and prosperity to the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hounds!� When the forced cheering had subsided, our friend�or rather Major Yammerton�s friend�Mr. Smoothley, the gentleman who assisted at the sale of Bo-peep, arose to address the meeting amid coughs and knocks and the shuffling of feet. Mr. Smoothley coughed too, for he felt he had an uphill part to perform; but Sir Moses was a hard task-master, and held his �I. O. U.�s� for a hundred and fifty-seven pounds. On silence being restored, Mr. Smoothley briefly glanced at the topics urged, as he said, in such a masterly manner by their excellent and popular master, to whom they all owed a deep debt of gratitude for the spirited manner in which he hunted the country, rescuing it from the degradation to which it had fallen, and restoring it to its pristine fame and prosperity�(applause from Sir Moses and his _claqueurs_). �With respect to the specific proposal submitted by Sir Moses, Mr. Smoothley proceeded to say, he really thought there could not be a difference of opinion on the subject�(renewed applause, with murmurs of dissent here and there). It was clearly their interest to have the country hunted four days a week, and the mode in which Sir Moses proposed accomplishing the object was worthy the talents of the greatest financier of the day�(applause)�for it placed the load on the shoulders of those who were the best able to bear it�(applause). Taking all the circumstances of the case, therefore, into consideration, he thought the very least they could do would be to pass a unanimous vote of thanks to their excellent friend for the brilliant sport he had hitherto shown them, and pledge themselves to aid to the utmost of their power in carrying out his most liberal and judicious proposal. �Jewish enough,� whispered Mr. Straddler into the flying hatter�s ear. And the following week�s Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald, and also the Featherbedfordshire Gazette, contained a string of resolutions, embodying the foregoing, as unanimously passed at a full meeting of the members of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, held at the Fox and Hounds Hotel, in Ilinton, Sir Moses Mainchance, Bart., in the chair. And each man set to work on the pocket of his neighbour with an earnestness inspired by the idea of saving his own. The result was that a very considerable sum was raised for the four days a-week, which, somehow or other, the country rarely or ever got, except in the shape of advertisements; for Sir Moses always had some excuse or other for shirking it,�either his huntsman had got drunk the day before, or his first whip had had a bad fall, or his second whip had been summoned to the small debts court, or his hounds had been fighting and several of them had got lamed, or the distemper had broken out in his stable, or something or other had happened to prevent him. Towards Christmas, or on the eve of an evident frost, he came valiantly out, and if foiled by a sudden thaw, would indulge in all sorts of sham draws, and short days, to the great disgust of those who were not in the secret. Altogether Sir Moses Mainchance rode Hit-im and Hold-im shire as Hit-im and Hold-im shire had never been ridden before. 223m _Original Size_ CHAPTER XXIX. THE PANGBURN PARK ESTATE. THE first thing that struck Sir Moses Mainchance after he became a �laird� was that he got very little interest for his money. Here he was he who had always looked down with scorn upon any thing that would not pay ten per cent., scarcely netting three by his acres. He couldn�t understand it�dom�d if he could. How could people live who had nothing but land? Certainly Mr. Plantagenet Smith had left the estate in as forlorn a condition as could well be imagined. Latterly his agent, Mr. Tom Teaser, had directed his attention solely to the extraction of rent, regardless of maintenance, to say nothing of improvements, consequently the farm buildings were dilapidated, and the land impoverished in every shape and way. Old pasture-field after old pasture-field had gradually succumbed to the plough, and the last ounce of freshness being extracted, the fields were left to lay themselves down to weeds or any thing they liked. As this sort of work never has but one ending, the time soon arrived when the rent was not raiseable. Indeed it was the inability to make �both ends meet,� as Paul Pry used to say, which caused Mr. Plantagenet Smith to retire from Burke�s landed gentry, which he did to his own advantage, land being sometimes like family plate, valuable to sell, but unprofitable to keep. Sir Moses, flushed with his reception and the consequence he had acquired, met his tenants gallantly the first rent-day, expecting to find everything as smooth and pleasant as a London house-rent audit. Great was his surprise and disgust at the pauperised wretches he encountered, creatures that really appeared to be but little raised above the brute creation, were it not for the uncommon keenness they showed at a �catch.� First came our old friend Henerey Brown & Co., who, foiled in their attempt to establish themselves on Major Yammerton�s farm at Bonnyrigs, and also upon several other farms in different parts of the county, had at length �wheas we have considered� Mr. Teaser to some better purpose for one on the Pangburn Park Estate. This was Doblington farm, consisting of a hundred and sixty of undrained obdurate clay, as sticky as bird-lime in wet, and as hard as iron in dry weather, and therefore requiring extra strength to take advantage of a favourable season. Now Henerey Brown & Co. had farmed, or rather starved, a light sandy soil of some two-thirds the extent of Doblington, and their half-fed pony horses and wretched implements were quite unable to cope with the intractable stubborn stuff they had selected. Perhaps we can hardly say they selected it, for it was a case of Hobson�s choice with them, and as they offered more rent than the outgoing tenant, who had farmed himself to the door, had paid, Mr. Teaser installed them in it. And now at the end of the year, (the farms being let on that beggarly pauper-encouraging system of a running half year) Henerey & Humphrey came dragging their legs to the Park with a quarter of a year�s rent between them, Henerey who was the orator undertaking to appear, Humphrey paying his respects only to the cheer. Sir Moses and Mr. Teaser were sitting in state in the side entrance-hall, surrounded by the usual paraphernalia of pens, ink, and paper, when Henerey�s short, square turnip-headed, vacant-countenanced figure loomed in the distance. Mr. Teaser trembled when he saw him, for he knew that the increased rent obtained for Henerey�s farm had been much dwelt upon by the auctioneer, and insisted upon by the vendor as conducive evidence of the improving nature of the whole estate. Teaser, like the schoolboy in the poem, now traced the day�s disaster in Henerey�s morning face. However, Teaser put a good face on the matter, saying, as Henerey came diverging up to the table, �This is Mr. Brown, Sir Moses, the new tenant of Doblington�the farm on the Hill.� he was going to add �with the bad out-buildings,� but he thought he had better keep that to himself. _Humph_ sniffed the eager baronet, looking the new tenant over. �Your sarvent, Sir Moses,� ducked the farmer, seating himself in the dread cash-extracting chair. �Well, my man, and how dy�e do? I hope you�re well�How�s your wife? I hope she�s well,� continued the Baronet, watching Henerey�s protracted dive into his corduroy breeches-pockets, and his fish up of the dirty canvas money-bag. Having deliberately untied the string, Henerey, without noticing the Baronet�s polite enquiries, shook out a few local five pound notes, along with some sovereigns, shillings, and sixpence upon the table, and heaving a deep sigh, pushed them over towards Mr. Teaser. That worthy having wet his thumb at his mouth proceeded to count the dirty old notes, and finding them as he expected, even with the aid of the change, very short of the right amount, he asked Henerey if he had any bills against them? �W-h-o-y no-a ar think not,� replied Henerey, scratching his straggling-haired head, apparently conning the matter over in his mind. �W-h-o-y, yeas, there�s the Income Tax, and there�s the lime to �loo off.� �Lime!� exclaimed the Baronet, �What have I to do with lime?� �W-h-o-y, yeas, you know you promised to �loo the lime,� replied Hererey, appealing to Mr. Teaser, who frowned and bit his lip at the over-true assertion. �Never heard of such a thing!� exclaimed Sir Moses, seeing through the deceit at a glance. �Never heard of such a thing,� repeated he. �That�s the way you keep up your rents is it?� asked he: �Deceive yourselves by pretending to get more money than you do, and pay rates and taxes upon your deceit as a punishment. That �ill not do! dom�d if it will,� continued the Baronet, waxing warm. �Well, but the income tax won�t bring your money up to anything like the right amount,� observed Mr. Teaser to Henerey, anxious to get rid of the lime question. �W-h-o-y n-o-a,� replied Henerey, again scratching his pate, �but it�s as much as I can bring ye to-day.� �To-day, man!� retorted Sir Moses, �Why, don�t you know that this is the rent-day! the day on which the entire monetary transactions on the whole estate are expected to be settled.� _Henerey_��O, w-h-o-y it �ill make ne odds to ye, Sir Moses.� _Sir Moses_��Ne odds to me! How do you know that?� _Henerey_�(apologetically) �Oh, Sir Moses, you have plenty, Sir Moses.� _Sir Moses_��Me plenty! me plenty! I�m the poorest crittur alive!� which was true enough, only not in the sense Sir Moses intended it. _Henerey_��Why, why, Sir Moses, ar�ll bring ye some more after a bit; but ar tell ye,� appealing to Teaser, �_Ye mun �loo for the lime._� �The lime be hanged,� exclaimed Sir Moses. �Dy�e sp�ose I�m such a fool as to let you the land, and farm ye the land, and pay income tax on rent that I never receive? That won�t do�dom�d if it will.� _Henerey_�(boiling up) �Well, but Sir Moses, wor farm�s far o�er dear.� _Sir Moses_�(turning flesh-colour with fury) �O�er dear! Why, isn�t it the rent you yourself offered for it?� _Henerey_��Why, why, but we hadn�t looked her carefully over.� �Bigger fool you,� ejaculated the Jew. �The land�s far worse nor we took it for�some of the plough�s a shem to be seen�wor stable rains in desprate�there isn�t a dry place for a coo�the back wall of the barn�s all bulgin oot�the pigs get into wor garden for want of a gate�there isn�t a fence �ill turn a foal�the hars eat all wor tormots�we�re perfectly ruined wi� rats,� and altogether Henerey opened such a battery of grievances as completely drove Sir Moses, who hated anyone to talk but himself, from his seat, and made him leave the finish of his friend to Mr. Teaser. As the Baronet went swinging out of the room he mentally exclaimed, �Never saw such a man as that in my life�dom�d if ever I did!� Mr. Teaser then proceeded with the wretched audit, each succeeding tenant being a repetition of the first�excuses�drawbacks�allowances for lime�money no matter to Sir Moses�and this with a whole year�s rent due, to say nothing of hopeless arrears. �How the deuce,� as Sir Moses asked, �do people live who have nothing but land?� When Sir Moses returned, at the end of an hour or so, he found one of the old tenants of the estate, Jacky Hindmarch, in the chair. Jacky was one of the real scratching order of farmers, and ought to be preserved at Madame Tussaud�s or the British Museum, for the information of future ages. To see him in the fields, with his crownless hat and tattered clothes, he was more like a scare-crow than a farmer; though, thanks to the influence of cheap finery, he turned out very shiney and satiney on a Sunday. Jacky had seventy acres of land,�fifty acres of arable and twenty acres of grass, which latter he complimented with an annual mowing without giving it any manure in return, thus robbing his pastures to feed his fallows,�if, indeed, he did not rob both by selling the manure off his farm altogether. Still Jacky was reckoned a cute fellow among his compatriots. He had graduated in the Insolvent Debtors� Court to evade his former landlord�s claims, and emerged from gaol with a good stock of bad law engrafted on his innate knavery. In addition to this, Jacky, when a hind, had nearly had to hold up his hand at Quarter Sessions for stealing his master�s corn, which he effected in a very ingenious way:�The granary being above Jacky�s stable, he bored a hole through the floor, to which he affixed a stocking; and, having drawn as much corn as he required, he stopped the hole up with a plug until he wanted a fresh supply. The farmer�one Mr. Podmore�at length smelt a rat; but giving Jacky in charge rather prematurely, he failed in substantiating the accusation, when the latter, acting �under advice,� brought an action against Podmore, which ended in a compromise, Podmore having to pay Jacky twenty pounds for robbing him! This money, coupled with the savings of a virtuous young woman he presently espoused, and who had made free with the produce of her master�s dairy, enabled Jacky to take the farm off which he passed through the Insolvent Debtors� Court, on to the Pangburn Park estate, where he was generally known by the name of Lawyer Hindmarch. Jacky and his excellent wife attempted to farm the whole seventy acres themselves; to plough, harrow, clean, sow, reap, mow, milk, churn,�do everything, in fact; consequently they were always well in arrear with their work, and had many a fine run after the seasons. If Jacky got his turnips in by the time other people were singling theirs, he was thought to do extremely well. To see him raising the seed-furrow in the autumn, a stranger would think he was ploughing in a green crop for manure, so luxuriant were the weeds. But Jacky Hindmarch would defend his system against Mr. Mechi himself; there being no creature so obstinate or intractable as a pig-headed farmer. A landlord had better let his land to a cheesemonger, a greengrocer, a draper, anybody with energy and capital, rather than to one of these self-sufficient, dawdling nincompoops. To be sure, Jacky farmed as if each year was to be his last, but he wouldn�t have been a bit better if he had had a one-and-twenty years� lease before him. �Take all out and put nothing in,� was his motto. This was the genius who was shuffling, and haggling, and prevaricating with Mr. Teaser when Sir Moses returned, and who now gladly skulked off: Henerey Brown not having reported very favourably of the great man�s temper. The next to come was a woman,�a great, mountainous woman�one Mrs. Peggy Turnbull, wife of little Billy Turnbull of Lowfield Farm, who, she politely said, was not fit to be trusted from home by hisself.�Mrs. Turnbull was, though, being quite a match for any man in the country, either with her tongue or her fists. She was a great masculine knock-me-down woman, round as a sugar-barrel, with a most extravagant stomach, wholly absorbing her neck, and reaching quite up to her chin. Above the barrel was a round, swarthy, sunburnt face, lit up with a pair of keen little twinkling beady black eyes. She paused in her roll as she neared the chair, at which she now cast a contemptuous look, as much as to say, �How can I ever get into such a thing as that?� Mr. Teaser saw her dilemma and kindly gave her the roomier one on which he was sitting�while Sir Moses inwardly prepared a little dose of politeness for her. �Well, my good woman,� said he as soon as she got soused on to the seat. �Well, my good woman, how dy�e do? I hope you�re well. How�s your husband? I hope he�s well;� and was proceeding in a similar strain when the monster interrupted his dialogue by thumping the table with her fist, and exclaiming at the top of her voice, as she fixed her little beady black eyes full upon him� �_D�ye think we�re ganninn to get a new B-a-r-r-u-n?_� �Dom you and your b-a-r-r-n!� exclaimed the Baronet, boiling up. �Why don�t you leave those things to your husband?� �_He�s see shy!_� roared the monster. �You�re not shy, however!� replied Sir Moses, again jumping up and running away. And thus what with one and another of them, Sir Moses was so put out, that dearly as he loved a let off for his tongue, he couldn�t bring himself to face his friends again at dinner. So the agreeable duty devolved upon Mr. Teaser, of taking the chair, and proposing in a bumper toast, with all the honours and one cheer more, the health of a landlord who, it was clear, meant to extract the uttermost farthing he could from his tenants. And that day�s proceedings furnished ample scope for a beginning, for there was not one tenant on the estate who paid up; and Sir Moses declared that of all the absurdities he had ever heard tell of in the whole course of his life, that of paying income-tax on money he didn�t receive was the greatest. �Dom�d if it wasn�t!� said he. In fact the estate had come to a stand still, and wanted nursing instead of further exhaustion. If it had got into the hands of an improving owner�a Major Yammerton, for instance,�there was redemption enough in the land; these scratching fellows, only exhausting the surface; and draining and subsoiling would soon have put matters right, but Sir Moses declared he wouldn�t throw good money after bad, that the rushes were meant to be there and there they should stay. If the tenants couldn�t pay their rents how could they pay any drainage interest? he asked. Altogether Sir Moses declared it shouldn�t be a case of over shoes, over boots, with him�that he wouldn�t go deeper into the mud than he was, and he heartily wished he had the price of the estate back in his pocket again, as many a man has wished, and many a one will wish again�there being nothing so ticklish to deal with as land. There is no reason though why it should be so; but we will keep our generalities for another chapter. Sir Moses�s property went rapidly back, and soon became a sort of last refuge for the destitute, whither the ejected of all other estates congregated prior to scattering their stock, on failing to get farms in more favoured localities. As they never meant to pay, of course they all offered high rents, and then having got possession the Henerey Brown scene was enacted�the farm was �far o�er dear��they could �make nout on�t at that rent!� nor could they have made aught on them if they had had them for nothing, seeing that their capital consisted solely of their intense stupidity. Then if Sir Moses wouldn�t reduce the rent, he might just do his �warst,� meanwhile they pillaged the land both by day and by night. The cropping of course corresponded with the tenure, and may be described as just anything they could get off the land. White crop succeeded white crop, if the weeds didn�t smother the seeds, or if any of the slovens did �try for a few turnips,� as they called it, they were sown on dry spots selected here and there, with an implement resembling a dog�s-meat man�s wheelbarrow�drawn by one ass and steered by another. Meanwhile Mr. Teaser�s labours increased considerably, what with the constant lettings and leavings and watchings for �slopings.� There was always some one or other of the worthies on the wing, and the more paper and words Mr. Teaser employed to bind them, the more inefficient and futile he found the attempt. It soon became a regular system to do the new landlord, in furtherance of which the tenants formed themselves into a sort of mutual aid association. Then when a seizure was effected, they combined not to buy, so that the sufferer got his wretched stock back at little or no loss. Wretched indeed, was the spectacle of a sale; worn out horses, innocent of corn; cows, on whose hips one could hang one�s hat; implements that had been �fettled oop� and �fettled oop,� until not a particle of the parent stock remained; carts and trappings that seemed ready for a bonfire; pigs, that looked as if they wanted food themselves instead of being likely to feed any one else; and poultry that all seemed troubled with the pip. The very bailiff�s followers were shocked at the emptiness of the larders. A shank bone of salt meat dangling from the ceiling, a few eggs on a shelf, a loaf of bread in a bowl, a pound of butter in a pie-dish,�the whole thing looking as unlike the plentiful profusion of a farm-house as could well be imagined. The arduous duties of the office, combined with the difficulty of pleasing Sir Moses, at length compelled Mr. Teaser to resign, when our �laird,� considering the nature of the services required concluded that there could be no one so fit to fulfil them as one of the �peoplish.� Accordingly he went to town, and after Consulting Levy this, and �Goodman� that, and Ephraim t�other, he at length fixed upon that promising swell, young Mr. Mordecai Nathan, of Cursitor-street, whose knowledge of the country consisted in having assisted in the provincial department of his father�s catchpoll business in the glorious days of writs and sponging-houses. In due time down came Mordecai, ringed and brooched and chained and jewelled, and as Sir Moses was now the great man, hunting the country, associating with Lord Oilcake, and so on, he gave Mordecai a liberal salary, four-hundred a year made up in the following clerical way: 230m _Original Size_ Besides, which, Sir Moses promised him ten per cent, upon all recovered arrears, which set Mordecai to work with all the enthusiastic energy of his race. CHAPTER XXX. COMMERCE AND AGRICULTURE. 231m _Original Size_ ONE of the most distinguishing features between commerce and agriculture undoubtedly is the marked indifference shown to the value of time by the small followers of the latter, compared to the respectful treatment it receives at the hands of the members of the commercial world. To look at their relative movements one would think that the farmer was the man who carried on his business under cover, instead of being the one who exposes all his capital to the weather. It is a rare thing to see a farmer�even in hay time�in a hurry. If the returns could be obtained we dare say it would be found that three-fourths of the people who are late for railway trains are farmers. In these accelerated days, when even the very street waggon horses trot, they are the only beings whose pace has not been improved. The small farmer is just the same slowly moving dawdling creature that he was before the perfection of steam. Never punctual, never ready, never able to give a direct answer to a question; a pitchfork at their backs would fail to push some of these fellows into prosperity. They seem wholly lost to that emulative spirit which actuates the trader to endeavour to make each succeeding year leave him better than the last. A farmer will be forty years on a farm without having benefited himself, his family, his landlord, or any human being whatever. The last year�s tenancy will find him as poor as the first, with, in all probability, his land a great deal poorer. In dealing, a small farmer is never happy without a haggle. Even if he gets his own price he reproaches hiself when he returns home with not having asked a little more, and so got a wrangle. Very often, however, they outwit themselves entirely by asking so much more than a thing is really worth, that a man who knows what he is about, and has no hopes of being able to get the sun to stand still, declines entering upon an apparently endless negotiation. See lawyer Hindmarch coming up the High Street at Halterley fair, leading his great grey colt, with his landlord Sir Moses hailing him with his usual �Well my man, how d�ye do? I hope you�re well, how much for the colt?� The lawyer�s keen intellect�seeing that it is his landlord, with whom he is well over the left�springs a few pounds upon an already exorbitant price, and Sir Moses, who can as he says, measure the horse out to ninepence, turns round on his heel with a chuck of his chin, as much as to say, �you may go on.� Then the lawyer relenting says, �w�h�o�y, but there�ll be summit to return upon that, you know, Sir Moses, Sir.� �I should think so,� replies the Baronet, walking away, to �Well my man�how d�ye do? I hope you�re well,� somebody else. A sale by auction of agricultural stock illustrates our position still further, and one remarkable feature is that the smaller the sale the more unpunctual people are. They seldom get begun under a couple of hours after the advertised time, and then the dwelling, the coaxing, the wrangling, the �puttings-up� again, the ponderous attempts at wit are painful and oppressive to any one accustomed to the easy gliding celerity of town auctioneers. A conference with a farmer is worse, especially if the party is indiscreet enough to let the farmer come to him instead of his going to the farmer. The chances, then, are, that he is saddled with a sort of old man of the sea; as a certain ambassador once was with a gowk of an Englishman, who gained an audience under a mistaken notion, and kept sitting and sitting long after his business was discussed, in spite of his Excellency�s repeated bows and intimations that he might retire. Gowk seemed quite insensible to a hint. In vain his Excellency stood bowing and bowing�hoping to see him rise. No such luck. At length his Excellency asked him if there was anything else he could do for him? �Why, noa.� replied Gowk drily; adding after a pause, �but you haven�t asked me to dine.� �Oh, I beg your pardon!� replied his Excellency, �I wasn�t aware that it was in my instructions, but I�ll refer to them and see,� added he, backing out of the room. Let us fancy old Heavyheels approaching his landlord, to ask if he thinks they are gannin to get a new barrun, or anything else he may happen to want, for these worthies have not discovered the use of the penny-post, and will trudge any distance to deliver their own messages. Having got rolled into the room, the first thing Heels does is to look out for a seat, upon which he squats like one of Major Yammerton�s hares, and from which he is about as difficult to raise. Instead of coming out with his question as a trader would, �What�s rum? what�s sugar? what�s indigo?� he fixes his unmeaning eyes on his landlord, and with a heavy aspiration, and propping his chin up with a baggy umbrella, ejaculates��_N-o-o_,� just as if his landlord had sent for him instead of his having come of his own accord. �Well!� says the landlord briskly, in hopes of getting him on. �It�s a foine day,� observes Heavyheels, as if he had nothing whatever on his mind, and so he goes maundering and sauntering on, wasting his own and his landlord�s time, most likely ending with some such preposterous proposition as would stamp any man for a fool if it wasn�t so decidedly in old Heavyheel�s own favour. To give them their due, they are never shy about asking, and have always a host of grievances to bait a landlord with who gives them an opportunity. Some of the women�we beg their pardon�ladies of the establishments, seem to think that a landlord rides out for the sake of being worried, and rush at him as he passes like a cur dog at a beggar. Altogether they are a wonderful breed! It will hardly be credited hereafter, when the last of these grubbing old earthworms is extinct, that in this anxious, commercial, money-striving country, where every man is treading on his neighbour�s heels for cash, that there should ever have been a race of men who required all the coaxing and urging and patting on the back to induce them to benefit themselves that these slugs of small tenant farmers have done. And the bulk of them not a bit better for it. They say �y-e-a-s,� and go and do the reverse directly. Fancy our friend Goodbeer, the brewer, assembling his tied Bonnifaces at a banquet consisting of all the delicacies of the season�beef, mutton, and cheese, as the sailor said�and after giving the usual loyal and patriotic toasts, introducing his calling in the urgent way some landlords do theirs�pointing out that the more swipes they sell the greater will be their profit, recommending them to water judiciously, keeping the capsicum out of sight, and, in lieu of some new implement of husbandry, telling them that a good, strong, salt Dutch cheese, is found to be a great promoter of thirst, and recommending each man to try a cheese on himself�perhaps ending by bowling one at each of them by way of a start. But some will, perhaps, say that the interests of the landlord and tenant-farmer are identical, and that you cannot injure the latter without hurting the former. Not more identical, we submit, than the interests of Goodbeer with the Bonnifaces; the land is let upon a calculation what each acre will produce, just as Goodbeer lets a public-house on a calculation founded on its then consumption of malt liquor; and whatever either party makes beyond that amount, either through the aid of guano, Dutch cheese, or what not, is the tenant�s. The only difference we know between them is, that Goodbeer, being a trader, will have his money to the day; while in course of time the too easy landlord�s rent has become postponed to every other person�s claim. It is, �O, it will make ne matter to you, Sir Moses,� with too many of them. Then, if that convenient view is acquiesced in, the party submitting is called a �good landlord� (which in too many instances only means a great fool), until some other favour is refused, when the hundredth one denied obliterates the recollection of the ninety-nine conferred, and he sinks into a �rank bad un.� The best landlord, we imagine, is he who lets his land on fair terms, and keeps his tenants well up to the mark both with their farming and their payments. At present the landlords are too often a sort of sleeping partners with their tenants, sharing with them the losses of the bad years without partaking with them in the advantages of the good ones. �Ah, it�s all dom�d well,� we fancy we hear Sir Moses Mainchance exclaim, �saying, �keep them up to the mark,� but how d�ye do it? how d�ye do it? can you bind a weasel? No man�s tried harder than I have!� We grant that it is difficult, but agriculture never had such opportunities as it has now. The thing is to get rid of the weasels, and with public companies framed for draining, building, doing everything that is required without that terrible investigation of title, no one is justified in keeping his property in an unproductive state. The fact is that no man of capital will live in a cottage, the thing therefore is to lay a certain number of these small holdings together, making one good farm of them all, with suitable buildings, and, as the saying is, let the weasels go to the wall. They will be far happier and more at home with spades or hoes in their hands, than in acting a part for which they have neither capital, courage, nor capacity. Fellows take a hundred acres who should only have five, and haven�t the wit to find out that it is cheaper to buy manure than to rent land. This is not a question of crinoline or taste that might be advantageously left to Mrs. Pringle; but is one that concerns the very food and well being of the people, and landlords ought not to require coaxing and patting on the back to induce them to partake of the cheese that the commercial world offers them. Even if they are indifferent about benefiting themselves they should not be regardless of the interests for their country. But there are very few people who cannot spend a little more money than they have. Let them �up then and at� the drainage companies, and see what wonders they�ll accomplish with their aid! We really believe the productive powers of the country might be quadrupled. CHAPTER XXXI. SIR MOSES�S MENAGE.�DEPARTURE OF FINE BILLY. 235m _Original Size_ SIR MOSES, being now a magnate of the land, associating with Lord Oilcake, Lord Repartee, Sir Harry Fuzball and other great dons, of course had to live up to the mark, an inconvenient arrangement for those who do not like paying for it, and the consequence was that he had to put up with an inferior article.�take first-class servants who had fallen into second-class circumstances. He had a ticket-of-leave butler, a _delirium tremens_ footman, and our old friend pheasant-feathers, now calling herself Mrs. Margerum, for cook and house-keeper. And first, of the butler. He was indeed a magnificent man, standing six feet two and faultlessly proportioned, with a commanding presence of sufficient age to awe those under him, and to inspire confidence in an establishment with such a respectable looking man at the head. Though so majestic, he moved noiselessly, spoke in a whisper, and seemed to spirit the things off the table without sound or effort. Pity that the exigencies of gambling should have caused such an elegant man to melt his master�s plate, still greater that he should have been found out and compelled to change the faultless white vest of upper service for the unbecoming costume of prison life. Yet so it was: and the man who was convicted as Henry Stopper, and sentenced to fourteen years� transportation, emerged at the end of four with a ticket-of-leave, under the assumed name of Demetrius Bankhead. Mr. Bankhead, knowing the sweets of office, again aspired to high places, but found great difficulty in suiting himself, indeed in getting into service at all. People who keep fine gentlemen are very chary and scrupulous whom they select, and extremely inquisitive and searching in their inquiries. In vain Mr. Bankhead asserted that he had been out of health and living on the Continent, or that he had been a partner in a brewery which hadn�t succeeded, or that his last master was abroad he didn�t know where, and made a variety of similar excuses. Though many fine ladies and gentlemen were amazingly taken with him at first, and thought he would grace their sideboards uncommonly, they were afraid to touch for fear �all was not right.� Then those of a lower grade, thought he wouldn�t apply to them after having lived in such high places as he described, and this notwithstanding Bankhead�s plausible assertion, that he wished for a situation in a quiet regular family in the country, where he could get to bed at a reasonable hour, instead of being kept up till he didn�t know when. He would even come upon trial, if the parties liked, which would obviate all inquiries about character; just as if a man couldn�t run off with the plate the first day as well as the last. Our readers, we dare say, know the condescending sort of gentleman �who will accept of their situations,� and who deprecate an appeal to their late masters by saying in an airified sort of way, with a toss of the head or a wave of the hand, that they told his Grace or Sir George they wouldn�t trouble to ask them for characters. Just as if the Duke or Sir George were infinitely beneath their notice or consideration. And again the sort of men who flourish a bunch of testimonials, skilfully selecting the imposing passages and evading the want of that connecting link upon which the whole character depends, and who talk in a patronising way of �poor lord this,� or �poor Sir Thomas that,� and what they would have done for them if they had been alive, poor men! Mr. Demetrius Bankhead tried all the tricks of the trade�we beg pardon�profession�wherever he heard of a chance, until hope deferred almost made his noble heart sick. The �puts off� and excuses he got were curiously ingenious. However, he was pretty adroit himself, for when he saw the parties were not likely to bite, he anticipated a refusal by respectfully declining the situation, and then saying that he might have had so and so�s place, only he wanted one where he should be in town half the year, or that he couldn�t do with only one footman under him. It was under stress of circumstances that Sir Moses Mainchance became possessed of Mr. Bankhead�s services. He had kicked his last butler (one of the fine characterless sort) out of the house for coming in drunk to wait at dinner, and insisting upon putting on the cheese first with the soup, then with the meat, then with the sweets, and lastly with the dessert; and as Sir Moses was going to give one of his large hunt dinners shortly after, it behoved him to fill up the place�we beg pardon�office�as quickly as possible. To this end he applied to Mrs. Listener, the gossiping Register Office-keeper of Hinton, a woman well calculated to write the history of every family in the county, for behind her screen every particular was related, and Mrs. Listener, having paraded all the wretched glazey-clothed, misshapen creatures that always turn up on such occasions, Sir Moses was leaving after his last visit in disgust, when Mr. Bankhead walked in��quite promiscuous,� as the saying is, but by previous arrangement with Mrs. Listener. Sir Moses was struck with Bankhead�s air and demeanour, so quiet, so respectful, raising his hat as he met Sir Moses at the door, that he jumped to the conclusion that he would do for him, and returning shortly after to Mrs. Listener, he asked all the usual questions, which Mrs. Listener cleverly evaded, merely saying that he professed to be a perfect butler, and had several most excellent testimonials, but that it would be much better for Sir Moses to judge for himself, for really Mrs. Listener had the comfort of Sir Moses so truly at heart that she could not think of recommending any one with whom she was not perfectly conversant, and altogether she palavered him so neatly, always taking care to extol Bankhead�s personal appearance as evidence of his respectability, that the baronet was fairly talked into him, almost without his knowing it, while Mrs. Listener salved her own conscience with the reflection that it was Sir Moses�s own doing, and that the bulk of his plate was �Brummagem� ware�and not silver. So the oft-disappointed ticket-of-leaver was again installed in a butlers pantry. And having now introduced him, we will pass over the delirium tremens footman and arrive at that next important personage in an establishment, the housekeeper, in this case our old friend pheasant�s-feathers. Mrs. Margerum, late Sarey Grimes, the early coach companion and confidante of our fair friend Mrs. Pringle�had undergone the world�s �ungenerous scorn,� as well for having set up an adopted son, as for having been turned away from many places for various domestic peculations. Mrs. Margerum, however, was too good a judge to play upon anything that anybody could identify, consequently though she was often caught, she always had an answer, and would not unfrequently turn the tables on her accusers�lawyer Hindmarch like�and make them pay for having been robbed. No one knew better than Mrs. Margerum how many feathers could be extracted from a bed without detection, what reduction a horse-hair mattress would stand, or how to make two hams disappear under the process of frying one. Indeed she was quite an adept in housekeeping, always however preferring to live with single gentlemen, for whom she would save a world of trouble by hiring all the servants, thus of course having them well under her thumb. Sir Moses having suffered severely from waste, drunkenness and incapacity, had taken Mrs. Margerum on that worst of all recommendations, the recommendation of another servant�viz., Lord Oilcake�s cook, for whom Mrs. Margerum had done the out-door carrying when in another situation. Mrs. Margerum�s long career, coupled with her now having a son equal to the out-door department, established a claim that was not to be resisted when his lordship�s cook had a chance, on the application of Sir Moses, of placing her. Mrs. Margerum entered upon her duties at Pangburn Park, with the greatest plausibility, for not content with the usual finding fault with all the acts of her predecessors, she absolutely �reformed the butcher�s bills,� reducing them nearly a pound a-week below what they had previously been, and showed great assiduity in sending in all the little odds and ends of good things that went out. To be sure the hams disappeared rather quickly, but then they _do_ cut so to waste in frying, and the cows went off in their milk, but cows are capricious things, and Mrs. Hindmarch and she had a running account in the butter and egg line, Mrs. Hindmarch accommodating her with a few pounds of butter and a few score of eggs when Sir Moses had company, Mrs. Margerum repaying her at her utmost convenience, receiving the difference in cash, the repayment being always greatly in excess of the advance. Still as Mrs. Margerum permitted no waste, and allowed no one to rob but herself, the house appeared to be economically kept, and if Sir Moses didn�t think that she was a �charming woman,� he at all events considered he was a most fortunate man, and felt greatly indebted to Lord Oilcake�s cook for recommending her��dom�d if he didn�t.� But though Mrs. Margerum kept the servants well up to their tea and sugar allowances, she granted them every indulgence in the way of gadding about, and also in having their followers, provided the followers didn�t eat, by which means she kept the house quiet, and made her reign happy and prosperous. Being in full power when Mr. Bankhead came, she received him with the greatest cordiality, and her polite offer of having his clothes washed in Sir Moses�s laundry being accepted, of course she had nothing to fear from Mr. Bankhead. And so they became as they ought to be, very good friends�greatly to Sir Moses�s advantage. Now for the out-door department of Sir Moses�s ménage. The hunting establishment was of the rough and ready order, but still the hounds showed uncommon sport, and if the horses were not quite up to the mark, that perhaps was all in favour of the hounds. The horses indeed were of a very miscellaneous order�all sorts, all sizes, all better in their wind than on their legs�which were desperately scored and iron-marked. Still the cripples could go when they were warm, and being ridden by men whose necks were at a discount, they did as well as the best. There is nothing like a cheap horse for work. Sir Moses�s huntsman was the noted Tom Findlater, a man famous for everything in his line except sobriety, in which little item he was sadly deficient. Tom would have been quite at the top of the tree if it hadn�t been for this unfortunate infirmity. �The crittur,� as a Scotch huntsman told Sir Moses at Tattersall�s, �could no keep itself sober.� To show the necessities to which this degrading propensity reduces a man, we will quote Tom�s description of himself when he applied to be discharged under the Insolvent Debtors� Act before coming to Sir Moses. Thus it ran��John Thomas Findlater known also as Tom Find�ater, formerly huntsman to His Grace the Duke of Streamaway, of Streamaway Castle, in Streamaway-shire, then of No. 6, Back Row, Broomsfield, in the county of Tansey, helper in a livery stable, then huntsman to Sampson Cobbyford, Esq., of Bluntfield Park, master of the Hugger Mugger hounds in the county of Scramblington, then huntsman to Sir Giles Gatherthrong, Baronet, of Clipperley Park, in the county of Scurry, then huntsman to the Right Honourable Lord Lovedale, of Gayhurst Court, in the county of Tipperley, then of No. 11, Tan Yard Lane, Barrenbin, in the county of Thistleford, assistant to a ratcatcher, then huntsman to Captain Rattlinghope, of Killbriton Castle, in the County Steepleford, then whipper-in to the Towrowdeshire hounds in Derrydownshire, then helper at the Lion and the Lamb public-house at Screwford, in the County of Mucklethrift, then of 6 1/2 Union Street, in Screwford, aforesaid, moulder to a clay-pipe maker, then and now out of business and employ, and whose wife is a charwoman.� Such were the varied occupations of a man, who might have lived like a gentleman, if he had only had conduct. There is no finer place than that of a huntsman, for as Beckford truly says, his office is pleasing and at the same time flattering, he is paid for that which diverts him, nor is a general after a victory more proud, than is a huntsman who returns with his fox�s head. When Sir Moses fell in with Tom Findlater down Tattersall�s entry, Tom was fresh from being whitewashed in the Insolvent Debtors� Court, and having only ninepence in the world, and what he stood up in, he was uncommonly good to deal with. Moreover, Sir Moses had the vanity to think that he could reclaim even the most vicious; and, provided they were cheap enough, he didn�t care to try. So, having lectured Tom well on the importance of sobriety, pointing out to him the lamentable consequences of drunkenness�of which no one was more sensible than Tom�Sir Moses chucked him a shilling, and told him if he had a mind to find his way down to Pangburn Park, in Hit-im-and-Hold-im shire, he would employ him, and give him what he was worth; with which vague invitation Tom came in the summer of the season in which we now find him. And now having sketched the ménage, let us introduce our friend Billy thereto. But first we must get him out of the dangerous premises in which he is at present located�a visit that has caused our handsome friend Mrs. Pringle no little uneasiness. It was fortunate for Sir Moses Mainchance, and unfortunate for our friend Fine Billy, that the Baronet was a bachelor, or Sir Moses would have fared very differently at the hands of the ladies who seldom see much harm in a man so long as he is single, and, of course, refrains from showing a decided preference for any young lady. It is the married men who monopolise all the vice and improprieties of life. The Major, too, having sold Billy a horse, and got paid for him, was not very urgent about his further society at present, nor indisposed for a little quiet, especially as Mrs. Yammerton represented that the napkins and table-linen generally were running rather short. Mamma, too, knowing that there would be nothing but men-parties at Pangburn Park, had no uneasiness on that score, indeed rather thought a little absence might be favourable, in enabling Billy to modify his general attentions in favour of a single daughter, for as yet he had been extremely dutiful in obeying his Mamma�s injunctions not to be more agreeable to one sister than to another. Indeed, our estimable young friend did not want to be caught, and had been a good deal alarmed at the contents of his Mamma�s last letter. One thing, however, was settled, namely, that Billy was to go to the Park, and how to get there was the next consideration; for, though the Baronet had offered to convey him in the first instance, he had modified the offer into the loan of the gig at the last, and there would be more trouble in sending a horse to fetch it, than there would be in starting fair in a hired horse and vehicle from Yammerton Grange. The ready-witted Major, however, soon put matters right. �I�ll te te tell you wot,� said he, �you can do. You can have old Tommy P-p-plumberg, the registrar of b-b-births, deaths, and marriages, t-t-trap for a trifle�s-s-say, s-s-seven and sixpence�only you must give him the money as a p-p-present, you know, not as it were for the hire, or the Excise would be down upon him for the du-du-duty, and p-p-p�raps fine him into the b-b-bargain.� Well, that seemed all right and feasible enough, and most likely would have been all right if Monsieur had proposed it; but, coming from master, of course Monsieur felt bound to object. �It vouldn�t hold alf a quarter their things,� he said; �besides, how de deuce were they to manage with de horse?� The Major essayed to settle that, too. There would be no occasion for Mr. Pringle to take all his things with him, as he hoped he would return to them from Sir Moses�s and have another turn with the haryers�try if they couldn�t circumvent the old hare that had beat them the other day, and the thing would be for Mr. Pringle to ride his horse quietly over, Monsieur going in advance with the gig, and having all things ready against Mr. Pringle arrived; for the Major well knew that the Baronet�s promises were not to be depended upon, and would require some little manouvering to get carried out, especially in the stable department. Still there was a difficulty�Monsieur couldn�t drive. No, by his vord, he couldn�t drive. He was _valet-de-chambre_, not coachman or grum, and could make nothing of horses. Might know his ear from his tail, but dat was all. Should be sure to opset, and p�raps damage his crown. (Jack wanted to go in a carriage and pair.) Well, the Major would accommodate that too. Tom Cowlick, the hind�s lad at the farm, should act the part of charioteer, and drive Monsieur, bag, baggage and all. And so matters were ultimately settled, it never occurring to Billy to make the attempt on the Major�s stud that the Baronet proposed, in the shape of borrowing a second horse, our friend doubtless thinking he carried persecution enough in his own nag. The knotty point of transit being settled, Billy relapsed into his usual easy languor among the girls, while Monsieur made a judicious draft of clothes to take with them, leaving him a very smart suit to appear in at church on Sunday, and afterwards ride through the county in. We will now suppose the dread hour of departure arrived. It was just as Mrs. Pringle predicted! There were the red eye-lids and laced kerchiefs, and all the paraphernalia of leave-taking, mingled with the hopes of Major and Mrs. Yammerton, that Billy would soon return (after the washing, of course); for, in the language of the turf, Billy was anybody�s game, and one sister had just as good a right to red eye-lids as another. Having seen Billy through the ceremony of leave-taking, the Major then accompanied him to the stable, thinking to say a word for himself and his late horse �ere they parted. After admiring Napoleon the Great�s condition, as he stood turned round in the stall ready for mounting, the Major observed casually, �that he should not be surprised if Sir Moses found fault with that �oss.� �Why?� asked Billy, who expected perfection for a hundred guineas. �D-d-don�t know,� replied the Major, with a Jack Rogers� shrug of the shoulders. �D-d-don�t know, �cept that Sir Moses seldom says a good word for anybody�s �oss but his own.� The clothes being then swept over the horse�s long tail into the manger, he stepped gaily out, followed by our friend and his host. �I thought it b-b-better to send your servant on,� observed the Major confidentially, as he stood eyeing the gay deceiver of a horse: �for, between ourselves, the Baronet�s stables are none of the best, and it will give you the opportunity of getting the pick of them.� �Yarse,� replied Billy, who did not enter into the delicacies of condition. �That ho-ho-horse requires w-w-warmth,� stuttered the Major, �and Sir Moses�s stables are both d-d-damp and d-d-dirty;� saying which, he tendered his ungloved hand, and with repeated hopes that Billy would soon return, and wishes for good sport, not forgetting compliments to the Baronet, our hero and his host at length parted for the present. And the Major breathed more freely as he saw the cock-horse capering round the turn into the Helmington road. CHAPTER XXXII. THE BAD STABLE; OR, �IT�S ONLY FOR ONE NIGHT.� FROM Yammerton Grange to Pangburn Park is twelve miles as the crow flies, or sixteen by the road. The Major, who knows every nick and gap in the country, could ride it in ten or eleven; but this species of knowledge is not to be imparted to even the most intelligent head. Not but what the Major tried to put it into Billy�s, and what with directions to keep the Helmington road till he came to the blacksmith�s shop, then to turn up the crooked lane on the left, leaving Wanley windmill on the right, and Altringham spire on the left, avoiding the village of Rothley, then to turn short at Samerside Hill, keeping Missleton Plantations full before him, with repeated assurances that he couldn�t miss his way, he so completely bewildered our friend, that he was lost before he had gone a couple of miles. Then came the provoking ignorance of country life,�the counter-questions instead of answers,�the stupid stare and tedious drawl, ending, perhaps, with �ars a stranger,� or may be the utter negation of a place within, perhaps, a few miles of where the parties live. Billy blundered and blundered; took the wrong turning up the crooked lane, kept Wanley windmill on the left instead of the right, and finally rode right into the village of Rothley, and then began asking his way. It being Sunday, he soon attracted plenty of starers, such an uncommon swell being rare in the country; and one told him one way; another, another; and then the two began squabbling as to which was the right one, enlisting of course the sympathies of the bystanders, so that Billy�s progress was considerably impeded. Indeed, he sometimes seemed to recede instead of advance, so contradictory were the statements as to distance, and the further be went the further he seemed to have to go. If Sir Moses hadn�t been pretty notorious as well from hunting the country as from his other performances, we doubt whether Billy would have reached Pangburn Park that night. As it was, Sir Moses�s unpopularity helped Billy along in a growling uncivil sort of way, so different to the usual friendly forwarding that marks the approach to a gentleman�s house in the country. 243m _Original Size_ �Ay, ay, that�s the way,� said one with a sneer. �What, you�re gannin to him�are ye?� asked another, in a tone that as good as said, I wouldn�t visit such a chap. �Aye, that�s the way�straight on, through Addingham town��for every countryman likes to have his village called a town��straight on through Addingham town, keep the lane on the left, and then when ye come to the beer-shop at three road ends, ax for the Kingswood road, and that�ll lead ye to the lodges.� All roads are long when one has to ask the way�the distance seems nearly double in going to a place to what it does in returning, and Billy thought he never would get to Pangburn Park. The shades of night, too, drew on�Napoleon the Great had long lost his freedom and gaiety of action, and hung on the bit in a heavy listless sort of way. Billy wished for a policeman to protect and direct him. Lights began to be scattered about the country, and day quickly declined in favour of night. The darkening mist gathered perceptibly. Billy longed for those lodges of which he had heard so much, but which seemed ever to elude him. He even appeared inclined to compound for the magnificence of two by turning in at Mr. Pinkerton�s single one. By the direction of the woman at this one, he at length reached the glad haven, and passing through the open portals was at length in Pangburn Park. The drab-coloured road directed him onward, and Billy being relieved from the anxieties of asking his way, pulled up into a walk, as well to cool his horse as to try and make out what sort of a place he had got to. With the exception, however, of the road, it was a confused mass of darkness, that might contain trees, hills, houses, hay-stacks, anything. Presently the melodious cry of hounds came wafted on the southerly breeze, causing our friend to shudder at the temerity of his undertaking. �Drat these hounds,� muttered he, wishing he was well out of the infliction, and as he proceeded onward the road suddenly divided, and both ways inclining towards certain lights, Billy gave his horse his choice, and was presently clattering on the pavement of the court-yard of Pangburn Park. Sir Moses�s hospitality was rather of a spurious order; he would float his friends with claret and champagne, and yet grudge their horses a feed of corn. Not but that he was always extremely liberal and pressing in his offers, begging people would bring whatever they liked, and stay as long as they could, but as soon as his offers were closed with, he began to back out. Oh, he forgot! he feared he could only take in one horse; or if he could take in a horse he feared he couldn�t take in the groom. Just as he offered to lend Billy his gig and horse and then reduced the offer into the loan of the gig only. So it was with the promised two-stalled stable. When Monsieur drove, or rather was driven, with folded arms into the court-yard, and asked for his �me lors stable,� the half-muzzy groom observed with a lurch and a hitch of his shorts, that �they didn�t take in (hiccup) osses there�leastways to stop all night.� �Vell, but you�ll put up me lor Pringle�s,� observed Jack with an air of authority, for he considered that he and his master were the exceptions to all general rules. �Fear we can�t (hiccup) it,� replied the blear-eyed caitiff; �got as many (hiccup) osses comin to-night as ever we have room for. Shall have to (hiccup) two in a (hiccup) as it is� (hiccup). �Oh, you can stow him away somewhere,� now observed Mr. Demetrius Bankhead, emerging from his pantry dressed in a pea-green wide-awake, a Meg Merrilies tartan shooting-jacket, a straw-coloured vest, and drab pantaloons. �You�ll be Mr. Pringle�s gentleman, I presume,� observed Bankhead, now turning and bowing to Jack, who still retained his seat in the gig. �I be, sare,� replied Jack, accepting the proffered hand of his friend. �Oh, yes, you�ll put him up somewhere, Fred,� observed Bankhead, appealing again to the groom, �he�ll take no harm anywhere,� looking at the hairy, heated animal, �put �im in the empty cow-house,� adding �it�s only for one night�only for one night.� �O dis is not the quadruped,� observed Monsieur, nodding at the cart mare before him, �dis is a job beggar vot ve can kick out at our pleasure, but me lor is a cornin� on his own proper cheval, and he vill vant space and conciliation.� �Oh, we�ll manage him somehow,� observed Bankhead confidently, �only we�ve a large party to-night, and want all the spare stalls we can raise, but they�ll put �im up somewhere,� added he, �they�ll put �im up somewhere,� observing as before, �it�s only for one night�only for one night. Now won�t you alight and walk in,� continued he, motioning Monsieur to descend, and Jack having intimated that his lor vould compliment their politeness if they took vell care of his �orse, conceived he had done all that a faithful domestic could under the circumstances, and leaving the issue in the hands of fate, alighted from his vehicle, and entering by the back way, proceeded to exchange family �particulars� with Mr. Bankhead in the pantry. Now the Pangburn Park stables were originally very good, forming a crescent at the back of the house, with coach-houses and servants� rooms intervening, but owing to the trifling circumstance of allowing the drains to get choked, they had fallen into disrepute. At the back of the crescent were some auxiliary stables, worse of course than the principal range, into which they put night-visitors� horses, and those whose owners were rash enough to insist upon Sir Moses fulfilling his offers of hospitality to them. At either end of these latter were loose boxes, capable of being made into two-stalled stables, only these partitions were always disappearing, and the roofs had long declined turning the weather; but still they were better than nothing, and often formed receptacles for sly cabby�s, or postboys who preferred the chance of eleemosynary fare at Sir Moses�s to the hand in the pocket hospitality of the Red Lion, at Fillerton Hill, or the Mainchance Arms, at Duckworth Bridge. Into the best of these bad boxes the gig mare was put, and as there was nothing to get in the house, Tom Cowlick took his departure as soon as she had eaten her surreptitious feed of oats. The pampered Napoleon the Great, the horse that required all the warmth and coddling in the world, was next introduced, fine Billy alighting from his back in the yard with all the unconcern that he would from one of Mr. Splint�s or Mr. Spavins�s week day or hour jobs. Indeed, one of the distinguishing features between the new generation of sportsmen and the old, is the marked indifference of the former to the comforts of their horses compared to that shown by the old school, who always looked to their horses before themselves, and not unfrequently selected their inns with reference to the stables. Now-a-days, if a youth gives himself any concern about the matter, it will often only be with reference to the bill, and he will frequently ride away without ever having been into the stable. If, however, fine Billy had seen his, he would most likely have been satisfied with the comfortable assurance that it was �only for one night,� the old saying, �enough to kill a horse,� leading the uninitiated to suppose that they are very difficult to kill. �Ah, my dear Pringle!� exclaimed Sir Moses, rising from the depths of a rather inadequately stuffed chair (for Mrs. Margerum had been at it). �Ah, my dear Pringle, I�m delighted to see you!� continued the Baronet, getting Billy by both hands, as the noiseless Mr. Bankhead, having opened the library door, piloted him through the intricacies of the company. Our host really was glad of a new arrival, for a long winter�s evening had exhausted the gossip of parties who in a general way saw quite enough, if not too much, of each other. And this is the worst of country visiting in winter; people are so long together that they get exhausted before they should begin. They have let off the steam of their small talk, and have nothing left to fall back upon but repetition. One man has told what there is in the �Post,� another in �Punch,� a third in the �Mark Lane Express,� and then they are about high-and-dry for the rest of the evening. From criticising Billy, they had taken to speculating upon whether he would come or not, the odds�without which an Englishmen can do nothing�being rather in favour of Mrs. Yammerton�s detaining him. It was not known that Monsieur Rougier had arrived. The mighty problem was at length solved by the Richest Commoner in England appearing among them, and making the usual gyrations peculiar to an introduction. He was then at liberty for ever after to nod or speak or shake hands with or bow to Mr. George and Mr. Henry Waggett, of Kitteridge Green, both five-and-twenty pound subscribers to the Hit-im and Hold-im-shire hounds, to Mr. Stephen Booty, of Verbena Lodge, who gave ten pounds and a cover, to Mr. Silverthorn, of Dryfield, who didn�t give anything, but who had two very good covers which he had been hinting he should require to be paid for,�a hint that had procured him the present invitation, to Mr. Strongstubble, of Buckup Hill, and Mr. Tupman, of Cowslip Cottage, both very good friends to the sport but not �hand in the pocket-ites,� to Mr. Tom Dribbler, Jun., of Hardacres, and his friend Captain Hurricane, of Her Majesty�s ship Thunderer, and to Mr. Cuthbert Flintoff, commonly called Cuddy Flintoff, an �all about� sportsman, who professed to be of all hunts but blindly went to none. Cuddy�s sporting was in the past tense, indeed he seemed to exist altogether upon the recollections of the chace, which must have made a lively impression upon him, for he was continually interlarding his conversation with view holloas, yoicks wind �ims! yoick�s push �im ups! Indeed, in walking about he seemed to help himself along with the aid of for-rardson! for-rards on! so that a person out of sight, but within hearing, would think he was hunting a pack of hounds. He dressed the sportsman, too, most assiduously, bird�s-eye cravats, step-collared striped vests, green or Oxford-grey cutaways, with the neatest fitting trousers on the best bow-legs that ever were seen. To see him at Tattersall�s sucking his cane, his cheesy hat well down on his nose, with his stout, well-cleaned doe-skin gloves, standing criticising each horse, a stranger would suppose that he lived entirely on the saddle, instead of scarcely ever being in one. On the present occasion, as soon as he got his �bob� made to our Billy, and our hero�s back was restored to tranquillity, he at him about the weather,�how the moon looked, whether there were any symptoms of frost, and altogether seemed desperately anxious about the atmosphere. This inquiry giving the conversation a start in the out-of-doors line, was quickly followed by Sir Moses asking our Billy how he left the Major, how he found his way there, with hopes that everything was comfortable, and oh! agonising promise! that he would do his best to show him sport. The assembled guests then took up the subject of their �magnificent country� generally, one man lauding its bottomless brooks, another its enormous bullfinches, a third its terrific stone walls, a fourth its stupendous on-and-offs, a fifth its flying foxes, and they unanimously resolved that the man who could ride over Hit-im and Hold-im-shire could ride over any country in the world. �_Any country in the world!_� vociferated Cuddy, slowly and deliberately, with a hearty crack of his fat thigh. And Billy, as he sat listening to their dreadful recitals, thought that he _had_ got into the lion�s den with a vengeance. Most sincerely he wished himself back at the peaceful pursuits of Yammerton Grange. Then, as they were in full cry with their boasting eulogiums, the joyful dressing-bell rang, and Cuddy Flintoff putting his finger in his ear, as if to avoid deafening himself, shrieked, �_hoick halloa! hoick!_� in a tone that almost drowned the sound of the clapper. Then when the �ticket of leaver� and the _delirium tremens_ footman appeared at the door with the blaze of bedroom candles, Cuddy suddenly turned whipper-in, and working his right arm as if he were cracking a whip, kept holloaing, �_get away hoick! get away hoick!_� until he drove Billy and Baronet and all before him. **** �Rum fellow that,� observed the Baronet, now showing Billy up to his room, as soon as he had got sufficient space put between them to prevent Cuddy hearing, �Rum fellow that,� repeated he, not getting a reply from our friend, who didn�t know exactly how to interpret the word �rum.� �That fellow�s up to everything,�cleverest fellow under the sun,� continued Sir Moses, now throwing open the door of an evident bachelor�s bed-room. Not but that it was one of the best in the house, only it was wretchedly furnished, and wanted all the little neatnesses and knic-knaceries peculiar to a lady-kept house. The towels were few and flimsy, the soap hard and dry, there was a pincushion without pins, a portfolio without paper, a grate with a smoky fire, while the feather-bed and mattress had been ruthlessly despoiled of their contents. Even the imitation maple-wood sofa on which Billy�s dress-clothes were now laid, had not been overlooked, and was as lank and as bare as a third-rate Margate lodging-house, one�all ribs and hollows. �Ah, there you are!� exclaimed Sir Moses, pointing to the garments, �There you are!� adding, �You�ll find the bell at the back of your bed,� pointing to one of the old smothering order of four-posters with its dyed moreen curtains closely drawn, �You�ll find the bell at the back of the bed, and when you come down we shall be in the same room as we were before.� So saying, the Baronet retired, leaving our Billy to commence operations. CHAPTER XXXIII. SIR MOSES�S SPREAD. 251m _Original Size_ WE dare pay it has struck such of our readers as have followed the chace for more than the usual average allowance of three seasons, that hunts flourish most vigorously where there is a fair share of hospitality, and Sir Moses Mainchance was quite of that opinion. He found it answered a very good purpose as well to give occasional dinners at home as to attend the club meetings at Hinton. To the former he invited all the elite of his field, and such people as he was likely to get anything out of while the latter included the farmers and yeomen, the Flying Hatters, the Dampers, and so on, whereby, or by reason or means whereof, as the lawyers say, the spirit of the thing was well sustained. His home parties were always a great source of annoyance to our friend Mrs. Margerum, who did not like to be intruded upon by the job cook (Mrs. Pomfret, of Hinton), Mrs. Margerum being in fact more of a housekeeper than a cook, though quite cook enough for Sir Moses in a general way, and perhaps rather too much of a housekeeper for him�had he but known it. Mrs. Pomfret, however, being mistress of Mrs. Margerum�s secret (viz., who got the dripping), the latter was obliged to �put up� with her, and taking her revenge by hiding her things, and locking up whatever she was likely to want. Still, despite of all difficulties, Mrs. Pomfret, when sober, could cook a very good dinner, and as Sir Moses allowed her a pint of rum for supper, she had no great temptation to exceed till then. She was thought on this occasion, if possible, to surpass herself, and certainly Sir Moses�s dinner contrasted very favourably with what Billy Pringle had been partaking of at our friend Major Yammerton�s, whose cook had more energy than execution. In addition to this, Mr. Bankhead plied the fluids most liberally, as the feast progressed, so that what with invitations to drink, and the regular course of the tide, the party were very happy and hilarious. Then, after dinner, the hot chestnuts and filberts and anchovy toasts mingling with an otherwise excellent desert flavoured the wine and brought out no end of �yoicks wind �ims� and aspirations for the morrow. They all felt as if they could ride�Billy and all! �Not any more, thank you,� being at length the order of the day, a move was made back to the library, a drawing-room being a superfluous luxury where there is no lady, and tea and coffee were rung for. A new subject of conversation was wanted, and Monsieur presently supplied the deficiency. �That�s a Frenchman, that servant of yours, isn�t he, Pringle?� asked Sir Moses, when Monsieur retired with the tray. �Yarse,� replied Billy, feeling his trifling moustache after its dip in the cup. �Thought so,� rejoined Sir Moses, who prided himself upon his penetration. �I�ll have a word with him when he comes in again,� continued he. Tea followed quickly on the heels of coffee, Monsieur coming in after Bankhead. Monsieur now consequentially drank, and dressed much in the manner that he is in the picture of the glove scene at Yammerton Grange. �_Ah, Monsieur! comment vous portez-vous?_� exclaimed the Baronet, which was about as much French as he could raise. �Pretty middlin�, tenk you, sare,� replied Jack, bowing and grinning at the compliment. �What, you speak English, do you?� asked the Baronet, thinking he might as well change the language. �I spake it, sare, some small matter, sare,� replied Jack, with a shrug of his shoulders��Not nothing like my modder�s tongue, you knows.� �Ah! you speak it domd well,� replied Sir Moses. �Let you and I have a talk together. Tell me, now, were you ever out hunting?� _Jean Rougier_. �Oh, yes, sare, I have been at the chasse of de small dicky-bird�tom-tit�cock-robin�vot you call.� _Sir Moses_ (laughing). �No, no, that is not the sort of chace I mean; I mean, have you ever been out fox-hunting?� _Jean Rougier_ (confidentially). �Nevare, sare�nevare.� Sir Moses. �Ah, my friend, then you�ve a great pleasure to come to�a great pleasure to come to, indeed. Well, you�re a domd good feller, and I�ll tell you what I�ll do�I�ll tell you what I�ll do�I�ll mount you to-morrow�domd if I won�t�you shall ride my old horse, Cockatoo�carry you beautifully. What d�ye ride? Thirteen stun, I should say,� looking Jack over, �quite up to that�quite up to that�stun above it, for that matter. You�ll go streaming away like a bushel of beans.� �Oh, sare, I tenk you, sare,� replied Jack, �but I have not got my hunting apparatus�my mosquet�my gun, my�no, not notin at all.� �Gun!� exclaimed Sir Moses, amidst the laughter of the company. �Why, you wouldn�t shoot the fox, would ye?� �_Certainement_� replied Jack. �I should pop him over.� �Oh, the devil!� exclaimed Sir Moses, throwing up his hands in astonishment. �Why, man, we keep the hounds on purpose to hunt him.� �Silly fellers,� replied Jack, �you should pepper his jacket.� �Ah, Monsieur, I see you have a deal to learn,� rejoined Sir Moses, laughing. �However, it�s never too late to begin�never too late to begin, and you shall take your first lesson to-morrow. I�ll mount you on old Cockatoo, and you shall see how we manage these matters in England.� �Oh, sare, I tenk you moch,� replied Jack, again excusing himself. �But I have not got no breeches, no boot-jacks�no notin, _comme il faut_.� �I�ll lend you everything you want,�a boot-jack and all,� replied Sir Moses, now quite in the generous mood. �Ah, sare, you are vare beautiful, and I moch appreciate your benevolence; bot I sud not like to risk my neck and crop outside an unqualified, contradictory quadruped.� �Nothing of the sort!� exclaimed Sir Moses, �nothing of the sort! He�s the quietest, gentlest crittur alive�a child might ride him, mightn�t it, Cuddy?� �Safest horse under the sun,� replied Cuddy Flintoff, confidently. �Don�t know such another. Have nothing to do but sit on his back, and give him his head, and he�ll take far better care of you than you can of him. He�s the nag to carry you close up to their stems. _Ho-o-i-ck, forrard, ho-o-i-ck!_ Dash my buttons, Monsieur, but I think I see you sailing away. Shouldn�t be surprised if you were to bring home the brush, only you�ve got one under your nose as it is,� alluding to his moustache. Jack at this looked rather sour, for somehow people don�t like to be laughed at; so he proceeded to push his tray about under the guests� noses, by way of getting rid of the subject. He had no objection to a hunt, and to try and do what Cuddy Flintoff predicted, only he didn�t want to spoil his own clothes, or be made a butt of. So, having had his say, he retired as soon as he could, inquiring of Bankhead, when he got out, who that porky old fellow with the round, close-shaven face was. When the second flight of tea-cups came in, Sir Moses was seated on a hardish chaise longue, beside our friend Mr. Pringle, to whom he was doing the agreeable attentive host, and a little of the inquisitive stranger; trying to find out as well about the Major and his family, as about Billy himself, his friends and belongings. The Baronet had rather cooled on the subject of mounting Monsieur, and thought to pave the way for a back-out. �That�s a stout-built feller of yours,� observed he to Billy, kicking up his toe at Jack as he passed before them with the supplementary tray of cakes and cream, and so on. �Yarse,� drawled Billy, wondering what matter it made to Sir Moses. �Stouter than I took him for,� continued the Baronet, eyeing Jack�s broad back and strong undersettings. �That man�ll ride fourteen stun, I dessay.� Billy had no opinion on the point so began admiring his pretty foot; comparing it with Sir Moses�s, which was rather thick and clumsy. The Baronet conned the mount matter over in his mind; the man was heavy; the promised horse was old and weak; the country deep, and he didn�t know that Monsieur could ride,�altogether he thought it wouldn�t do. Let his master mount him if he liked, or let him stay at home and help Bankhead with the plate, or Peter with the shoes. So Sir Moses settled it in his own mind, as far as he was concerned, at least, and resumed his enquiries of our Billy. Which of the Miss Yammertons he thought the prettiest, which sang the best, who played the harp, if the Major indulged him with much hare-soup, and then glanced incidentally at his stud, and Bo-Peep. He then asked him about Lord Ladythorne; if it was true that Mrs. Moffatt and he quarrelled; if his lordship wasn�t getting rather slack; and whether Billy didn�t think Dicky Boggledale an old woman, to which latter interrogatory he replied, �Yarse,��he thought he was, and ought to be drafted. While the _tête-à-tête_ was going on, a desultory conversation ensued among the other guests in various parts of the room, Mr. Booty button-holeing Captain Hurricane, to tell him a capital thing out of �Punch,� and receiving in return an exclamation of��Why, man, I told you that myself before dinner.� Tom Dribbler going about touching people up in the ribs with his thumb, inquiring with a knowing wink of his eye, or a jerk of his head, �Aye, old feller, how goes it;� which was about the extent of Tom�s conversational powers. Henry Waggett talking �wool� to Mr. Tupman; while Cuddy Flintoff kept popping out every now and then to look at the moon, returning with a �hoick wind �im; ho-ick!� or� �A southerly wind and a cloudy sky, Proclaimeth a hunting morning.� Very cheering the assurance was to our friend Billy Pringle, as the reader may suppose; but he had the sense to keep his feelings to himself. At length the last act of the entertainment approached, by the door flying open through an invisible agency, and the _delirium tremens_ footman appearing with a spacious tray, followed by Bankhead and Monsieur, with �Cardigans� and other the materials of �night-caps,� which they placed on the mirth-promoting circle of a round table. All hands drew to it like blue-bottle-flies to a sugar-cask, as well to escape from themselves and each other, as to partake of the broiled bones, and other the good things with which the tray was stored. �Hie, worry! worry! worry!� cried Cuddy Flintoff, darting at the black bottles, for he dearly loved a drink, and presently had a beaker of brandy, so strong, that as Silverthorn said, the spoon almost stood upright in it. �Let�s get chairs!� exclaimed he, turning short round on his heel: �let�s get chairs, and be snug; it�s as cheap sitting as standing,� so saying, he wheeled a smoking chair up to the table, and was speedily followed by the rest of the party, with various shaped seats. Then such of the guests as wanted to shirk drinking took whiskey or gin, which they could dilute as much as they chose; while those who didn�t care for showing their predilection for drink, followed Cuddy�s example, and made it as strong as they liked. This is the time that the sot comes out undisguisedly. The form of wine-drinking after dinner is mere child�s play in their proceedings: the spirit is what they go for. At length sots and sober ones were equally helped to their liking; and, the approving sips being taken, the other great want of life�tobacco�then became apparent. �Smoking allowed here,� observed Cuddy Flintoff, diving into his side-pocket for a cigar, adding, as he looked at the wretched old red chintz-covered furniture, which, not even the friendly light of the _moderateur_ lamps could convert into anything respectable: �No fear of doing any harm here, I think?� So the rest of the company seemed to think, for there was presently a great kissing of cigar-ends and rising of clouds, and then the party seeming to be lost in deep reveries. Thus they sat for some minutes, some eyeing their cocked-up toes, some the dirty ceiling, others smoking and nursing their beakers of spirit on their knees. At length Tom Dribbler gave tongue��What time will the hounds leave the kennel in the morning, Sir Moses?� asked he. �Hoick to Dribbler! Hoick!� immediately cheered Cuddy�as if capping the pack to a find. �Oh, why, let me see,� replied Sir Moses, filliping the ashes off the end of his cigar��Let me see,� repeated he��Oh�ah�tomorrow�s Monday; Monday, the Crooked Billet�Crooked Billet�nine miles�eight through Applecross Park; leave here at nine�ten to nine, say�nothing like giving them plenty of time on the road.� �Nothing,� assented Cuddy Flintoff, taking a deep drain at his glass, adding, as soon as he could get his nose persuaded to come out of it again, �I _do_ hate to see men hurrying hounds to cover in a morning.� �No fear of mine doing that,� observed Sir Moses, �for I always go with them myself when I can.� �Capital dodge, too,� assented Cuddy, �gets the fellers past the public houses�that drink�s the ruin of half the huntsmen in England;� whereupon he took another good swig. �Then, Monsieur, and you�ll all go together, I suppose,� interrupted Dribbler, who wanted to see the fun. �Monsieur, Monsieur�oh, ah, that�s my friend Pringle�s valet,� observed Sir Moses, drily; �what about him?� �Why he�s going, isn�t he?� replied Dribbler. �Oh, poor fellow, no,� rejoined Sir Moses; �he doesn�t want to go�it�s no use persecuting a poor devil because a Frenchman.� �But I dare say he�d enjoy it very much,� observed Dribbler. �Well, then, will you mount him?� asked Sir Moses. �Why I thought _you_ were going to do it,� replied Dribbler. �_Me_ mount him!� exclaimed Sir Moses, throwing out his ringed hands in well-feigned astonishment, as if he had never made such an offer��_Me_ mount him! why, my dear fellow, do you know how many people I have to mount as it is? Let me tell you,� continued he, counting them off on his fingers, �there�s Tom, and there�s Harry, and there�s Joe, and there�s the pad-groom and myself, five horses out every day�generally six, when I�ve a hack�six horses a day, four days a week�if that isn�t enough, I don�t know what is�dom�d if I do,� added he, with a snort and a determined jerk of his head. �Well, but we can manage him a mount among us, somehow, I dare say,� persevered Dribbler, looking round upon the now partially smoke-obscured company. �Oh no, let him alone, poor fellow; let him alone,� replied Sir Moses, coaxingly, adding, �he evidently doesn�t wish to go�evidently doesn�t wish to go.� �I don�t know that,� exclaimed Cuddy Flintoff, with a knowing jerk of his head; �I don�t know that�I should say he�s rather a y-o-o-i-cks wind �im! y-o-i-eks push �im up! sort of chap.� So saying, Cuddy drained his glass to the dregs. �I should say you�re rather a y-o-i-eks wind �im�y-o-i-cks drink �im up sort of chap,� replied Sir Moses, at which they all laughed heartily. Cuddy availed himself of the _divertissement_ to make another equally strong brew�saying, �It was put there to drink, wasn�t it?� at which they all laughed again. Still there was a disposition to harp upon the hunt�Dribbler tied on the scent, and felt disposed to lend Jack a horse if nobody else would. So he threw out a general observation, that he thought they could manage a mount for Monsieur among them. �Well, but perhaps his master mayn�t, like it,� suggested Sir Moses, in hopes that Billy would come to the rescue. �O, I don�t care about it,� replied Billy, with an air of indifference, who would have been glad to hunt by deputy if he could, and so that chance fell to the ground. �_Hoick to Governor! Hoick to Governor!_� cheered Cuddy at the declaration. �Now who�ll lend him a horse?� asked he, taking up the question. �What say you, Stub?� appealing to Mr. Strongstubble, who generally had more than he could ride. �He�s such a beefey beggar,� replied Strongstubble, between the whiffs of a cigar. �Oh, ah, and a Frenchman too!� interposed Sir Moses, �he�ll have no idea of saving a horse, or holding a horse together, or making the most of a horse.� �Put him on one that �ll take care of himself,� suggested Cuddy; �there�s your old Nutcracker horse, for instance,� added he, addressing himself to Harry Waggett. �Got six drachms of aloes,� replied Waggett, drily. �Or your Te-to-tum, Booty,� continued Cuddy, nothing baffled by the failure. �Lame all round,� replied Booty, following suit. �Hut you and your lames,� rejoined Cuddy, who knew better��I�ll tell you what you must do then, Tommy,� continued he, addressing himself familiarly to Dribbler, �you must lend him your old kicking chestnut�the very horse for a Frenchman,� added Cutty, slapping his own tight-trousered leg��you send the Shaver to the Billet in the morning along with your own horse, and old Johnny Crapaud will manage to get there somehow or other�walk if he can�t ride: shoemaker�s pony�s very safe.� �Oh, I�ll send him in my dog-cart if that�s all,� exclaimed Sir Moses, again waxing generous. �That �ll do! That �ll do!� replied Cuddy, appealing triumphantly to the brandy. Then as the out-door guests began to depart, and the in-door ones to wind up their watches and ask about breakfast, Cuddy took advantage of one of Sir Moses� momentary absences in the entrance hall to walk off to bed with the remainder of the bottle of brandy, observing, as he hurried away, that he was �apt to have spasms in the night�; and Sir Moses, thinking he was well rid of him at the price, went through the ceremony of asking the �remanets� if they would take any more, and being unanimously answered in the negative, he lit the bedroom candles, turned off the _modérateurs_, and left the room to darkness and to Bankhead. CHAPTER XXXIV. GOING TO COVER WITH THE HOUNDS. HOW different a place generally proves to what we anticipate, and how difficult it is to recall our expectations after we have once seen it, unless we have made a memorandum beforehand. How different again a place looks in the morning to what we have conjectured over-night. What we have taken for towers perhaps have proved to be trees, and the large lake in front a mere floating mist. Pangbum Park had that loose rakish air peculiar to rented places, which carry a sort of visible contest between landlord and tenant on the face of everything. A sort of �it�s you to do it, not me� look. It showed a sad want of paint and maintenance generally. Sir Moses wasn�t the man to do anything that wasn�t absolutely necessary, �Dom�d if he was,� so inside and outside were pretty much alike. Our friend Billy Pringle was not a man of much observation in rural matters, though he understood the cut of a coat, the tie of a watch-ribbon cravat, or the fit of a collar thoroughly. We are sorry to say he had not slept very well, having taken too much brandy for conformity�s sake, added to which his bed was hard and knotty, and the finely drawn bolsters and pillows all piled together, were hardly sufficient to raise his throbbing temples. As he lay tossing and turning about, thinking now of Clara Yammerton�s beautiful blue eyes and exquisitely rounded figure, now of Flora�s bright hair, or Harriet�s graceful form, the dread Monsieur entered his shabbily furnished bed-room, with, �Sare, I have de pleasure to bring you your pink to-day,� at once banishing the beauties and recalling the over-night�s conversation, the frightful fences, the yawning ditches, the bottomless brooks, with the unanimous declaration that the man who could ride over Hit-im and Hold-im-shire could ride over any country in the world. And Billy really thought if he could get over the horrors of that day he would retire from the purgatorial pleasures of the chace altogether. 259m _Original Size_ With this wise resolution he jumped out of bed with the vigorous determination of a man about to take a shower-bath, and proceeded to invest himself in the only mitigating features of the chace, the red coat and leathers. He was hardly well in them before a clamorous bell rang for breakfast, quickly followed by a knock at the door, announcing that it was on the table. Sir Moses was always in a deuce of a hurry on a hunting morning. Our hero was then presently performing the coming downstairs feat he is represented doing at page 147. and on reaching the lower regions he jumped in with a dish of fried ham which led him straight to the breakfast room. Here Sir Moses was doing all things at once, reading the �Post,� blowing his beak, making the tea, stirring the fire, crumpling his envelopes, cussing the toast, and doming the footman, to which numerous avocations he now added the pleasing one of welcoming our Billv. �Well done you! First down, I do declare!� exclaimed he, tendering him his left hand, his right one being occupied with his kerchief. �Sit down, and let�s be at it,� continued he, kicking a rush-bottomed chair under Billy as it were, adding �never wait for any man on a hunting morning.� So saying, he proceeded to snatch an egg, in doing which he upset the cream-jug. �Dom the thing,� growled he, �what the deuce do they set it there for. D�ye take tea?� now asked he, pointing to the tea-pot with his knife��or coffee?� continued he, pointing to the coffee-pot with his fork, �or both praps,� added he, without waiting for an answer to either question, but pushing both pots towards his guest, following up the advance with ham, eggs, honey, buns, butter, bread, toast, jelly, everything within reach, until he got Billy fairly blocked with good things, when he again set-to on his own account, munching and crunching, and ended by nearly dragging all the contents of the table on to the floor by catching the cloth with his spur as he got up to go away. He then went doming and scuttling out of the room, charging Billy if he meant to go with the hounds to �look sharp.� During his absence Stephen Booty and Mr. Silverthorn came dawdling into the room, taking it as easy as men generally do who have their horses on and don�t care much about hunting. Indeed Silverthorn never disguised that he would rather have his covers under plough than under gorse, and was always talking about the rent he lost, which he estimated at two pounds an acre, and Sir Moses at ten shillings. Finding the coast clear, they now rang for fresh ham, fresh eggs, fresh tea, fresh everything, and then took to pumping Billy as to his connection with the house, Sir Moses having made him out over night to be a son of Sir Jonathan Pringle�s, with whom he sometimes claimed cousinship, and they wanted to get a peep at the baronetage if they could. In the midst of their subtle examination, Sir Moses came hurrying back, whip in one hand, hat in the other, throwing open the door, with, �Now, are you ready?� to Billy, and �morning, gentlemen,� to Booty and Silverthorn. Then Billy rose with the desperate energy of a man going to a dentist�s, and seizing his cap and whip off the entrance table, followed Sir Moses through the intricacies of the back passages leading to the stables, nearly falling over a coal-scuttle as he went. They presently changed the tunnel-like darkness of the passage into the garish light of day, by the opening of the dirty back door. Descending the little flight of stone steps, they then entered the stable-yard, now enlivened with red coats and the usual concomitants of hounds leaving home. There was then an increased commotion, stable-doors flying open, from which arch-necked horses emerged, pottering and feeling for their legs as they went. Off the cobble-stone pavement, and on to the grass grown soft of the centre, they stood more firm and unflinching. Then Sir Moses took one horse, Tom Findlater another, Harry the first whip a third, Joe the second whip a fourth, while the blue-coated pad groom came trotting round on foot from the back stables, between Sir Moses�s second horse and Napoleon the Great. Billy dived at his horse without look or observation, and the clang of departure being now at its height, the sash of a second-floor window flew up, and a white cotton night-capped head appeared bellowing out, �_Y-o-i-cks wind �im! y-o-i-cks push �im up!_� adding, �_Didn�t I tell ye_ it was going to be a hunting morning?� �Ay, ay, Cuddy you did,� replied Sir Moses laughing, muttering as he went: �That�s about the extent of your doings.� �He�ll be late, won�t he?� asked Billy, spurring up alongside of the Baronet. �Oh, he�s only an afternoon sportsman that,� replied Sir Moses; adding, �he�s greatest after dinner.� �Indeed!� mused Billy, who had looked upon him with the respect due to a regular flyer, a man who could ride over Hit-im and Hold-im-shire itself. The reverie was presently interrupted by the throwing open of the kennel door, and the clamorous rush of the glad pack to the advancing red coats, making the green sward look quite gay and joyful. �Gently, there! gently!� cried Tom Findlater, and first and second whips falling into places, Tom gathered his horse together and trotted briskly along the side of the ill-kept carriage road, and on through the dilapidated lodges: a tattered hat protruding through the window of one, and two brown paper panes supplying the place of glass in the other. They then got upon the high road, and the firy edge being taken off both hounds and horses, Tom relaxed into the old post-boy pace, while Sir Moses proceeded to interrogate him as to the state of the kennel generally, how Rachael�s feet were, whether Prosperous was any better, if Abelard had found his way home, and when Sultan would be fit to come out again. They then got upon other topics connected with the chace, such as, who the man was that Harry saw shooting in Tinklerfield cover; if Mrs Swan had said anything more about her confounded poultry; and whether Ned Smith the rat-catcher would take half a sovereign for his terrier or not. Having at length got all he could out of Tom, Sir Moses then let the hounds flow past him, while he held back for our Billy to come up. They were presently trotting along together a little in the rear of Joe, the second whip. �I�ve surely seen that horse before,� at length observed Sir Moses, after a prolonged stare at our friend�s steed. �Very likely,� replied Billy, �I bought him of the Major.� �The deuce you did!� exclaimed Sir Moses, �then that�s the horse young Tabberton had.� �What, you know him, do you?� asked Billy. �Know him! I should think so,� rejoined Moses; �everybody knows him.� �Indeed!� observed Billy, wondering whether for good or evil. �I dare say, now, the Major would make you give thirty, or five-and-thirty pounds for that horse,� observed Sir Moses, after another good stare. �Far more!� replied Billy, gaily, who was rather proud of having given a hundred guineas. �Far more!� exclaimed Sir Moses with energy; �far more! Ah!� added he, with a significant shake of the head, �he�s an excellent man, the Major�an excellent man,�but a _leet_le too keen in the matter of horses.� Just at this critical moment Tommy Heslop of Hawthorndean, who had been holding back in Crow-Tree Lane to let the hounds pass, now emerged from his halting-place with a �Good morning, Sir Moses, here�s a fine hunting morning?� �Good morning, Tommy, good morning,� replied Sir Moses, extending his right hand; for Tommy was a five-and-twenty pounder besides giving a cover, and of course was deserving of every encouragement. The salute over, Sir Moses then introduced our friend Billy,��Mr. Pringle, a Featherbedfordshire gentleman, Mr. Heslop,� which immediately excited Tommy�s curiosity�not to say jealousy�for the �Billet� was very �contagious,� for several of the Peer�s men, who always brought their best horses, and did as much mischief as they could, and after ever so good a run, declared it was nothing to talk of. Tommy thought Billy�s horse would not take much cutting down, whatever the rider might do. Indeed, the good steed looked anything but formidable, showing that a bad stable, though �only for one night,� may have a considerable effect upon a horse. His coat was dull and henfeathered; his eye was watery, and after several premonitory sneezes, he at length mastered a cough. Even Billy thought he felt rather less of a horse under him than he liked. Still he didn�t think much of a cough. �Only a slight cold,� as a young lady says when she wants to go to a ball. Three horsemen in front, two black coats and a red, and two reds joining the turnpike from the Witch berry road, increased the cavalcade and exercised Sir Moses� ingenuity in appropriating backs and boots and horses. �That�s Simon Smith,� said he to himself, eyeing a pair of desperately black tops dangling below a very plumb-coloured, long-backed, short-lapped jacket. �Ah! and Tristram Wood,� added he, now recognising his companion. He then drew gradually upon them and returned their salutes with an extended wave of the hand that didn�t look at all like money. Sir Moses then commenced speculating on the foremost group. There was Peter Linch and Charley Drew; but who was the fellow in black? He couldn�t make out. �Who�s the man in black, Tommy?� at length asked he of Tommy Heslop. �Don�t know,� replied Tommy, after scanning the stranger attentively. �It can�t be that nasty young Rowley Abingdon; and yet I believe it is,� continued Sir Moses, eyeing him attentively, and seeing that he did not belong to the red couple, who evidently kept aloof from him. �It is that nasty young Abingdon,� added he. �Wonder at his impittance in coming out with me. It�s only the other day that ugly old Owl of a father of his killed me young Cherisher, the best hound in my pack,� whereupon the Baronet began grinding his teeth, and brewing a little politeness wherewith to bespatter the young Owl as he passed. The foremost horses hanging back to let their friends the hounds overtake them, Sir Moses was presently alongside the black coat, and finding he was right in his conjecture as to who it contained, he returned the youth�s awkward salute with, �Well, my man, how d�ye do? hope you�re well. How�s your father? hope he�s well,� adding, �dom �im, he should be hung, and you may tell �im I said so.� Sir Moses then felt his horse gently with his heel, and trotted on to salute the red couple. And thus he passed from singles to doubles, and from doubles to triples, and from triples to quartets, and back to singles again, including the untold occupants of various vehicles, until the ninth milestone on the Bushmead road, announced their approach to the Crooked Billet. Tom Findlater then pulled up from the postboy jog into a wallk, at which pace he turned into the little green field on the left of the blue and gold swinging sign. Here he was received by the earthstopper, the antediluvian ostler, and other great officers of state. But for Sir Moses� presence the question would then have been �What will you have to drink?� That however being interdicted, they raised a discussion about the weather, one insisting that it was going to be a frost; another, that it was going to be nothing of the sort. CHAPTER XXXV. THE MEET. THE Crooked Billet Hotel and Posting house, on the Bushmead road had been severed from society by the Crumpletin Railway. It had indeed been cut off in the prime of life: for Joe Cherriper, the velvet-collared doeskin-gloved Jehu of the fast Regulator Coach, had backed his opinion of the preference of the public for horse transit over steam, by laying out several hundred pounds of his accumulated fees upon the premises, just as the surveyors were setting out the line. �A rally might be andy enough for goods and eavy marchandise,� Joe said; �but as to gents ever travellin� by sich contraband means, that was utterly and entirely out of the question. Never would appen so long as there was a well-appointed coach like the Regulator to be ad.� So Joe laid on the green paint and the white paint, and furbished up the sign until it glittered resplendent in the rays of the mid-day sun. But greater prophets than Joe have been mistaken. One fine summer�s afternoon a snorting steam-engine came puffing and panting through the country upon a private road of its own, drawing after it the accumulated rank, beauty, and fashion of a wide district to open the railway, which presently sucked up all the trade and traffic of the country. The Crooked Billet fell from a first-class way-side house at which eight coaches changed horses twice a-day, into a very seedy unfrequented place�a very different one to what it was when our hero�s mother, then Miss Willing, changed horses on travelling up in the Old True Blue Independent, on the auspicious day that she captured Mr. Pringle. Still it was visited with occasional glimpses of its former greatness in the way of the meets of the hounds, when the stables were filled, and the long-deserted rooms rang with the revelry of visitors. This was its first gala-day of the season, and several of the Featherbedfordshire gentlemen availed themselves of the fineness of the weather to see Sir Moses� hounds, and try whether they, too, could ride over Hit-im and Hold-im shire. The hounds had scarcely had their roll on the greensward, and old black Challenger proclaimed their arrival with his usual deep-toned vehemence, ere all the converging roads and lanes began pouring in their tributaries, and the space before the bay-windowed red brick-built �Billet� was soon blocked with gentlemen on horseback, gentlemen in Malvern dog-carts, gentlemen in Newport Pagnells, gentlemen in Croydon clothesbaskets, some divesting themselves of their wraps, some stretching themselves after their drive, some calling for brandy, some for baccy, some for both brandy and baccy. Then followed the usual inquiries, �Is Dobbinson coming?� �Where�s the Damper?� �Has anybody seen anything of Gameboy Green?� Next, the heavily laden family vehicles began to arrive, containing old fat _paterfamilias_ in the red coat of his youth, with his �missis� by his side, and a couple of buxom daughters behind, one of whom will be installed in the driving seat when papa resigns. Thus we have the Mellows of Mawdsley Hill, the Chalkers of Streetley, and the Richleys of Jollyduck Park, and the cry is still, �They come! they come!� It is going to be a bumper meet, for the foxes are famous, and the sight of a good �get away� is worth a dozen Legers put together. See here comes a nice quiet-looking little old gentleman in a well-brushed, flat-brimmed hat, a bird�s-eye cravat, a dark grey coat buttoned over a step-collared toilanette vest, nearly matching in line his delicate cream-coloured leathers, who everybody stares at and then salutes, as he lifts first one rose-tinted top and then the other, working his way through the crowd, on a thorough-bred snaffle-bridled bay. He now makes up to Sir Moses, who exclaims as the raised hat shows the familiar blue-eyed face, �Ah! Dicky my man! how d�ye do? glad to see you?� and taking off his glove the Baronet gives our old friend Boggledike a hearty shake of the hand. Dicky acknowledges the honour with becoming reverence, and then begins talking of sport and the splendid runs they have been having, while Sir Moses, instead of listening, cons over some to give him in return. But who have we here sitting so square in the tandem-like dogcart, drawn by the high-stepping, white-legged bay with sky-blue rosettes, and long streamers, doing the pride that apes humility in a white Macintosh, that shows the pink collar to great advantage? Imperial John, we do believe? Imperial John, it is! He has come all the way from Barley Hill Hall, leaving the people on the farm and the plate in the drawing-room to take care of themselves, starting before daylight, while his footman groom has lain out over night to the serious detriment of a half sovereign. As John now pulls up, with a trace-rattling ring, he cocks his Imperial chin and looks round for applause�a �Well done, you!� or something of that sort, for coming such a distance. Instead of that, a line of winks, and nods, and nudges, follow his course, one man whispering another, �I say, here�s old Imperial John,� or �I say, look at Miss de Glancey�s boy;� while the young ladies turn their eyes languidly upon him to see what sort of a hero the would-be Benedict is. His Highness, however, has quite got over his de Glancey failure, and having wormed his way after divers �with your leaves,� and �by your leaves,� through the intricacies of the crowd, he now pulls up at the inn door, and standing erect in his dog-cart, sticks his whip in the socket, and looks around with a �This is Mr. Hybrid the-friend-of-an-Earl� sort of air. �Ah! Hybrid, how d�ye do?� now exclaims Sir Moses familiarly; �hope you�re well?�how�s the Peer? hope he�s well. Come all the way from Barley Hill?� �Barley Hill _Hall_,� replies the great man with an emphasis on the Hall, adding in the same breath, �Oi say, ostler, send moy fellow!� whereupon there is a renewed nudging and whispering among the ladies beside him, of �That�s Mr. Hybrid!� �That�s Imperial John, the gentleman who wanted to marry Miss de Glancey for though Miss de Glancey was far above having him, she was not above proclaiming the other.� His Highness then becomes an object of inquisitive scrutiny by the fair; one thinking he might do for Lavinia Edwards; another, for Sarah Bates; a third, for Rachel Bell; a fourth, perhaps, for herself. It must be a poor creature that isn�t booked for somebody. Still, John stands erect in his vehicle, flourishing his whip, hallooing and asking for his fellow. �Ring the bell for moy fellow!�Do go for moy fellow!�Has anybody seen moy fellow? Have you seen moy fellow?� addressing an old smock-frocked countryman with a hoe in his hand. �Nor, arm d�d if iver ar i did!� replied the veteran, looking him over, a declaration that elicited a burst of laughter from the bystanders, and an indignant chuck of the Imperial chin from our John. �_Tweet, tweet, tweet!_� who have we here? All eyes turn up the Cherryburn road; the roused hounds prick their ears, and are with difficulty restrained from breaking away. It�s Walker, the cross postman�s gig, and he is treating himself to a twang of the horn. But who has he with him? Who is the red arm-folded man lolling with as much dignity as the contracted nature of the vehicle will allow? A man in red, with cap and beard, and all complete. Why it�s Monsieur! Monsieur coming _in forma pauperis_, after Sir Moses� liberal offer to send him to cover,�Monsieur in a faded old sugar-loaf shaped cap, and a scanty coat that would have been black if it hadn�t been red. 266m _Original Size_ Still Walker trots him up like a man proud of his load amid the suppressed titters and �Who�s this?� of the company. Sir Moses immediately vouchsafes him protection�by standing erect in his stirrups, and exclaiming with a waive of his right hand, �Ah, Monsieur! _comment vous portez-vous?_� �Pretty bobbish, I tenk you, sare, opes you are vell yourself and all de leetle Mainchanees,� replied Monsieur, rising in the gig, showing the scrimpness of his coat and the amplitude of his cinnamon-coloured peg-top trousers, thrust into green-topped opera-boots, much in the style of old Paul Pry. Having put something into Walker�s hand, Monsieur alights with due caution and Walker whipping on, presently shows the gilt �V. R.� on the back of his red gig as he works his way through the separating crowd. Walker claims to be one of Her Majesty�s servants; if not to rank next to Lord Palmerston, at all events not to be far below him. And now Monsieur being left to himself, thrusts his Malacca cane whip stick under his arm, and drawing on a pair of half-dirty primrose-coloured kid gloves, pokes into the crowd in search of his horse, making up to every disengaged one he saw, with �Is dee�s for me? Is dee�s for me?� Meanwhile Imperial John having emancipated himself from his Mackintosh, and had his horse placed becomingly at the step of the dog-cart, so as to transfer himself without alighting, and let everybody see the magnificence of the establishment, now souces himself into the saddle of a fairish young grey, and turns round to confront the united field; feeling by no means the smallest man in the scene. �Hybrid!� exclaims Sir Moses, seeing him approach the still dismounted Monsieur, �Hybrid! let me introduce my friend Rougier, Monsieur Rougier, Mr. Hybrid! of Barley Hill Hall, a great friend of Lord Ladythorne�s,� whereupon off went the faded sugar-loaf-shaped cap, and down came the Imperial hat, Sir Moses interlarding the ceremony with, �great friend of Louis Nap�s, great friend of Louis Nap�s,� by way of balancing the Ladythorne recommendation of John. The two then struck up a most energetic conversation, each being uncommonly taken with the other. John almost fancied he saw his way to the Tuileries, and wondered what Miss �somebody� would say if he got there. The conversation was at length interrupted by Dribbler�s grinning groom touching Jack behind as he came up with a chestnut horse, and saying, �Please, Sir, here�s your screw.� �Ah, my screw, is it!� replied Jack, turning round, �dat is a queer name for a horse�screw�hopes he�s a good �un.� �A good �un, and nothin� but a good �un,� replied the groom, giving him a punch in the ribs, to make him form up to Jack, an operation that produced an ominous grunt. �Vell� said Jack, proceeding to dive at the stirrup with his foot without taking hold of the reins; �if Screw is a good �un I sall make you handsome present�tuppence a penny, p�raps�if he�s a bad �un, I sall give you good crack on the skoll,� Jack flourishing his thick whipstick as he spoke. �Will you!� replied the man, leaving go of the rein, whereupon down went the horse�s head, up went his heels, and Jack was presently on his shoulder. �Oh, de devil!� roared Jack, �he vill distribute me! he vill distribute me! I vill be killed! Nobody sall save me! here, garçon, grum!� roared he amid the mirth of the company. �Lay �old of his �ead! lay �old of his �ocks! lay �old of �eels! Oh, murder! murder!� continued he in well-feigned dismay, throwing out his supplicating arms. Off jumped Imperial John to the rescue of his friend, and seizing the dangling rein, chucked up the horse�s head with a resolute jerk that restored Jack to his seat. �Ah, my friend, I see you are not much used to the saddle,� observed His Highness, proceeding to console the friend of an Emperor. �Vell, sare, I am, and I am not,� replied Jack, mopping his brow, and pretending to regain his composure, �I am used to de leetle �orse at de round-about at de fair, I can carry off de ring ten time out of twice, but these great unruly, unmannerly, undutiful screws are more than a match for old Harry.� �Just so,� assented His Highness, with a chuck of his Imperial chin, �just so;� adding in an under-tone, �then I�ll tell you what we�ll do�I�ll tell you what we�ll do�we�ll pop into the bar at the back of the house, and have a glass of something to strengthen our nerves.� �By all means, sare,� replied Jack, who was always ready for a glass. So they quietly turned the corner, leaving the field to settle their risible faculties, while they summoned the pretty corkscrew ringletted Miss Tubbs to their behests. �What shall it be?� asked Imperial John, as the smiling young lady tripped down the steps to where they stood. �Brandy,� replied Jack, with a good English accent. �Two brandies!� demanded Imperial John, with an air of authority. �Cold, _with_?� asked the lady, eyeing Monsieur�s grim visage. �_Neat!_� exclaimed Jack in a tone of disdain. �Yes, Sir,� assented the lady, bustling away. �_Shilling_ glasses!� roared Jack, at the last flounce of her blue muslin. Presently she returned bearing two glasses of very brown brandy, and each having appropriated one, Jack began grinning and bowing and complimenting the donor. �Sare,� said he, after smelling at the beloved liquor, �I have moch pleasure in making your quaintance. I am moch pleased, sare, with the expression of your mog. I tink, sare, you are de �andsomest man I never had de pleasure of lookin� at. If, sare, dey had you in my country, sare, dey vod make you a King�Emperor, I mean. I drink, sare, your vare good health,� so saying, Jack swigged off the contents of his glass at a draught. Imperial John felt constrained to do the same. �Better now,� observed Jack, rubbing his stomach as the liquid fire began to descend. �Better now,� repeated he, with a jerk of his head, �Sare,� continued he, �I sall return the compliment�I sall treat you to a glass.� Imperial John would rather not. He was a glass of sherry and a biscuit sort of man; but Monsieur was not to be balked in his liberality. �Oh, yes, sare, make me de pleasure to accept a glass,� continued Jack, �Here! Jemima! Matilda! Adelaide! vot the doose do they call de young vomans�look sharp,� added he, as she now reappeared. �Apportez, dat is to say, bring tout suite, directly; two more glasses; dis gentlemans vill be goode enough to drink my vare good �ealth.� �Certainly,� replied the smiling lady, tripping away for them. �Ah, sare, it is de stoff to make de air corl,� observed Jack, eyeing his new acquaintance. �Ye sall go like old chaff before the vind after it. Vill catch de fox myself.� The first glass had nearly upset our Imperial friend, and the second one appeared perfectly nauseous. He would give anything that Jack would drink them both himself. However, Monsieur motioned blue muslin to present the tray to John first, so he had no alternative but to accept. Jack then took his glass, and smacking his lips, said��I looks, sare, towards you, sare, vith all de respect due to your immortal country. De English, sare, are de finest nation under de moon; and you, sare, and you are as fine a specimens of dat nation as never vas seen. Two such mans as you, sare, could have taken Sebastopol. You could vop all de ell ound savage Sepoys by yourself. So now, sare,� continued Jack, brandishing his glass, �make ready, present, _fire!_� and at the word fire, he drained off his glass, and then held it upside down to show he had emptied it. Poor Imperial John was obliged to follow suit. The Imperial head now began to swim. Mr. Hybrid saw two girls in blue muslin, two Monsieurs, two old yellow Po-chaises, two water-carts with a Cochin-China cock a gollowing a-top of each. Jack, on the contrary, was quite comfortable. He had got his nerves strung, and was now ready for anything. �S�pose, now,� said he, addressing his staring, half-bewildered friend, �you ascend your gallant grey, and let us look after dese mighty chasseurs. But stop,� added he, �I vill first pay for de tipple,� pretending to dive into his peg-top trousers pocket for his purse. �_Ah! malheureusement_,� exclaimed he, after feeling them both. �I have left my blont, my tin, in my oder trousers pockets. Navare mind! navare mind,� continued he, gaily, �ve vill square it op some other day. Here,� added he to the damsel, �dis gentlemens vill pay, and I vill settle vid him some oder day�some oder day.� So saying, Jack gathered his horse boldly together, and spurred out of the inn-yard in a masterly way, singing _Partant pour la Syrie_ as he went. CHAPTER XXXVI. A BIRD�S EYE VIEW. 273m _Original Size_ HE friends reappeared at the front of the Crooked Billet Hotel when the whole cavalcade had swept away, leaving only the return ladies, and such of the grooms as meant to have a drink, now that �master was safe.� Sir Moses had not paid either Louis Napoleon�s or Lord Ladythorne�s friend the compliment of waiting for them. On the contrary, having hailed the last heavy subscriber who was in the habit of using the Crooked Billet meet, he hallooed the huntsman to trot briskly away down Rickleton Lane, and across Beecham pastures, as well to shake off the foot-people, as to prevent any attempted attendance on the part of the carriage company. Sir Moses, though very gallant, was not always in the chattering mood; and, assuredly, if ever a master of hounds may be excused for a little abruptness, it is when he is tormented by the rival spirits of the adjoining hunt, people who always see things so differently to the men of the country, so differently to what they are meant to do. It was evident however by the lingering looks and position of parties that the hunt had not been long gone�indeed, the last red coat might still be seen bobbing up and down past the weak and low parts of the Rickleton Lane fence. So Monsieur, having effected a satisfactory rounding, sot his horse�s head that way, much in the old threepence a-mile and hopes for something over, style of his youth. Jack hadn�t forgotten how to ride, though he might occasionally find it convenient to pretend to be a tailor. Indeed, his horse seemed to have ascertained the fact, and instead of playing any more monkey-tricks, he began to apply himself sedulously to the road. Imperial John was now a fitter subject for solicitude than Monsieur, His Highness�s usual bumptious bolt-upright seat being exchanged for a very slouchy, vulgar roll. His saucy eyes too seemed dim and dazzled, like an owl�s flying against the sun. Some of the toiling pedestrians, who in spite of Sir Moses�s intention to leave them in the lurch, had started for the hunt, were the first overtaken, next two grinning boys riding a barebacked donkey, one with his face to the tail, doing the flagellation with an old hearth-brush, then a brandy-nosed horse-breaker, with a badly-grown black colt that didn�t promise to be good for anything, next Dr. Linton on his dun pony, working his arms and legs most energetically, riding far faster than his nag; next Noggin, the exciseman, stealing quietly along on his mule as though he were bent on his business and had no idea of a hunt; and at length a more legitimate representative of the chace in the shape of young Mr. Hadaway, of Oakharrow Hill, in a pair of very baggy white cords, on but indifferent terms about the knees with his badly cleaned tops. They did not, however, overtake the hounds, and the great body of scarlet, till just as they turned off the Summersham road into an old pasture-field, some five acres of the low end of which had been cut off for a gorse to lay to the adjoining range of rocky hills whose rugged juniper and broom-dotted sides afforded very comfortable and popular lying for the foxes. It being, if a find, a quick �get away,� all hands were too busy thinking of themselves and their horses, and looking for their usual opponents to take heed of anything else, and Jack and his friends entered without so much as an observation from any one. Just at that moment up went Joe�s cap on the top of the craig, and the scene changed to one of universal excitement. Then, indeed, had come the tug of war! Sir Moses, all hilarity, views the fox! Now Stephen Booty sees him, now Peter Lynch, and now a whole cluster of hats are off in his honour. **** And now his honour�s off himself� �Shrill horns proclaim his flight.� Oh dear! oh dear! where�s Billy Pringle? Oh dear! oh dear! where�s Imperial John? Oh dear! where�s Jack Rogers? Jack�s all right! There he is grinning with enthusiasm, quite forgetting that he�s a Frenchman, and hoisting his brown cap with the best of them. Another glass would have made him give a stunning view-halloa. Imperial John stares like a man just awoke from a dream. Is he in bed, or is he out hunting, or how! he even thinks he hears Miss de Glancey�s �_Si-r-r!_ do you mean to insult me?� ringing in his ears. Billy Pringle! poor Billy! he�s not so unhappy as usual. His horse is very docile. His tail has lost all its elegant gaiety, and altogether he has a very drooping, weedy look: he coughs, too, occasionally. Billy, however, doesn�t care about the coughs, and gives him a dig with his spur to stop it. �Come along, Mr. Pringle, come along!� now shrieks Sir Moses, hurrying past, hands down, head too, hugging and spurring his horse as he goes. He is presently through the separating throng, leaving Billy far in the rear. �_Quick�s_� the word, or the chance is lost. There are no reserved places at a hunt. A flying fox admits of no delay. It is either go or stay. And now, Monsieur Jean Rougier having stuck his berry-brown conical cap tight on his bristly black head, crams his chestnut horse through the crowd, hallooing to his transfixed brandy friend, �Come along, old cock-a-doodle! come along, old Blink Bonny!� Imperial John, who has been holding a mental conference with himself, poising himself in the saddle, and making a general estimate of his condition, thinking he is not so drunk as �all that,� accepts the familiar challenge, and urges his horse on with the now flying crowd. He presently makes a bad shot at a gate on the swing, which catching him on the kneecap, contributes very materially to restore his sobriety, the pain making him first look back for his leg, which he thinks must be off, and then forward at the field. It is very large; two bustling Baronets, two Monsieurs, two huntsmen, two flying hatters�everybody in duplicate, in short. Away they scud up Thorneycroft Valley at a pace that looks very like killing. The foremost rise the hill, hugging and holding on by the manes. �I�ll go!� says his Highness to himself, giving up rubbing his kneecap, and settling himself in his saddle, he hustles his horse, and pushing past the undecided ones, is presently in the thick of the fray. There is Jack going, elbows and legs, elbows and legs, at a very galloping, dreary, done sort of pace, the roaring animal he bestrides contracting its short, leg-tied efforts every movement. Jack presently begins to objurgate the ass who lent it him; first wishes he was on himself, then declares the tanner ought to have him. He now sits sideways, and proceeds to give him a good rib-roasting in the old post-boy style. And now there�s a bobbing up and down of hats, caps, and horses� heads in front, with the usual deviation under the �hounds clauses consolidation act,� where the dangerous fencing begins. A pair of white breeches are summersaulting in the air, and a bay horse is seen careering in a wild head in the air sort of way, back to the rear instead of following the hounds. �That�s lucky,� said Jack Rogers to himself, as soon as he saw him coming towards him, and circumventing him adroitly at the corner of a turnip-field, he quits his own pumped-out animal and catches him. �That�s good,� said he, looking him over, seeing that he was a lively young animal in fairish condition, with a good saddle and bridle. �Stirrups just my length, too, I do believe,� continued he, preparing to mount. �All right, by Jove!� added he, settling himself into the saddle, feet well home, and gathering his horse together, he shot forward with the easy elasticity of breeding. It was a delightful change from the rolling cow-like action of the other. �Let us see vot he as in his monkey,� said Jack to himself, now drawing the flask from the saddle-case. �Sherry, I fear,� said he, uncorking it. �Brandy, I declare,� added he with delight, after smelling it. He then took a long pull at the contents. �Good it is, too!� exclaimed he, smacking his lips; �better nor ve ad at de poblic;� so saying, he took another long suck of it. �May as vell finish it,� continued he, shaking it at his ear to ascertain what was left; and having secured the remainder, he returned the monkey to the saddle-case, and put on his horse with great glee, taking a most independent line of his own. Jack�s triumph, however, was destined to be but of short duration. The fox being hard pressed, abandoned his original point for Collington Woods, and swerving to the left over Stanbury Hundred, was headed by a cur, and compelled to seek safety in a drain in the middle of a fallow field. The hounds were presently feathering over the mouth in the usual wild, disappointed sort of way, that as good as says, �No fault of ours, you know; if he won�t stay above ground, we can�t catch him for you.� Such of the field as had not ridden straight for Collington Woods, were soon down at the spot; and while the usual enquiries, �Where�s Pepper?� �Where�s Viper?� �Where can we get a spade?� �Does anybody know anything about the direction of this drain?� were going on, a fat, fair, red-coated, flushed-faced pedestrian�to wit, young Mr. Threadcroft, the woolstapler�s son of Harden Grange and Hinton, dived into the thick of the throng, and making up to Monsieur, exclaimed in an anger-choked voice, �This (puff) is my (gasp) horse! What the (gasp, puff) devil do you mean by riding away with him in this (puff-, gasp) way?� the youth mopping his brow with a yellow bandanna as he spoke. 277m _Original Size_ �Your oss!� exclaimed Jack with the greatest effrontery, �on de loose can he be your os: I catched him fair! and I�ve a right to ride him to de end of de run;� a claim that elicited the uproarious mirth of the field, who all looked upon the young wool-pack, as they called him, as a muff. �_Nonsense!_� retorted the youth, half frantic with rage. �How can that be?� �Ow can dat be,� repeated Jack, turning sideways in his saddle, and preparing to argue the case, �Ow can dat be? Dis hont, sare, I presume, sare, is condocted on de principle of de grand hont de Epping, vere every mans vot cotched anoder�s oss, is entitled to ride him to the end of de ron,� replied Jack gravely. �Nonsense!� again retorted the youth, amidst the renewed laughter of the field. �We know nothing of Epping hunts here!� �Nothin� of Epping onts here?� exclaimed Jack, throwing out his hands with well feigned astonishment. �Nothin� of Epping honts here! Vy, de grand hont de Epping rules all the oder honts, jost as the grand Clob de Jockey at Newmarket rules all oder Jockey Clubs in de kingdom.� �Hoot, toot,� sneered the fat youth, �let�s have none of yonr jaw. Give me my horse, I say, how can he be yours?� �Because, sare,� replied Jack, �I tells you I cotched �im fairly in de field. Bot for me he vod have been lost to society�to de vorld at large�eat up by de loup�by de volf�saddle, bridle, and all.� �Nothing of the sort!� retorted Mr. Treadcroft, indignantly, �you had no business to touch him.� Monsieur (with energy). I appeal to you, Sare Moses Baronet, de grand maître de chien, de master of all de dogs and all de dogs� vives, if I have not a right to ride �im. �Ah, I�m afraid, Monsieur, it�s not the law of this country,� replied Sir Moses, laughing. �It may be so in France, perhaps; but tell me, where�s your own horse?� Monsieur. Pomped out de beggar; had no go in �im; left him in a ditch. Sir Moses. That�s a pity!�if you�d allowed me, I�d have sent you a good �un. Mr. Treadcroft, thus reinforced by Sir Moses�s decision, returned to the charge with redoubled vigour. �If you don�t give me up my horse, sir,� says he, with firmness, �I�ll give you in charge of the police for stealing him.� Then �Conscience, which makes cowards of us all,� caused Jack to shrink at the recollection of his early indiscretion in the horse-stealing line, and instantly resolving not to give Jack Ketch a chance of taking any liberties with his neck, he thus addresses Mr. Treadcroft:� �Sare, if Sare Moses Baronet, de grand maître de chien, do grandmodder of all de dogs and all de dogs� vives, says it is not a case of catch �im and keep �im �cordin� to de rules of de grand hont de Epping, I must surrender de quadruped, but I most say it is dem un�andsome treatment, after I �ave been at de trouble of catching �im.� So saying, Jack dropped off on the wrong side of the saddle, and giving the horse a slap on his side left his owner to take him. �_Tally-ho! there he goes!_� now exclaimed a dozen voices, as out bounced the fox with a flourish of his well tagged brush that looked uncommonly defiant. What a commotion he caused! Every man lent a shout that seemed to be answered by a fresh effort from the flyer: but still, with twenty couple of overpowering animals after him, what chance did there seem for his life, especially when they could hunt him by his scent after they had lost sight. Every moment, however, improved his opportunity, and a friendly turn of the land shutting him out of view, the late darting, half-frantic pack were brought to their noses. �Hold hard for _one_, minute!� is the order of the day. �Now, catch �em if you can!� is the cry. Away they go in the settled determined way of a second start. The bolt taking place on the lower range of the gently swelling Culmington hills, that stretch across the north-east side of Hit-im and Hold-im shire, and the fox making for the vale below, Monsieur has a good bird�s eye view of the scramble, without the danger and trouble of partaking of the struggle. Getting astride a newly stubbed ash-tree near the vacated drain mouth, he thus sits and soliloquises��He�s a pretty flyer, dat fox�if dey catch �im afore he gets to the hills,� eyeing a gray range uudulating in the distance, �they�ll do well. That Moff of a man,� alluding to Treadcroft, ��ill never get there. At all events,� chuckled Jack, �his brandy vont. Dats �im! I do believe,� exclaimed Jack, �off again!� as a loose horse is now seen careering across a grass field. �No; dat is a black coat,� continued Jack, as the owner now appeared crossing the field in pursuit of his horse. �Bot dat vill be �im! dat vill be friend Moll�,� as a red rider now measures his length on the greensward of a field in the rear of the other one; and Jack, taking off his faded cap, waives it triumphantly as he distinctly recognises the wild, staring running of his late steed. �Dash my buttons!� exclaims he, working his arms as if he was riding, �bot if it hadn�t been for dat unwarrantable, unchristian-like cheek I�d ha� shown those red coats de vay on dat oss, for I do think he has de go in him and only vants shovin� along.�Ah Moff�my friend Moff!� laughed he, eyeing Treadcroft�s vain endeavour to catch his horse, �you may as vell leave �im where he is�you�ll only fatigue yourself to no purpose. If you �ad �im you�d be off him again de next minute.� The telescope of the chace is now drawn out to the last joint, and Jack, as he sits, has a fine bird�s eye view of the scene. If the hounds go rather more like a flock of wild geese than like the horses in the chariot of the sun, so do the field, until the diminutive dots, dribbling through the vale, look like the line of a projected railway. �If I mistake not,� continued Jack, �dat leetle shiny eel-like ting,� eyeing a tortuous silvery thread meandering through the vale, �is vater, and dere vill be some fon by de time dey get there.� Jack is right in his conjecture. It is Long Brawlingford brook, with its rotten banks and deep eddying pools, describing all sorts of geographical singularities in its course through the country, too often inviting aspiring strangers to astonish the natives by riding at it, while the cautious countrymen rein in as they approach, and, eyeing the hounds, ride for a ford at the first splash. Jack�s friend, Blink Bonny, has ridden not amiss, considering his condition�at all events pretty forward, as may be inferred from his having twice crossed the Flying Hatter and come in for the spray of his censure. But for the fact of his Highness getting his hats of the flyer, he would most likely have received the abuse in the bulk. As it was, the hatter kept letting it go as he went. And now as the hounds speed over the rich alluvial pastures by the brook, occasionally one throwing its tongue, occasionally another, for the scent is first-rate and the pace severe, there is a turning of heads, a checking of horses, and an evident inclination to diverge. Water is in no request. �Who knows the ford?� cries Harry Waggett, who always declined extra risk.��You know the ford, Smith?� continued he, addressing himself to black tops. �Not when I�m in a hur-hur-hurry,� ejaculates Smith, now fighting with his five-year-old bay. �O�ill show ye the ford!� cries Imperial John, gathering his grey together and sending him at a stiff flight of outside slab-made rails which separate the field from the pack. This lands His Highness right among the tail hounds. �Hold hard, Mr. Hybrid!� now bellows Sir Moses, indignant at the idea of a Featherbedfordshire farmer thinking to cut down his gallant field. �One minuit! and you may go as hard as iver you like!� cries Tom Findlater, who now sees the crows hovering over his fox as he scuttles away on the opposite side of the brook. There is then a great yawing of mouths and hauling of heads and renewed inquiries for fords.�You know the ford, Brown? You know the ford, Green? _Who_ knows the ford? His Highness, thus snubbed and rebuked on all sides, is put on his mettle, and inwardly resolves not to be bullied by these low Hit-im and Hold-im shire chaps. �If they don�t know what is due to the friend of an Earl, he will let them see that he does.� So, regardless of their shouts, he shoves along with his Imperial chin well in the air, determined to ride at the brook�let those follow who will. He soon has a chance. The fox has taken it right in his line, without deviating a yard either way, and Wolds-man, and Bluecap, and Ringwood, and Hazard, and Sparkler are soon swimming on his track, followed by the body of the screeching, vociferating pack. Old Blink Bonny now takes a confused, wish-I-was-well-over, sort of look at the brook, shuddering when he thought how far he was from dry clothes. It is however, too late to retreat. At it he goes in a half resolute sort of way, and in an instant the Imperial hat and the Imperial horse�s head are all that appear above water. �_Hoo-ray!_� cheer some of the unfeeling Hit-im and Hold-im shireites, dropping down into the ford a little below. �_Hoo-ray!_� respond others on the bank, as the Red Otter, as Silverthorne calls His Highness, rises hatless to the top. �Come here, and I�ll help you out!� shouts Peter Linch, eyeing Mr. Hybrid�s vain darts first at the hat and then at the horse. �Featherbedfordshire for ever!� cries Charley Drew, who doesn�t at all like Imperial John. And John, who finds the brook not only a great deal wider, but also a great deal deeper and colder than he expected, is in such a state of confusion that he lands on one side and his horse on the other, so that his chance of further distinction is out for the day. And as he stands shivering and shaking and emptying his hat, he meditates on the vicissitudes of life, the virtues of sobriety, and the rashness of coping with a friend of His Imperial brother, Louis Nap. His horse meanwhile regales upon grass, regardless of the fast receding field. Thus John is left alone in his glory, and we must be indebted to other sources for an account of the finish of this day�s sport. CHAPTER XXXVII. TWO ACCOUNTS OF A RUN; OR, LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. MONSIEUR Jean Rougier having seen the field get small by degrees, if not beautifully less, and having viewed the quivering at the brook, thinking the entertainment over, now dismounted from his wooden steed, and, giving it a crack with his stick, saying it was about as good as his first one, proceeded to perform that sorry exploit of retracing his steps through the country on foot. Thanks to the influence of civilisation, there is never much difficulty now in finding a road; and, Monsieur was soon in one whose grassy hoof-marked sides showed it had been ridden down in chase. Walking in scarlet is never a very becoming proceeding; but, walking in such a scarlet as Jack had on, coupled with such a cap, procured him but little respect from the country people, who took him for one of those scarlet runners now so common with hounds. One man (a hedger) in answer to his question, �If he had seen his horse?� replied, after a good stare��Nor�nor nobody else;� thinking that the steed was all imaginary, and Jack was wanting to show off: another said, �Coom, coom, that ill not de; you�ve ne horse.� Altogether, Monsieur did not get much politeness from anyone; so he stumped moodily along, venting his spleen as he went. The first thing that attracted his attention was his own pumped-out steed, standing with its snaffle-rein thrown over a gate-post; and Jack, having had about enough pedestrian exercise, especially considering that he was walking in his own boots, now gladly availed himself of the lately discarded mount. �Wooay, ye great grunting brute!� exclaimed he, going up with an air of ownership, taking the rein off the post, and climbing on. He had scarcely got well under way, ere a clattering of horses� hoofs behind him, attracted his attention; and, looking back, he saw the Collington Woods detachment careering along in the usual wild, staring, _which-way? which-way?_ sort of style of men, who have been riding to points, and have lost the hounds. In the midst of the flight was his master, on the now woe-begone bay; who came coughing, and cutting, and hammer and pincering along, in a very ominous sort of way. Billy, on the other hand, flattered himself that they were having a very tremendous run, with very little risk, and he was disposed to take every advantage of his horse, by way of increasing its apparent severity, thinking it would be a fine thing to tell his Mamma how he had got through his horse. Monsieur having replied to their _which ways?_ with the comfortable assurance �that they need not trouble themselves any further, the hounds being miles and miles away,� there was visible satisfaction on the faces of some; while others, more knowing, attempted to conceal their delight by lip-curling exclamations of �What a bore!� �Thought _you_ knew the country, Brown.� �Never follow you again, Smith,� and so on. They then began asking for the publics. �Where�s the Red Lion?� �Does anybody know the way to the Barley Mow?� �How far is it to the Dog and Duck at Westpool?� �Dat oss of yours sall not be quite vell, I tink, sare,� observed Jack to his master, after listening to one of its ominous coughs. �Oh, yes he is, only a little lazy,� replied Billy, giving him a refresher, as well with the whip on his shoulder, as with the spur on his side. �He is feeble, I should say, sare,� continued Jack, eyeing him pottering along. �What should I give him, then?� asked Billy, thinking there might be something in what Jack said. �I sud say a leetle gin vod be de best ting for im,� replied Jack. �Gin! but where can I get gin here?� asked Billy. �Dese gentlemens is asking their vays to de Poblic ouses,� replied Jack; �and if you follows dem, you vill laud at some tap before long.� Jack was right. Balmey Zephyr, as they call Billy West, the surgeon of Hackthorn, who had joined the hunt quite promiscuous, is leading the way to the Red Lion, and the cavalcade is presently before the well-frequented door; one man calling for Purl, another Ale, a third for Porter; while others hank their horses on to the crook at the door, while they go in to make themselves comfortable. Jack dismounting, and giving his horse in charge of his master, entered the little way-side hostelry; and, asking for a measure of gin, and a bottle of water, he drinks off the gin, and then proceeds to rinse Billy�s horse�s mouth out with the water, just as a training-groom rinses a horse�s after a race. �Dat vill do,� at length said Jack, chucking the horse�s head up in the air, as if he gets him to swallow the last drop of the precious beverage. �Dat vill do,� repeated he, adding, �he vill now carry you ome like a larkspur.� So saying, Jack handed the bottle back through the window, and, paying the charge, remounted his steed, kissing his hand, and _bon-jouring_ the party, as he set off with his master in search of Pangburn Park. Neither of them being great hands at finding their way about a country, they made sundry bad hits, and superfluous deviations, and just reached Pangburn Park as Sir Moses and Co. came triumphantly down Rossington hill, flourishing the brush that had given them a splendid fifty minutes (ten off for exaggeration) without a check, over the cream of their country, bringing Imperial John, Gameboy Green, and the flower of the Featherbedfordshire hunt, to the most abject and unmitigated grief. �Oh, such a run!� exclaimed Sir Moses, throwing out his paws. �Oh, such a run! Finest run that ever was seen! Sort of run, that if old Thorne (meaning Lord Ladythorne) had had, he�d have talked about it for a year.� Sir Moses then descended to particulars, describing the heads up and sterns down work to the brook, the Imperial catastrophe which he dwelt upon with great _goût_, dom�d if he didn�t; and how, leaving John in the water, they went away over Rillington Marsh, at a pace that was perfectly appalling, every field choking off some of those Featherbedfordshireites, who came out thinking to cut them all down; then up Tewey Hill, nearly to the crow trees, swinging down again into the vale by Billy Mill, skirting Laureston Plantations, and over those splendid pastures of Arlingford, where there was a momentary check, owing to some coursers, who ought to be hung, dom�d if they shouldn�t. �This,� continued Sir Moses, �let in some of the laggers, Dickey among the number; but we were speedily away again; and, passing a little to the west of Pickering Park, through the decoy, and away over Larkington Rise, shot down to the Farthing-pie House, where that great Owl, Gameboy Green, thinking to show off, rode at an impracticable fence, and got a cropper for his pains, nearly knocking the poor little Damper into the middle of the week after next by crossing him. Well, from there he made for the main earths in Purdoe Banks, where, of course, there was no shelter for him; and, breaking at the east end of the dene, he set his head straight for Brace well Woods, good two miles off (one and a quarter, say); but his strength failing him over Winterflood Heath, we ran from scent to view, in the finest, openest manner imaginable,�dom�d if we didn�t,� concluded Sir Moses, having talked himself out of breath. The same evening, just as Oliver Armstrong was shutting up day by trimming and lighting the oil-lamp at the Lockingford toll-bar, which stands within a few yards from where the apparently well-behaved little stream of Long Brawlingford brook divides the far-famed Hit-im and Hold-im shire from Featherbedfordshire, a pair of desperately mud-stained cords below a black coat and vest, reined up behind a well wrapped and buttoned-up gentleman in a buggy, who chanced to be passing, and drew forth the usual inquiry of �What sport?� The questioner was no less a personage than Mr. Easylease, Lord Ladythorne�s agent�we beg pardon, Commissioner�and Mr. Gameboy Green, the tenant in possession of the soiled cords, recognising the voice in spite of the wraps, thus replied� �Oh, Mr. Easylease it�s you, sir, is it? Hope you�re well, sir,� with a sort of move of his hat�not a take off, nor yet a keep on��hope Mrs. Easylease is quite well, and the young ladies.� �Quite well, thank you; hope Mrs. G.�s the same. What sport have you had?� added the Commissioner, without waiting for an answer to the inquiry about the ladies. �Sport!� repeated Gameboy, drawing his breath, as he conned the matter hastily over. �Sport!� recollecting he was as good as addressing the Earl himself�master of hounds�favours past�hopes for future, and so on. �Well,� said he, seeing his line; �We�ve had a nice-ish run�a fair-ish day�five and twenty minutes, or so.� �Fast?� asked Mr. Easylease, twirling his gig-whip about, for he was going to Tantivy Castle in the morning, and thought he might as well have something to talk about beside the weather. �Middlin��nothin� partieklar,� replied Green, with a chuck of the chin. �Kill?� asked the Commissioner, continuing the laconics. �Don�t know,� replied the naughty Green, who knew full well they had; for he had seen them run into their fox as he stood on Dinglebank Hill; and, moreover, had ridden part of the way home with Tommy Heslop, who had a pad. �Why, you�ve been down!� exclaimed the Commissioner, starting round at the unwonted announcement of Gameboy Green, the best man of their hunt, not knowing if they had killed. �Down, aye,� repeated Gameboy, looking at his soiled side, which looked as if he had been at a sculptor�s, having a mud cast taken of himself. �I�m indebted to the nasty little jealous Damper for that.� �The Damper!� exclaimed the Commissioner, knowing how the Earl hated him. �The Damper! that little rascally draper�s always doing something wrong. How did he manage it?� �Just charged me as I was taking a fence,� replied Green, �and knocked me clean over.� �What a shame!� exclaimed the Commissioner, driving on. �What a shame,� repeated he, whipping his horse into a trot. And as he proceeded, he presently fell in with Dr. Pillerton, to whom he related how infamously the Hit-im and Hold-im shire chaps had used poor Green, breaking three of his ribs, and nearly knocking his eye out. And Dr. Pillerton, ever anxious, &c., told D�Orsay Davis, the great we of the Featherbedfordshire Gazette, who forthwith penned such an article on fox-hunting Jealousy, generally, and Hit-im and Hold-im shire Jealousy in particular, as caused Sir Moses to declare he�d horsewhip him the first time he caught him,��dom�d if he wouldn�t.� CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE SICK HORSE AND THE SICK MASTER. 288m _Original Size_ YOUR oss sall be seek�down in de mouth dis mornin�, sare,� observed Monsieur to Billy, as the latter lay tossing about in his uncomfortable bed, thinking how he could shirk that day�s hunting penance; Sir Moses, with his usual dexterity, having evaded the offer of lending him a horse, by saying that Billy�s having nothing to do the day before would be quite fresh for the morrow. �Shall be w-h-a-w-t?� drawled our hero, dreading the reply. �Down in de mouth�seek�onvell,� replied Jack, depositing the top-boots by the sofa, and placing the shaving-water on the toilette table. �Oh, is he!� said Billy, perking up, thinking he saw his way out of the dilemma. �What�s the matter with him?� �He coughs, sare�he does not feed, sare�and altogether he is not right.� �So-o-o,� said Billy, conning the matter over��then, p�raps I�d better not ride him?� �Vot you think right, sare,� replied Jack. �He is your quadruped, not mine; but I should not say he is vot dey call, op to snoff�fit to go.� �Ah,� replied Billy. �I�ll not ride �im! hate a horse that�s not up to the mark.� �Sare Moses Baronet vod perhaps lend you von, sare,� suggested Jack. �Oh, by no means!� replied Billy in a fright. �By no means! I�d just as soon not hunt to-day, in fact, for I�ve got a good many letters to write and things to do; so just take the water away for the present and bring it back when Sir Moses is gone.� So saying, Billy turned over on his thin pillow, and again sought the solace of his couch. He presently fell into a delightful dreamy sort of sleep, in which he fancied that after dancing the Yammerton girls all round, he had at length settled into an interminable �Ask Mamma Polka,� with Clara, from which he was disagreeably aroused by Jack Rogers� hirsute face again protruding between the partially-drawn curtains, announcing, �Sare Moses Baronet, sare, has cot his stick�is off.� �Sir Moses, _what!_� started Billy, dreading to hear about the hunt. �Sare Moses Baronet, sare, is gone, and I�ve brought you your _l�eau chaude_, as you said.� �All right!� exclaimed Billy, rubbing his eyes and recollecting himself, �all right;� and, banishing the beauty, he jumped out of bed and resigned himself to Rogers, who forthwith commenced the elaborate duties of his office. As it progressed he informed Billy how the land lay. �Sare Moses was gone, bot Coddy was left, and Mrs. Margerum said there should be no _déjeuner_ for Cod� (who was a bad tip), till Billy came down. And Jack didn�t put himself at all out of his way to expedite matters to accommodate Cuddy. At length Billy descended in a suit of those tigerish tweeds into which he had lapsed since he got away from Mamma, and was received with a round of tallihos and view-holloas by Cuddy, who had been studying _Bell�s Life_ with exemplary patience in the little bookless library, reading through all the meets of the hounds as if he was going to send a horse to each of them. Then Cuddy took his revenge on the servants by ringing for everything he could think of, demanding them all in the name of Mr. Pringle; just as an old parish constable used to run frantically about a fair demanding assistance from everybody in the name of the Queen. Mr. Pringle wanted devilled turkey, Mr. Pringle wanted partridge pie, Mr. Pringle wanted sausages, Mr. Pringle wanted chocolate, Mr. Pringle wanted honey, jelly and preserve. Why the deuce, didn�t they send Mr. Pringle his breakfast in properly? And if the servants didn�t think Billy a very great man, it wasn�t for want of Cuddy trying to make them. And so, what with Cuddy�s exertions and the natural course of events, Billy obtained a very good breakfast. The last cup being at length drained, Cuddy clutched _Bell�s Life_, and wheeling his semicircular chair round to the fire, dived into his side pocket, and, producing a cigar-case, tendered Billy a weed. And Cuddy did it in such a matter-of-course way, that much as Billy disliked smoking, he felt constrained to accept one, thinking to get rid of it by a sidewind, just as he had got rid of old Wotherspoon�s snuff, by throwing it away. So, taking his choice, he lit it, and prepared to beat a retreat, but was interrupted by Cuddy asking where �he was going?� �Only into the open air,� replied Billy, with the manner of a professed smoker. �Open air, be hanged!� retorted Cuddy. �Open airs well enough in summer-time when the roses are out, and the strawberries ripe, but this is not the season for that kind of sport. No, no, come and sit here, man,� continued he, drawing a chair alongside of him for Billy, �and let�s have a chat about hunting.� �But Sir Moses won�t like his room smoked in,� observed Billy, making a last effort to be off. �Oh, Sir Moses don�t care!� rejoined Cuddy, with a jerk of his head; �Sir Moses don�t care! can�t hurt such rubbish as this,� added he, tapping the arm of an old imitation rose-wood painted chair that stood on his left. �No old furniture broker in the Cut, would give ten puns for the whole lot, curtains, cushions, and all,� looking at the faded red hangings around. So Billy was obliged to sit down and proceed with his cigar. Meanwhile Cuddy having established a good light to his own, took up his left leg to nurse, and proceeded with his sporting speculations. �Ah, hunting wasn�t what it used to be (whiff), nor racing either (puff). Never was a truer letter (puff), than that of Lord Derby�s (whiff), in which he said racing had got into the (puff) hands of (whiff) persons of an inferior (puff) position, who keep (puff) horses as mere instruments of (puff) gambling, instead of for (whiff) sport.� Then, having pruned the end of his cigar, he lowered his left leg and gave his right one a turn, while he indulged in some hunting recollections. �Hunting wasn�t what it used to be (puff) in the days of old (whiff) Warde and (puff) Villebois and (whiff) Masters. Ah no!� continued he, taking his cigar out of his month, and casting his eye up at the dirty fly-dotted ceiling. �Few such sportsmen as poor Sutton or Ralph Lambton, or that fine old fire-brick, Assheton Smith. People want to be all in the ring now, instead of sticking to one sport, and enjoying it thoroughly�yachts, manors, moors, race-horses, cricket, coaches, coursing, cooks�and the consequence is, they get blown before they are thirty, and have to live upon air the rest of their lives. Wasn�t one man in fifty that hunted who really enjoyed it. See how glad they were to tail off as soon as they could. A good knock on the nose, or a crack on the crown settled half of them. Another thing was, there was no money to be made by it. Nothing an Englishman liked so much as making money, or trying to make it.� So saying, Cuddy gave his cigar another fillip, and replacing it in his mouth, proceeded to blow a series of long revolving clouds, as he lapsed into a heaven of hunting contemplations. From these he was suddenly aroused by the violent retching of Billy. Our friend, after experiencing the gradual growth of seasickness mingled with a stupifying headache, was at length fairly overcome, and Cuddy had just time to bring the slop-basin to the rescue. Oh, how green Billy looked! **** �Too soon after breakfast�too soon after breakfast,� muttered Cuddy, disgusted at the interruption. �Lie down for half an hour, lie down for half an hour,� continued he ringing the bell violently for assistance. �Send Mr. Pringle�s valet here! send Mr. Pringle�s valet here!� exclaimed he, as the half-davered footman came staring in, followed by the ticket-of-leave butler, �Here, Monsieur!� continued he, as Rougier�s hairy face now peeped past the door, �your master wants you�eat something that�s disagreed with him�that partridge-pie, I think, for I feel rather squeamish myself; and you, Bankhead,� added he, addressing the butler, �just bring us each a drop of brandy, not that nasty brown stuff Mother Margermn puts into the puddings, but some of the white, you know�the best, you know,� saying which, with a �now old boy!� he gave Billy a hoist from his seat by the arm, and sent him away with his servant. The brandy, however, never came, Bankhead declaring they had drunk all he had out, the other night. So Cuddy was obliged to console himself with his cigars and _Bell�s Life_, which latter he read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested, pausing every now and then at the speculative passages, wondering whether Wilkinson and Kidd, or Messrs. Wilkinson and Co. were the parties who had the honour of having his name on their books, where Henry Just, the backer of horses, got the Latin for his advertisement from, and considering whether Nairn Sahib, the Indian fiend, should be roasted alive or carried round the world in a cage. He also went through the column and a quarter of the meets of hounds again, studied the doings at Copenhagen Grounds, Salford Borough Gardens, and Hornsea Wood, and finally finished off with the time of high-water at London Bridge, and the list of pedestrian matches to come. He then folded the paper carefully up and replaced it in his pocket, feeling equal to a dialogue with anybody. Having examined the day through the window, he next strolled to his old friend the weather-glass at the bottom of the stairs, and then constituting himself huntsman to a pack of hounds, proceeded to draw the house for our Billy; �_Y-o-o-icks_, wind him! _y-o-o-icks_, push him up!� holloaed he, going leisurely up-stairs, �_E�leu in there! E�leu in!_� continued he, on arriving at a partially closed door on the first landing. �_There�s nobody here! There�s nobody here!_� exclaimed Mrs. Margerum, hurrying out. �There�s nobody here, sir!� repeated she, holding steadily on by the door, to prevent any one entering where she was busy packing her weekly basket of perquisites, or what the Americans more properly call �stealings.� �Nobody here! bitch-fox, at all events!� retorted Cuddy, eyeing her confusion��where�s Mr. Pringle�s room?� asked he. �I�ll show you, sir; I�ll show you,� replied she, closing the room-door, and hurrying on to another one further along. �This is Mr. Pringle�s room, sir,� said she, stopping before it. �All right!� exclaimed Cuddy, knocking at the door. �Come in,� replied a feeble voice from within; and in Cuddy went. There was Billy in bed, with much such a disconsolate face as he had when Jack Rogers appeared with his hunting things. As, however, nobody ever admits being sick with smoking, Billy readily adopted Cuddy�s suggestion, and laid the blame on the pie. Cuddy, indeed, was good enough to say he had been sick himself, and of course Billy had a right to be so, too. �Shouldn�t have been so,� said Cuddy, �if that beggar Bankhead had brought the brandy; but there�s no getting anything out of that fellow.� And Caddy and Billy being then placed upon terms of equality, the interesting invalids agreed to have a walk together. To this end Billy turned out of bed and re-established himself in his recently-discarded coat and vest; feeling much like a man after a bad passage from Dover to Calais. The two then toddled down-stairs together, Cuddy stopping at the bottom of the flight to consult his old friend the glass, and speculate upon the Weather. �Dash it! but it�s falling,� said he, with a shake of the head after tapping it. �Didn�t like the looks of the sky this morning�wish there mayn�t be a storm brewing. Had one just about this time last year. Would be a horrid bore if hunting was stopped just in its prime,� and talked like a man with half-a-dozen horses fit to jump out of their skins, instead of not owning one. And Billy thought it would be the very thing for him if hunting was stopped. With a somewhat light heart, he followed Cuddy through the back slums to the stables. �Sir Moses doesn�t sacrifice much to appearances, does he?� asked Cuddy, pointing to the wretched rough-cast peeling off the back walls of the house, which were greened with the drippings of the broken spouts. �No,� replied Billy, staring about, thinking how different things looked there to what they did at the Carstle. �Desperately afraid of paint,� continued Cuddy, looking about. �Don�t think there has been a lick of paint laid upon any place since he got it. Always tell him he�s like a bad tenant at the end of a long lease,� which observation brought them to the first stable-door. �Who�s here?� cried Cuddy, kicking at the locked entrance. �Who�s there?� demanded a voice from within. �Me! _Mr. Flintoff_�!� replied Cuddy, in a tone of authority; �_open the door_� added he, imperiously. The dirty-shirted helper had seen them coming; but the servants generally looking upon Cuddy as a spy, the man had locked the door upon him. �Beg pardon, sir,� now said the Catiff, pulling at his cowlick as he opened it; �beg pardon, sir, didn�t know it was you.� �Didn�t you,� replied Cuddy, adding, �you might have known by my knock,� saying which Cuddy stuck his cheesey hat down on his nose, and pocketing his hands, proceeded to scrutinise the stud. �What�s this �orse got a bandage on for?� asked he about one. �Why don�t ye let that �orse�s �ead down?� demanded he of another. �Strip this �orse,� ordered he of a third. Then Cuddy stood criticising his points, his legs, his loins, his hocks, his head, his steep shoulder, as he called it, and then ordered the clothes to be put on again. So he went from stable to stable, just as he does at Tattersall�s on a Sunday, Cuddy being as true to the �corner� as the needle to the pole, though, like the children, he looks, but _never_ touches, that is to say, �bids,� at least not for himself. Our Billy, soon tiring of this amusement�if, indeed, amusement it can be called�availed himself of the interregnum caused by the outside passage from one set of stables to another, to slip away to look after his own horse, of whose health he suddenly remembered Rougier had spoken disparagingly in the morning. After some little trouble he found the Juniper-smelling head groom, snoring asleep among a heap of horse-cloths before the fire in the saddle-room. It is said that a man who is never exactly sober is never quite drunk, and Jack Wetun was one of this order, he was always running to the �unsophisticated gin-bottle,� keeping up the steam of excitement, but seldom overtopping it, and could shake himself into apparent sobriety in an instant. Like most of Sir Moses�s people, he was one of the fallen angels of servitude, having lived in high places, from which his intemperate habits had ejected him; and he was now gradually descending to that last refuge of the destitute, the Ostlership of a farmer�s inn. Starting out of his nest at the rousing shake of the helper, who holloaed in his ear that �Mr. Pringle wanted to see his �orse,� Wetun stretched his brawny arms, and, rubbing his eyes, at length comprehended Billy, when he exclaimed with a start, �Oss, sir? Oh, by all means, sir;� and, bundling on his greasy-collared, iron-grey coat, he reeled and rolled out of the room, followed by our friend. �That (hiccup) oss of (hiccup) yours is (hiccup) amiss, I think (hiccup), sir,� said he, leading, or rather lurching the way. �A w-h-a-w-t?� drawled Billy, watching Weton�s tack and half-tack gait. �Amiss (hiccup)�unwell�don�t like his (hiccup) looks,� replied the groom, rolling past the stable-door where he was. �Oh, beg pardon,� exclaimed he, bumping against Billy on turning short back, as he suddenly recollected himself; �Beg pardon, he�s in here,� added he, fumbling at the door. It was locked. Then, oh dear, he hadn�t got the (hiccup) key, then (hiccup); yes, he had got the (hiccup) key, as he recollected he had his coat on, and dived into the pocket for it. Then he produced it; and, after making several unsuccessful pokes at the key-hole, at length accomplished an entry, and Billy again saw Napoleon the Great, now standing in the promised two-stalled stable along with Sir Moses�s gig mare. To a man with any knowledge of horses, Napoleon certainly did look very much amiss�more like a wooden horse at a harness-maker�s, than an animal meant to go,�stiff, with his fore-logs abroad, and an anxious care-worn countenance continually cast back at its bearing flanks. �Humph!� said Billy, looking him over, as he thought, very knowingly. �Not so much amiss, either, is he?� �Well, sir, what you think,� replied Wetun, glad to find that Billy didn�t blame him for his bad night�s lodgings. �Oh, I dare say he�ll be all right in a day or two,� observed Billy, half inclined to recommend his having his feet put into warm water. �Ope so,� replied Wetun, looking up the horse�s red nostrils, adding, �but he�s not (hiccup) now, somehow.� Just then a long reverberating crack sounded through the courtyard, followed by the clattering of horses� hoofs, and Wetun exclaiming, �_Here be Sir Moses!_� dropped the poor horse�s head, and hurried ont to meet his master, accompanied by Billy. �Ah, Pringle!� exclaimed Sir Moses, gaily throwing his leg over his horse�s head as he alighted. �Ah, Pringle, my dear fellow, what, got you?� �Well, what sport?� demanded Cuddy Flintoff, rushing up with eager anxiety depicted on his face. �Very good,� replied Sir Moses, stamping the mud off his boots, and then giving himself a general shake; �very good,� repeated he; �found at Lobjolt Corse�-ran up the banks and down the banks, and across to Beatie�s Bog, then over to Deep-well Rocks, and back again to the banks.� �_Did you kill?_� demanded Cuddy, not wanting to hear any more about the banks�up the banks or down the banks either. �Why, no,� replied Sir Moses, moodily; �if that dom�d old Daddy Nevins hadn�t stuck his ugly old mug right in the way, we should have forced him over Willowsike Pastures, and doubled him up in no time, for we were close upon him; whereas the old infidel brought us to a check, aud we never could get upon terms with him again; but, come,� continued Sir Moses, wishing to cut short this part of the narrative, �let�s go into the house and get ourselves warmed, for the air�s cold, and I haven�t had a bite since breakfast.� �Ay, come in!� cried Cuddy, leading the way; �come in, and get Mr. Pringle a drop of brandy, for he�s eat something that�s disagreed with him.� �Eat something that�s disagreed with him. Sorry to hear that; what could it be?�what could it be?� asked Sir Moses, as the party now groped their way along the back passages. �Why, I blame the partridge-pie,� replied Cuddy, demurely. �Not a bit of it!� rejoined Sir Moses��not a bit of it! eat some myself�eat some myself�will finish it now�will finish it now.� �We�ve saved you that trouble,� replied Cuddy, �for we finished it ourselves.� �The deuce you did!� exclaimed Sir Moses, adding, �and were _you_ sick?� �Squeamish,� replied Cuddy��Squeamish; not so bad as Mr. Pringle.� �But bad enough to want some brandy, I suppose,� observed the Baronet, now entering the library. �Quite so,� said Cuddy��quite.� �Why didn�t you get some?�why didn�t you get some?� asked the Baronet, moving towards the bell. �Because Bankhead has none out,� replied Mr. Cuddy, before Sir Moses rang. �None out!� retorted Sir Moses��none out!�what! have you finished that too!� �Somebody has, it seems,� replied Cuddy, quite innocently. �Well, then, I�ll tell you what you must do�I�ll tell you what you must do,� continued the Baronet, lighting a little red taper, and feeling in his pocket for the keys��you must go into the cellar yourself and get some�go into the cellar yourself and get some;� so saying, Sir Moses handed Cuddy the candle and keys, saying, �shelf above the left hand bin behind the door,� adding, �you know it�you know it.� �Better bring two when I�m there, hadn�t I?� asked Cuddy. �Well,� said Sir Moses, dryly, �I s�pose there�ll be no great harm if you do;� and away Cuddy went. �D-e-e-a-vil of a fellow to drink�d-e-e-a-vil of a fellow to drink,� drawled Sir Moses, listening to his receding footsteps along the passage. He then directed his blarney to Billy. �Oh dear, he was sorry to hear he�d been ill; what could it be? Lost a nice gallop, too�dom�d if he hadn�t. Couldn�t be the pie! Wondered he wasn�t down in the morning.� Then Billy explained that his horse was ill, and that prevented him. �Horse ill!� exclaimed Sir Moses, throwing out his hands, and raising his brows with astonishment��horse ill! O dear, but that shouldn�t have stopped you, if I�d known�should have been most welcome to any of mine�dom�d if you shouldn�t! There�s Pegasus, or Atalanta, or Will-o�-the-Wisp, or any of them, fit to go. O dear, it was a sad mistake not sending word. Wonder what Wetun was about not to tell me�would row him for not doing so,� and as Sir Moses went on protesting and professing and proposing, Cuddy Flintoff�s footstep and �_for-rard on! for-rard on!_� were heard returning along the passage, and he presently entered with a bottle in each hand. �There are a brace of beauties!� exclaimed he, placing them on the round table, with the dew of the cellar fresh on their sides��there are a brace of blood-like beauties!� repeated he, eyeing their neat tapering necks, �the very race-horse of bottles�perfect pictures, I declare; so different to those great lumbering roundshouldered English things, that look like black beer or porter, or something of that sort.� Then Cuddy ran off for glasses and tumblers and water; and Sir Moses, having taken a thimble-full of brandy, retired to change his clothes, declaring he felt chilly; and Cuddy, reigning in his stead, made Billy two such uncommonly strong brews, that we are sorry to say he had to be put to bed shortly after. And when Mr. Bankhead heard that Cuddy Flintoff had been sent to the cellar instead of him, he declared it was the greatest insult that had ever been offered to a gentleman of his �order,� and vowed that he would turn his master off the first thing in the morning. CHAPTER XXXIX. MR. PRINGLE SUDDENLY BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE H. H. H. NEXT day being a �dies non� in the hunting way, Sir Moses Mainchance lay at earth to receive his steward, Mr. Mordecai Nathan, and hear what sport he had had as well in hunting up arrears of rent as in the management of the Pangburn Park estate generally. Very sorry the accounts were, many of the apparent dullard farmers being far more than a match for the sharp London Jew. Mr. Mordecai Nathan indeed, declared that it would require a detective policeman to watch each farm, so tricky and subtile were the occupants. And as Sir Moses listened to the sad recitals, how Henery Brown & Co. had been leading off their straw by night, and Mrs. Turnbull selling her hay by day, and Jacky Hindmarch sowing his fallows without ever taking out a single weed, he vowed that they were a set of the biggest rogues under the sun, and deserved to be hung all in a row,�dom�d if they didn�t! And he moved and seconded and carried a resolution in his own mind, that the man who meddled with land as a source of revenue was a very great goose. So, charging Mr. Mordecai Nathan to stick to them for the money, promising him one per cent. more (making him eleven) on what he recovered, he at length dissolved the meeting, most heartily wishing he had Pangburn Park in his pocket again. Meanwhile Messrs. Flintoff and Pringle had yawned away the morning in the usual dreamy loungy style of guests in country-houses, where the meals are the chief incidents of the day. Mr. Pringle not choosing to be tempted with any more �pie,� had slipped away to the stable as soon as Cuddy produced the dread cigar-case after breakfast, and there had a conference with Mr. Wetun, the stud-groom, about his horse Napoleon the Great. The drunkard half laughed when Billy asked �if he thought the horse would be fit to come out in the morning, observing that he thought it would be a good many mornins fust, adding that Mr. Fleams the farrier had bled him, but he didn�t seem any better, and that he was coming back at two o�clock, when p�raps Mr. Pringle had better see him himself.� Whereupon our friend Billy, recollecting Sir Moses�s earnest deprecation of his having stayed at home for want of a horse the day before, and the liberal way he had talked of Atalanta and Pegasus, and he didn�t know what else, now charged Mr. Wetun not to mention his being without a horse, lest Sir Moses might think it necessary to mount him; which promise being duly accorded, Billy, still shirking Cuddy, sought the retirement of his chamber, where he indited an epistle to his anxious Mamma, telling her all, how he had left Major Yammerton�s and the dangerous eyes, and had taken up his quarters with Sir Moses Mainchance, a great fox-hunting Hit-im and Hold-im shire Baronet at Pangburn Park, expecting she would be very much pleased and struck with the increased consequence. Instead of which, however, though Mrs. Pringle felt that he had perhaps hit upon the lesser evil, she wrote him a very loving letter by return of post, saying she was glad to hear he was enjoying himself, but cautioning him against �Moses Mainchance� (omitting the Sir), adding that every man�s character was ticketed in London, and the letters �D. D.� for �Dirty Dog� were appended to his. She also told him that uncle Jerry had been inquiring about him, and begging she would call upon him at an early day on matters of business, all of which will hereafter �more full and at large appear,� as the lawyers say; meanwhile, we must back the train of ideas a little to our hero. Just as he was affixing the great seal of state to the letter, Cuddy Flintoff�s �for-rard on! for-rard on!� was heard progressing along the passage, followed by a noisy knock, with an exclamation of �Pringle� at our friend�s door. �Come in!� cried he; and in obedience to the invitation, Flintoff stood in the doorway. �Don�t forget,� said he, �that we dine at Hinton to-day, and the Baronet�s ordered the trap at four,� adding, �I�m going to dress, and you�d better do the same.� So saying, Cuddy closed the door, and hunted himself along to his own room at the end of the passage��_E�leu in there! E�leu in!_� oried he as he got to the door. Hinton, once the second town in Hit-im and Hold-im shire, stands at the confluence of the Long Brawlinerford and Riplinton brooks, whose united efforts here succeed in making a pretty respectable stream. It is an old-fashioned country place, whose component parts may be described as consisting of an extensive market-place, with a massive church of the florid Gothic, or gingerbread order of architecture at one end, a quaint stone-roofed, stone-pillared market cross at the other, the Fox and Hounds hotel and posting-house on the north side, with alternating shops and public houses on the south. Its population, according to a certain �sore subject� topographical dictionary, was 23,500, whilst its principal trade might have been described as �fleecing the foxhunters.� That was in its golden days, when Lord Martingal hunted the country, holding his court at the Fox and Hounds hotel, where gentlemen stayed with their studs for months and months together, instead of whisking about with their horses by steam. Then every stable in the town was occupied at very remunerative rents, and the inhabitants seemed to think they could never build enough. Like the natives of most isolated places, the Hintonites were very self-sufficient, firmly believing that there were no such conjurors as themselves; and, when the Grumpletin railway was projected, they resolved that it would ruin their town, and so they opposed it to a man, and succeeded in driving it several miles off, thus scattering their trade among other places along the line. Year by year the bonnet and mantle shops grew less gay, the ribbons less attractive, until shop after shop lapsed into a sort of store, hardware on one side, and millinery, perhaps, on the other. But the greatest fall of all was that of the Fox and Hounds hotel and posting-house. This spacious hostelry had apparently been built with a view of accommodating everybody; and, at the time of our story, it loomed in deserted grandeur in the great grass-grown market-place. In structure it was more like a continental inn than an English one; quadrangular, entered by a spacious archway, from whose lofty ceiling hung the crooks, from whence used to dangle the glorious legs and loins of four-year-old mutton, the home-fed hams, the geese, the ducks, the game, with not unfrequently a haunch or two of presentation venison. With the building, however, the similarity ended, the cobble-stoned courtyard displaying only a few water-casks and a basket-caged jay, in lieu of the statues, and vases, and fountains, and flower-stands that grace the flagged courts of the continent. But in former days it boasted that which in the eye of our innkeeper passes show, namely, a goodly line of two-horse carriages drawn across its ample width. In those days county families moved like county families, in great, caravan-like carriages, with plenty of servants, who, having drunk the �Park or Hall� allowance, uphold their characters and the honour of their houses, by topping up the measure of intemperance with their own money. Their masters and mistresses, too, considered the claims of the innkeepers, and ate and drank for the good of the house, instead of sneaking away to pastry-cooks for their lunches at a third of the price of the inn ones. Not that any landlord had ever made money at the Fox and Hounds hotel. Oh, no! it would never do to admit that. Indeed, Mr. Binny used to declare, if it wasn�t �the great regard he had for Lord Martingal and the gents of his hunt, he�d just as soon be without their custom;� just as all Binnys decry, whatever they have�military messes, hunt messes, bar messes, any sort of messes. They never make anything by them�not they. Now, however, that the hunt was irrevocably gone, words were inadequate to convey old Peter the waiter�s lamentations at its loss. �Oh dear, sir!� he would say, as he showed a stranger the club-room, once the eighth wonder of the world, �Oh dear, sir! I never thought to see things come to this pass. This room, sir, used to be occupied night after night, and every Wednesday we had more company than it could possibly hold. Now we have nothing but a miserable three-and-sixpence a head once a month, with Sir Moses in the chair, and a shilling a bottle for corkage. Formerly we had six shillings a bottle for port and five for sherry, which, as our decanters didn�t hold three parts, was pretty good pay.� Then Peter would open the shutters and show the proportions of the room, with the unrivalled pictures on the walls: Lord Martingal on his horse, Lord Martingal off his horse; Mr. Customer on his horse, Mr. Customer off his horse, Mr. Customer getting drunk; Mr. Crasher on his horse, Mr. Crasher with a hound, &c., all in the old woodeny style that prevailed before the gallant Grant struck out a fresh light in his inimitable �Breakfast,� and �Meet of the Stag-hounds.� But the reader will perhaps accompany us to one of Sir Moses�s �Wednesday evenings;� for which purpose they will have the goodness to suppose the Baronet and Mr. Flintoff arrayed in the dress uniform of the hunt�viz., scarlet coats with yellow collars and facings, and Mr. Pringle attired in the height of the fashion, bundling into one of those extraordinary-shaped vehicles that modern times have introduced. �_Right!_� cries the footman from the steps of the door, as Bankhead and Monsieur mount the box of the carriage, and away the well-muffled party drive to the scene of action. The great drawback to the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt club-room at the Fox and Hounds hotel and posting-house at Hinton, undoubtedly was, that there was no ante or reception room. The guests on alighting from their vehicles, after ascending the broad straight flight of stairs, found themselves suddenly precipitated into the dazzling dining-room, with such dismantling accommodation only as a low screen before the door at the low-end of the room afforded. The effect therefore was much the or same as if an actor dressed for his part on the stage before the audience; a fox-hunter in his wraps, and a fox-hunter in his red, being very distinct and different beings. It was quite destructive of anything like imposing flourish or effect. Moreover the accumulation of steaming things on a wet night, which it generally was on a club dinner, added but little to the fragrance of the room. So much for generalities; we will now proceed to our particular dinner. 301m _Original Size_ Sir Moses being the great gun of the evening, of course timed himself to arrive becomingly late�indeed the venerable post-boy who drove him, knew to a moment when to arrive; and as the party ascended the straight flight of stairs they met a general buzz of conversation coming down, high above which rose the discordant notes of the Laughing Hyæna. It was the first hunt-dinner of the season, and being the one at which Sir Moses generally broached his sporting requirements, parties thought it prudent to be present, as well as to hear the prospects of the season as to protect their own pockets. To this end some twenty or five-and-twenty variegated guests were assembled, the majority dressed in the red coat and yellow facings of the hunt, exhibiting every variety of cut, from the tight short-waisted swallow-tails of Mr. Crasher�s (the contemporary of George the Fourth) reign, down to the sack-like garment of the present day. Many of them looked as if, having got into their coats, they were never to get out of them again, but as pride feels no pain, if asked about them, they would have declared they were quite comfortable. The dark-coated gentry were principally farmers, and tradespeople, or the representatives of great men in the neighbourhood. Mr. Buckwheat, Mr. Doubledrill, Mr. James Corduroys, Mr. Stephen Broadfurrow; Mr. Pica, of the �Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald;� Hicks, the Flying Hatter, and his shadow Tom Snowdon the draper or Damper, Manford the corn-merchant, Smith the saddler. Then there was Mr. Mossman, Lord Polkaton�s Scotch factor, Mr. Squeezeley, Sir Morgan Wildair�s agent, Mr. Lute, on behalf of Lord Harpsichord, Mr. Stiff representing Sir George Persiflage, &c., &c. These latter were watching the proceedings for their employers, Sir Moses having declared that Mr. Mossman, on a former occasion (see page 188, ante), had volunteered to subscribe fifty pounds to the hounds, on behalf of Lord Polkaton, and Sir Moses had made his lordship pay it too��dom�d if he hadn�t.� With this sketch of the company, let us now proceed to the entry. Though the current of conversation had been anything but flattering to our master before his arrival, yet the reception they now gave him, as he emerged from behind the screen, might have made a less self-sufficient man than Sir Moses think he was extremely popular. Indeed, they rushed at him in a way that none but Briareus himself could have satisfied. They all wanted to hug him at once. Sir Moses having at length appeased their enthusiasm, and given his beak a good blow, proceeded to turn part of their politeness upon Billy, by introducing him to those around. Mr. Pringle, Mr. Jarperson�Mr. Pringle, Mr. Paul Straddler�Mr. Pringle, Mr. John Bullrush, and so on. Meanwhile Cuddy Flintoff kept up a series of view halloas and hunting noises, as guest after guest claimed the loan of his hand for a shake. So they were all very hearty and joyful as members of a fox-hunting club ought to be. 303m _Original Size_ The rules of the Hit-im and Hold-im-shire hunt, like those of many other hunts and institutions, were sometimes very stringent, and sometimes very lax�very stringent when an objectionable candidate presented himself�very lax when a good one was to be obtained. On the present occasion Sir Moses Mainchance had little difficulty in persuading the meeting to suspend the salutary rule (No. 5) requiring each new candidate to be proposed and seconded at one meeting, and his name placed above the mantelpiece in the club-room, until he was ballotted for at another meeting, in favour of the nephew of his old friend and brother Baronet, Sir Jonathan Pringle; whom he described as a most promising young sportsman, and likely to make a most valuable addition to their hunt. And the members all seeing matters in that light, Cuddy Flintoff was despatched for the ballot-box, so that there might be no interruption to the advancement of dinner by summoning Peter. Meanwhile Sir Moses resumed the introductory process, Mr. Heslop Mr. Pringle, Mr. Pringle Mr. Smoothley, Mr. Drew Mr. Pringle, helping Billy to the names of such faces as he could not identity for want of their hunting caps. Cleverer fellows than Billy are puzzled to do that sometimes. Presently Mr. Flintoff returned with the rat-trap-like ballot-box under his arm, and a willow-pattern soup-plate with some beans in the bottom of it, in his hand. �Make way!� cried he, �make way!� advancing up the room with all the dignity of a mace-bearer. �Where will you have it, Sir Moses?� asked he, �where will you have it, Sir Moses?� �Here!� replied the Baronet, seizing a card-table from below the portrait of Mr. Customer getting drunk, and setting it out a little on the left of the fire. The ballot-box was then duly deposited on the centre of the green baize with a composite candle on each side of it. Sir Moses, then thinking to make up in dignity what he had sacrificed to expediency, now called upon the meeting to appoint a Scrutineer on behalf of the club, and parties caring little who they named so long as they were not kept waiting for dinner, holloaed out �Mr. Flintoff!� whereupon Sir Moses put it to them if they were all content to have Mr. Flintoff appointed to the important and responsible office of Scrutineer, and receiving a shower of �yes-es!� in reply, he declared Mr. Flintoff was duly elected, and requested him to enter upon the duties of his office. Cuddy, then turning up his red coat wrists, so that there might be no suspicion of concealed beans, proceeded to open and turn the drawers of the ballot-box upside down, in order to show that they were equally clear, and then restoring them below their �Yes� and �No� holes, he took his station behind the table with the soup-plate in his hand ready to drop a bean into each member�s hand, as he advanced to receive it. Mr. Heslop presently led the way at a dead-march-in-Saul sort of pace, and other members falling in behind like railway passengers at a pay place, there was a continuous dropping of beans for some minutes, a solemn silence being preserved as if the parties expected to hear on which side they fell. At length the constituency was exhausted, and Mr. Flintoff having assumed the sand-glass, and duly proclaimed that he should close the ballot, if no member appeared before the first glass was out, speedily declared it was run, when, laying it aside, he emptied the soup-plate of the remaining beans, and after turning it upside down to show the perfect fairness of the transaction, handed it to Sir Moses to hold for the result. Drawing out the �Yes� drawer first, he proceeded with great gravity to count the beans out into the soup-plate�one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and so on, up to eighteen, when the inverted drawer proclaimed they were done. �Eighteen Ayes,� announced Sir Moses to the meeting, amid a murmur of applause. Mr. Flintoff then produced the dread �No,� or black-ball drawer, whereof one to ten white excluded, and turning it upside down, announced, in a tone of triumph, �_none!_� �Hooray!� cried Sir Moses, seizing our hero by both hands, and hugging him heartily��Hooray! give you joy, my boy! you�re a member of the first club in the world! The Caledonian�s nothing to it;�dom�d if it is.� So saying, he again swung him severely by the arms, and then handed him over to the meeting. And thus Mr. Pringle was elected a member of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, without an opportunity of asking his Mamma, for the best of all reasons, that Sir Moses had not even asked him himself. CHAPTER XL. THE HUNT DINNER, 307m _Original Size_ CARCELY were the congratulations of the company to our hero, on his becoming a member of the renowned Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, over, ere a great rush of dinner poured into the room, borne by Peter and the usual miscellaneous attendants at an inn banquet; servants in livery, servants out of livery, servants in a sort of half-livery, servants in place, servants out of place, post-boys converted into footmen, �boots� put into shoes. Then the carrot and turnip garnished roasts and boils, and stews were crowded down the table, in a profusion that would astonish any one who thinks it impossible to dine under a guinea a head. Rounds, sirloins middles, sucking-pigs, poultry, &c. (for they dispensed with the formalities of soup and fish ), being duly distributed. Peter announced the fact deferentially to Sir Moses, as he stood monopolizing the best place before the fire, whereupon the Baronet, drawing his hands out of his trowser�s pockets, let fall his yellow lined gloves and clapping his hands, exclaimed. �DINNER GENTLEMAN!� in a stentorian voice, adding, �PRINGLE you sit on my right! and CUDDY!� appealing to our friend Flintoff�. �will you take the vice-chair?� �With all my heart!� replied Cuddy, whereupon making an imaginary hunting-horn of his hand, he put it to his mouth, and went blowing and hooping down the room, to entice a certain portion of the guests after him. All parties being at length suited with seats, grace was said, and the assault commenced with the vigorous determination of over-due appetites. If a hand-in-the-pocket-hunt-dinner possesses few attractions in the way of fare, it is nevertheless free from the restraints and anxieties that pervade private entertainments, where the host cranes at the facetious as he scowls at his butler, or madame mingles her pleasantries with prayers for the safe arrival of the creams, and those extremely capricious sensitive jellies. People eat as if they had come to dine and not to talk, some, on this occasion, eating with their knives, some with their forks, some with both occasionally. And so, what with one aid and another, they made a very great clatter. The first qualms of hunger being at length appeased, Sir Moses proceeded to select subjects for politeness in the wine-taking way�men whom he could not exactly have at his own house, but who might be prevented from asking for cover-rent, or damages, by a little judicious flattery, or again, men who were only supposed to be lukewarmly disposed towards the great Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt. Sir Moses would rather put his hand into a chimney-sweep�s pocket than into his own, but so long as anything could be got by the tongue he never begrudged it. So he �sherried� with Mossman and the army of observation generally, also with Pica, who always puffed his hunt, cutting at D�Orsay Davis�s efforts on behalf of the Earl, and with Buckwheat (whose son he had recently dom�d à la Rowley Abingdon), and with Corduroys, and Straddler, and Hicks, and Doubledrill�with nearly all the dark coats, in short�Cuddy Flintoff, too, kept the game a-going at his end of the table, as well to promote conviviality as to get as much wine as he could; so altogether there was a pretty brisk consumption, and some of the tight-clad gentlemen began to look rather apoplectic. Cannon-ball-like plum-puddings, hip-bath-like apple-pies, and foaming creams, completed the measure of their uneasiness, and left little room for any cheese. Nature being at length most abundantly satisfied throughout the assembly, grace was again said, and the cloth cleared for action. The regulation port and sherry, with light�very light�Bordeaux, being duly placed upon the table, with piles of biscuits at intervals, down the centre, Sir Moses tapped the well-indented mahogany with his presidential hammer, and proceeded to prepare the guests for the great toast of the evening, by calling upon them to fill bumpers to the usual loyal and patriotic ones. These being duly disposed of, he at length rose for the all-important let off, amid the nudges and �now then�s,� of such of the party as feared a fresh attempt on their pockets�Mossman and Co., in particular, were all eyes, ears, and fears. �Gentlemen!� cries Sir Moses, rising and diving his hands into his trouser�s pockets��Gentlemen!� repeated he, with an ominous cough, that sounded very like cash. �_Hark to the Bar owl!�hark_� cheered Cuddy Flintoff from the other end of the room, thus cutting short a discussion about wool, a bargain for beans, and an inquiry for snuff in his own immediate neighbourhood, and causing a tapping of the table further up. �Gentlemen!� repeated Sir Moses, for the third time, amid cries of �hear, hear,� and �order, order,���I now have the pleasure of introducing to your notice the toast of the evening�a toast endeared by a thousand associations, and rendered classical by the recollection of the great and good men who have given it in times gone by from this very chair�(applause). I need hardly say, gentlemen, that that toast is the renowned Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt�(renewed applause)�a hunt second to none in the kingdom; a hunt whose name is famous throughout the land, and whose members are the very flower and élite of society�(renewed applause). Never, he was happy to say, since it was established, were its prospects so bright and cheering as they were at the present time�(great applause, the announcement being considered indicative of a healthy exchequer)�its country was great, its covers perfect, and thanks to their truly invaluable allies�the farmers�their foxes most abundant�(renewed applause). Of those excellent men it was impossible to speak in terms of too great admiration and respect�(applause)�whether he looked at those he was blessed with upon his own estate�(laughter)�or at the great body generally, he was lost for words to express his opinion of their patriotism, and the obligations he felt under to them. So far from ever hinting at such a thing as damage, he really believed a farmer would be hooted from the market-table who broached such a subject�(applause, with murmurs of dissent)�or who even admitted it was possible that any could be done�(laughter and applause). As for a few cocks and hens, he was sure they felt a pleasure in presenting them to the foxes. At all events, he could safely say he had never paid for any�(renewed laughter). Looking, therefore, at the hunt in all its aspects�its sport past, present, and to come�he felt that he never addressed them under circumstances of greater promise, or with feelings of livelier satisfaction. It only remained for them to keep matters up to the present mark, to insure great and permanent prosperity. He begged, therefore, to propose, with all the honours, Success to the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt!��(drunk with three times three and one cheer more). Sir Moses and Cuddy Flintoff mounting their chairs to mark time. Flintoff finishing off with a round of view halloas and other hunting noises. When the applause and Sir Moses had both subsided, parties who had felt uneasy about their pockets, began to breathe more freely, and as the bottles again circulated, Mr. Mossman and others, for whom wine was too cold, slipped out to get their pipes, and something warm in the bar; Mossman calling for whiskey, Buckwheat for brandy, Broadfurrow for gin, and so on. Then as they sugared and flavoured their tumblers, they chewed the cud of Sir Moses�s eloquence, and at length commenced discussing it, as each man got seated with his pipe in his mouth and his glass on his knee, in a little glass-fronted bar. �What a man he is to talk, that Sir Moses,� observed Buckwheat after a long respiration. �He�s a greet economist of the truth, I reckon,� replied Mr. Mossman, withdrawing his pipe from his mouth, �for I�ve written to him till I�m tired, about last year�s damage to Mrs. Anthill�s sown grass.� �He�s right, though, in saying he never paid for poultry,� observed Mr. Broadfurrow, with a humorous shake of his big head, �but, my word, his hook-nosed agent has as many letters as would paper a room;� and so they sipped, and smoked, and talked the Baronet over, each man feeling considerably relieved at there being no fresh attempt on the pocket. Meanwhile Sir Moses, with the aid of Cuddy Flintoff, trimmed the table, and kept the bottles circulating briskly, presently calling on Mr. Paul Straddler for a song, who gave them the old heroic one, descriptive of a gallant run with the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hounds, in the days of Mr. Customer, at which they all laughed and applauded as heartily as if they had never heard it before. They then drank Mr. Straddler�s health, and thanks to him for his excellent song. As it proceeded, Sir Moses intimated quietly to our friend Billy Pringle that he should propose his health next, which would enable Mr. Pringle to return the compliment by proposing Sir Moses, an announcement that threw our hero into a very considerable state of trepidation, but from which he saw no mode of escape. Sir Moses then having allowed a due time to elapse after the applause that followed the drinking of Mr. Straddler�s health, again arose, and tapping the table with his hammer, called upon them to fill bumpers to the health of his young friend on his right (applause). �He could not express the pleasure it afforded him,� he said, �to see a nephew of his old friend and brother Baronet, Sir Jonathan Pringle, become a member of their excellent hunt, and he hoped Billy would long live to enjoy the glorious diversion of fox-hunting,� which Sir Moses said it was the bounden duty of every true-born Briton to support to the utmost of his ability, for that it was peculiarly the sport of gentlemen, and about the only one that defied the insidious arts of the blackleg, adding that Lord Derby was quite right in saying that racing had got into the hands of parties who kept horses not for sport, but as mere instruments of gambling, and if his (Sir Moses�s) young friend, Mr. Pringle, would allow him to counsel him, he would say, Never have anything to do with the turf (applause). Stick to hunting, and if it didn�t bring him in money, it would bring him in health, which was better than money, with which declaration Sir Moses most cordially proposed Mr. Pringle�s health (drunk with three times three and one cheer more). Now our friend had never made a speech in his life, but being, as we said at the outset, blessed with a great determination of words to the mouth, he rose at a hint from Sir Moses, and assured the company �how grateful he was for the honour they had done him as well in electing him a member of their delightful sociable hunt, as in responding to the toast of his health in the flattering manner they had, and he could assure them that nothing should be wanting on his part to promote the interests of the establishment, and to prove himself worthy of their continued good opinion,� at which intimation Sir Moses winked knowingly at Mr. Smoothley, who hemmed a recognition of his meaning. Meanwhile Mr. Pringle stood twirling his trifling moustache, wishing to sit down, but feeling there was something to keep him up: still he couldn�t hit it off. Even a friendly round of applause failed to help him out; at length, Sir Moses, fearing he might stop altogether, whispered the words �_My health_,� just under his nose; at which Billy perking up, exclaimed, �Oh, aye, to be sure!� and seizing a decanter under him, he filled himself a bumper of port, calling upon the company to follow his example. This favour being duly accorded, our friend then proceeded, in a very limping, halting sort of way, to eulogise a man with whom he was very little acquainted amid the friendly word-supplying cheers and plaudits of the party. At length he stopped again, still feeling that he was not due on his seat, but quite unable to say why he should not resume it. The company thinking he might have something to say to the purpose, how he meant to hunt with them, or something of that sort, again supplied the cheers of encouragement. It was of no use, however, he couldn�t hit it off. **** �_All the honors!_� at length whispered Sir Moses as before. �O, ah, to be sure! _all the honors!_� replied Billy aloud, amidst the mirth of the neighbours. �Gentlemen!� continued he, elevating his voice to its former pitch, �This toast I feel assured�that is to say, I feel quite certain. I mean,� stammered he, stamping with his foot, �I, I, I.� �_Aye, two thou�s i� Watlington goods!_� exclaimed the half-drunken Mr. Corduroys, an announcement that drew forth such a roar of laughter as enabled Billy to tack the words, �all the honors,� to the end, and so with elevated glass to continue the noise with cheers. He then sate down perfectly satisfied with this his first performance, feeling that he had the germs of oratory within him. A suitable time having elapsed, Sir Moses rose and returned thanks with great vigour, declaring that beyond all comparison that was the proudest moment of his life, and that he wouldn�t exchange the mastership of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hounds for the highest, the noblest office in the world�Dom�d if he would! with which asseveration he drank all their very good healths, and resumed his seat amidst loud and long continued applause, the timidest then feeling safe against further demands on their purses. Another song quickly followed, and then according to the usual custom of society, that the more you abuse a man in private the more you praise him in public, Sir Moses next proposed the health of that excellent and popular nobleman the Earl of Ladythorne, whose splendid pack showed such unrivalled sport in the adjoining county of Featherbedford; Sir Moses, after a great deal of flattery, concluding by declaring that he would �go to the world�s end to serve Lord Ladythorne�Dom�d if he wouldn�t,� a sort of compliment that the noble Earl never reciprocated; on the contrary, indeed, when he condescended to admit the existence of such a man as Sir Moses, it was generally in that well-known disparaging enquiry, �Who _is_ that Sir Aaron Mainchance? or who is that Sir Somebody Mainchance, who hunts Hit-im and Hold-im shire?� He never could hit off the Baronet�s Christian or rather Jewish name. Now, however, it was all the noble Earl, �my noble friend and brother master,� the �noble and gallant sportsman,� and so on. Sir Moses thus partly revenging himself on his lordship with the freedom. When a master of hounds has to borrow a �draw� from an adjoining country, it is generally a pretty significant hint that his own is exhausted, and when the chairman of a hunt dinner begins toasting his natural enemy the adjoining master, it is pretty evident that the interest of the evening is over. So it was on the present occasion. Broad backs kept bending away at intervals, thinking nobody saw them, leaving large gaps unclosed up, while the guests that remained merely put a few drops in the bottoms of their glasses or passed the bottles altogether. Sir Aaron, we beg his pardon�Sir Moses, perceiving this, and knowing the value of a good report, called on those who were left to �fill a bumper to the health of their excellent and truly invaluable friend Mr. Pica, contrasting his quiet habits with the swaggering bluster of a certain Brummagem Featherbedfordshire D�Orsay.� (Drunk with great applause, D�Orsay Davis having more than once sneered at the equestrian prowess of the Hit-im aud Hold-im shire-ites.) Mr. Pica, who was a fisherman and a very bad one to boot, then arose and began dribbling out the old stereotyped formula about air we breathe, have it not we die, &c., which was a signal for a general rise; not all Sir Moses and Cuddy Flintoff�s united efforts being able to restrain the balance of guests from breaking away, and a squabble occurring behind the screen about a hat, the chance was soon irrevocably gone. Mr. Pica was, therefore, left alone in his glory. If any one, however, can afford to be indifferent about being heard, it is surely an editor who can report himself in his paper, and poor Pica did himself ample justice in the �Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald� on the Saturday following. CHAPTER XLI. THE HUNT TEA.�BUSHEY HEATH AND BARE ACRES. 313m _Original Size_ THE 15th rule of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, provides that all members who dine at the club, may have tea and muffins ad libitum for 6 d. a head afterwards, and certainly nothing can be more refreshing after a brawling riotous dinner than a little quiet comfortable Bohea. Sir Moses always had his six-penn�orth, as had a good many of his friends and followers. Indeed the rule was a proposition of the Baronet�s, such a thing as tea being unheard of in the reign of Mr. Customer, or any of Sir Moses�s great predecessors. Those were the days of �lift him up and carry him to bed.� Thank goodness they are gone! Men can hunt without thinking it necessary to go out with a headache. Beating a jug in point of capacity is no longer considered the accomplishment of a gentleman. Mr. Pica�s eloquence having rather prematurely dissolved the meeting, Sir Moses and his friends now congregated round the fire all very cheery and well pleased with themselves�each flattering the other in hopes of getting a compliment in return. �Gone off amazingly well!� exclaimed one, rubbing his hands in delight at its being over. �Capital party,� observed another. �Excellent speech yours, Sir Moses,� interposed a third. �Never heard a better,� asserted a fourth. �Ought to ask to have it printed,� observed a fifth. �O, never fear! Pica�ll do that,� rejoined a sixth, and so they went on warding off the awkward thought, so apt to arise of �what a bore these sort of parties are. Wonder if they do any good?� The good they do was presently shown on this occasion by Mr. Smoothley, the Jackall of the hunt, whose pecuniary obligations to Sir Moses we have already hinted at, coming bowing and fawning obsequiously up to our Billy, revolving his hands as though he were washing them, and congratulating him upon becoming one of them. Mr. Smoothley was what might be called the head pacificator of the hunt, the gentleman who coaxed subscriptions, deprecated damage, and tried to make young gentlemen believe they had had very good runs, when in fact they had only had very middling ones. The significant interchange of glances between Sir Moses and him during Billy�s speech related to a certain cover called Waverley gorse, which the young Woolpack, Mr. Treadcroft, who had ascertained his inability to ride, had announced his intention of resigning. The custom of the hunt was, first to get as many covers as they could for nothing; secondly to quarter as few on the club funds as possible; and thirdly to get young gentlemen to stand godfathers to covers, in other words to get them to pay the rent in return for the compliment of the cover passing by their names, as Heslop�s spiny, Linch�s gorse, Benson�s banks, and so on. This was generally an after-dinner performance, and required a skilful practitioner to accomplish, more particularly as the trick was rather notorious. Mr. Smoothley was now about to try his hand on Mr. Pringle. The bowing and congratulations over, and the flexible back straightened, he commenced by observing that, he supposed a copy of the rules of the hunt addressed to Pangburn Park, would find our friend. �Yarse,� drawled Billy, wondering if there would be anything to pay. �Dash it, he wished there mightn�t? Shouldn�t be surprised if there was?� 315m _Original Size_ Mr. Smoothley, however, gave him little time for reflection, for taking hold of one of his own red-coat buttons, he observed, �that as he supposed Mr. Pringle would be sporting the hunt uniform, he might take the liberty of mentioning that Garnett the silversmith in the market-place had by far the neatest and best pattern�d buttons.� �Oh, Garnett, oh, yarse,� replied Billy, thinking he would get a set for his pink, instead of the plain ones he was wearing. �His shop is next the Lion and the Lamb public house,� continued Mr. Smoothley, �between it and Mrs. Russelton the milliner�s, and by the way that reminds me,� continued he, though we don�t exactly see how it could, �and by the way that reminds me that there is an excellent opportunity for distinguishing yourself by adopting the cover young Mr. Treadcroft has just abandoned.� �The w-h-a-at?� drawled Billy, dreading a �do;� his mother having cautioned him always to be mindful after dinner. �O, merely the gorse,� continued Mr. Smoothley, in the most affable matter-of-course way imaginable, �merely the gorse�if you�ll step this way, I�ll show you,� continued he, leading the way to where a large dirty board was suspended against the wall below the portrait of Lord Martingal on his horse. �_Now he�s running into him!_� muttered Sir Moses to himself, his keen eye supplying the words to the action. �This, you see,� explained Mr. Smoothley, hitching the board off its brass-headed nail, and holding it to the light��this, you see, is a list of all the covers in the country�Screechley, Summer-field, Reddingfield, Bewley, Lanton Hill, Baxterley, and so forth. Then you see here,� continned he, pointing to a ruled column opposite, �are the names of the owners or patrons�yes� (reading), �owners or patrons�Lord Oilcake, Lord Polkaton, Sir Harry Fuzball, Mr. Heslop, Lord Harpsichord, Mr. Drew, Mr. Smith. Now young Mr. Treadcroft, who has had as many falls as he likes, and perhaps more, has just announced his intention of retiring and giving up this cover,� pointing to Waverley, with Mr. Treadcroft, Jun.�s name opposite to it, �and it struck me that it would be a capital opportunity for you who have just joined us, to take it before anybody knows, and then it will go by the name of Pringle�s gorse, and you�ll get the credit of all the fine runs that take place from it.� �Y-a-r-s-e,� drawled Billy, thinking that that would be a sharp thing to do, and that it would be fine to rank with the lords. �Then,� continued Mr. Smoothley, taking the answer for an assent, �I�ll just strike Treadey�s name ont, and put yours in;� so saying, he darted at the sideboard, and seizing an old ink-clotted stump of a pen, with just enough go in it to make the required alteration, and substituted Mr. Pringle�s name for that of Mr. Treadcroft. And so, what with his cover, his dinner, and his button, poor Billy was eased of above twenty pounds. Just as Sir Moses was blowing his beak, stirring the fire, and chuckling at the success of the venture, a gingling of cups and tinkling of spoons was heard in the distance, and presently a great flight of tea-trays emerged from either side of the screen, conspicuous among the bearers of which were the tall ticket-of-leave butler and the hirsute Monsieur Jean Rougier. These worthies, with a few other �gentlemen�s gentlemen,� had been regaled to a supper in the �Blenheim,� to which Peter had contributed a liberal allowance of hunt wine, the consumption of which was checked by the corks, one set, it was said, serving Peter the season. That that which is everybody�s business is nobody�s, is well exemplified in these sort of transactions, for though a member of the hunt went through the form of counting the cork-tops every evening, and seeing that they corresponded with the number set down in Peter�s book, nobody ever compared the book with the cellar, so that in fact Peter was both check-keeper and auditor. Public bodies, however, are all considered fair game, and the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt was no exception to the rule. In addition to the wine, there had been a sufficient allowance of spirits in the �Blenheim� to set the drunkards to work on their own account, and Jack Rogers, who was quite the life of the party, was very forward in condition when the tea-summons was heard. �Hush!� cried Peter, holding up his hand, and listening to an ominous bell-peal, �I do believe that�s for tea! So it is,� sighed he, as a second summons broke upon the ear. �Tea at this hour!� ejaculated he, �who�d ha� thought it twenty years ago! Why, this is just the time they�d ha� been calling for Magnums, and beginnin� the evening�_Tea!_ They�d as soon ha� thought of callin� for winegar!� added he, with a bitter sneer. So saying, Peter dashed a tear from his aged eye, and rising from his chair, craved the assistance of his guests to carry the degrading beverage up-stairs, to our degenerate party. �A set of weshenvomen!� muttered he, as the great slop-basin-like-cups stood ranged on trays along the kitchen-table ready for conveyance. �Sarves us right for allowing such a chap to take our country,� added he, adopting his load, and leading the tea-van. When the soothing, smoking beverage entered, our friend, Cuddy Flintoff, was �yoicking� himself about the club-room, stopping now at this picture, now that, holloaing at one, view-holloaing at another, thus airing his hunting noises generally, as each successive subject recalled some lively association in his too sensitive hunting imagination. Passing from the contemplation of that great work of art, Mr. Customer getting drunk, he suddenly confronted the tea-brigade entering, led by Peter, Monsieur, and the ticket-of-leave butler. �Holloa! old Bushey Heath!� exclaimed Cuddy, dapping his hands, as Mousieur�s frizzed face loomed congruously behind a muffin-towering tea-tray. �Holloa! old Bushey Heath!� repeated he, louder than before, �_What cheer there?_� �Vot cheer there, Brother Bareacres?� replied Jack in the same familiar tone, to the great consternation of Cuddy, and the amusement of the party. �Dash the fellow! but he�s getting bumptious,� muttered Cuddy, who had no notion of being taken up that way by a servant. �Dash the fellow! but he�s getting bumptious,� repeated he, adding aloud to Jack, �That�s not the way you talked when you tumbled off your horse the other day!� �Tombled off my �oss, sare!� replied Jack, indignantly��tombled off my �oss, sare�nevare, sare!�nevare!� �What!� retorted Cuddy, �do you mean to say you didn�t tumble off your horse on the Crooked Billet day?� for Cuddy had heard of that exploit, but not of Jack�s subsequent performance. �No, sare, I jomp off,� replied Jack, thinking Cuddy alluded to his change of horses with the Woolpack. �_Jo-o-m-p_ off! j-o-omp off!� reiterated Cuddy, �we all jomp off, when we can�t keep on. Why didn�t old Imperial John take you into the Crooked Billet, and scrape you, and cherish you, and comfort you, and treat you as he would his own son?� demanded Cuddy. �Imperial John, sare, nevare did nothin� of the sort,� replied Jack, confidently. �Imperial John and I retired to �ave leetle drop drink together to our better �quaintance. I met John there, _n�est-ce pas?_ Monsieur Sare Moses, Baronet! Vasn�t it as I say?� asked Jack, jingling his tea-tray before the Baronet. �Oh yes,� replied Sir Moses,��Oh yes, undoubtedly; I introduced you there; but here! let me have some tea,� continued he, taking a cup, wishing to stop the conversation, lest Lord Ladythorne might hear he had introduced his right-hand man, Imperial John, to a servant. Cuddy, however, wasn�t to be stopped. He was sure Jack had tumbled off, and was bent upon working him in return for his Bareacres compliment. �Well, but tell us,� said he, addressing Jack again, �did you come over his head or his tail, when you jomp off?� �Don�t, Cuddy! don�t!� now muttered Sir Moses, taking the entire top tier off a pile of muffins, and filling his mouth as full as it would hold; �don�t,� repeated he, adding, �it�s no use (munch) bullying a poor (crunch) beggar because he�s a (munch) Frenchman� (crunch). Sir Moses then took a great draught of tea. Monsieur�s monkey, however, was now up, and he felt inclined to tackle with Flintoff. �I tell you vot, sare Cuddy,� said he, looking him full in the face, �you think yourself vare great man, vare great ossmaan, vare great foxer, and so on, bot I vill ride you a match for vot monies you please.� �Hoo-ray! well done you! go it, Monsieur! Who�d ha� thought it! Now for some fun!� resounded through the room, bringing all parties in closer proximity. Flintoff was rather taken aback. He didn�t expect anything of that sort, and though he fully believed Jack to be a tailor, he didn�t want to test the fact himself; indeed he felt safer on foot than on horseback, being fonder of the theory than of the reality of hunting. �Hut you and your matches,� sneered he, thrusting his hands deep in his trousers� pockets, inclining to sheer of, adding, �go and get his Imperial Highness to ride you one.� �His Imperial Highness, sare, don�t deal in oss matches. He is not a jockey, he is a gentlemans�great friend of de great lords vot rules de oder noisy dogs,� replied Jack. �_Humph_, grunted Sir Moses, not liking the language. �In-deed!� exclaimed Cuddy with a frown, �In-deed! Hark to Monsieur! Hark!� �Oh, make him a match, Cuddy! make him a match!� now interposed Paul Straddler, closing up to prevent Cuddy�s retreat. Paul, as we said before, was a disengaged gentleman who kept a house of call for Bores at Hinton,�a man who was always ready to deal, or do anything, or go any where at any body else�s expense. A great judge of a horse, a great judge of a groom, a great judge of a gig, a gentleman a good deal in Cuddy Flintoff�s own line in short, and of course not a great admirer of his. He now thought he saw his way to a catch, for the Woolpack had told him how shamefully Jack had bucketed his horse, and altogether he thought Monsieur might be as good a man across country as Mr. Flintoff. At all events he would like to see. �Oh, make him a match, Cuddy! make him a match!� now exclaimed he, adding in Flintoff�s ear, �never let it be said you were afraid of a Frenchman.� �Afraid!� sneered Cuddy, �nobody who knows me will think that, I guess.� �Well then, _make_ him a match!� urged Tommy Heslop, who was no great admirer of Cuddy�s either; �_make_ him a match, and I�ll go your halves.� �And I�ll go Monsieur�s,� said Mr. Straddler, still backing the thing up. Thus appealed to, poor Cuddv was obliged to submit, and before he knew where he was, the dread pen, ink and paper were produced, and things began to assume a tangible form. Mr. Paul Straddler, having seated himself on a chair at the opportune card-table, began sinking his pen and smoothing out his paper, trying to coax his ideas into order. �Now, let us see,� said he, �now let us see. Monsieur, what�s his name�old Bushey-heath as you call him, agrees to ride Mr. Flintoff a match across country�now for distance, time, and stake! now for distance, time, and stake!� added he, hitting off the scent. �Well, but how can you make a match without any horses? how can you make a match without any horses?� asked Sir Moses, interposing his beak, adding �I�ll not lend any�dom�d if I will.� That being the first time Sir Moses was ever known not to volunteer one. �O, we�ll find horses,� replied Tommy Heslop, �we�ll find horses!� thinking Sir Moses�s refusal was all in favor of the match. �Catch weights, catch horses, catch every thing.� �Now for distance, time, and stake,� reiterated Mr. Straddler. �Now for distance, time, and stake, Monsieur!� continued he, appealing to Jack. �What distance would you like to have it?� �Vot you please, sare,� replied Monsieur, now depositing his tray on the sideboard; �vot you please, sare, much or little; ten miles, twenty miles, any miles he likes.� �O, the fellow�s mad,� muttered Cuddy, with a jerk of his head, making a last effort to be off. �Don�t be in a hurry, Cuddy, don�t be in a hurry,� interposed Heslop, adding, �he doesn�t understand it�he doesn�t understand it.� �O, I understands it, nicely, vell enough,� replied Jack, with a shrug of his shoulders; �put us on to two orses, and see vich gets first to de money post.� �Aye, yes, exactly, to be sure, that�s all right,� asserted Paul Straddler, looking up approvingly at Jack, �and you say you�ll beat Mr. Flintoff?� �I say I beat Mr. Flintoff,� rejoined Jack��beat im dem vell too�beat his ead off�beat him _stupendous!_� added he. �O, dash it all, we can�t stand that, Caddy!� exclaimed Mr. Heslop, nudging Mr. Flintoff; �honor of the country, honor of the hunt, honor of England, honor of every thing�s involved.� Cuddy�s bristles were now up too, and shaking his head and thrusting his hands deep into his trousers pockets, �he declared he couldn�t stand that sort of language,�shot if he could.� �No; nor nobody else,� continued Mr. Heslop, keeping him up to the indignity mark; �must be taught better manners,� added he with a pout of the lip, as though fully espousing Caddy�s cause. �Come along, then! come along!� cried Paul Straddler, flourishing his dirty pen; �let�s set up a school for grown sportsmen. Now for the good boys. Master Bushey-heath says he�ll ride Master Bareacres a match across country�two miles say�for, for, how much?� asked he, looking up. This caused a pause, as it often does, even after dinner, and not the less so in the present instance, inasmuch as the promoters of the match had each a share in the risk. What would be hundreds in other people�s cases becomes pounds in our own. Flintoff and Straddler looked pacifically at each other, as much as to say, �There�s no use in cutting each other�s throats, you know.� �Suppose we say,� (exhibiting four fingers and a thumb, slyly to indicate a five pound note), said Heslop demurely, after a conference with Cuddy. �With all my heart,� asserted Straddler, �glad it was no more.� �And call it fifty,� whispered Heslop. �Certainly!� assented Straddler, �very proper arrangement.� �Two miles for fifty pounds,� announced Straddler, writing it down. �P. P. I s�pose?� observed he, looking up. �P. P.� assented Heslop. �Now, what next?� asked Paul, feeling that there was something more wanted. �An umpire,� suggested Mr. Smoothley. �Ah, to be sure, an umpire,� replied Mr. Straddler; �who shall it be?� �Sir Moses!� suggested several voices. �Sir Moses, by all means,� replied Straddler. �Content,� nodded Mr. Heslop. �It must be on a non-hunting day, then,� observed the Baronet, speaking from the bottom of his tea-cup. �Non-hunting day!� repeated Cuddy; �non-hunting day; fear that �ill not do�want to be off to town on Friday to see Tommy White�s horses sold. Have been above a week at the Park, as it is.� �You�ve been a fortnight to-morrow, sir,� observed the ticket-of-leave butler (who had just come to announce the carriage) in a very different tone to his usual urbane whisper. �Fortnight to-morrow, have I?� rejoined Cuddy sheepishly; �greater reason why I should be off.� �O, never think about that! O, never think about that! Heartily welcome, heartily welcome,� rejoined Sir Moses, stuffing his mouth full of muffin, adding �Mr. Pringle will keep you company; Mr. Pringle will keep you company.� (Hunch, munch, crunch.) �Mr. Pringle _must_ stop,� observed Mr. Straddler, �unless he goes without his man.� �To besure he must,� assented Sir Moses, �to be sure he must,� adding, �stop as long as ever you like. I�ve no engagement till Saturday�no engagement till Saturday.� Now putting off our friend�s departure till Saturday just gave a clear day for the steeple-chase, the next one, Thursday, being Woolerton by Heckfield, Saturday the usual make-believe day at the kennels; so of course Friday was fixed upon, and Sir Moses having named �noon� as the hour, and Timberlake toll-bar as the _rendezvous_, commenced a series of adieus as he beat a retreat to the screen, where having resumed his wraps, and gathered his tail, he shot down-stairs, and was presently re-ensconced in his carriage. The remanets then of course proceeded to talk him and his friends over, some wishing the Baronet mightn�t be too many for Billy, others again thinking Cuddy wasn�t altogether the most desirable acquaintance a young man could have, though there wasn�t one that didn�t think that he himself was. That topic being at length exhausted, they then discussed the projected steeple-chase, some thinking that Cuddy was a muff, others that Jack was, some again thinking they both were. And as successive relays of hot brandy and water enabled them to see matters more clearly, the Englishman�s argument of betting was introduced, and closed towards morning at �evens,� either jockey for choice. Let us now take a look at the homeward bound party. It was lucky for Billy that the night was dark and the road rough with newly laid whinstones, for both Sir Moses and Cuddy opened upon him most volubly and vehemently as soon as ever they got off the uneven pavement, with no end of inquiries about Jack and his antecedents. If he could ride? If he had ever seen him ride? If he had ever ridden a steeplechase? Where he got him? How long he had had him? To most of which questions, Billy replied with his usual monosyllabic drawling, �yarses,� amid jolts, and grinds, and gratings, and doms from Sir Moses, and cusses from Cuddy, easing his conscience with regard to Jack�s service, by saying that he had had him �some time.� Some time! What a fine elastic period that is. We�d back a lawyer to make it cover a century or a season. Very little definite information, however, did they extract from Billy with regard to Jack for the best of all reasons, that Billy didn�t know anything. Both Cuddy and Sir Moses interpreted his ignorance differently, and wished he mightn�t know more than was good for them. And so in the midst of roughs and smooths, and jolts and jumps, and examinings, and cross-examinings, and re-examinings, they at length reached Pangburn Park Lodges, and were presently at home. �Breakfast at eight!� said Sir Moses to Bankhead, as he alighted from the carriage. �Breakfast at eight, Pringle!� repeated he, and seizing a flat candlestick from the half-drunken footman in the passage, he hurried up-stairs, blowing his beak with great vigour to drown any appeal to him about a horse. He little knew how unlikely our young friend was to trouble him in that way. CHAPTER XLII. MR. GEORDEY GALLON. CUDDY Flintoff did not awake at all comfortable the next morning, and he distinctly traced the old copyhead of �Familiarity breeds contempt,� in the hieroglyphic pattern of his old chintz bed-hangings. He couldn�t think how he could ever be so foolish as to lay himself open to such a catastrophe; it was just the wine being in and the wit being out, coupled with the fact of the man being a Frenchman, that led him away�and he most devoutly wished he was well out of the scrape. Suppose Monsieur was a top sawyer! Suppose he was a regular steeple-chaser! Suppose he was a second Beecher in disguise! It didn�t follow because he was a Frenchman that he couldn�t ride. Altogether Mr. Flintoff repented. It wasn�t nice amusement, steeple-chasing he thought, and the quicksilver of youth had departed from him; getting called Bareacres, too, was derogatory, and what no English servant would have done, if even he had called him Bushy Heath. Billy Pringle, on the other hand, was very comfortable, and slept soundly, regardless of clubs, cover rents, over-night consequences, altogether. Each having desired to be called when the other got up, they stood a chance of lying in bed all day, had not Mrs. Margerum, fearing they would run their breakfast, and the servants�-hall dinner together, despatched Monsieur and the footman with their respective hot-water cans, to say the other had risen. It was eleven o�clock ere they got dawdled down-stairs, and Cuddy again began demanding this and that delicacy in the name of Mr. Pringle: Mr. Pringle wanted Yorkshire pie; Mr. Pringle wanted potted prawns; Mr. Pringle wanted bantams� eggs; Mr. Pringle wanted honey. Why the deuce didn�t they attend to Mr. Pringle? The breakfast was presently interrupted by the sound of wheels, and almost ere they had ceased to revolve, a brisk pull at the doorbell aroused the inmates of both the front and back regions, and brought the hurrying footman, settling himself into his yellow-edged blue-livery coat as he came. It was Mr. Heslop. Heslop in a muffin cap, and so disguised in heather-coloured tweed, that Mr. Pringle failed to recognise him as he entered. Cuddy did, though; and greeting him with one of his best view holloas, he invited him to sit down and partake. Heslop was an early bird, and had broke his fast hours before: but a little more breakfast being neither here nor there, he did as he was requested, though he would much rather have found Cuddy alone. He wanted to talk to him about the match, to hear if Sir Moses had said anything about the line of country, what sort of a horse he would like to ride, and so on. Billy went munch, munch, munching on, in the tiresome, pertinacious sort of way people do when others are anxiously wishing them done,�now taking a sip of tea, now a bit of toast, now another egg, now looking as if he didn�t know what he would take. Heslop inwardly wished him at Jericho. At length another sound of wheels was heard, followed by another peal of the bell; and our hero presently had a visitor, too, in the person of Mr. Paul Straddler. Paul had come on the same sort of errand as Heslop, namely, to arrange matters about Monsieur; and Heslop and he, seeing how the land lay, Heslop asked Cuddy if there was any one in Sir Moses�s study; whereupon Cuddy arose and led the way to the sunless little sanctum, where Sir Moses kept his other hat, his other boots, his rows of shoes, his beloved but rather empty cash-box, and the plans and papers of the Pangburn Park estate. Two anxious deliberations then ensued in the study and breakfast-room, in the course of which Monsieur was summoned into the presence of either party, and retired, leaving them about as wise as he found them. He declared he could ride, ride �dem vell too,� and told Paul he could �beat Cuddy�s head off;� but he accompanied the assertions with such wild, incoherent arguments, and talked just as he did to Imperial John before the Crooked Billet, that they thought it was all gasconade. If it hadn�t been P. P., Paul would have been off. Cuddy, on the other hand, gained courage; and as Heslop proposed putting him on his famous horse General Havelock, the reported best fencer in the country, Cuddy, who wasn�t afraid of pace, hoped to be able to give a good account of himself. Indeed, he so far recovered his confidence, as to indulge in a few hunting noises��_For-rard, on! For-rard on!_� cheered he, as if he was leading the way with the race well in hand. 323m _Original Size_ Meanwhile Monsieur, who could keep his own counsel, communicated by a certain mysterious agency that prevails in most countries, and seems to rival the electric telegraph in point of speed, to enlist a confederate in his service. This was Mr. Geordey Gallon, a genius carrying on the trades of poacher, pugilist, and publican, under favour of that mistaken piece of legislation the Beer Act. Geordey, like Jack, had begun life as a post-boy, and like him had undergone various vicissitudes ere he finally settled down to the respectable calling we have named. He now occupied the Rose and Crown beershop at the Four Lane-Ends, on the Heatherbell Road, some fifteen miles from Pangburn Park, where, in addition to his regular or irregular calling, he generally kept a racing-like runaway, that whisked a light spring-cart through the country by night, freighted with pigeons, poultry, game, dripping�which latter item our readers doubtless know includes every article of culinary or domestic use. He was also a purveyor of lead, lead-stealing being now one of the liberal professions. Geordey had had a fine time of it, for the Hit-im and Hold-im shire constables were stupid and lazy, and when the short-lived Superintendent ones were appointed, it was only a trifle in his way to suborn them. So he made hay while the sun shone, and presently set up a basket-buttoned green cutaway for Sundays, in lieu of the baggy pocketed, velveteen shooting-jacket of week-days, and replaced the fox-skin cap with a bare shallow drab, with a broad brim, and a black band, encasing his substantial in cords and mahogany tops, instead of the navvie boot that laced his great bulging calves into globes. He then called himself a sporting man. Not a fair, not a fight, not a fray of any sort, but Geordey�s great square bull-headed carcase was there, and he was always ready to run his nag, or trot his nag, or match his nag in any shape or way�Mr. George Gallon�s Blue Ruin, Mr. George Gallon�s Flower of the West, Mr. George Gallon�s Honor Bright, will be names familiar to most lovers of leather-plating. * Besides this, he did business in a smaller way. Being a pure patriot, he was a great promoter of the sports and pastimes of the people, and always travelled with a prospectus in his pocket of some raffle for a watch, some shooting-match for a fat hog, some dog or some horse to be disposed of in a surreptitious way, one of the conditions always being, that a certain sum was to be spent by the winner at Mr. Gallon�s, of the Hose and Crown, at the Four Lane-ends on the Heatherbell Road. Such was the worthy selected by Monsieur Rougier to guard his interests in the matter. But how the communication was made, or what were the instructions given, those who are acquainted with the wheels within wheels, and the glorious mystification that prevails in all matters relating to racing or robbing, will know the impossibility of narrating. Even Sir Moses was infected with the prevailing epidemic, and returned from hunting greatly subdued in loquacity. He wanted to be on for a £5 or two, but couldn�t for the life of him make out which was to be the right side. So he was very chary of his wine after dinner, and wouldn�t let Cuddy have any brandy at bed-time��Dom�d if he would.� CHAPTER XLIII. SIR MOSES PERPLEXED�THE RENDEZVOUS FOR THE RACE. THE great event was ushered in by one of those fine bright autumnal days that shame many summer ones, and seem inclined to carry the winter months fairly over into the coming year. The sun rose with effulgent radiance, gilding the lingering brown and yellow tints, and lighting up the landscape with searching, inquisitorial scrutiny. Not a nook, not a dell, not a cot, not a curl of smoke but was visible, and the whole scene shone with the vigour of a newly burnished, newly varnished picture. The cattle stood in bold relief against the perennially green fields, and the newly dipped lambs dotted the hill-sides like white marbles. A clear bright light gleamed through the stems of the Scotch fir belt, encircling the brow of High Rays Hill, giving goodly promise of continued fineness. * We append one of Mr. Gallon�s advertisements for a horse, which is very characteristic of the man:� �A Flash high-stepping SCREW WANTED. Must be very fast, steady in single harness, and the price moderate. Blemishes no object. Apply, by letter, real name and address, with full description, to Mr. George Gallon, Rose and Crown, Four-Lane-ends. Hit-im and Hold-im shire.� Sir Moses, seeing this harbinger of fair from his window as he dressed, arrayed himself in his best attire, securing his new blue and white satin cravat with a couple of massive blood-stone pins, and lacing his broad-striped vest with a multiplicity of chains and appendant gew-gaws. He further dared the elements with an extensive turning up of velvet. Altogether he was a great swell, and extremely well pleased with his appearance. The inmates of the Park were all at sixes and sevens that morning, Monsieur having left Billy to be valeted by the footman, whose services were entirely monopolised by Cuddy Flintoff and Sir Moses. When he did at length come, he replied to Billy�s enquiry �how his horse was,� that he was �quite well,� which was satisfactory to our friend, and confirmed him in his opinion of the superiority of his judgment over that of Wetun and the rest. Sir Moses, however, who had made the tour of the stables, thought otherwise, and telling the Tiger to put the footboard to the back of the dog-cart, reserved the other place in front for his guest. A tremendous hurry Sir Moses was in to be off, rushing in every two or three minutes to see if Billy wasn�t done his breakfast, and at last ordering round the vehicle to expedite his movements. Then he went to the door and gave the bell such a furious ring as sounded through the house and seemed well calculated to last for ever. Billy then came, hustled along by the ticket-of-leave butler and the excitable footman, who kept dressing him as he went; and putting his mits, his gloves, his shawl, cravat, and his taper umbrella into his hands, they helped him up to the seat by Sir Moses, who forthwith soused him down, by touching the mare with the whip, and starting off at a pace that looked like trying to catch an express train. Round flew the wheels, up shot the yellow mud, open went the lodge gates, bark went the curs, and they were presently among the darker mud of the Marshfield and Greyridge Hill Road. On, on, Sir Moses pushed, as if in extremis. �Well now, how is it to be?� at length asked he, getting his mare more by the head, after grinding through a long strip of newly-laid whinstone: �How is it to be? Can this beggar of yours ride, or can he not?� Sir Moses looking with a scrutinising eye at Billy as he spoke. �Yarse, he can ride,� replied Billy, feeling his collar; �rode the other day, you know.� _Sir Moses_. �Ah, but that�s not the sort of riding I mean. Can he ride across country? Can he ride a steeple-chase, in fact?� _Mr. Pringle_. �Yarse, I should say he could,� hesitated our friend. _Sir Moses_. �Well, but it won�t do to back a man to do a thing one isn�t certain he can do, you know. Now, between ourselves,� continued he, lowering his voice so as not to let the Tiger hear��Cuddy Flintoff is no great performer�more of a mahogany sportsman than any thing else, and it wouldn�t take any great hand to beat him.� Billy couldn�t say whether Monsieur was equal to the undertaking or not, and therefore made no reply. This perplexed Sir Moses, who wished that Billy�s downy face mightn�t contain more mischief than it ought. It would be a devil of a bore, he thought, to be done by such a boy. So he again took the mare short by the head, and gave expression to his thoughts by the whip along her sides. Thus he shot down Walkup Hill at a pace that carried him half way up the opposing one. Still he couldn�t see his way�dom�d if he could�and he felt half inclined not to risk his �fi-pun� note. In this hesitating mood he came within sight of the now crowd-studded rendezvous. Timberlake toll bar, the rendezvous for the race, stands on the summit of the hog-backed Wooley Hill, famous for its frequent sheep-fairs, and commands a fine view over the cream of the west side of Featherbedfordshire, and by no means the worst part of the land of Jewdea, as the wags of the former country call Hit-im and Hold-im shire. Sir Moses had wisely chosen this rendezvous, in order that he might give Lord Ladythorne the benefit of the unwelcome intrusion without exciting the suspicion of the farmers, who would naturally suppose that the match would take place over some part of Sir Moses�s own country. In that, however, they had reckoned without their host. Sir Moses wasn�t the man to throw a chance away�dom�d if he was. The road, after crossing the bridge over Bendibus Burn, being all against collar, Sir Moses dropped his reins, and sitting back in his seat, proceeded to contemplate the crowd. A great gathering there was, horsemen, footmen, gigmen, assmen, with here and there a tinkling-belled liquor-vending female, a tossing pie-man, or a nut-merchant. As yet the spirit of speculation was not aroused, and the people gathered in groups, looking as moody as men generally do who want to get the better of each other. The only cheerful faces on the scene were those of Toney Loftus, the pike-man, and his wife, whose neat white-washed, stone-roofed cottage was not much accustomed to company, save on the occasion of the fairs. They were now gathering their pence and having a let-off for their long pent-up gossip. Sir Moses�s approach put a little liveliness into the scene, and satisfied the grumbling or sceptical ones that they had not come to the wrong place. There was then a general move towards the great white gate, and as he paid his fourpence the nods of recognition and How are ye�s? commenced amid a vigorous salute of the muffin bells. _Tinkle tinkle tinkle, buy buy buy_, toss and try! toss and try! _tinkle tinkle tinkle_. Barcelona nuts, crack �em and try �em, crack �em and try �em; the invitation being accompanied with the rattle of a few in the little tin can. �Now, where are the jockeys?� asked Sir Moses, straining his eye-balls over the open downs. �They�re coomin. Sir Moses, they�re coomin,� replied several voices; and as they spoke, a gaily-dressed man, on a milk-white horse, emerged from the little fold-yard of Butterby farm, about half a mile to the west, followed by two distinct groups of mounted and dismounted companions, who clustered round either champion like electors round a candidate going to the hustings. �There�s Geordey Gallon!� was now the cry, as the hero of the white horse shot away from the foremost group, and came best pace across the rush-grown sward of the sheep-walk towards the toll-bar. �There�s Geordey Gallon! and now we shall hear summut about it;� whereupon the scattered groups began to mingle and turn in the direction of the coming man. It was Mr. Gallon,�Gallon on his famous trotting hack Tippy Tom�a vicious runaway brute, that required constant work to keep it under, a want that Mr. Gallon liberally supplied it with. It now came yawning and boring on the bit, one ear lying one way, the other another, shaking its head like a terrier with a rat in its mouth, with a sort of air that as good as said. �Let me go, or I�ll either knock your teeth down your throat with my head, or come back over upon you.� So Mr. Gallon let him go, and came careering along at a leg-stuck-out sort of butcher�s shuffle, one hand grasping the weather-bleached reins, the other a cutting-whip, his green coat-laps and red kerchief ends lying out, his baggy white cords and purple plush waistcoat strings all in a flutter, looking as if he was going to bear away the gate and house, Toney Loftus and wife, all before him. Fortunately for the byestanders there was plenty of space, which, coupled with the deep holding ground and Mr. Gallon�s ample weight�good sixteen stone�enabled him to bring the white nag to its bearings; and after charging a flock of geese, and nearly knocking down a Barcelona-nut merchant, he got him manoeuvred in a semicircular sort of way up to the gate, just as if it was all right and plain sailing. He then steadied him with a severe double-handed jerk of the bit, coupled with one of those deep ominous _wh-o-o ah�s_ that always preceded a hiding. Tippy Tom dropped his head as if he understood him. All eyes were now anxiously scrutinising Gallon�s great rubicund double-chinned visage, for, in addition to his general sporting knowledge and acquirements, he was just fresh from the scene of action where he had doubtless been able to form an opinion. Even Sir Moses, who hated the sight of him, and always declared he �ought to be hung,� vouchsafed him a �good morning, Gallon,� which the latter returned with a familiar nod. He then composed himself in his capacious old saddle, and taking off his white shallow began mopping his great bald head, hoping that some one would sound the key-note of speculation ere the advancing parties arrived at the gate. They all, however, seemed to wish to defer to Mr. Gallon�Gallon was the man for their money, Gallon knew a thing or two, Gallon was up to snuff,�go it, Gallon! **** �What does onybody say �boot it Frenchman?� at length asked he in his elliptical Yorkshire dialect, looking round on the company. �What do you say �boot it Frenchman, Sir Moses?� asked he, not getting an answer from any one. �Faith, I know nothing,� replied the Baronet, with a slight curl of the lip. �Nay, yeer tied to know summut, hooever,� replied Gallon, rubbing his nose across the back of his hand; �yeer tied to know summut, hooever. Why, he�s a stoppin� at yeer house, isn�t he?� �That may all be,� rejoined Sir Moses, �without my knowing anything of his riding. What do you say yourself? you�ve seen him.� �Seen him!� retorted Gallon, �why he�s a queer lookin� chap, ony hoo�that�s all ar can say: haw, haw, haw.� �You won�t back him, then?� said Sir Moses, inquiringly. �Hardly that,� replied Gallon, shaking his head and laughing heartily, �hardly that, Sir Moses. Ar�ll tell you whatar�ll do, though,� said he, �just to mak sport luike, ar�ll tak yeer two to one�two croons to one,� producing a greasy-looking metallic-pencilled betting-book as he spoke. Just then a move outside the ring announced an arrival, and presently Mr. Heslop came steering Cuddy Flintoff along in his wife�s Croydon basket-carriage, Cuddy�s head docked in an orange-coloured silk cap, and his whole person enveloped in a blue pilot coat with large mother-of-pearl buttons. The ominous green-pointed jockey whip was held between his knees, as with folded arms he lolled carelessly in the carriage, trying to look comfortable and unconcerned. �Mornin�, Flintoff�, how are ye?� cried Sir Moses, waving his hand from his loftier vehicle, as they drew up. �Mornin�, Heslop, how goes it? Has anybody seen anything of Monsieur?� asked he, without waiting for an answer to either of these important inquiries. �He�s coming, Sir Moses,� cried several voices, and presently the Marseillaise hymn of liberty was borne along on the southerly breeze, and Jack�s faded black hunting-cap was seen bobbing up and down in the crowd that encircled him, as he rode along on Paul Straddler�s shooting pony. Jack had been at the brandy bottle, and had imbibed just enough to make him excessively noisy. �Three cheers for Monsieur Jean Rougier, de next Emperor of de French!� cried he, rising in his stirrups, as he approached the crowd, taking off his old brown hunting-cap, and waving it triumphantly, �Three cheers for de best foxer, de best fencer, de best fighter in all Europe!� and at a second flourish of the cap the crowd came into the humour of the thing, and cheered him lustily. And then of course it was one cheer more for Monsieur; and one cheer more he got. �Three cheers for ould England!� then demanded Mr. Gallon on behalf of Mr. Flintoff, which being duly responded to, he again asked �What onybody would do �boot it Frenchman?� �Now, gentlemen,� cried Sir Moses, standing erect in his dogcart, and waving his hand for silence: �Now, gentlemen, listen to me!� Instead of which somebody roared out, �Three cheers for Sir Moses!� and at it they went again, _Hooray, hooray, hooray_, for when an English mob once begins cheering, it never knows when to stop. �Now, gentlemen, listen to me,� again cried he, as soon as the noise had subsided. �It�s one o�clock, and it�s time to proceed to business. I called you here that there might be no unnecessary trespass or tampering with the ground, and I think I�ve chosen a line that will enable you all to see without risk to yourselves or injury to anyone� (applause, mingled with a tinkling of the little bells). �Well now,� added he, �follow me, and I�ll show you the way;� so saying, he resumed his seat, and passing through the gate turned short to the right, taking the diagonal road leading down the hill, in the direction of Featherbedfordshire. �Where can it be?� was then the cry. �I know,� replied one of the know-everything ones. �Rainford, for a guinea!� exclaimed Mr. Gallon, fighting with Tippy Tom, who wanted to be back. �I say Rushworth!� rejoined Mr. Heslop, cutting in before him. �Nothin� o� the sort!� asserted Mr. Buckwheat; �he�s for Harlingson green to a certainty.� The heterogeneous cavalcade then fell into line, the vehicles and pedestrians keeping the road, while the horsemen spread out on either side of the open common, with the spirit of speculation divided between where the race was to be and who was to win. Thus they descended the hill and joined the broad, once well-kept turnpike, whose neglected milestones still denoted the distance between London and Hinton�London so many miles on one side, Hinton so many miles on the other�things fast passing into the regions of antiquity. Sir Moses now put on a little quicker, and passing through the village of Nettleton and clearing the plantation beyond, a long strip of country lay open to the eye, hemmed in between the parallel lines of the old road and the new Crumpletin Railway. He then pulled up on the rising ground, and placing his whip in the socket, stood up to wait the coming of the combatants, to point them out the line he had fixed for the race. The spring tide of population flowed in apace, and he was presently surrounded with horsemen, gigmen, footmen, and bellmen as before. �Now, gentlemen!� cried Sir Moses, addressing Mr. Flintoff and Monsieur, who were again ranged on either side of his dogcart: �Now, gentlemen, you see the line before you. The stacks, on the right here,� pointing to a row of wheat stacks in the adjoining field, �are the starting post, and you have to make your ways as straight as ever you can to Lawristone Clump yonder,� pointing to a clump of dark Scotch firs standing against the clear blue sky, on a little round hill, about the middle of a rich old pasture on Thrivewell Farm, the clump being now rendered more conspicuous by sundry vehicles clustered about its base, the fair inmates of which had received a private hint from Sir Moses where to go to. The Baronet always played up to the fair, with whom he flattered himself he was a great favourite. �Now then, you see,� continued he, �you can�t get wrong, for you�ve nothing to do but to keep between the lines of the rail and the road, on to neither of which must you come: and now you gentlemen,� continued he, addressing the spectators generally, �there�s not the slightest occasion for any of you to go off the road, for you�ll see a great deal better on it, and save both your own necks and the farmers� crops; so just let me advise you to keep where you are, and follow the jockeys field by field as they go. And now, gentlemen,� continued he, again addressing the competitors, ��having said all I have to say on the subject, I advise you to get your horses and make a start of it, for though the day is fine its still winter, you�ll remember, and there are several ladies waiting for your coming.� So saying, Sir Moses soused down in his seat, and prepared to watch the proceedings. Mr. Flintoff was the first to peel; and his rich orange and white silk jacket, natty doeskins, and paper-like boots, showed that he had got himself up as well with a due regard to elegance as to lightness. He even emptied some halfpence out of his pockets, in order that he might not carry extra weight. He would, however, have been a great deal happier at home. There was no �yoieks, wind him,� or �yoicks, push �im up,� in him now. Monsieur did not show to so much advantage as Cuddy; but still he was a good deal better attired than he was out hunting on the Crooked-Billet day. He still retained the old brown cap, but in lieu of the shabby scarlet, pegtop trousers and opera-boots, he sported a red silk jacket, a pair of old-fashioned broad-seamed leathers, and mahogany boots�the cap being the property of Sir Moses�s huntsman, Tom Findlater, the other articles belonging to Mr. George Gallon of the Rose and Crown. And the sight of them, as Monsieur stripped, seemed to inspirit the lender, for he immediately broke out with the old inquiry, �What does onybody say �boot it Frenchman?� �What do _you_ say �boot it Frenchman, Sir Moses?� asked he. Sir Moses was silent, for he couldn�t see his way to a satisfactory investment; so, rising in his seat, he holloaed out to the grooms, who were waiting their orders outside the crowd, to �bring in the horses.� �Make way, there! make way, there!� cried he, as the hooded and sheeted animals approached and made up to their respective riders. �Takeoff his nightcap! take off his nightcap!� cried Jack, pulling pettedly at the strings of the hood; �take off his nightcap!� repeated he, stamping furiously, amid the laughter of the bystanders, many of whom had never seen a Frenchman, let alone a mounted one, before. The obnoxious nightcap being removed, and the striped sheet swept over his tail, Mr. Rowley Abingdon�s grey horse Mayfly Blood showing himself as if he was in a dealer�s yard, for as yet he had not ascertained what he was out for. A horse knows when he is going to hunt, or going to exercise, or going to be shod, or going to the public house, but these unaccustomed jaunts puzzle him. Monsieur now proceeded to inform him by clutching at the reins, as he stood preparing for a leg-up on the wrong side. �The other side, mun, the other side,� whispered Paul Straddler in his ear; whereupon Monsieur passed under the horse�s head, and appeared as he ought. The movement, however, was not lost on Sir Moses, who forthwith determined to back Cuddy. Cuddy might be bad, but Monsieur must be worse, he thought. �I�ll lay an even five on Mr. Flintoff!� cried he in a loud and audible voice. �I�ll lay an even five on Mr. Flintoff,� repeated he, looking boldly round. �Gallon, what say you?� asked he, appealing to the hero of the white horse. �Can�t be done, Sir Moses, can�t be done,� replied Gallon, grinning from ear to ear, with a shake of his great bull head. �Tak yeer three to two if you loike,� added he, anxious to be on. Sir Moses now shook his head in return. �Back myself, two pound ten�forty shillin�, to beat dis serene and elegant Englishman!� exclaimed Jack, now bumping up and down in his saddle as if to establish a seat. �Do you owe him any wages?� asked Sir Moses of Billy in an under-tone, wishing to ascertain what chance there was of being paid if he won. �Yarse, I owe him some,� replied Billy; but how much he couldn�t say, not having had Jack�s book lately. Sir Moses caught at the answer, and the next time Jack offered to back himself, he was down upon him with a �Done!� adding, �I�ll lay you an even pund if you like.� �With all my heart, Sare Moses Baronet,� replied Jack gaily; adding, �you are de most engagin�, agreeable mans I knows; a perfect beauty vidout de paint.� Gallon now saw his time was come, and he went at Sir Moses with a �Weell, coom, ar�le lay ye an even foive.� �Done!� cried the Baronet. �A tenner, if you loike!� continued Gallon, waxing valiant. Sir Moses shook his head. �Get me von vet sponge, get me von vet sponge,� now exclaimed Jack, looking about for the groom. �Wet sponge! What the deuce do you want with a wet sponge?� demanded Sir Moses with surprise. �Yet sponge, just damp my knees leetle�make me stick on better,� replied Jack, turning first one knee and then the other out of the saddle to get sponged. �O dom it, if it�s come to that, I may as well have the ten,� muttered Sir Moses to himself. So, nodding to Gallon, he said �I�ll make it ten.� �Done!� said Gallon, with a nod, and the bet was made�Done, and Done, being enough between gentlemen. �Now, then,� cried Sir Moses, stepping down from his dogcart, �come into the field, and I�ll start you.� Away then the combatants went, and the betting became brisk in the ring. Mr. Flintoff the favourite at evens. CHAPTER XLIV. THE RACE ITSELF. 335m _Original Size_ FROM the Nettleton cornstacks to Lawristone Clump was under two miles, and, barring Bendibus Brook, there was nothing formidable in the line�nothing at least to a peaceably disposed man pursuing the even tenor of his way, either on horseback or in his carriage along the deserted London road. Very different, however, did the landscape now appear to our friend Cuddy Flintoff as he saw it stretching away in diminishing perspective, presenting an alternating course of husbandry stubble after grass, wheat after stubble, seeds after wheat, with perhaps pasture again after fallow. Bendibus, too, as its name indicates, seemed to be here, there, and everywhere; here, as shown by the stone bridge on the road,�there, as marked by the pollard willows lower down�and generally wherever there was an inconvenient breadth and irregularity of fence. The more Mr. Flintoff looked at the landscape, the less he liked it. Still he had a noble horse under him in General Havelock�a horse that could go through deep as fast as he could over grass, and that only required holding together and sitting on to carry him safe over his fences. It was just that, however, that Cuddy couldn�t master. He couldn�t help fancying that the horse would let him down, and he didn�t like the idea. Mayfly, on the other hand, was rather skittish, and began prancing and capering as soon as he got off the road into the field. �Get �im by de nob! get �im by de nob!� cried Jack, setting up his shoulders. �Swing �im round by de tail! swing �im round by de tail!� continued he, as the horse still turned away from his work. �Ord dom it, that�s that nasty crazy brute of old Rowley Abingdon�s, I do declare!� exclaimed Sir Moses, getting out of the now plunging horse�s way. �Didn�t know the beggar since he was clipped. That�s the brute that killed poor Cherisher,�best hound in my pack. Take care, Monsieur! that horse will eat you if he gets you off.� �Eat me!� cried Jack, pretending alarm; �dat vod be vare unkind.� _Sir Moses_. �Unkind or not, he�ll do it, I assure you.� �Oh, dear! oh! dear!� cried Jack, as the horse laid back his ears, and gave a sort of wincing kick. �I�ll tell you what,� cried Sir Moses, emboldened by Jack�s fear, �I�ll lay you a crown you don�t get over the brook.� �Crown, sare! I have no crowns,� replied Jack, pulling the horse round. �I�ll lay ve sovereign�von pon ten, if vou like.� �Come, I�ll make it ten shillings. I�ll make it ten shillings,� replied Sir Moses: adding, �Mr. Flintoff is my witness.� �Done!� cried Monsieur. �Done! I takes the vager. Von pon I beats old Cuddy to de clomp, ten shillin� I gets over de brook.� �All right!� rejoined Sir Moses, �all right! Now,� continued he, clapping his hands, �get your horses together�one, two, three, and _away!_� Up bounced Mayfly in the air; away went Cuddy amidst the cheers and shouts of the roadsters��_Flintoff! Flintoff! Flinfoff!! The yaller! the yaller! the yaller!_� followed by a general rush along the grass-grown Macadamised road, between London and Hinton. �Oh, dat is your game, is it?� asked Jack as Mayfly, after a series of minor evolutions, subsided on all fours in a sort of attitude of attention. �Dat is your game, is it!� saying which he just took him short by the head, and, pressing his knees closely into the saddle, gave him such a couple of persuasive digs with his spurs as sent him bounding away after the General. �_Go it, Frenchman!_� was now the cry. �Go it! aye he _can_ go it,� muttered Jack, as the horse now dropped on the bit, and laid himself out for work. He was soon in the wake of his opponent. The first field was a well-drained wheat stubble, with a newly plashed fence on the ground between it and the adjoining pasture; which, presenting no obstacle, they both went at it as if bent on contending for the lead, Monsieur _sacré_ing, grinning, and grimacing, after the manner of his adopted country; while Mr. Flintoff sailed away in the true jockey style, thinking he was doing the thing uncommonly well. Small as the fence was, however, it afforded Jack an opportunity of shooting into his horse�s shoulders, which Cuddy perceiving, he gave a piercing view holloa, and spurred away as if bent on bidding him goodbye. This set Jack on his mettle; and getting back into his seat he gathered his horse together and set too, elbows and legs, elbows and legs, in a way that looked very like frenzy. The _feint_ of a fall, however, was a five-pound note in Mr. Gallon�s way, for Jack did it so naturally that there was an immediate backing of Cuddv. �_Flintoff! Flintoff! Flintoff! The yaller! the yaller! the yaller!_� was again the cry. The pasture was sound, and they sped up it best pace, Mr. Flintoff well in advance. The fence out was nothing either�a young quick fence set on the ground, which Cuddy flew in Leicestershire style, throwing up his right arm as he went. Monsieur was soon after him with a high bucking jump. They were now upon plough,�undrained plough, too, which the recent rains bad rendered sticky and holding. General Havelock could have crossed it at score, but the ragged boundary fence of Thrivewell farm now appearing in view, Mr. Flintoff held him well together, while he scanned its rugged irregularities for a place. �These are the nastiest fences in the world,� muttered Cuddy to himself, �and I�ll be bound to say there�s a great yawning ditch either on this side or that. Dash it! I wish I was over,� continued he, looking up and down for an exit. There was very little choice. Where there weren�t great mountain ash or alder growers laid into the fence, there were bristling hazel uprights, which presented little more attraction. Altogether it was not a desirable obstacle. Even from the road it looked like something. �_Go it, Cuddy! Go it!_� cried Sir Moses, now again in his dogcart, from the midst of the crowd, adding, �It�s nothing of a place!� �Isn�t it,� muttered Cuddy, still looking up and down, adding, �I wish you had it instead of me.� �Ord dom it, go at it like a man!� now roared the Baronet, fearing for his investments. �Go at it for the honour of the hunt! for the honour of Hit-im and Hold-im shire!� continued he, nearly stamping the bottom of his dog-cart out. The mare started forward at the sound, and catching Tippy Tom with the shafts in the side, nearly upset Geordey Gallon, who, like Sir Moses, was holloaing on the Frenchman. There was then a mutual interchange of compliments. Meanwhile Cuddy, having espied a weak bush-stopped gap in a bend of the hedge, now walks his horse quietly up to it, who takes it in a matter-of-course sort of way that as good as says, �What _have_ you been making such a bother about.� He then gathers himself together, and shoots easily over the wide ditch on the far side, Cuddy hugging himself at its depth as he lands. Monsieur then exclaiming, �Dem it, I vill not make two bites of von cherry,� goes at the same place at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and beat beside Cuddy ere the latter had well recovered from his surprise at the feat. �Ord rot it!� exclaimed he, starting round, �what d�ye mean by following a man that way? If I�d fallen, you�d ha� been a-top of me to a certainty.� �Oh, never fear,� replied Monsieur, grinning and flourishing his whip. �Oh, never fear, I vod have �elped you to pick up de pieces.� �Pick up the pieces, sir!� retorted Cuddy angrily. �I don�t want to pick up the pieces. I want to ride the race as it should be.� �Come then, old cock,� cried Monsieur, spurring past, �you shall jomp �pon me if you can.� So saying, Jack hustled away over a somewhat swampy enclosure, and popping through an open bridle-gate, led the way into a large rich alluvial pasture beyond. Jack�s feat at the boundary fence, coupled with the manner in which he now sat and handled his horse, caused a revulsion of feeling on the road, and Gallon�s stentorian roar of �The _Frenchman! the Frenchman!_� now drowned the vociferations on behalf of Mr. Flintoff and the �yaller.� Sir Moses bit his lips and ground his teeth with undisguised dismay. If Flintoff let the beggar beat him, he�-he didn�t know what he would do. �_Flintoff! Flintoff!_� shrieked he as Cuddy again took the lead. And now dread Rendibus appears in view! There was no mistaking its tortuous sinuosities, even if the crowd on the bridge had not kept vociferating, �The bruk! the bruk!� �The bruk be hanged!� growled Cuddy, hardening his heart for the conflict. �The bruk be hanged!� repeated he, eyeing its varying curvature, adding, �if ever I joke with any man under the rank of a duke again, may I be capitally D�d. Ass that I was,� continued he, �to take a liberty with this confounded Frenchman, who cares no more for his neck than a frog. Dashed, if ever I joke with any man under the rank of a prince of the blood royal,� added he, weaving his eyes up and down the brook for a place. �_Go at it full tilt!_� now roars Sir Moses from the bridge; �go at it full tilt for the honour of Hit-im and Hold-im shire!� �Honour of Hit-im and Hold-im shire be hanged!� growled Cuddy; �who�ll pay for my neck if I break it, I wonder!� �Cut along, old cock of vax!� now cries Monsieur, grinning up on the grey. �Cut along, old cock of vax, or I�ll be into your pocket.� �_Shove him along!_� roars stentorian-lunged Gallon, standing erect in his stirrups, and waving Monsieur on with his hat. �_Shove him along!_� repeats he, adding, �he�ll take it in his stride.� Mayfly defers to the now-checked General, who, accustomed to be ridden freely, lays back his vexed ears for a kick, as Monsieur hurries up. Cuddy still contemplates the scene, anxious to be over, but dreading to go. �Nothing so nasty as a brook,� says he; �never gets less, but may get larger.� He then scans it attentively. There is a choice of ground, but it is choice of evils, of which it is difficult to choose the least when in a hurry. About the centre are sedgy rushes, indicative of a bad taking off, while the weak place next the ash involves the chance of a crack of the crown against the hanging branch, and the cattle gap higher up may be mended with wire rope, or stopped with some awkward invisible stuff. Altogether it is a trying position, especially with the eyes of England upon him from the bridge and road. �Oh, go at it, mun!� roars Sir Moses, agonised at his hesitation; �Oh, go at it, mun! It�s _nothin_� of a place!� �Isn�t it,� muttered Cuddy; �wish you were at it instead of me.� So saying, he gathers his horse together in an undecided sort of way, and Monsieur charging at the moment, lands Cuddie on his back in the field and himself in the brook. 339m _Original Size_ Then a mutual roar arose, as either party saw its champion in distress. �_Stick to him, Cuddy! stick to him!_� roars Sir Moses. �_Stick to him, Mouncheer! stick to him!_� vociferates Mr. Gallon on the other side. They do as they are bid; Mr. Flintoff remounting just as Monsieur scrambles out of the brook, aud Cuddy�s blood now being roused, he runs the General gallantly at it, and lands, hind legs and all, on the opposite bank. Loud cheers followed the feat. It is now anybody�s race, and the vehemence of speculation is intense. �The red!���The yaller! the yaller!���The red!� Mr. Gallon is frantic, and Tippy Tom leads the way along the turnpike as if he, too, was in the race. Sir Moses�s mare breaks into a canter, and makes the action of the gig resemble that of a boat going to sea. The crowd rush pell-mell without looking where they are going; it is a wonder that nobody is killed. Lawristone Clump is now close at hand, enlivened with the gay parasols and colours of the ladies. There are but three more fences between the competitors and it, and seeing what he thinks a weak place in the next, Mr. Flintoff races for it over the sound furrows of the deeply-drained pasture. As he gets near it begins to look larger, and Cuddy�s irresolute handling makes the horse swerve. �Now, then, old stoopid!� cries Jack, in a good London cabman�s accent; �Now, then, old stoopid! vot are ye stargazing that way for? Vy don�t ye go over or get out o� de vay?� �_Go yourself_,�� growled Cuddy, pulling his horse round. �Go myself!� repeated Jack; ��ow the doose can I go vid your great carcase stuck i� the vay!� �My great carcase stuck i� the way!� retorted Cuddy, spurring and hauling at his horse. �My great carcase stuck in the way! Look at your own, and be hanged to ye!� �Vell, look at it!� replied Jack, backing his horse for a run, and measuring his distance, he clapped spurs freely in his sides, and going at it full tilt, flew over the fence, exclaiming as he lit, �Dere, it is for you to �zamine.� �That feller can ride a deuced deal better than he pretends,� muttered Cuddy, wishing his tailorism mightn�t be all a trick; saying which he followed Jack�s example, and taking a run he presently landed in the next field, amidst the cheers of the roadsters. This was a fallow, deep, wet, and undrained, and his well ribbed-up horse was more than a match for Jack�s across it. Feeling he could go, Cuddy set himself home in his saddle, and flourishing his whip, cantered past, exclaiming, �Come along old stick in the mud!� �I�ll stick i� the mod ye!� replied Jack, hugging and holding his sobbing horse. �I�ll stick i� the mod ye! Stop till I gets off dis birdliming field, and I�ll give you de go-bye, Cuddy, old cock.� Jack was as good as his word, for the ground getting sounder on the slope, he spurted up a wet furrow, racing with Cuddy for the now obvious gap, that afforded some wretched half-starved calves a choice between the rushes of one field and the whicken grass of the other. Pop, Jack went over it, looking back and exclaiming to Cuddy, �Bon jour! top of de mornin� to you, sare!� as he hugged his horse and scuttled up a high-backed ridge of the sour blue and yellow-looking pasture. The money was now in great jeopardy, and the people on the road shouted and gesticulated the names of their respective favourites with redoubled energy, as if their eagerness could add impetus to the animals. �_Flintoff! Flintoff! Flintoff!_� �_The Frenchman! the Frenchman!_� as Monsieur at length dropped his hands and settled into something like a seat. On, on, they went, Monsieur every now and then looking back to see that he had a proper space between himself and his pursuer, and, giving his horse a good dig with his spurs, he lifted him over a stiff stake-and-rice fence that separated him from the field with the Clump. �Here they come!� is now the cry on the hill, and fair faces at length turn to contemplate the galloppers, who come sprawling up the valley in the unsightly way fore-shortened horses appear to do. The road gate on the right flies suddenly open, and Tippy Tom is seen running away with Geordey Gallon, who just manages to manouvre him round the Clump to the front as Monsieur comes swinging in an easy winner. Glorious victory for Geordey! Glorious victory for Monsieur! They can�t have won less than thirty pounds between them, supposing they get paid, and that Geordey gives Jack his �reglars.� Well may Geordey throw up his shallow hat and hug the winner. But who shall depict the agony of Sir Moses at this dreadful blow to his finances? The way he dom�d Cuddy, the way he dom�d Jack, the way he swung frantically about Lawristone Clump, declaring he was ruined for ever and ever! After thinking of everybody at all equal to the task, we are obliged to get, our old friend Echo to answer �Who!� CHAPTER XLV. HENEREY BROWN & CO. AGAIN. THE first paroxysm of rage being over, Sir Moses remounted his dog-cart, and drove rapidly off, seeming to take pleasure in making his boy-groom (who was at the mare�s head) run after it as long as he could. �What�s it Baronet off?� exclaimed Mr. Gallon, staring with astonishment at the fast-receding vehicle; �what�s it, Baronet off?� repeated he, thinking he would have to go to Pangburn Park for his money. �O dear Thir Mothes is gone!� lisped pretty Miss Mechlinton, who wanted to have a look at our hero, Mr. Pringle, who she heard was frightfully handsome, and alarmingly rich. And the ladies, who had been too much occupied with the sudden rush of excited people to notice Sir Moses�s movements, wondered what had happened that he didn�t come to give his tongue an airing among them as usual. One said he had got the tooth-ache; another, the ear-ache; a third, that he had got something in his eye; while a satirical gentleman said it looked more like a B. in his bonnet. �Ony hoo,� however, as Mr. Gallon would say, Sir Moses was presently out of the field and on to the hard turnpike again. We need scarcely say that Mr. Pringle�s ride home with him was not of a very agreeable character: indeed, the Baronet had seldom been seen to be so put out of his way, and the mare came in for frequent salutations with the whip�latitudinally, longitudinally, and horizontally, over the head and ears, accompanied by cutting commentaries on Flintoff�s utter uselessness and inability to do anything but drink. He �never saw such a man�domd if ever he did,� and he whipped the mare again in confirmation of the opinion. Nor did matters mend on arriving at home; for here Mr. Mordecai Nathan met him in the entrance hall, with a very doleful face, to announce that Henerey Brown & Co., who had long been coddling up their horses, had that morning succeeded in sloping with them and their stock to Halterley Fair, and selling them in open market, leaving a note hanging to the key in the house-door, saying that they had gone to Horseterhaylia where Sir Moses needn�t trouble to follow them. �Ond dom it!� shrieked the Baronet, jumping up in the air like a stricken deer; �ond dom it! I�m robbed! I�m robbed! I�m ruined! I�m ruined!� and tottering to an arm-chair, he sank, overpowered with the blow. Henerey Brown & Co. had indeed been too many for him. After a long course of retrograding husbandry, they seemed all at once to have turned over a new leaf, if not in the tillage way, at all events in that still better way for the land, the cattle line,�store stock, with some symptoms of beef on their bones, and sheep with whole fleeces, going on all-fours depastured the fields, making Mordecai Nathan think it was all the fruits of his superior management. Alaek a-day! They belonged to a friend of Lawyer Hindmarch�s, who thought Henerey Brown & Co. might as well eat all off the land ere they left. And so they ate it as bare as a board. �Ond dom it, how came you to let them escape?� now demanded the Baronet, wringing his hands in despair; �ond dom it, how came you to let them escape?� continued he, throwing himself back in the chair. �Why really, Sir Moses, I was perfectly deceived; I thought they were beginning to do better, for though they were back with their ploughing, they seemed to be turning their attention to stock, and I was in hopes that in time they would pull round.� �Pull round!� ejaculated the Baronet; �pull round! They�ll flatten me I know with their pulling;� and thereupon he kicked out both legs before him as if he was done with them altogether. His seat being in the line of the door, a rude draught now caught his shoulder, which making him think it was no use sitting there to take cold and the rheumatism, he suddenly bounced up, and telling Nathan to stay where he was, he ran up stairs, and quickly changed his fine satiney, velvetey, holiday garments, for a suit of dingy old tweeds, that looked desperately in want of the washing-tub. Then surmounting the whole with a drab wide-awake, he clutched a knotty dog-whip, and set off on foot with his agent to the scene of disaster, rehearsing the licking he would give Henerey with the whip if he caught him, as he went. Away he strode, as if he was walking a match, down Dolly�s Close, over the stile, into Farmer Hayford�s fields, and away by the back of the lodges, through Orwell Plantation and Lowestoff End, into the Rushworth and Mayland Road. Doblington farm-house then stood on the rising ground before him. It was indeed a wretched, dilapidated, woe-begone-looking place; bad enough when enlivened with the presence of cattle and the other concomitants of a farm; but now, with only a poor white pigeon, that Henerey Brown & Co., as if in bitter irony, had left behind them, it looked the very picture of misery and poverty-stricken desolation. It was red-tiled and had been rough-cast, but the casting was fast coming off, leaving fine map-like tracings of green damp on the walls,�a sort of map of Italy on one side of the door, a map of Africa on the other, one of Horseterhaylia about the centre, with a perfect battery of old hats bristling in the broken panes of the windows. Nor was this all; for, by way of saving coals, Henerey & Humphrey had consumed all the available wood about the place�stable-fittings, cow-house-fittings, pig-sty-fittings, even part of the staircase�and acting under the able advice of Lawyer Hindmarch, had carried away the pot and oven from the kitchen, and all the grates from the fire-places, under pretence of having bought them of the outgoing tenant when they entered,�a fact that the lawyer said �would be difficult to disprove.� If it had not been that Henerey Brown & Co. had been sitting rent-free, and that the dilapidated state of the premises formed an excellent subject of attack for parrying payment when rent came to be demanded, it would be difficult to imagine people living in a house where they had to wheel their beds about to get to the least drop-exposed quarter, and where the ceilings bagged down from the rafters like old-fashioned window-hangings. People, however, can put up with a great deal when it saves their own pockets. Master and man having surveyed the exterior then entered. �Well,� said Sir Moses, looking round on the scene of desolation, �they�ve made a clean sweep at all events.� �They have that,� assented Mr. Mordecai Nathan. �I wonder it didn�t strike you, when you caught them selling their straw off at night, that they would be doing something of this sort,� observed Sir Moses. �Why, I thought it rather strange,� replied Mr. Nathan; �only they assured me that for every load of straw they sold, they brought back double the value in guano, or I certainly should have been more on the alert.� �Guano be hanged!� rejoined the Baronet, trying to open the kitchen window, to let some fresh air into the foul apartment; �guano be hanged! one ton of guano makes itself into twenty ton with the aid of Kentish gravel. No better trade than spurious manure-manufacturing; almost as good as cabbage-cigar making. Besides,� continued he, �the straw goes off to a certainty, whereas there�s no certainty about the guano coming back instead of it. Oh, dom it, man,� continued he, knocking some of the old hats out of the broken panes, after a fruitless effort to open the window, �I�d have walked the bailiffs into the beggars if I could have foreseen this.� �So would I, Sir Moses,� replied Mr. Nathan; �only who could we get to come in their place?� That observation of Mr. Mordecai Nathan comprises a great deal, and accounts for much apparent good landlordism, which lets a bad tenant go on from year to year with the occasional payment of a driblet of rent, instead of ejecting him; the real fact being that the landlord knows there is no one to get to come in his place�no better one at least�and that fact constitutes one of the principal difficulties of land-owning. If a landlord is not prepared to take an out-of-order farm into his own hands, he must either put up with an incompetent non-paying tenant, or run the risk of getting a worse one from the general body of outlying incompetence. A farm will always let for something. There is a regular rolling stock of bad farmers in every country, who pass from district to district, exercising their ingenuity in extracting whatever little good their predecessors have left in the land. These men are the steady, determined enemies to grass. Their great delight is to get leave to plough out an old pasture-field under pretence of laying it down better. There won�t be a grass field on a farm but what they will take some exception to, and ask leave to have �out� as they call it. Then if they get leave, they take care never to have a good take of seeds, and so plough on and plough on, promising to lay it down better after each fresh attempt, just as a thimble-rigger urges his dupe to go on and go on, and try his luck once more, until land and dupe are both fairly exhausted. The tenant then marches, and the thimble-rigger decamps, each in search of fresh fields and flats new. Considering that all writers on agriculture agree that grass land pays double, if not treble, what arable land does, and that one is so much more beautiful to the eye than the other, to say nothing of pleasanter to ride over, we often wonder that landlords have not turned their attention more to the increase and encouragement of grass land on their estates than they have done. To be sure they have always had the difficulty to contend with we have named, viz., a constant hankering on the part of even some good tenants to plough it out. A poor grass-field, like Gay�s hare, seems to have no friends. Each man proposes to improve it by ploughing it out, forgetful of the fact, that it may also be improved by manuring the surface. The quantity of arable land on a farm is what puts landlords so much in the power of bad farmers. If farms consisted of three parts grass and one part plough, instead of three parts plough and one part grass, no landlord need ever put up with an indifferent, incompetent tenant; for the grass would carry him through, and he could either let the farm off, field by field, to butchers and graziers, or pasture it himself, or hay it if he liked. Nothing pays better than hay. A very small capital would then suffice for the arable land; and there being, as we said before, a rolling stock of scratching land-starvers always on the look-out for out-of-order farms, so every landowner should have a rolling stock of horses and farm-implements ready to turn upon any one that is not getting justice done it. There is no fear of gentlemen being overloaded with land; for the old saying, �It�s a good thing to follow the laird,� will always insure plenty of applicants for any farm a landlord is leaving�supposing, of course, that he has been doing it justice himself, which we must say landlords always do; the first result we see of a gentleman farming being the increase of the size of his stock-yard, and this oftentimes in the face of a diminished acreage under the plough. Then see what a saving there is in grass-farming compared to tillage husbandry: no ploughs, no harrows, no horses, no lazy leg-dragging clowns, who require constant watching; the cattle will feed whether master is at home or polishing St. James�s Street in paper boots and a tight bearing-rein. Again, the independence of the grass-farmer is so great. When the wind howls and the rain beats, and the torrents roar, and John Flail lies quaking in bed, fearing for his corn, then old Tom Nebuchadnezzar turns quietly over on his side like the Irish jontleman who, when told the house was on fire, replied, �Arrah, by Jasus, I�m only a lodger!� and says, �Ord rot it, let it rain; it�ll do me no harm! I�m only a grass-grower!� But we are leaving Sir Moses in the midst of his desolation, with nothing but the chilly fog of a winter�s evening and his own bright thoughts to console him. �And dom it, I�m off,� exclaimed he, fairly overcome with the impurity of the place; and hurrying out, he ran away towards home, leaving Mr. Mordecai Nathan to lock the empty house up, or not, just as he liked. And to Pangburn Park let us now follow the Baronet, and see what our friend Billy is about. CHAPTER XLVI. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE. MR. Pringle�s return was greeted with an immense shoal of letters, one from Mamma, one with �Yammerton Grange� on the seal, two from his tailors�one with the following simple heading, �To bill delivered,� so much; the other containing a vast catalogue of what a jury of tailors would consider youthful �necessaries,� amounting in the whole to a pretty round sum, accompanied by an intimation, that in consequence of the tightness of the money-market, an early settlement would be agreeable�and a very important-looking package, that had required a couple of heads to convey, and which, being the most mysterious of the whole, after a due feeling and inspection, he at length opened. It was from his obsequious friend Mr. Smoothley, and contained a printed copy of the rules of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire Hunt, done up in a little red-backed yellow-lined book, with a note from the sender, drawing Mr. Pringle�s attention to the tenth rule, which stipulated that the annual club subscription of fifteen guineas was to be paid into Greedy and Griper�s bank, in Hinton, by Christmas-day in each year at latest, or ten per cent, interest would be charged on the amount after that. �Fi-fi-fifteen guineas! te-te-ten per cent.!� ejaculated Billy, gasping for breath; �who�d ever have thought of such a thing!� and it was some seconds before he sufficiently recovered his composure to resume his reading. The rent of the cover he had taken, Mr. Smoothley proceeded to say, was eight guineas a-year. �Eight guineas a-year!� again ejaculated Billy; �eight guineas a-year! why I thought it was a mere matter of form. Oh dear, I can�t stand this!� continued he, looking vacantly about him. �Surely, risking one�s neck is quite bad enough, without paying for doing so. Lord Ladythorne never asked me for any money, why should Sir Moses? Oh dear, oh dear! I wish i�d never embarked in such a speculation. Nothing to be made by it, but a great deal to be lost. Bother the thing, I wish I was out of it,� with which declaration he again ventured to look at Mr. Smoothley�s letter. It went on to say, that the rent would not become payable until the next season, Mr. Treadcroft being liable for that year�s rent. �Ah well, come, that�s some consolation, at all events,� observed our friend, looking up again; �that�s some consolation, at all events,� adding, �I�ll take deuced good care to give it up before another year comes round.� Smoothley then touched upon the more genial subject of the hunt-buttons. he had desired Garnet, the silversmith, to send a couple of sets off the last die, one for Billy�s hunting, the other for his dress coat; and he concluded by wishing our friend a long life of health and happiness to wear them with the renowned Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt; and assuring him that he was always his, with great sincerity, John Smoothley. �Indeed,� said Billy, throwing the letter down; �more happiness if I don�t wear them,� continued he, conning over his many misfortunes, and the great difficulty he had in sitting at the jumps. �However,� thought he, �the dress ones will do for the balls,� with which not uncommon consolation he broke the red seal of the Yammerton Grange letter. This was from our friend the Major, all about a wonderful hunt his �haryers� had had, which he couldn�t resist the temptation of writing to tell Billy of. The description then sprawled over four sides of letter paper, going an arrant burst from end to end, there not being a single stop in the whole, whatever there might have been in the hunt; and the Major concluded by saying, that it was by far the finest run he had ever seen during his long mastership, extending over a period of five-and-thirty years. Glancing his eye over its contents, how they found at Conksbury Corner, and ran at a racing pace without a check to Foremark Hill, and down over the water-meadows at Dove-dale Green to Marbury Hall, turning short at Fullbrook Folly, and over the race-course at Ancaster Lawn, doubling at Dinton Dean, and back over the hill past Oakhanger Gorse to Tufton Holt, where they killed, the account being interwoven, parenthesis within parenthesis, with the brilliant hits and performances of Lovely, and Lilter, and Dainty, and Bustler, and others, with the names of the distinguished party who were out, our old friend Wotherspoon among the number, Billy came at last to a sly postscript, saying that �his bed and stall were quite ready for him whenever he liked to return, and they would all be delighted to see him.� The wording of the Postscript had taken a good deal of consideration, and had undergone two or three revisions at the hands of the ladies before they gave it to the Major to add�one wanting to make it rather stronger, another rather milder, the Major thinking they had better have a little notice before Mr. Pringle returned, while Mamma (who had now got all the linen up again) inclined, though she did not say so before the girls, to treat Billy as one of the family. Upon a division whether the word �quite� should stand part of the Postscript or not, the Major was left in a minority, and the pressing word passed. His bed and stall were �quite ready,� instead of only �ready� to receive him. Miss Yammerton observing, that �quite� looked as if they really wished to have him, while �ready� looked as if they did not care whether he came or not. And Billy, having pondered awhile on the Postscript, which he thought came very opportunely, proceeded to open his last letter, a man always taking those he doesn�t know first. This letter was Mamma�s�poor Mamma�s�written in the usual strain of anxious earnestness, hoping her beloved was enjoying himself, but hinting that she would like to have him back. Butterfingers was gone, she had got her a place in Somersetshire, so anxiety on that score was over. Mrs. Pringle�s peculiar means of information, however, informed her that the Misses Yammerton were dangerous, and she had already expressed her opinion pretty freely with regard to Sir Moses. Indeed, she didn�t know which house she would soonest hear of her son being at�Sir Moses�s with his plausible pocket-guarding plundering, or Major Yammerton�s, with the three pair of enterprising eyes, and Mamma�s mature judgment directing the siege operations. Mrs. Pringle wished he was either back at Tantivy Castle, or in Curtain Crescent again. Still she did not like to be too pressing, but observed, as Christmas was coming, when hunting would most likely be stopped by the weather, she hoped he would run up to town, where many of his friends, Jack Sheppard, Tom Brown, Harry Bean, and others, were asking for him, thinking he was lost. She also said, it would be a good time to go to Uncle Jerry�s, and try to get a settlement with him, for though she had often called, sometimes by appointment, she had never been able to meet with him, as he was always away, either seeing after some chapel he was building, or attending a meeting for the conversion of the Sepoys, or some other fanatics. The letter concluded by saying, that she had looked about in vain for a groom likely to suit him; for, although plenty had presented themselves from gentlemen wishing for high wages with nothing to do, down to those who would garden and groom and look after cows, she had not seen anything at all to her mind. Mr. Luke Grueler, however, she added, who had called that morning, had told her of one that he could recommend, who was just leaving the Honourable Captain Swellington; and being on his way to town from Doubleimupshire, where the Captain had got to the end of his tether, he would very possibly call; and, if so, Billy would know him by his having Mr. Grueler�s card to present. And with renewed expressions of affection, and urging him to take care of himself, as well among the leaps as the ladies, she signed herself his most doting and loving �Mamma.� �Groom!� (humph) �Swellington!� (humph) muttered Billy, folding up the letter, and returning it to its highly-musked envelope. �Wonder what sort of a beggar he�ll be?� continued he, twirling his mustachios; �Wonder how he�ll get on with Rougier?� and a thought struck him, that he had about as much as he could manage with Monsieur. However, many people have to keep what they don�t want, and there is no reason why such an aspiring youth as our friend should be exempt from the penance of his station. Talking of grooms, we are not surprised at �Mamma�s� difficulty in choosing one, for we know of few more difficult selections to make; and, considering the innumerable books we have on the choice and management of horses, we wonder no one has written on the choice and management of grooms. The truth is, they are as various as the horse-tribe itself; and, considering that the best horse may soon be made a second-rate one by bad grooming, when a second-rate one may be elevated to the first class by good management, and that a man�s neck may be broken by riding a horse not fit to go, it is a matter of no small importance. Some men can dress themselves, some can dress their horses; but very few can dress both themselves and their horses. Some are only fit to strip a horse and starve him. It is not every baggy-corded fellow that rolls slangily along in top-boots, and hisses at everything he touches, that is a groom. In truth, there are very few grooms, very few men who really enter into the feelings and constitutions of horses, or look at them otherwise than as they would at chairs or mahogany tables. A horse that will be perfectly furious under the dressing of one man, will be as quiet as possible in the hands of another�-a rough subject thinking the more a horse prances and winces, the greater the reason to lay on. Some fellows have neither hands, nor eyes, nor sense, nor feeling, nor anything. We have seen one ride a horse to cover without ever feeling that he was lame, while a master�s eye detected it the moment he came in sight. Indeed, if horses could express their opinions, we fear many of them would have very indifferent ones of their attendants. The greater the reason, therefore, for masters giving honest characters of their servants. Our friend Mr. Pringle, having read his letters, was swinging up and down the little library, digesting them, when the great Mr. Bankhead bowed in with a card on a silver salver, and announced, in his usual bland way, that the bearer wished to speak to him. �Me!� exclaimed Billy, wondering who it could be; �Me!� repeated he, taking the highly-glazed thin pasteboard missive off the tray, and reading, �Mr. Luke Grueler, Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.� �Grueler, Grueler!� repeated Billy, frowning and biting his pretty lips; �Grueler�I�ve surely heard that name before.� �The bearer, sir, comes _from_ Mr. Grueler, sir,� observed Mr. Bankhead, in explanation: �the party�s own name, sir, is Gaiters; but he said by bringing in this card, you would probably know who he is.� �Ah! to be sure, so I do,� replied Billy, thus suddenly enlightened, �I�ve just been reading about him. Send him in, will you?� �If you please, sir,� whispered the bowing Bankhead as he withdrew. Billy then braced himself up for the coming interview. A true groom�s knock, a loud and a little one, presently sounded on the white-over-black painted door-panel, and at our friend�s �Come in,� the door opened, when in sidled a sleek-headed well put on groomish-looking man, of apparently forty or five-and-forty years of age. The man bowed respectfully, which Billy returned, glancing at his legs to see whether they were knock-kneed or bowed, his Mamma having cautioned him against the former. They were neither; on the contrary, straight good legs, well set off with tightish, drab-coloured kerseymere shorts, and continuations to match. His coat was an olive-coloured cutaway, his vest a canary-coloured striped toilanette, with a slightly turned-down collar, showing the whiteness of his well-tied cravat, secured with a gold flying-fox pin. Altogether he was a most respectable looking man, and did credit to the recommendation of Mr. Grueler. Still he was a groom of pretension�that is to say, a groom who wanted to be master. He was hardly, indeed, satisfied with that, and would turn a gentleman off who ventured to have an opinion of his own on any matter connected with his department. Mr. Gaiters considered that his character was the first consideration, his master�s wishes and inclinations the second; so if master wanted to ride, say, Rob Roy, and Gaiters meant him to ride Moonshine, there would be a trial of skill which it should be. Mr. Gaiters always considered himself corporally in the field, and speculated on what people would be saying of �his horses.� Some men like to be bullied, some don�t, but Gaiters had dropped on a good many who did. Still these are not the lasting order of men, and Gaiters had attended the dispersion of a good many studs at the Corner. Again, some masters had turned him off, while he had turned others off; and the reason of his now being disengaged was that the Sheriff of Doubleimupshire had saved him the trouble of taking Captain Swellington�s horses to Tattersall�s, by selling them off on the spot. Under these circumstances, Gaiters had written to his once former master�or rather employer�Mr. Grueler, to announce his retirement, which had led to the present introduction. Many people will recommend servants who they wouldn�t take themselves. Few newly married couples but what have found themselves saddled with invaluable servants that others wanted to get rid of. Mutual salutations over, Gaiters now stood in the first position, hat in front, like a heavy father on the stage. Our friend not seeming inclined to lead the gallop, Mr. Gaiters, after a prefatory hem, thus commenced: �Mr. Grueler, sir, I presume, would tell you, sir, that I would call upon you, sir?� Billy nodded assent. �I�m just leaving the Honourable Captain Swellington, of the Royal Hyacinth Hussars, sir, whose regiment is ordered out to India; and fearing the climate might not agree with my constitution, I have been obliged to give him up.� �Ah!� ejaculated Billy. �I have his testimonials,� continued Gaiters, putting his hat between his legs, and diving into the inside pocket of his cutaway as he spoke. �I have his testimonials,� repeated he, producing a black, steel-clasped banker or bill-broker�s looking pocket-book, and tedding up a lot of characters, bills, recipes, and other documents in the pocket. He then selected Captain Swellington�s character from the medley, written on the best double-thick, cream-laid note-paper, sealed with the Captain�s crest�a goose�saying that the bearer John Gaiters was an excellent groom, and might safely be trusted with the management of hunters. �You�ll probably know who the Captain is, sir,� continued Mr. Gaiters, eyeing Billy as he read it. �He�s a son of the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Flareup�s, of Flareup Castle, one of the oldest and best families in the kingdom�few better families anywhere,� just as if the Peer�s pedigree had anything to do with Gaiters�s grooming. �I have plenty more similar to it,� continued Mr. Gaiters, who had now selected a few out of the number which he held before him, like a hand at cards. �Plenty more similar to it,� repeated he, looking them over. �Here is Sir Rufus Rasper�s, Sir Peter Puller�s, Lord Thruster�s, Mr. Cropper�s, and others. Few men have horsed more sportsmen than I have done; and if my principals do not go in the first flight, it is not for want of condition in my horses. Mr. Grueler was the only one I ever had to give up for overmarking my horses; and he was so hard upon them I couldn�t stand it; still he speaks of me, as you see, in the handsomest manner,� handing our friend Mr. Grueler�s certificate, couched in much the same terms as Captain Swellington�s. �Yarse,� replied Billy, glancing over and then returning it, thinking, as he again eyed Mr. Gaiters, that a smart lad like Lord Ladythorne�s Cupid without wings would be more in his way than such a full-sized magnificent man. Still his Mamma and Mr. Grueler had sent Gaiters, and he supposed they knew what was right. In truth, Gaiters was one of those overpowering people that make a master feel as if he was getting hired, instead of suiting himself with a servant. This preliminary investigation over, Gaiters returned the characters to his ample book, and clasping it together, dropped it into his capacious pocket, observing, as it fell, that he should be glad to endeavour to arrange matters with Mr. Pringle, if he was so inclined. Our friend nodded, wishing he was well rid of him. �It�s not every place I would accept,� continued Mr. Gaiters, growing grand; �for the fact is, as Mr. Grueler will tell you, my character is as good as a Bank of England note; and unless I was sure I could do myself justice, I should not like to venture on an experiment, for it�s no use a man undertaking anything that he�s not allowed to carry out his own way; and nothing would be so painful to my feelings as to see a gentleman not turned out as he should be.� Mr. Pringle drawled a �yarse,� for he wanted to be turned out properly. �Well, then,� continued Mr. Gaiters, changing his hat from his right hand to his left, subsiding into the second position, and speaking slowly and deliberately, �I suppose you want a groom to take the entire charge and management of your stable�a stud groom, in short?� �Yarse, I s�pose so,� replied Billy, not knowing exactly what he wanted, and wishing his Mamma hadn�t sent him such a swell. �Well, then, sir,� continued Mr. Gaiters, casting his eyes up to the dirty ceiling, and giving his chin a dry shave with his disengaged hand; �Well, then, sir, I flatter myself I can fulfil that office with credit to myself and satisfaction to my employer.� �Yarse,� assented Billy, thinking there would be very little satisfaction in the matter. �Buy the forage, hire the helpers, do everything appertaining to the department,�in fact, just as I did with the Honourable Captain Swellington.� �Humph,� said Billy, recollecting that his Mamma always told him never to let servants buy anything for him that he could help. �Might I ask if you buy your own horses?� inquired Mr. Gaiters, after a pause. �Why, yarse, I do,� replied Billy; �at least I have so far.� �Hum! That would be a consideration,� muttered Gaiters, compressing his mouth, as if he had now come to an obstacle; �that would be a consideration. Not that there�s any benefit or advantage to be derived from buying horses,� continued he, resuming his former tone; �but when a man�s character�s at stake, it�s agreeable, desirable, in fact, that he should be intrusted with the means of supporting it. I should like to buy the horses,� continued he, looking earnestly at Billy, as if to ascertain the amount of his gullibility. �Well,� drawled Billy, �I don�t care if you do,� thinking there wouldn�t be many to buy. �Oh!� gasped Gaiters, relieved by the announcement; he always thought he had lost young Mr. Easyman�s place by a similar demand, but still he couldn�t help making it. It wouldn�t have been doing justice to the Bank of England note character, indeed, if he hadn�t. �Oh!� repeated he, emboldened by success, and thinking he had met with the right sort of man. He then proceeded to sum up his case in his mind,�forage, helpers, horses, horses, helpers, forage;�he thought that was all he required; yes, he thought it was all he required, and the Bank of England note character would be properly supported. He then came to the culminating point of the cash. Just as he was clearing his throat with a prefatory �_Hre_� for this grand consideration, a sudden rush and banging of doors foreboding mischief resounded through the house, and something occurred��that we will tell in another chapter. CHAPTER XLVII. A CATASTROPHE.�A T�TE-�-T�TE DINNER ON, Sir, Sir, please step this way! please step this way!� exclaimed the _delirium tremems_ footman, rushing coatless into the room where our hero and Mr. Gaiters were,�his shirt-sleeves tucked up, and a knife in hand, as if he had been killing a pig, though in reality he was fresh from the knife-board. �Oh, Sir, Sir, please step this way!� repeated he, at once demolishing the delicate discussion at which our friend and Mr. Gaiters had arrived. �What�s ha-ha-happened?� demanded Billy, turning deadly pale; for his cares were so few, that he couldn�t direct his fears to any one point in particular. �Please, sir, your �oss has dropped down in a f-f-fit!� replied the man, all in a tremble. �Fit!� ejaculated Billy, brushing past Gaiters, and hurrying out of the room. �Fit!� repeated Gaiters, turning round with comfortable composure, looking at the man as much as to say, what do you know about it? �Yes, f-f-fit!� repeated the footman, brandishing his knife, and running after Billy as though he were going to slay him. Dashing along the dark passages, breaking his shins over one of those unlucky coal-scuttles that are always in the way, Billy fell into an outward-bound stream of humanity,�Mrs. Margerum, Barbara the housemaid, Mary the Lanndrymaid, Jones the gardener�s boy, and others, all hurrying to the scene of action. Already there was a ring formed round the door, of bare-armed helpers, and miscellaneous hangers-on, looking over each other�s shoulders, who opened a way for Billy as he advanced. The horse was indeed down, but not in a fit; for he was dying, and expired just as Billy entered. There lay the glazy-eyed hundred-guinea Napoleon the Great, showing his teeth, reduced to the mere value of his skin; so great is the difference between a dead horse and a live one. �Bad job!� said Wetun, who was on his knees at its head, looking up; �bad job!� repeated he, trying to look dismal. �What! is he dead?� demanded Billy, who could hardly realise the fact. �Dead, ay�he�ll never move more,� replied Wetun, showing his fast-stiffening neck. �By Jove! why didn�t you send for the doctor?� demanded Billy. �Doctor! we had the doctor,� replied Wetun, �but he could do nothin� for him.� �Nothin� for him!� retorted Billy; �why not?� �Because he�s rotten,� replied Wetun. �Rotten! how can that be?� asked our friend, adding, �I only bought him the other day!� �If you open �im you�ll find he�s as black as ink in his inside, rejoined the groom, now getting up in the stall and rubbing his knees. �Well, but what�s that with?� demanded Billy. �It surely must be owing to something. Horses don�t die that way for nothing.� �Owing to a bad constitution�harn�t got no stamina,� replied Wetun, looking down upon the dead animal. Billy was posed with the answer, and stood mute for a while. �That �oss �as never been rightly well sin he com�d,� now observed Joe Bates, the helper who looked after him, over the heads of the door-circle. �I didn�t like his looks when he com�d in from �unting that day,� continued Tom Wisp, another helper. �No, nor the day arter nonther,� assented Jack Strong, who was a capital hand at finding fault, and could slur over his work with anybody. Just then Mr. Gaiters arrived; and a deferential entrance was opened for his broadcloth by the group before the door. The great Mr. Gaiters entered. Treating the dirty blear-eyed Wetun more as a helper than an equal, he advanced deliberately up the stall and proceeded to examine the dead horse. He looked first up his nostrils, next at his eye, then at his neck to see if he had been bled. �I could have cured that horse if I�d had him in time,� observed he to Billy with a shake of the head. �Neither you nor no man under the sun could ha� done it,� asserted Mr. Wetun, indignant at the imputation. �I could though�at least he never should have been in that state,� replied Gaiters coolly. �I say you couldn�t!� retorted Wetun, putting his arms a-kimbo, and sideling up to the daring intruder, a man who hadn�t even asked leave to come into his stable. A storm being imminent, our friend slipped off, and Sir Moses arrived from Henerey Brown &, Co.�s just at the nick of time to prevent a fight. So much for a single night in a bad stable, a result that our readers will do well to remember when they ask their friends to visit them��Love me, love my horse,� being an adage more attended to in former times than it is now. �Ah, my dear Pringle! I�m so sorry to hear about your horse! go sorry to hear about your horse!� exclaimed Sir Moses, rushing forward to greet our friend with a consolatory shake of the hand, as he came sauntering into the library, flat candlestick in hand, before dinner. �It�s just the most unfortunate thing I ever knew in my life; and I wouldn�t have had it happen at my house for all the money in the world�dom�d if I would,� added he, with a downward blow of his fist. Billy could only reply with one of his usual monotonous �y-a-r-ses.� �However,� said the Baronet, �it shall not prevent your hunting to-morrow, for I�ll mount you with all the pleasure in the world�all the pleasure in the world,� repeated he, with a flourish of his hand. �Thank ye,� replied Billy, alarmed at the prospect; �but the fact is, the Major expects me back at Yammerton Grange, and��� �That�s nothin!� interrupted Sir Moses; �that�s nothin; hunt, and go there after�all in the day�s work. Meet at the kennel, find a fox in five minutes, have your spin, and go to the Grange afterwards.� �O, indeed, yes, you shall,� continued he, settling it so, �shall have the best horse in my stable�Pegasus, or Atalanta, or Old Jack, or any of them�dom�d if you shalln�t�so that matter�s settled.� �But, but, but,� hesitated our alarmed friend, �I�I�I shall have no way of getting there after hunting.� �O, I�ll manage that too,� replied Sir Moses, now in the generous mood. �I�ll manage that too�shall have the dog-cart�the thing we were in to-day; my lad shall go with you and bring it back, and that�ll convey you and your traps and all altogether. Only sorry I can�t ask you to stay another week, but the fact is I�ve got to go to my friend Lord Lundyfoote�s for Monday�s hunting at Harker Crag,��the fact being that Sir Moses had had enough of Billy�s company and had invited himself there to get rid of him. The noiseless Mr. Bankhead then opened the door with a bow, and they proceeded to a tête-à-tête dinner, Cuddy Flintoff having wisely sent for his things from Heslop�s house, and taken his departure to town under pretence, as he told Sir Moses in a note, of seeing Tommy White�s horses sold. Cuddy was one of that numerous breed of whom every sportsman knows at least one�namely, a man who is always wanting a horse, a �do you know of a horse that will suit me?� sort of a man. Charley Flight, who always walks the streets like a lamplighter and doesn�t like to be checked in his stride, whenever he sees Cuddy crawling along Piccadilly towards the Corner, puts on extra steam, exclaiming as he nears him, �How are you, Cuddy, how are you? I _don�t_ know of a horse that will suit you!� So he gets past without a pull-up. But we are keeping the soup waiting�also the fish�cod sounds rather�for Mrs. Margerum not calculating on more than the usual three days of country hospitality,�the rest day, the drest day, and the pressed day,�had run out of fresh fish. Indeed the whole repast bespoke the exhausted larder peculiar to the end of the week, and an adept in dishes might have detected some old friends with new faces. Some _rechauffers_ however are quite as good if not better than the original dishes�hashed venison for instance�though in this case, when Sir Moses inquired for the remains of the Sunday�s haunch, he was told that Monsieur had had it for his lunch�Jack being a safe bird to lay it upon, seeing that he had not returned from the race. If Jack had been in the way then, the cat would most likely have been the culprit, or old Libertine, who had the run of the house. Neither the Baronet nor Billy however was in any great humour for eating, each having cares of magnitude to oppress his thoughts, and it was not until Sir Moses had imbibed the best part of a pint of champagne besides sherry at intervals, that he seemed at all like himself. So he picked and nibbled and dom�d and dirted as many plates as he could. Dinner being at length over, he ordered a bottle of the green-sealed claret (his best), and drawing his chair to the fire proceeded to crack walnuts and pelt the shells at particular coals in the fire with a vehemence that showed the occupation of his mind. An observing eye could almost tell which were levelled at Henerey Brown, which at Cuddy Flintoff, and which again at the impudent owner of Tippy Tom. At length, having exhausted his spleen, he made a desperate dash at the claret-jug, and pouring himself out a bumper, pushed it across to our friend, with a �help yourself,� as he sent it. The ticket-of-leave butler, who understood wine, had not lost his skill during his long residence at Portsmouth, and brought this in with the bouquet in great perfection. The wine was just as it should be, neither too warm nor too cold; and as Sir Moses quaffed a second glass, his equanimity began to revive. When not thinking about money, his thoughts generally took a sporting turn, Horses and hounds, and the system of kennel, Leicestershire saga, and the hounds of old Moynell, as the song says; and the loss of Billy�s horse now obtruded on his mind. �How the deuce it had happened he couldn�t imagine; his man, Wetun,�and there was no better judge�said he seemed perfectly well, and a better stable couldn�t be than the one he was in; indeed he was standing alongside of his own favourite mare, Whimpering Kate,��faith, he wished he had told them to take her out, in case it was anything infectious,�only it looked more like internal disease than anything else.�Wished he mightn�t be rotten. The Major was an excellent man,�cute,��� and here he checked himself, recollecting that Billy was going back there on the morrow. �A young man,� continued he, �should be careful who he dealt with, for many what were called highly honourable men were very unscrupulous about horses;� and a sudden thought struck Sir Moses, which, with the aid of another bottle, he thought he might try to carry out. So apportioning the remains of the jug equitably between Billy and himself, he drew the bell, and desired the ticket-of-leave butler to bring in another bottle and a devilled biscuit. �That wine won�t hurt you,� continued he, addressing our friend, �that wine won�t hurt you, it�s not the nasty loaded stuff they manufacture for the English market, but pure, unadulterated juice of the grape, without a headache in a gallon of it so saying, Sir Moses quaffed off his glass and set it down with evident satisfaction, feeling almost a match for the owner of Tippy Tom. He then moved his chair a little on one side, and resumed his contemplation of the fire,�the blue lights rising among the red,�the gas escaping from the coal,�the clear flame flickering with the draught. He thought he saw his way,�yes, he thought he saw his way, and forthwith prevented any one pirating his ideas, by stirring the fire. Mr. Bankhead then entered with the bottle and the biscuit, and, placing them on the table, withdrew. �Come, Pringle!� cried Sir Moses cheerfully, seizing the massive cut-glass decanter, �let�s drink the healths of the young ladies at��, you know where,� looking knowingly at our friend, who blushed. �We�ll have a bumper to that,� continued he, pouring himself out one, and passing the bottle to Billy. �The young ladies at Yammerton Grange!� continued Sir Moses, holding the glass to the now sparkling fire before he transferred its bright ruby-coloured contents to his thick lips. He then quaffed it off with a smack. �The young ladies at Yammerton Grange!� faltered Billy, after filling himself a bumper. �Nice girls those, dom�d if they�re not,� observed the Baronet, now breaking the devilled biscuit. �You must take care what you�re about there, though, for the old lady doesn�t stand any nonsense; the Major neither.� Billy said he wasn�t going to try any on��. �No�but they�ll try it on with you,� retorted Sir Moses; �mark my words if they don�t.� �O, but I�m only there for hunting,� observed Billy, timidly. �I dare say,� replied Sir Moses, with a jerk of his head, �I dare say,�but it�s very agreeable to talk to a pretty girl when you come in, and those _are_ devilish pretty girls, let me tell you,�dom�d if they�re not,�only one talk leads to another talk, and ultimately Mamma talks about a small gold ring.� Billy was frightened, for he felt the truth of what Sir Moses said. They then sat for some minutes in silence, ruminating on their own affairs,�Billy thinking he would be careful of the girls, and wondering how he could escape Sir Moses�s offer of a bump on the morrow,�Sir Moses thinking he would advance that performance a step. He now led the way. �You�ll be wanting a horse to go with the Major�s harriers,� observed he; �and I�ve got the very animal for that sort of work; that grey horse of mine, the Lord Mayor, in the five-stalled stable on the right; the safest, steadiest animal ever man got on to; and I�ll make you a present of him, dom�d if I won�t; for I�m more hurt at the loss of yours than words can express; wouldn�t have had such a thing happen at my house on any account; so that�s a bargain, and will make all square; for the grey�s an undeniable good �un�worth half-a-dozen of the Major�s�and will do you some credit, for a young man on his preferment should always study appearances, and ride handsome horses; and the grey is one of the handsomest I ever saw. Lord Tootleton, up in Neck-and-crop-shire, who I got him of, gave three �under�d for him at the hammer, solely, I believe, on account of his looks, for he had never seen him out except in the ring, which is all my eye, for telling you whether a horse is a hunter or not; but, however, he _is_ a hunter, and no mistake, and you are most heartily welcome to him, dom�d if you�re not; and I�m deuced glad that it occurred to me to give him you, for I shall now sleep quite comfortable; so help yourself, and we�ll drink Foxhunting,� saying which, Sir Moses, who had had about enough wine, filled on a liberal heel-tap, and again passed the bottle to his guest. Now Billy, who had conned over the matter in his bedroom before dinner, had come to the conclusion that he had had about hunting enough, and that the loss of Napoleon the Great afforded a favourable opportunity for retiring from the chase; indeed, he had got rid of the overpowering Mr. Gaiters on that plan, and he was not disposed to be cajoled into a continuance of the penance by the gift of a horse; so as soon as he could get a word in sideways, he began hammering away at an excuse, thanking Sir Moses most energetically for his liberality, but expressing his inability to accept such a magnificent offer. Sir Moses, however, who did not believe in any one refusing a gift, adhered pertinaciously to his promise,��Oh, indeed, he should have him, he wouldn�t be easy if he didn�t take him,� and ringing the bell he desired the footman to tell Wetun to see if Mr. Pringle�s saddle would fit the Lord Mayor, and if it didn�t, to let our friend have one of his in the morning, and �here!� added he, as the man was retiring, �bring in tea.��And Sir Moses being peremptory in his presents, Billy was compelled to remain under pressure of the horse.�So after a copious libation of tea the couple hugged and separated for the night, Sir Moses exclaiming �Breakfast at nine, mind!� as Billy sauntered up stairs, while the Baronet ran off to his study to calculate what Henerey Brown & Co. had done him out of. CHAPTER XLVIII. ROUGIER�S MYSTERIOUS LODGINGS�THE GIFT HORSE. MR. Gallon�s liberality after the race with Mr. Flintoff was so great that Monsieur Rougier was quite overcome with his kindness and had to be put to bed at the last public-house they stopped at, viz.�the sign of the Nightingale on the Ashworth road. Independently of the brandy not being particularly good, Jack took so much of it that he slept the clock round, and it was past nine the next morning ere he awoke. It then took him good twenty minutes to make out where he was; he first of all thought he was at Boulogne, then in Paris, next at the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover, and lastly at the Coal-hole in the Strand. Presently the recollection of the race began to dawn upon him�the red jacket�the grey horse, Cuddy in distress, and gradually he recalled the general outline of the performance, but he could not fill it up so as to make a connected whole, or to say where he was. He then looked at his watch, and finding it was half-past four, he concluded it had stopped,�an opinion that was confirmed on holding it to his ear; so without more ado, he bounded out of bed in a way that nearly sent him through the gaping boards of the dry-rotting floor of the little attic in which they had laid him. He then made his way to the roof-raised window to see what was outside. A fine wet muddy road shone below him, along which a straw-cart was rolling; beyond the road was a pasture, then a turnip field; after which came a succession of green, brown, and drab fields, alternating and undulating away to the horizon, varied with here and there a belt or tuft of wood. Jack was no wiser than he was, but hearing sounds below, he made for the door, and opening the little flimsy barrier stood listening like a terrier with its ear at a rat-hole. These were female voices, and he thus addressed them��I say, who�s there? Theodosia, my dear,� continued he, speaking down stairs, �vot�s de time o� day, my sweet?� The lady thus addressed as Theodosia was Mrs. Windybank, a very forbidding tiger-faced looking woman, desperately pitted with the small-pox, who was not in the best of humours in consequence of the cat having got to the cream-bowl; so all the answer she made to Jack�s polite enquiry was, �Most ten.� �Most ten!� repeated Jack, �most ten! how the doose can that be?� �It is hooiver,� replied she, adding, �you may look if you like.� �No, my dear, I�ll take your word for it,� replied Jack; �but tell me, Susannah,� continued he, �whose house is this I�m at?� �Whose house is�t?� replied the voice; �whose house is�t? why, Jonathan Windybank�s�you knar that as well as I do.� �De lady�s not pleasant,� muttered Jack to himself; so returning into the room, he began to array himself in his yesterday�s garments, Mr. Gallon�s boots and leathers, his own coat with Finlater�s cap, in which he presently came creaking down stairs and confronted the beauty with whom he had had the flying colloquy. The interview not being at all to her advantage, and as she totally denied all knowledge of Pangburn Park, and �de great Baronet vot kept the spotted dogs,� Monsieur set off on foot to seek it; and after divers askings, mistakings, and deviations, he at length arrived on Rossington hill just as the servants� hall dinner-bell was ringing, the walk being much to the detriment of Mr. Gallon�s boots. In consequence of Monsieur�s _laches_, as the lawyers would say, Mr. Pringle was thrown on the resources of the house the next morning; but Sir Moses being determined to carry out his intention with regard to the horse, sent the footman to remind Billy that he was going to hunt, and to get him his things if required. So our friend was obliged to adorn for the chase instead of retiring from further exertion in that line as he intended; and with the aid of the footman he made a very satisfactory toilette,�his smart scarlet, a buff vest, a green cravat, correct shirt-collar, with unimpeachable leathers and boots. Though this was the make-believe day of the week, Sir Moses was all hurry and bustle as usual, and greeted our hero as he came down stairs with the greatest enthusiasm, promising, of all things in the world! to show him a run. �Now bring breakfast! bring breakfast!� continued he, as if they had got twenty miles to go to cover; and in came urn and eggs, and ham, and cakes, and tongue, and toast, and buns, all the concomitants of the meal.�At it Sir Moses went as if he had only ten minutes to eat it in, inviting his guest to fall-to also. Just as they were in the midst of the meal a horse was heard to snort outside, and on looking up the great Lord Mayor was seen passing up the Park. �Ah, there�s your horse!� exclaimed Sir Moses, �there�s your horse! been down to the shop to get his shoes looked to,� though in reality Sir Moses had told the groom to do just what he was doing, viz.�to pass him before the house at breakfast-time without his clothing. The Lord Mayor was indeed a sort of horse that a youngster might well be taken in with, grey, with a beautiful head and neck, and an elegantly set-on tail. He stepped out freely and gaily, and looked as lively as a lark. He was, however, as great an impostor as Napoleon the Great; for, independently of being troubled with the Megrims, he was a shocking bad hack, and a very few fields shut him up as a hunter. �Well now,� said Sir Moses, pausing in his meal, with the uplifted knife and fork of admiration, �that, to my mind, is the handsomest horse in the country,�I don�t care where the next handsomest is.�Just look at his figure, just look at his action.�Did you ever see anything so elegant? To my mind he�s as near perfection as possible, and what�s more, he�s as good as he looks, and all I�ve got to say is, that you are most heartily welcome to him.� �O, thank�e,� replied Billy, �thank�e, but I couldn�t think of accepting him,�I couldn�t think of accepting him indeed.� �O, but you shall,� said Sir Moses, resuming his eating, �O but you shall, so there�s an end of the matter.�And now have some more tea,� whereupon he proceeded to charge Billy�s cup in the awkward sort of way men generally do when they meddle with the tea-pot. Sir Moses, having now devoured his own meal, ran off to his study, telling Billy he would call him when it was time to go, and our friend proceeded to dandle and saunter, and think what he would do with his gift horse. He was certainly a handsome one�handsomer than Napoleon, and grey was a smarter colour than bay�might not be quite so convenient for riding across country on, seeing the color was conspicuous, but for a hot day in the Park nothing could be more cool or delightful. And he thought it was extremely handsome of Sir Moses giving it to him, more, he felt, than nine-tenths of the people in the world would have done. Our friend�s reverie was presently interrupted by Sir Moses darting back, pen and paper in hand, exclaiming, �I�ll tell ye what, my dear Pringle! I�ll tell ye what! there shall be no obligation, and you shall give me fifty puns for the grey and pay for him when you please. But _mark_ me!� added he, holding up his forefinger and looking most scrutinisingly at our friend, �_Only on one condition, mind! only on one condition, mind!_ that you give me the refusal of him if ever you want to part with him;� and without waiting for an answer, he placed the paper before our friend, and handing him the pen, said, �There, then, sign that I. O. U.� And Billy having signed it, Sir Moses snatched it up and disappeared, leaving our friend to a renewal of his cogitations. 365m _Original Size_ Sir Moses having accomplished the grand �do,� next thought he would back out of the loan of the dog-cart. For this purpose he again came hurrying back, pen in hand, exclaiming, �Oh dear, he was so sorry, but it had just occurred to him that he wanted the mare to go to Lord Lundyfoote�s; however, I�ll make it all square, I�ll make it all square,� continued he; �I�ll tell Jenkins, the postman, to send a fly as soon as he gets to Hinton, which, I make no doubt, will be here by the time we come in from hunting, and it will take you and your traps all snug and comfortable; for a dog-cart, after all, is but a chilly concern at this time of year, and I shouldn�t like you to catch cold going from my house;� and without waiting for an answer, he pulled-to the door and hurried back to his den. Billy shook his head, for he didn�t like being put off that way, and muttered to himself, �I wonder who�ll pay for it though.� However, on reflection, he thought perhaps he would be as comfortable in a fly as finding his way across country on horseback; and as he had now ascertained that Monsieur could ride, whether or not he could drive, he settled that he might just as well take the grey to Yammerton Grange as not. This then threw him back on his position with regard to the horse, which was not so favourable as it at first appeared; indeed, he questioned whether he had done wisely in signing the paper, his Mamma having always cautioned him to be careful how he put his name to anything. Still, he felt he couldn�t have got off without offending Sir Moses; and after all, it was more like a loan than a sale, seeing that he had not paid for him, and Sir Moses would take him back if he liked. Altogether he thought he might be worse off, and, considering that Lord Tootleton had given three hundred for the horse, he certainly must be worth fifty. There is nothing so deceiving as price. Only tell a youngster that a horse has cost a large sum, and he immediately looks at him, while he would pass him by if he stood at a low figure. Having belonged to a lord, too, made him so much more acceptable to Billy. A loud crack of a whip, accompanied by a �Now, Pringle!� presently resounded through the house, and our friend again found himself called upon to engage in an act of horsemanship. �Coming!� cried he, starting from the little mirror above the scanty grey marble mantel-piece, in which he was contemplating his moustachios; �Coming!� and away he strode, with the desperate energy of a man bent on braving the worst. His cap, whip, gloves, and mits, were all laid ready for him on the entrance hall-table; and seizing them in a cluster, he proceeded to decorate himself as he followed Sir Moses along the intricate passages leading to the stable-yard. CHAPTER XLIX. THE SHAM DAY. SATURDAY is a very different day in the country to what it is in London. In London it is the lazy day of the week, whereas it is the busy one in the country. It is marked in London by the coming of the clean-linen carts, and the hurrying about of Hansoms with gentlemen with umbrellas and small carpet-bags, going to the steamers and stations for pleasure; whereas in the country everybody is off to the parliament of his local capital on business. All the markets in Hit-im and Hold-im shire were held on a Saturday, and several in Featherbedfordshire; and as everybody who has nothing to do is always extremely busy, great gatherings were the result. This circumstance made Sir Moses hit upon Saturday for his fourth, or make-believe day with the hounds, inasmuch as few people would be likely to come, and if they did, he knew how to get rid of them. The consequence was, that the court-yard at Pangburn Park exhibited a very different appearance, on this occasion, to what it would have done had the hounds met there on any other day of the week. Two red coats only, and those very shabby ones, with very shady horses under them�viz., young Mr. Billikins of Red Hill Lodge, and his cousin Captain Luff of the navy (the latter out for the first time in his life), were all that greeted our sportsmen; the rest of the field being attired in shooting-jackets, tweeds, antigropolos and other anti-fox-hunting looking things. �Good morning, gentlemen! good morning!� cried Sir Moses, waving his hand from the steps at the promiscuous throng; and without condescending to particularise any one, he hurried across for his horse, followed by our friend. Sir Moses was going to ride Old Jack, one of the horses he had spoken of for Billy, a venerable brown, of whose age no one�s memory about the place supplied any information�though when he first came all the then wiseacres prophesied a speedy decline. Still Old Jack had gone on from season to season, never apparently getting older, and now looking as likely to go on as ever. The old fellow having come pottering out of the stable and couched to his load, the great Lord Mayor came darting forward as if anxious for the fray. �It�s _your_ saddle, sir,� said Wetun, touching his forehead with his finger, as he held on by the stirrup for Billy to mount. Up then went our friend into the old seat of suffering. �There!� exclaimed Sir Moses, as he got his feet settled in the stirrups; �there, you do look well! If Miss �um� sees you,� continued he, with a knowing wink, �it�ll be all over with you;� so saying, Sir Moses touched Old Jack gently with the spur, and proceeded to the slope of the park, where Findlater and the whips now had the hounds. Tom Findlater, as we said before, was an excellent huntsman, but he had his peculiarities, and in addition to that of getting drunk, he sometimes required to be managed by the rule of contrary, and made to believe that Sir Moses wanted him to do the very reverse of what he really did. Having been refused leave to go to Cleaver the butcher�s christening-supper at the sign of the Shoulder of Mutton, at Kimberley, Sir Moses anticipated that this would be one of his perverse days, and so he began taking measures accordingly. �Good morning, Tom,� said he, as huntsman and whips now sky-scraped to his advance��morning all of you,� added he, waving a general salute to the hound-encircling group. �Now, Tom,� said he, pulling up and fumbling at his horn, �I�ve been telling Mr. Pringle that we�ll get him a gallop so as to enable him to arrive at Yammerton Grange before dark.� �Yes, Sir Moses,� replied Tom, with a rap of his cap-peak, thinking he would take very good care that he didn�t. �Now whether will Briarey Banks or the Reddish Warren be the likeliest place for a find?� �Neither, Sir Moses, neither,� replied Tom confidently, �Tipthorne�s the place for us.� This was just what Sir Moses wanted. �Tipthorne, you think, do you?� replied he, musingly. �Tipthorne, you think�well, and where next?� �Shillington, Sir Moses, and Halstead Hill, and so on to Hatchington Wood.� �Good!� replied the Baronet, �Good!� adding, �then let�s be going.� At a whistle and a waive of his hand the watchful hounds darted up, and Tom taking the lead, the mixed cavalcade swept after them over the now yellow-grassed park in a north-easterly direction, Captain Luff working his screw as if he were bent on treading on the hounds� stems. There being no one out to whom Sir Moses felt there would be any profitable investment of attention, he devoted himself to our hero, complimenting him on his appearance, and on the gallant bearing of his steed, declaring that of all the neat horses he had ever set eyes on the Lord Mayor was out-and-out the neatest. So with compliments to Billy, and muttered �cusses� at Luff, they trotted down Oxclose Lane, through the little village of Homerton, past Dewfield Lawn, over Waybridge Common, shirking Upwood toll-bar, and down Cornforth Bank to Burford, when Tipthorne stood before them. It was a round Billesdon Coplow-like hill, covered with stunted oaks, and a nice warm lying gorse sloping away to the south; but Mr. Tadpole�s keeper having the rabbits, he was seldom out of it, and it was of little use looking there for a fox. That being the case, of course it was more necessary to make a great pretension, so halting noiselessly behind the high red-berried hedge, dividing the pasture from the gorse, Tom despatched his whips to their points, and then touching his cap to Sir Moses, said, �P�raps Mr. Pringle would like to ride in and see him find.� �Ah, to be sure,� replied Sir Moses, �let�s both go in,� whereupon Tom opened the bridle-gate, and away went the hounds with a dash that as good as said if we don�t get a fox we�ll get a rabbit at all events. �A fox for a guinea!� cried Findlater, cheering them, and looking at his watch as if he had him up already. �A fox for a guinea!� repeated he, thinking how nicely he was selling his master. �Keep your eye on this side,� cried Sir Moses to Billy. �he�ll cross directly!� Terrible announcement. How our friend did quake. �_Yap, yap, yap_,� now went the shrill note of Tartar, the tarrier, �_Yough, yough, yough_� followed the deep tone of young Venturesome, close in pursuit of a bunny. �_Crack!_� went a heavy whip, echoing through the air and resounding at the back of the hill. All again was still, and Tom advanced up the cover, standing erect in his stirrups, looking as if half-inclined to believe it was a fox after all. �_Eloo in! Eloo in!_� cried he, capping Talisman and Wonderful across. �Yoicks wind �im! yoicks push him up!� continued he, thinking what a wonderful performance it would be if they did find. �Squeak, yap, yell, squeak,� now went the well-known sound of a hound in a trap. It is Labourer, and a whip goes diving into the sea of gorse to the rescue. �Oh, dom those traps,� cries Sir Moses, as the clamour ceases, adding, �no fox here, I told you so,� adding, �should have gone to the Warren.� He then took out his box-wood horn and stopped the performance by a most discordant blast. The hounds came slinking out to the summons, some of them licking their lips as if they had not been there altogether for nothing. �Where to, now, please Sir Moses?� asked Tom, with a touch of his cap, as soon as he had got them all out. 371m _Original Size_ �_Tally-ho!_� cries Captain Luff, in a most stentorian strain�adding immediately, �Oh no! I�m mistaken, _It�s a hare!_� as half the hounds break away to his cry. �Oh, dom you and your noise,� cries Sir Moses, in well-feigned disgust, adding��Why don�t you put your spectacles on?� Luff looks foolish, for he doesn�t know what to say, and the excitement dies out in a laugh at the Captain�s expense. �Where to, now, please, Sir Moses?� again asks Tom, chuckling at his master�s displeasure, and thinking how much better it would have been if he had let him go to the supper. �Where you please,� growled the Baronet, scowling at Luff�s nasty rusty Napoleons��where you please, you said Shillington, didn�t you�anywhere, only let us find a fox,� added he, as if he really wanted one. Tom then got his horse short by the head, and shouldering his whip, trotted off briskly, as if bent on retrieving the day. So he went through the little hamlet of Hawkesworth over Dippingham water meadows, bringing Blobbington mill-race into the line, much to Billy�s discomfiture, and then along the Hinton and London turnpike to the sign of the Plough at the blacksmith�s shop at Shillington. The gorse was within a stone�s throw of the �Public,� so Luff and some of the thirsty ones pulled up to wet their whistles and light the clay pipes of gentility. The gorse was very open, and the hounds ran through it almost before the sots had settled what they would have, and there being a bye-road at the far end, leading by a slight _détour_ to Halstead Hill, Sir Moses hurried them out, thinking to shake off some of them by a trot. They therefore slipped away with scarcely a crack of the whip, let alone the twang of a horn. �Bad work this,� said Sir Moses, spurring and reining up alongside of Billy, �bad work this; that huntsman of mine,� added he, in an under tone, �is the most obstinate fool under the sun, and let me give you a bit of advice,� continued he, laying hold of our friend�s arm, as if to enforce it. �If ever you keep hounds, always give orders and never ask opinions. Now, Mister Findlater!� hallooed he, to the bobbing cap in advance, �Now, Mister Findlater! you�re well called Findlater, by Jove, for I think you�ll never find at all. Halstead Hill, I suppose, next?� �Yes, Sir Moses,� replied Tom, with a half-touch of his cap, putting on a little faster, to get away, as he thought, from the spray of his master�s wrath. And so with this comfortable game at cross purposes, master and servant passed over what is still called Lingfield common (though it now grows turnips instead of gorse), and leaving Cherry-trees Windmill to the left, sunk the hill at Drovers� Heath, and crossing the bridge at the Wellingburn, the undulating form of Halstead Hill stood full before them. Tom then pulled up into a walk, and contemplated the rugged intricacies of its craggy bush-dotted face. �If there�s a fox in the country one would think he�d be here,� observed he, in a general sort of way, well knowing that Mr. Testyfield�s keeper took better care of them than that. �Gently hurrying!� hallooed he, now cracking his whip as the hounds pricked their ears, and seemed inclined to break away to an outburst of children from the village school below. Tom then took the hounds to the east end of the hill, where the lying began, and drew them along the face of it with the usual result, �_Nil_.� Not even a rabbit. �Well, that�s queer,� said he, with well feigned chagrin, as Pillager, Petulant, and Ravager appeared on the bare ground to the west, leading out the rest of the pack on their lines. They were all presently clustering in view again. A slight twang of the horn brought them pouring down to the hill to our obstinate huntsman just as Captain Luff and Co. hove in sight on the Wellingburn Bridge, riding as boldly as refreshed gentlemen generally do. There was nothing for it then but Hatchington Wood, with its deep holding rides and interminable extent. There is a Hatchington Wood in every hunt, wild inhospitable looking thickets, that seem as if they never knew an owner�s care, where men light their cigars and gather in groups, well knowing that whatever sport the hounds may have, theirs is over for the day. Places in which a man may gallop his horse�s tail off, and not hear or see half as much as those do who sit still. Into it Tom now cheered his hounds, again thinking how much better it would have been if Sir Moses had let him go to the supper. �_Cover hoick! Cover hoick!_� cheered he to his hounds, as they came to the rickety old gate. �I wouldn�t ha� got drunk,� added he to himself. �_Yoi, wind him! Yoi, rouse him, my boys!_ what �arm could it do him, my going, I wonders?� continued he to himself. �Yoi, try for him, Desp�rate, good lass! Desp�rate bad job my not gettin�, I know,� added he, rubbing his nose on the back of his hand; and so with cheers to his hounds and commentaries on Sir Moses�s mean conduct, the huntsman proceeded from ride to road and from road to ride, varied with occasional dives into the fern and the rough, to exhort and encourage his hounds to rout out a fox; not that he cared much now whether he found one or not, for the cover had long existed on the reputation of a run that took place twelve years before, and it was not likely that a place so circumstanced would depart from its usual course on that day. There is nothing certain, however, about a fox-hunt, but uncertainty; the worst-favoured days sometimes proving the best, and the best-favoured ones sometimes proving the worst. We dare say, if our sporting readers would ransack their memories, they will find that most of their best days have been on unpromising ones. So it was on the present occasion, only no one saw the run but Tom and the first whip. Coming suddenly upon a fine travelling fox, at the far corner of the cover, they slipped away with him down wind, and had a bona fide five and thirty minutes, with a kill, in Lord Ladythorne�s country, within two fields of his famous gorse cover, at Cockmere. �Ord! rot ye, but ye should ha� seen that, if you�d let me go to the supper,� cried Tom, as he threw himself off his lathered tail-quivering horse to pick up his fox, adding, �I knows when to blow the horn and when not.� Meanwhile Sir Moses, having got into a wrangle with Jacky Phillips about the price of a pig, sate on his accustomed place on the rising ground by the old tumble-down farm-buildings, wrangling, and haggling, and declaring it was a �do.� In the midst of his vehemence, Robin Snowball�s camp of roystering, tinkering besom-makers came hattering past; and Robin, having a contract with Sir Moses for dog horses, gave his ass a forwarding bang, and ran up to inform his patron that �the hunds had gone away through Piercefield plantins iver see lang since:��a fact that Robin was well aware of, having been stealing besom-shanks in them at the time. �Oh, the devil!� shrieked Sir Moses, as if he was shot. �Oh, the devil!� continued he, wringing his hands, thinking how Tom would be bucketing Crusader now that he was out of sight; and catching up his horse, he stuck spurs in his sides, and went clattering up the stony cross-road to the west, as hard as ever the old Jack could lay legs to the ground, thinking what a wigging he would give Tom if he caught him. �Hark!� continued he, pulling short up across the road, and nearly shooting Billy into his pocket with the jerk of his suddenly stopped horse, �Hark!� repeated he, holding up his hand, �Isn�t that the horn?� �Oh, dom it! it�s Parker, the postman,� added he,��what business has the beggar to make such a row!� for, like all noisy people, Sir Moses had no idea of anybody making a noise but himself. He then set his horse agoing again, and was presently standing in his stirrups, tearing up the wretched, starvation, weed-grown ground outside the cover. Having gained a sufficient elevation, he again pulled up, and turning short round, began surveying the country. All was quiet and tranquil. The cattle had their heads to the ground, the sheep were scattered freely over the fields, and the teams were going lazily over the clover-lays, leaving shiny furrows behind them. �Well, that�s a sell, at all events!� said he, dropping his reins. �Be b�und to say they are right into the heart of Featherbedfordshire by this time,�most likely at Upton Moss in Woodberry Yale,�as fine a country as ever man crossed,�and to think that that wretched deluded man has it all to himself!�I�d draw and quarter him if I had him, dom�d if I wouldn�t,� added Sir Moses, cutting frantically at the air with his thong-gathered whip. Our friend Billy, on the other hand, was all ease and composure. He had escaped the greatest punishment that could befall him, and was so clean and comfortable, that he resolved to surprise his fair friends at Yammerton Grange in his pink, instead of changing as he intended. Sir Moses, having strained his eye-balls about the country in vain, at length dropped down in his saddle, and addressing the few darkly-clad horsemen around him with, �Well, gentlemen, I�m afraid it�s all over for the day,� adding, �Come, Pringle, let us be going,� he poked his way past them, and was presently retracing his steps through the wood, picking up a lost hound or two as he went. And still he was so loth to give it up, that he took Forester Hill in his way, to try if he could see anything of them; but it was all calm and blank as before; and at length he reached Pangburn Park in a very discontented mood. In the court-yard stood the green fly that had to convey our friend back to fairy-land, away from the red coats, silk jackets and other the persecutions of pleasure, to the peaceful repose of the Major and his �haryers.� Sir Moses looked at it with satisfaction, for he had had as much of our friend�s society as he required, and did not know that he could �do� him much more if he had him a month; so if he could now only get clear of Monsieur without paying him, that was all he required. Jack, however, was on the alert, and appeared on the back-steps as Sir Moses dismounted; nor did his rapid dive into the stable avail him, for Jack headed him as he emerged at the other end, with a hoist of his hat, and a �Bon jour, Sare Moses, Baronet!� �Ah, Monsieur, comment vous portez-vous?� replied the Baronet, shying off, with a keep-your-distance sort of waive of the hand. Jack, however, was not to be put off that way, and following briskly up, he refreshed Sir Moses�s memory with, �Pund, I beat Cuddy, old cock, to de clomp; ten franc�ten shillin��I get over de brook; thirty shillin� in all, Sare Moses, Baronet,� holding out his hand for the money. �Oh, ah, true,� replied Sir Moses, pretending to recollect the bets, adding, �If you can give me change of a fifty-pun note, I can pay ye,� producing a nice clean one from his pocket-book that he always kept ready for cases of emergency like the present. �Fifty-pun note, Sare Moses!� replied Jack, eyeing it. �Fifty-pun note! I �ave not got such an astonishin� som about me at present,� feeling his pockets as he spoke; �bot I vill seek change, if you please.� �Why, no,� replied Sir Moses, thinking he had better not part with the decoy-duck. �I�ll tell you what I�ll do, though,� continued he, restoring it to its case; �I�ll send you a post-office order for the amount, or pay it to your friend, Mr. Gallon, whichever you prefer.� �Vell, Sir Moses, Baronet,� replied Jack, considering, �I think de leetle post-office order vill be de most digestible vay of squarin� matters.� �Va-a-ry good,� cried Sir Moses, �Va-a-ry good. I�ll send you one, then,� and darting at a door in the wall, he slipped through it, and shot the bolt between Jack and himself. And our hero, having recruited nature with lunch, and arranged with Jack for riding his horse, presently took leave of his most hospitable host, and entered the fly that was to convey him back to Yammerton Grange. And having cast himself into its ill-stuffed hold he rumbled and jolted across country in the careless, independent sort of way that a man does who has only a temporary interest in the vehicle, easy whether he was upset or not. Let us now anticipate his arrival by transferring our imaginations to Yammerton Grange. CHAPTER L. THE SURPRISE. IT is all very well for people to affect the magnificent, to give general invitations, and say �Come whenever it suits you; we shall always be happy to see you,� and so on; but somehow it is seldom safe to take them at their word. How many houses has the reader to which he can ride or drive up with the certainty of not putting people �out,� as the saying is. If there is a running account of company going on, it is all very well; another man more or less is neither here nor there; but if it should happen to be one of those solemn lulls that intervene between one set of guests going and another coming, denoted by the wide-apart napkins seen by a side glance as he passes the dining-room window, then it is not a safe speculation. At all events, a little notice is better, save, perhaps, among fox-hunters, who care less for appearances than other people. It was Saturday, as we said before, and our friend the Major had finished his week�s work:�paid his labourers, handled the heifers that had left him so in the lurch, counted the sheep, given out the corn, ordered the carriage for church in case it kept dry, and as day closed had come into the house, and exchanged his thick shoes for old worsted worked slippers, and cast himself into a semicircular chair in the druggeted drawing-room to wile away one of those long winter evenings that seem so impossible in the enduring length of a summer day, with that best of all papers, the �Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald.� The local paper is the paper for the country gentleman, just as the �Times� is the paper for the Londoner. The �Times� may span the globe, tell what is doing at Delhi and New York, France, Utah, Prussia, Spain, Ireland, and the Mauritius; but the paper that tells the squire of the flocks and herds, the hills and dales, the births and disasters of his native district, is the paper for his money. So it was with our friend the Major. He enjoyed tearing the half-printed halfwritten envelope off his �Herald,� and holding its damp sides to the cheerful fire until he got it as crisp as a Bank of England note, and then, sousing down in his easy chair to enjoy its contents, conscious that no one had anticipated them. How he revelled in the advertisements, and accompanied each announcement with a mental commentary of his own. We like to see country gentlemen enjoying their local papers. Ashover farm to let, conjured up recollections of young Mr. Gosling spurting past in white cords, and his own confident prediction that the thing wouldn�t last. Burlinson the auctioneer�s assignment for the benefit of his creditors, reminded him of his dogs, and his gun, and his manor, and his airified looks, and drew forth anathemas on Burlinson in particular, and on pretenders in general. Then Mr. Napier�s announcement that Mr. Draggleton of Rushworth had applied for a loan of four thousand pounds from the Lands Improvement Company for draining, sounded almost like a triumph of the Major�s own principles, Draggleton having long derided the idea of water getting into a two-inch pipe at a depth of four feet, or of draining doing any good. And the Major chuckled with delight at the thought of seeing the long pent-up water flow in pure continuous streams off the saturated soil, and of the clear, wholesome complexion the land would presently assume. Then the editorial leader on the state of the declining corn markets, and of field operations (cribbed of course from the London papers) drew forth an inward opinion that the best thing for the land-owners would be for corn to keep low and cattle to keep high for the next dozen years or more, and so get the farmers� minds turned from the precarious culture of corn to the land-improving practice of grazing and cattle-feeding. And thus the Major sat, deeply immersed in the contents of each page; but as he gradually mastered the cream of their contents, he began to turn to and fro more rapidly; and as the rustling increased, Mrs. Yammerton, who was dying for a sight of the paper, at length ventured to ask if there was anything about the Hunt ball in it. �Hunt ball!� growled the Major, who was then in the hay and straw market, wondering whether, out of the twenty-seven carts of hay reported to have been at Hinton Market on the previous Saturday, there were any of his tenants there on the sly; �Hunt ball!� repeated he, running the candle up and down the page; �No, there�s nothin� about it here,� replied he, resuming his reading. �It�ll be on the front page, my dear,� observed Mrs. Yammerton, �if there is anything.� �Well, I�ll give it you presently,� replied the Major, resuming his reading; and so he wens on into the wool markets, thence to the potato and hide departments, until at length he found himself floundering among the Holloway Pills, Revalenta Food, and �Sincere act of gratitude,� &c., advertisements; when, turning the paper over with a wisk, and an inward �What do they put such stuff as that in for?� he handed it to his wife: while, John Bull like, he now stood up, airing himself comfortably before the fire. No sooner was the paper fairly in Mamma�s hands, than there was a general rush of the young ladies to the spot, and four pairs of eyes were eagerly glancing up and down the columns of the front page, all in search of the magical letter �B� for Ball. Education�Fall in Night Lights�Increased Rate of Interest�Money without Sureties�Iron and Brass Bedsteads�Glenfield Starch�Deafness Cured�German Yeast�Insolvent Debtor�Elkington�s Spoons�Boots and Shoes,�but, alas! no Ball. �Yes, there it is! No it isn�t,� now cried Miss Laura, as her blue eye caught at the heading of Mrs. Bobbinette the milliner�s advertisement, in the low corner of the page, Mrs. Bobbinette, like some of her customers, perhaps, not being a capital payer, and so getting a bad place. Thus it ran� HIT-IM AND HOLD-IM SHIRE HUNT BALL. �Mrs. Bobbinette begs to announce to the ladies her return from Paris, with every novelty in millinery, mantles, embroideries, wreaths, fans, gloves, &c. �Mrs. Bobbinette be hanged,� growled the Major, who winced under the very name of milliner; �just as much goes to Paris as I do. Last time she was there I know she was never out of Hinton, for Paul Straddler watched her.� �Well, but she gets very pretty things at all events,� replied Mrs. Yammerton, thinking she would pay her a visit. �Aye, and a pretty bill she�ll send in for them,� replied the Major. �Well, my dear, but you must pay for fashion, you know,� rejoined Mamma. �Pay for fashion! pay for haystacks!� growled the Major; �never saw such balloons as the women make of themselves. S�pose we shall have them as flat as doors next. One extreme always leads to another.� This discussion was here suddenly interrupted by a hurried �hush!� from Miss Clara, followed by a �hish!� from Miss Flora; and silence being immediately accorded, all ears recognised a rumbling sound outside the house that might have been mistaken for wind, had it not suddenly ceased before the door. The whole party was paralysed: each drawing breath, reflecting on his or her peculiar position:�Mamma thinking of her drawing-room�Miss, of her hair�Flora, of her sleeves�Harriet, of her shabby shoes�the Major, of his dinner. The agony of suspense was speedily relieved by the grating of an iron step and a violent pull at the door-bell, producing ejaculations of, �It _is_, however!� �Him, to a certainty!� with, �I told you so,�nothing but liver and bacon for dinner,� from the Major; while Mrs. Yammerton, more composed, swept three pair of his grey worsted stockings into the well of the ottoman, and covered the old hearth-rug with a fine new one from the corner, with a noble antlered stag in the centre. The young ladies hurried out of the room, each to make a quick revise of her costume. The shock to the nervous sensibilities of the household was scarcely less severe than that experienced by the inmates of the parlour; and the driver of the fly was just going to give the bell a second pull, when our friend of the brown coat came, settling himself into his garment, wondering who could be coming at that most extraordinary hour. �Major at home?� asked our hero, swinging himself out of the vehicle into the passage, and without waiting for an answer, he began divesting himself of his muffin-cap, cashmere shawl, and other wraps. He was then ready for presentation. Open went the door. �Mr. Pringle!� announced the still-astonished footman, and host and hostess advanced in the friendly emulation of cordiality. They were overjoyed to see him,�as pleased as if they had received a consignment of turtle and there was a haunch of venison roasting before the fire. The young ladies presently came dropping in one by one, each �_so_ astonished to find Mr. Pringle there!� Clara thinking the ring was from Mr. Jinglington, the pianoforte-tuner; Flora, that it was Mr. Tightlace�s curate; while Harriet did not venture upon a white lie at all. Salutations and expressions of surprise being at length over, the ladies presently turned the weather-conversation upon Pangburn Park, and inquired after the sport with Sir Moses, Billy being in the full glory of his pink and slightly soiled leathers and boots, from which they soon diverged to the Hunt ball, about which they could not have applied to any better authority than our friend. He knew all about it, and poured forth the volume of his information most freely. Though the Major talked about there being nothing but liver and bacon for dinner, he knew very well that the very fact of there being liver and bacon bespoke that there was plenty of something else in the larder. In fact he had killed a south-down,�not one of your modern muttony-lambs, but an honest, home-fed, four-year-old, with its fine dark meat and rich gravy; in addition to which, there had been some minor murders of ugly Cochin-China fowls,�to say nothing of a hunted hare, hanging by the heels, and several snipes and partridges, suspended by the neck. It is true, there was no fish, for, despite the railroad, Hit-im and Hold-im shire generally was still badly supplied with fish, but there was the useful substitute of cod-sounds, and some excellent mutton-broth; which latter is often better than half the soups one gets. Altogether there was no cause for despondency; but the Major, having been outvoted on the question of requiring notice of our friend�s return, of course now felt bound to make the worst of the case�especially as the necessary arrangements would considerably retard his dinner, for which he was quite ready. He had, therefore, to smile at his guest, and snarl at his family, at one and the same time.�Delighted to see Mr. Pringle back.�Disgusted at his coming on a Saturday.�Hoped our hero was hungry.�Could answer for it, he was himself,�with a look at Madam, as much as to say, �Come, you go and see about things and don�t stand simpering there.� But Billy, who had eaten a pretty hearty lunch at Pangburn Park, had not got jolted back into an appetite by his transit through the country, and did not enter into the feelings of his half-famished host. A man who has had half his dinner in the shape of a lunch, is far more than a match for one who has fasted since breakfast, and our friend chatted first with one young lady, and then with another, with an occasional word at Mamma, delighted to get vent for his long pent-up flummery. He was indeed most agreeable. Meanwhile the Major was in and out of the room, growling and getting into everybody�s way, retarding progress by his anxiety to hurry things on. At length it was announced that Mr. Pringle�s room was ready; and forthwith the Major lit him a candle, and hurried him upstairs, where his uncorded boxes stood ready for the opening keys of ownership. �Ah, there you are!� cried the Major, flourishing the composite candle about them; �there you are! needn�t mind much dressing�only ourselves�only ourselves. There�s the boot-jack,�here�s some hot water,�and we�ll have dinner as soon as ever you are ready.� So saying, he placed the candle on the much be-muslined toilette-table, and, diving into his pocket for the key of the cellar, hurried off to make the final arrangement of a feast. Our friend, however, who was always a dawdling leisurely gentleman, took very little heed of his host�s injunctions, and proceeded to unlock and open his boxes as if he was going to dress for a ball instead of a dinner; and the whole party being reassembled, many were the Major�s speculations and enquiries �what could he be about?� �must have gone to bed,� �would go up and see,� ere the glad sound of his opening door announced that he might be expected. And before he descended a single step of the staircase the Major gave the bell such a pull as proclaimed most volubly the intensity of his feelings. The ladies of course were shocked, but a hungry man is bad to hold, and there is no saying but the long-pealing tongue of the bell saved an explosion of the Major�s. At all events when our friend came sauntering into the now illuminated drawing-room, the Major greeted him with, �Heard you coming, rang the bell, knew you�d be hungry, long drive from Sir Moses�s here;� to which Billy drawled a characteristic �Yarse,� as he extinguished his candle and proceeded to ingratiate himself with the now elegantly attired ladies, looking more lovely from his recent restriction to the male sex. The furious peal of the bell had answered its purpose, for he had scarcely got the beauties looked over, and settled in his own mind that it was difficult to say which was the prettiest, ere the door opened, the long-postponed dinner was announced to be on the table, and the Major, having blown out the composites, gladly followed the ladies to the scene of action. And his host being too hungry to waste his time in apologies for the absence of this and that, and the footboy having plenty to do without giving the dishes superfluous airings, and the gooseberry champagne being both lively and cool, the dinner passed off as pleasantly as a luncheon, which is generally allowed to be the most agreeable sociable meal of the day, simply because of the absence of all fuss and pretension. And by the time the Major had got to the cheese, he found his temper considerably improved. Indeed, so rapidly did his spirits rise, that before the cloth was withdrawn he had well-nigh silenced all the ladies, with his marvellous haryers,�five and thirty years master of haryers without a subscription,�and as soon as he got the room cleared, he inflicted the whole hunt upon Billy that he had written to him about, an account of which he had in vain tried to get inserted in the Featherbedfordshire Gazette, through the medium of old �Wotherspoon, who had copied it out and signed himself �A Delighted Stranger.� Dorsay Davis, however, knew his cramped handwriting, and put his manuscript into the fire, observing in his notice to correspondents that �A Delighted Stranger� had better send his currant jelly contributions to grandmamma, meaning the Hit-im and Hold-im shire Herald. So our friend was victimised into a _viva voce_ account of this marvellous chase, beginning at Conksbury corner and the flight up to Foremark Hill and down over the water meadows to Dove-dale Green, &c., interspersed with digressions and explanations of the wonderful performance of the particular members of the pack, until he scarcely knew whether a real run or the recital of one was the most formidable. At length the Major, having talked himself into a state of excitement, without making any apparent impression on his guest�s obdurate understanding, proposed as a toast �The Merry Haryers,� and intimated that tea was ready in the drawing room, thinking he never had so phlegmatic an auditor before. Very different, however, was his conduct amid the general conversation of the ladies, who thought him just as agreeable as the Major thought him the contrary. And they were all quite surprised when the clock struck eleven, and declared they thought it could only be ten, except the Major, who knew the odd hour had been lost in preparing the dinner. So he moved an adjournment, and proclaimed that they would breakfast at nine, which would enable them to get to church in good time. Whereupon mutual good-nights were exchanged, our friend was furnished with a flat candlestick, and the elder sisters retired to talk him over in their own room; for however long ladies may be together during the day, there is always a great balance of conversation to dispose of at last, and so the two chatted and talked until midnight. Next morning they all appeared in looped-up dresses, showing the party-coloured petticoats of the prevailing fashion, which looked extremely pretty, and were all very well�a great improvement on the draggletails�until they came to get into the coach, when it was found, that large as the vehicle was, it was utterly inadequate for their accommodation. Indeed the door seemed ludicrously insufficient for the ingress, and Miss Clara turned round and round like a peacock contending with the wind, undecided which way to make the attempt. At last she chose a bold sideways dash, and entered with a squeeze of the petticoat, which suddenly expanded into its original size, but when the sisters had followed her example there was no room for the Major, nor would there have been any for our hero had not Mamma been satisfied with her own natural size, and so left space to squeeze him in between herself and the fair Clara. The Major then had to mount the coach box beside old Solomon, and went growling and grumbling along at the extravagances of fashion, and wondering what the deuce those petticoats would cost, he was presently comforted by seeing two similar ones circling over the road in advance, which on overtaking proved to contain the elegant Miss Bushels, daughters of his hind at Bonnyrigs farm, whereupon he made a mental resolution to reduce Bushel�s wages a shilling a week at least. This speedy influx of fashion and abundance of cheap tawdry finery has well nigh destroyed the primitive simplicity of country churches. The housemaid now dresses better�finer at all events�than her mistress did twenty years ago, and it is almost impossible to recognise working people when in their Sunday dresses. Gauze bonnets, Marabout feathers, lace scarfs, and silk gowns usurp the place of straw and cotton print, while lace-fringed kerchiefs are flourished by those whose parents scarcely knew what a pocket-handkerchief was. There is a medium in all things, but this mania for dress has got far beyond the bounds of either prudence or propriety; and we think the Major�s recipe for reducing it is by no means a bad one. 385m _Original Size_ We need scarcely say, that our hero�s appearance at church caused no small sensation in a neighbourhood where the demand for gossip was far in excess of the supply. Indeed, we fear many fair ladies� eyes were oftener directed to Major Yammerton�s pew than to the Reverend Mr. Tightlace in the pulpit. Wonderful were the stories and exaggerations that ensued, people always being on the running-up tack until a match is settled, after which, of course, they assume the running-down one, pitying one or other victim extremely�wouldn�t be him or her for anything�Mr. Tightlace thought any of the young ladies might do better than marry a mere fox-hunter, though we are sorry to add that the fox-hunter was far more talked of than the sermon. The general opinion seemed to be that our hero had been away preparing that dread document, the proposals for a settlement; and there seemed to be very little doubt that there would be an announcement of some sort in a day or two�especially when our friend was seen to get into the carriage after the gay petticoats, and the little Major to remount the box seat. And when at the accustomed stable stroll our master of haryers found the gallant grey standing in the place of the bay, he was much astonished, and not a little shocked to learn the sad catastrophe that had befallen the bay. �Well, he never heard anything like that!�_dead_! What, do you mean to say he absolutely died on your hands without any apparent cause?� demanded the Major; �must have been poisoned surely;� and he ran about telling everybody, and making as much to do as if the horse had still been his own. He then applied himself to finding out how Billy came by the grey, and was greatly surprised to learn that Sir Moses had given it him. �Well, that was queer,� thought he, �wouldn�t have accused him of that.� And he thought of the gift of Little Bo-peep, and wondered whether this gift was of the same order. CHAPTER LI. MONEY AND MATRIMONY. MONEY and matrimony! what a fine taking title! If that does not attract readers, we don�t know what will. Money and matrimony! how different, yet how essentially combined, how intimately blended! �No money, no matrimony,� might almost be written above some doors. Certainly money is an essential, but not so absorbing an essential as some people make it. Beyond the expenditure necessary for a certain establishment, a woman is seldom much the better for her husband�s inordinate wealth. We have seen the wife of a reputed millionaire no better done by than that of a country squire. Mr. Prospero Plutus may gild his coach and his harness, and his horses too, if he likes, but all the lacker in the world will not advance him a step in society; therefore, what can he do with his surplus cash but carry it to the �reserve fund,� as some Joint-Stock Bankers pretend to do. Still there is a money-worship among us, that is not even confined to the opposite sex, but breaks out in veneration among men, just as if one man having half a million or a million pieces of gold could be of any advantage to another man, who only knows the rich man to say �How d�ye do?� to. A clever foreigner, who came to this country some years ago for the honestly avowed purpose of marrying an heiress, used to exclaim, when any one told him that another man had so many thousands a year, �Vell, my good friend, vot for that to me? I cannot go for be marry to him!� and we never hear a man recommended to another man for his wealth alone, without thinking of our foreign friend. What earthly good can Plutus�s money do us? We can safely say, we never knew a rich man who was not uncommonly well able to take care of his cash. It is your poor men who are easy about money. To tell a young lady that a young gentleman has so many thousands a year is very different; and this observation leads us to say, that people who think they do a young man a kindness by exaggerating his means or expectations, are greatly mistaken. On the contrary, they do him an injury; for, sooner or later, the lawyers know everything, and disappointment and vexation is the result. Since our friend Warren wrote his admirable novel, �Ten Thousand a Year,� that sum has become the fashionable income for exaggerators. Nobody that has anything a year has less, though we all know how difficult a sum it is to realise, and how impossible it is to extract a five-pound note, or even a sovereign, from the pockets of people who talk of it as a mere bagatelle. This money mania has increased amazingly within the last few years, aided, no doubt, by the gigantic sums the Joint-Stock Banks have enabled penniless people to �go� for. When Wainwright, the first of the assurance office defrauders by poison, was in prison, he said to a person who called upon him, �You see with what respect they treat me. They don�t set me to make my bed, or sweep the yard, like those fellows,� pointing to his brother prisoners; �no, they treat me like a gentleman. They think I�m in for ten thousand pounds.� Ten thousand pounds! What would ten thousand pounds be nowadays, when men speculate to the extent of a quarter or may be half a million of money? Why Wainwright would have had to clean out the whole prison on the present scale of money delinquency. A hundred thousand pounder is quite a common fellow, hardly worth speaking of. There was a time when the greediest man was contented with his plum. Now the cry is �More! more!� until some fine morning the crier is �no more� himself. This money-craving and boasting is all bad. It deceives young men, and drives those of moderate income into the London clubs, instead of their marrying and settling quietly as their fathers did before them. They hear of nothing but thousands and tens of thousands until they almost believe in the reality, and are ashamed to encounter the confessional stool of the lawyers, albeit they may have as much as with prudence and management would make married life comfortable. Boasting and exaggeration also greatly misleads and disappoints anxious �Mammas,� all ready to believe whatever they like, causing very likely promising speculations to be abandoned in favour of what turn out great deal worse ventures. Only let a young man be disengaged, professionally and bodily, and some one or other will be sure to invest him with a fortune, or with surprising expectations from an uncle, an aunt, or other near relation. It is surprising how fond people are of fanning the flame of a match, and how they will talk about what they really know nothing, until an unfortunate youth almost appears to participate in their exaggerations. Could some of these Leviathans of fortune know the fabulous £ s. d. colours under which they have sailed, they would be wonderfully astonished at the extent of their innocent imposture. Yet they were not to blame because people said they had ten thousand a year, were richest commoners in fact. Many would then understand much unexplained politeness, and appreciate its disinterestedness at its true value. Captain Quaver would see why Mrs. Sunnybrow was to anxious that he should hear Matilda sing; Mr. Grist why Mrs. Snubwell manoeuvred to get him next Bridget at dinner; and perhaps our �Richest Commoner� why Mrs. Yammerton was so glad to see him back at the Grange. CHAPTER LII. A NIGHT DRIVE. PEOPLE who travel in the winter should remember it isn�t summer, and time themselves accordingly. Sir Moses was so anxious to see Monsieur Rougier off the premises, in order to stop any extra hospitality, that he delayed starting for Lundyfoote Castle until he saw him fairly mounted on the gift grey and out of the stable-yard; he then had the mare put to the dog-cart, and tried to make up for lost time by extra speed upon the road. But winter is an unfavourable season for expedition; if highways are improving, turnpikes are getting neglected, save in the matter of drawing the officers� sinecure salaries, and, generally speaking, the nearer a turnpike is to a railway, the worse the turnpike is, as if to show the wonderful advantage of the former. So Sir Moses went flipping and flopping, and jipping and jerking, through Bedland and Hawksworth and Washingley-field, but scarcely reached the confines of his country when he ought to have been nearing the Castle. It was nearly four o�clock by the great gilt-lettered clock on the diminutive church in the pretty village of Tidswell, situated on the banks of the sparkling Lune, when he pulled up at the sign of the Hold-away Harriers to get his mare watered and fed. It is at these sort of places that the traveller gets the full benefit of country slowness and stupidity. Instead of the quick ostler, stepping smartly up to his horse�s head as he reins up, there is generally a hunt through the village for old Tom, or young Joe, or some worthy who is either too old or too idle to work. In this case it was old bow-legged, wiry Tom Brown, whose long experience of the road did not enable him to anticipate a person�s wants; so after a good stare at the driver, whom at first he thought was Mr. Meggison, the exciseman; then Mr. Puncheon, the brewer; and lastly, Mr. Mossman, Lord Polkaton�s ruler; he asked, with a bewildered scratch of his head, �What, de ye want her put oop?� �Oop, yes,� replied Sir Moses; �what d�ye think I�m stopping for? Look alive; that�s a good fellow,� added he, throwing him the reins, as he prepared to descend from the vehicle. �Oh, it�s you, Sir Moses, is it,� rejoined the now enlightened patriarch, �I didn�t know you without your red coat and cap;� so saying, he began to fumble at the harness, and, with the aid of the Baronet, presently had the mare out of the shafts. It then occurred to the old gentleman that he had forgotten the key of the stable. �A sink,� said he, with a dash of his disengaged hand, �I�ve left the key i� the pocket o� mar coat, down i� Willy Wood�s shop, when ar was helpin� to kill a pig�run, lad, doon to Willy Wood,� said he to a staring by-standing boy, �and get me mar coat,� adding to Sir Moses, as the lad slunk unwillingly away, �he�ll be back directly wi� it.� So saying, he proceeded to lead the mare round to the stable at the back of the house. When the coat came, then there was no pail; and when they got a pail, then the pump had gone dry; and when they got some water from the well, then the corn had to be brought from the top of the house; so, what with one delay and another, day was about done before Sir Moses got the mare out of the stable again. Night comes rapidly on in the short winter months, and as Sir Moses looked at the old-fashioned road leading over the steepest part of the opposite hill, he wished he was well on the far side of it. He then examined his lamps, and found there were no candles in them, just as he remembered that he had never been to Lundyfoote Castle on wheels, the few expeditions he had made there having been performed on horseback, by those nicks and cuts that fox-hunters are so famous at making and finding. �Ord dom it,� said he to himself, �I shall be getting benighted. Tell me,� continued he, addressing the old ostler, �do I go by Marshfield and Hengrove, or��� �No, no, you�ve no business at noughter Marshfield nor Hengrove,� interrupted the sage; �veer way is straight oop to Crowfield-hall and Roundhill-green, then to Brackley Moor and Belton, and so on into the Sandywell-road at Langley. But if ar were you,� continued he, beginning to make confusion worse confounded, �ar would just gan through Squire Patterson�s Park here,� jerking his thumb to the left to indicate the direction in which it lay. �Is it shorter?� demanded Sir Moses, re-ascending the vehicle. �W-h-o-y no, it�s not shorter,� replied the man, �but it�s a better road rayther�less agin collar-like. When ye get to the new lodge ye mun mind turn to the right, and keep Whitecliffe Law to the left, and Lidney Mill to the right, you then pass Shimlow tilery, and make straight for Roundhill Green, and Brackley Moor, and then on to Belton, as ar toll�d ye afoor�ye can�t miss yeer way,� added he, thinking he could go it in the dark himself. �Can�t I?� replied Sir Moses, drawing the reins. He then chucked the man a shilling, and touching the mare with the point of the whip, trotted across the bridge over the Lane, and was speedily brought up at a toll-bar on the far side. It seems to be one of the ordinances of country life, that the more toll a man pays the worse road he gets, and Sir Moses had scarcely parted with his sixpence ere the sound running turnpike which tempted him past Squire Patterson�s lodge, ran out into a loose, river-stoned track, that grew worse and worse the higher he ascended the hill. In vain he hissed, and jerked, and jagged at the mare. The wheels revolved as if they were going through sea-sand. She couldn�t go any faster. It is labour and sorrow travelling on wheels, with a light horse and a heavy load, on woolly winter roads, especially under the depressing influence of declining day�when a gorgeous sunset has no charms. It is then that the value of the hissing, hill-rounding, plain-scudding railway is appreciated. The worst line that ever was constructed, even one with goods, passengers, and minerals all mixed in one train, is fifty times better than one of these ploughing, sobbing, heart-breaking drives. So thought Sir Moses, as, whip in hand, he alighted from the vehicle to ease the mare up the steep hill, which now ran parallel with Mr. Patterson�s rather indifferent park wall. What a commentary on consequence a drive across country affords, One sees life in all its phases�Cottage, House, Grange, �Imperial John� Hall, Park, Tower, Castle, &c. The wall, however, is the true index of the whole. Show me your wall and I�ll tell you what you have. There is the five hundred�by courtesy, thousand�a year wall, built of common stone, well embedded in mortar, extending only a few yards on either side of the lodgeless green gate. The thousand�by courtesy, fifteen hundred�a year wall, made of the same material, only the mortar ceases at the first convenient bend of the road, and the mortared round coping of the top is afterwards all that holds it together. Then there is the aspiring block and course wall, leading away with a sweep from either side of a handsome gateway, but suddenly terminating in hedges. The still further continued wall, with an abrupt juncture in split oak paling, that looks as if it had been suddenly nipped by a want-of-cash frost. We then get to the more successful all-round-the-park alike efforts of four or five thousand a-year�the still more solid masonry and ornamental work of �Ten Thousand a Year,� a Warren wall in fact, until at length we come to one so strong and so high, that none but a man on a laden wain can see over it, which of course denotes a Ducal residence, with fifty or a hundred thousand a year. In like manner, a drive across country enables a man to pick up information without the trouble of asking for it. The board against the tree at the corner of the larch plantation, stating that �Any one trespassing on these grounds, the property of A. B. C. Sowerby, Esq., will, &c., with the utmost, &c.,� enables one to jump to the conclusion that the Westmoreland-slated roof we see peering among the eagle-winged cedars and luxuriant Scotch firs on the green slope to the left, is the residence of said Sowerby, who doesn�t like to be trespassed upon. A quick-eyed land-agent would then trace the boundaries of the Sowerby estate from the rising ground, either by the size of its trees, its natural sterility, or by the rough, gateless fences, where it adjoins the neighbouring proprietors. Again, the sign of the Smith Arms at a wayside public-house, denotes that some member of that illustrious family either lives or has property in that immediate neighbourhood, and as everybody has a friend Smith, we naturally set about thinking whether it is our friend Smith or not. So a nobleman�s coronet surmounting his many-quartered coat-of-arms, suggests that the traveller is in the neighbourhood of magnificence; and if his appearance is at all in his favour, he will, perhaps, come in for a touch, or a demi-touch, of the hat from the passers-by, the process being almost mechanical in aristocratic parts. A board at a branch road with the words �To Lavender Lodge only,� saves one the trouble of asking the name of the place towards which we see the road bending, while a great deal of curious nomenclature may be gleaned from shop-fronts, inn-signs, and cart-shafts. But we are leaving Sir Moses toiling up the hill alongside of his dog-cart, looking now at his watch, now at his jaded mare, now at Mr. Patterson�s fragile park wall, thinking how he would send it over with his shoulder if he came to it out hunting. The wall was at length abruptly terminated by a cross-road intersecting the hill along a favourable fall of the ground, about the middle of it, and the mare and Sir Moses mutually stopped, the former to ease herself on the piece of level ground at the junction, the latter to consider whether his course was up the hill or along the more inviting line to the left. �Marshfield,� muttered he to himself, �is surely that way, but then that old buffer said I had no business at Marshfield. Dom the old man,� continued he, �I wish I�d never asked him anything about it, for he has completely bewildered me, and I believe I could have found my way better without.� So saying, Sir Moses reconnoitered the scene; the balance of the fat hill in front, with the drab-coloured road going straight up the steepest part of it, the diverging lines either way; above all, the fast closing canopy around. Across the road, to the right, was a paintless, weather-beaten finger-post, and though our friend saw it had lost two of its arms, he yet thought the remaining ones might give him some information. Accordingly, he went over to consult it. Not a word, no, not a letter was legible. There were some upright marks, but what they had stood for it was impossible to decipher. Sir Moses was nonplussed. Just at this critical moment, a rumbling sound proceeded from below, and looking down the hill, a grey speck loomed in the distance, followed by a darker one a little behind. This was consoling; for those who know how soon an agricultural country becomes quiet after once the labourers go to their homes can appreciate the boon of any stirrers. Still the carts came very slowly, and the quick falling shades of night travelled faster than they. Sir Moses stood listening anxiously to their jolting noises, thinking they would never come up. At the same time, he kept a sharp eye on the cross-road, to intercept any one passing that way. A tinker, a poacher, a mugger, the veriest scamp, would have been welcome, so long as he knew the country. No one, however, came along. It was an unfrequented line; and old Gilbert Price, who worked by the day, always retired from raking in the mud ruts on the approach of evening. So Sir Moses stood staring and listening, tapping his boot with his whip, as he watched the zig-zag course of the grey up the hill. He seemed a good puller, and to understand his work, for as yet no guiding voice had been heard. Perhaps the man was behind. As there is always a stout pull just before a resting-place, the grey now came to a pause, to collect his energies for the effort. Sir Moses looked at his mare, and then at the carts halting below, wondering whether if he left her she would take off. Just as he determined to risk it, the grey applied himself vigorously to the collar, and with a grinding, ploughing rush, came up to where Sir Moses stood. The cart was empty, but there was a sack-like thing, with a wide-awake hat on the top, rolling in the one behind. �Holloo, my man!� shouted Sir Moses, with the voice of a Stentor. The wide-awake merely nodded to the motion of the cart. �_Holloo, I say!_� roared he, still louder. An extended arm was thrown over the side of the cart, and the wide-awake again nodded as before. �The beggar�s asleep!� muttered Sir Moses, taking the butt-end of his whip, and poking the somnambulist severely in the stomach. A loud grunt, and with a strong smell of gin, as the monster changed his position, was all that answered the appeal. �The brute�s drunk,� gasped Sir Moses, indignant at having wasted so much time in waiting for him. The sober grey then made a well-rounded turn to the right, followed by the one in the rear, leaving our friend enveloped in many more shades of darkness than he was when he first designed him coming. Night had indeed about closed in, and lights began to appear in cottages and farm-houses that sparsedly dotted the hill side. �Well, here�s a pretty go,� said Sir Moses, remounting the dogcart, and gathering up the reins; �I�ll just give the mare her choice,� continued he, touching her with the whip, and letting her go. The sensible animal took the level road to the left, and Sir Moses�s liberality was at first rewarded by an attempted trot along it, which, however, soon relaxed into a walk. The creaking, labouring vehicle shook and rolled with the concussion of the ruts. He had got upon a piece of township road, where each surveyor shuffled through his year of office as best he could, filling up the dangerous holes in summer with great boulder stones that turned up like flitches of bacon in winter. So Sir Moses rolled and rocked in imminent danger of an upset. To add to his misfortunes, he was by no means sure but that he might have to retrace his steps: it was all chance. There are but two ways of circumventing a hill, either by going round it or over it; and the road, after evading it for some time, at length took a sudden turn to the right, and grappled fairly with its severity. The mare applied herself sedulously to her task, apparently cheered by the increasing lights on the hill. At length she neared them, and the radiant glow of a blacksmith�s shop cheered the drooping spirit of the traveller. �Holloo, my man!� cried Sir Moses, at length, pulling up before it. �Holloo!� responded the spark-showering Vulcan from within. �Is this the way to Lord Lundyfoote�s?� demanded Sir Moses, knowing the weight a nobleman�s name carries in the country. �Lord Lundyfoote�s!� exclaimed Osmand Hall, pausing in his work; �Lord Lundyfoote�s!� repeated he; �why, where ha� you come from?� �Tidswell,� replied Sir Moses, cutting off the former part of the journey. �Why, what set ye this way?� demanded the dark man, coming to the door with a red-hot horse-shoe on a spike, which was nearly all that distinguished him from the gloom of night; �ye should never ha� coom�d this way; ye should ha� gone by Marshfield and Hengrove.� �Dom it, I said so!� ejaculated the Baronet, nearly stamping the bottom of his gig out with vexation. �However, never mind,� continued he, recollecting himself, �I�m here now, so tell me the best way to proceed.� This information being at length accorded, Sir Moses proceeded; and the rest of the hill being duly surmounted, the dancing and stationary lights spreading o�er the far-stretching vale now appeared before him, with a clustering constellation, amid many minor stars scattered around, denoting the whereabouts of the castle. It is always cheering to see the far end of a journey, distant though the haven be, and Sir Moses put on as fast as his lampless condition would allow him, trusting to his eyes and his ears for keeping on the road. Very much surprised would he have been had he retraced his steps the next morning, and seen the steep banks and yawning ditches he had suddenly saved himself from going over or into by catching at the reins or feeling either wheel running in the soft. At length he reached the lodges of the massive variously-windowed castle, and passing gladly through them, found, on alighting at the door, that, instead of being late for dinner as he anticipated, his Lordship, who always ate a hearty lunch, was generally very easy about the matter, sometimes dining at seven, sometimes at eight, sometimes in summer even at nine o�clock. The footman, in reply to Sir Moses inquiring what time his Lordship dined, said he believed it was ordered at seven, but he didn�t know when it would be on the table. Being an ardent politician, Lord Lundyfoote received Sir Moses with the fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind cordiality, and dived so energetically into his subject, as soon as he got the weather disposed of, as never to wait for an answer to his question, whether his guest would like to take anything before dinner, the consequence of which was, that our poor friend was nearly famished with waiting. In vain the library time-piece ticked, and chimed, and struck; jabber, jabber, jabber, went his voluble Lordship; in vain the deep-toned castle-clock reverberated through the walls�on, on he went, without noticing it, until the butler, in apparent despair, took the gong, and gave it such a beating just outside the door, that he could scarcely hear himself speak. Sir Moses then adroitly slipped in the question if that was the signal for dressing; to which his Lordship having yielded a reluctant �Yes,� he took a candle from the entering footman, and pioneered the Baronet up to his bedroom, amid a running commentary on the state of the country and the stability of the ministry. And when he returned he found his Lordship distributing his opinions amoung an obsequious circle of neighbours, who received all he said with the deference due to a liberal dispenser of venison; so that Sir Moses not only got his dinner in comparative peace, but warded his Lordship off the greater part of the evening. CHAPTER LIII. MASTER ANTHONY THOM. 396m _Original Size_ THE two-penny post used to be thought a great luxury in London, though somehow great people were often shy of availing themselves of its advantages, indeed of taking their two-penny-posters in. �Two-penny-posters,� circulars, and ticketed shops, used to be held in about equal repugnance by some. The Dons, never thought of sending their notes or cards of invitation by the two-penny post. John Thomas used always to be trotted out for the purpose of delivery. Pre-paying a letter either by the two-penny post or the general used to be thought little short of an insult. Public opinion has undergone a great change in these matters. Not paying them is now the offence. We need scarcely expatiate on the boon of the penny post, nor on the advantage of the general diffusion of post-offices throughout the country, though we may observe, that the penny post was one of the few things that came without being long called for: indeed, so soon as it was practicable to have it, for without the almost simultaneous establishment of railways it would have been almost impossible to have introduced the system. The mail could not have carried the newspaper traffic and correspondence of the present day. The folded tablecloths of _Times_, the voluminous _Illustrated News_, the _Punch�s,_ the huge avalanches of papers that have broken upon the country within the last twenty years. Sir Moses Mainchance, unlike many country gentlemen, always had his letters forwarded to him where-ever he went. He knew it was only the trouble of writing a line to the Post-office, saying re-direct my letters to so-and-so, to have what he wanted, and thus to keep pace with his correspondence. He was never overpowered with letters when he came home from a visit or tour, as some of our acquaintance are, thus making writing doubly repugnant to them. The morning after his arrival at Lundyfoote Castle brought him a great influx of re-directed letters and papers. One from Mr. Heslop, asking him to meet at his house on the Friday week following, as he was going to have a party, one from Signior Quaverini, the eminent musician, offering his services for the Hunt ball: one from Mr. Isinglass, the confectioner, hoping to be allowed to supply the ices and refreshment as usual; another (the fifth), from Mr. Mossman, about the damage to Mr. Anthill�s sown grass; an envelope, enclosing the card and terms of Signior Dulcetto, an opposition musician, offering lower terras than Quaverini; a note from Mr. Paul Straddler, telling him about a horse to be bought dog cheap; and a �dead letter office� envelope, enclosing a blue ink written letter, directed to Master Anthony Thom, at the Inn-in-the-Sands Inn, Beechwood Green, stating that the party was not known at the address, reintroduces Mr. Geordey Gallon, a gentleman already known to the reader. How this letter came to be sent to Sir Moses was as follows:� When Mr. Geordey Gallon went upon the �Torf,� as he calls it, becoming, as he considered, the associate of Princes, Prime Ministers, and so on, he bethought him of turning respectable, and giving up the stolen-goods-carrying-trade,�a resolution that he was further confirmed in by the establishment of that troublesome obnoxious corps the Hit-im-and-Hold-im-shire Rural Police. To this end, therefore, he gradually reduced the number of his Tippy-Tom-jaunts through the country by night, intimating to his numerous patrons that they had better suit themselves elsewhere ere he ceased travelling altogether. Among the inconvenienced, was our old friend Mrs. Margerum, long one of his most regular customers; for it was a very rare thing for Mr. Gallon not to find a carefully stitched-up bundle in the corner of Lawyer Hindmarch�s cattle-shed, abutting on the Shillburn road as he passed in his spring cart. To remedy this serious inconvenience, Mrs. Margerum had determined upon inducting her adopted son, Master Anthony Thom, into the about-to-be-relinquished business; and Mr. Gallon having made his last journey, the accumulation of dripping caused by our hero�s visit to Pangburn Park made it desirable to have a clearing-out as soon as possible. To this end, therefore, she had written the letter now sent to Sir Moses; but, being a very prudent woman, with a slight smattering of law, she thought so long as she did not sign her surname at the end she was safe, and that no one could prove that it was from her. The consequence was, that Anthony Thom not having shifted his quarters as soon as intended, the letter was refused at the sign of the Sun-in-the-Sands, and by dint of postmark and contents, with perhaps a little _malice prepense_ on the part of the Post-master, who had suffered from a dishonest housekeeper himself, it came into the hands of Sir Moses. At first our master of the hounds thought it was a begging-letter, and threw it aside accordingly; but in course of casting about for a fresh idea wherewith to propitiate Mr. Mossman about the sown grass, his eye rested upon the writing, which he glanced at, and glanced at, until somehow he thought he had seen it before. At length he took the letter up, and read what made him stare very much as he proceeded. Thus it run:� �PANGBURN PARK, Thursday Night. �My own ever dear Anthony Thom, �_I write to you, trusting you will receive this safe, to say that as Mr. George Gallon has discontinued travelling altogether, I must trust to you entirely to do what is necessary in futur, but you must be most careful and watchful, for these nasty Pollis fellers are about every where, and seem to think they have a right to look into every bodies basket and bundle. We live in terrible times, I�m sure, my own beloved Anthony Thom, and if it wasn�t for the hope that I may see you become a great gentleman, like Mr. George Gallon, I really think I would forswear place altogether, for no one knows the anxiety and misery of living with such a nasty, mean, covetous body as Old Nosey._� �Old Nosey!� ejaculated Sir Moses, stopping short in his reading, and feeling his proboscis; �Old Nosey! dom it, can that mean me? Do believe it does�and it�s mother Margerum�s handwriting�dom�d if it isn�t,� continued he, holding the letter a little way off to examine and catch the character of the writing; �What does she mean by calling me a nasty, covetous body? I that hunt the country, subscribe to the Infirmary, Agricultural Society, and do everything that�s liberal and handsome. I�ll Old Nosey her!� continued he, grinding his teeth, and giving a vigorous flourish of his right fist; �I�ll Old Nosey her! I�ll turn her out of the house as soon as ever I get home, dom�d if I won�t,� said Sir Moses quivering with rage as he spoke. At length he became sufficiently composed to resume his reading� �-_No one knows the anxiety and misery of living with such a nasty, mean, covetous body as Old Nosey, who is always on the fret about expense, and thinks everybody is robbing him._� �Oh, dom it, that means me sure enough!� exclaimed Sir Moses; �that�s on account of the row I was kicking up t�other day about the tea�declared I drank a pound a week myself. I�ll tea her!� continued he, again turning to the letter and reading,� �-_I declare I�d almost as soon live under a mistress as under such a shocking mean, covetous man._� �Would you?� muttered Sir Moses; adding, �you shall very soon have a chance then.� The letter thus continued,� �-_The old feller will be away on Saturday and Sunday, so come afore lightning on Monday morning, say about four o�clock, and I�ll have everything ready to lower from my window_.� �Oh the deuce!� exclaimed Sir Moses, slapping his leg; �Oh the deuce! going to rob the house, I declare!� �-_To lower from my window_� read he again, �_for it�s not safe trusting things by the door as we used to do, now that these nasty knavish Pollis fellers are about; so now my own beloved Anthony Thom, if you will give a gentle whistle, or throw a little bit of soft dirt up at the window, where you will see a light burning, I�ll be ready for you, and you�ll be clear of the place long afore any of the lazy fellers here are up,�for a set of nastier, dirtier drunkards never were gathered together._� �Humph!� grunted Sir Moses, �that�s a cut at Mr. Findlater.� The writer then proceeded to say,� �_�But mind my own beloved Anthony Thom, if any body questions you, say it�s a parcel of dripping, and tell them they are welcome to look in if they like, which is the readiest way of stopping them from doing so. We have had a large party here, including a young gent from that fine old Lord Ladythorne, who I would dearly like to live with, and also that nasty, jealous, covetous body Cuddy Flintoff, peeping and prying about everywhere as usual. He deserves to have a dish-clout pinned to his tail_.� �_He, he, he!_� chuckled Sir Moses, as he read it �-_I shall direct this letter by post to you at the sign of the Sun in the Sands, unless I can get it conveyed by a private hand. I am half in hopes Mr. Gallon may call, as there is going to be a great steeple match for an immense sum of money, £200 they say, and they will want his fine judgment to direct matters. Mr. Gallon is indeed a man of a thousand_.� �Humph!� grunted Sir Moses, adding, �we are getting behind the curtain now.� He then went on reading,� ��_Oh my own dear darling Anthony Thom! what would I give to see you a fine gentleman like Mr. George Gallon. I do hope and trust, dearest, that it may yet come to pass; but we must make money, and take care of our money when made, for a man is nothing without money. What a noble example you have before you in Mr. George Gallon! He was once no better nor you, and now he has everything like a gentleman,�a hunting horse to ride on, gold studs in his shirt, and goose for his dinner. O my own beloved Anthony Thom, if I could but see you on a white horse, with a flowered silk tie, and a cut velvet vest with bright steel buttons, flourishing a silver-mounted whip, how glad, how rejoiced it would make me. Then I shouldn�t care for the pryings and grumblings of Old Nosey, or the jealous watchings of the nasty, waspish set with which one is surrounded, for I should say my Anthony Thom will revenge and protect me, and make me comfortable at last. So now my own dearest Anthony Thom, be careful and guarded in coming about here, for I dread those nasty lurkin Pollis men more nor can I say, for I never knew suspicious people what were good for any thing themselves; and how they ever come to interduce such nasty town pests into the quiet peaceful country, I can�t for the life of me imagine; but Mr. George Gallon, who is a man of great intellect, says they are dangerous, and that is partly why he has given up travelling; so therefore my own dearest Anthony Thom be guarded, and mind put on your pee jacket and red worsted comforter, for I dread these hoar frosts, and I�ll have everything ready for my darling pet, so that you won�t be kept waiting a moment; but mind if there�s snow on the ground you don�t come for fear of the tracks. I think I have littel more to say this time, my own darling Anthony Thom, except that I am, my own dear, dear son, _ �Your ever loving mother, �Sarah.� �B-o-o-y Jove!� exclaimed Sir Moses, sousing himself down in an easy chair beside the table at which he had been writing �b-o-y Jove, what a production! Regular robber, dom�d if she�s not. Would give something to catch Master Anthony Thom, in his red worsted comforter, with his parcel of dripping. Would see whether I�d look into it or not. And Mr. Geordey Gallon, too! The impudent fellow who pretended not to know the Frenchman. Regular plant as ever was made. Will see whether he gets his money from me. Ten punds the wretch tried to do me out of by the basest deceit that ever was heard of. Con-found them, but I�ll see if I can�t be upsides with them all though,� continued he, writhing for vengeance. And the whole of that day, and most of that night, and the whole of the following day when hunting at Harker Crag, he was thinking how he could manage it. At length, as he was going quietly home with the hounds, after only an indifferent day�s sport, a thought struck him which he proceeded to put in execution as soon as he got into the house. He wrote a note to dear Lord Repartee, saying, if it would be quite convenient to Lady Repartee and his Lordship, he would be glad to stay all night with them before hunting Filberton forest; and leaving the unfolded note on the library table to operate during the night, he wrote a second one in the morning, inquiring the character of a servant; and putting the first note into the fire, he sealed the second one, and laid it ostentatiously on the hall table for the post. We take it we all have some ambitious feeling to gratify�all have some one whom we either wish to visit, or who we desire should visit us. We will candidly state that our ambition is to dine with the Lord Mayor. If we could but achieve that great triumph, we really think we should rest satisfied the rest of our life. We know how it would elevate us in the eyes of such men as Cuddy Flintoff and Paul Straddler, and what an advantage it would be to us in society being able to talk in a familiar way of his Lordship (Lordship with a capital L., if you please, Mr. Printer). Thus the world proceeds on the aspiring scale, each man looking to the class a little in advance of his own. �O knew they but their happiness, of men the happiest� are the sporting country gentlemen who live at home at ease�unvexed alike with the torments of the money-maker and the anxieties of the great, and yet sufficiently informed and refined to be the companions of either�men who see and enjoy nature in all her moods and varieties, and live unfettered with the pomp and vexation of keeping up appearances, envying no one, whoever may envy them. If once a man quits this happy rank to breast the contending billows of party in hopes of rising to the one above it, what a harvest of discord he sows for his own reaping. If a man wants to be thoroughly disgusted with human nature, let him ally himself unreservedly to a political party. He will find cozening and sneaking and selfishness in all their varieties, and patriotic false pretences in their most luxuriant growth. But we are getting in advance of our subject, our thesis being Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon. Our snuffy friend Spoon was not exempt from the ambitious failings of lesser men. His great object of ambition was to get Major Yammerton to visit him�or perhaps to put it more correctly, his great object of ambition was to visit Major Yammerton. But then, unfortunately, it requires two parties to these bargains; and Mrs. Yammerton wouldn�t agree to it, not so much because old Spoon had been a butler, but because his wife (our pen splutters as it writes the objection) his wife had been a�a�housekeeper. A handsome housekeeper she was, too, when she first came into the country; so handsome, indeed, that Dicky Boggledike had made two excursions over to their neighbour, Farmer Flamstead, to see her, and had reported upon her very favourably to the noble Earl his august master. Still Mrs. Yammerton wouldn�t visit her. In vain Mrs. Wotherspoon sent her bantams� eggs, and guinea fowls� eggs, and cuttings from their famous yellow rose-tree; in vain old Spoon got a worn-out horse, and invested his nether man in white cords and top boots to turn out after the harriers; in vain he walked a hound in summer, and pulled down gaps, and lifted gates off their hinges in winter�it all only produced thanks and politeness. The Yammertons and they were very good How-do-you-do? neighbours, but the true beef-and-mutton test of British friendship was wanting. The dinner is the thing that signs and seals the acquaintance. Thus they had gone on from summer to summer, and from season to season, until hope deferred had not only made old Spoon�s heart sick, but had also seen the white cords go at the knees, causing him to retire his legs into the military-striped cinnamon-coloured tweeds in which he appears in: In addition to muffling his legs, he had begun to mutter and talk about giving up hunting,�getting old,�last season�and so on, which made the Major think he would be losing one of the most personable of his field. This made him pause and consider how to avert the misfortune. Hunted hares he had sent him in more than regular rotation: he had liquored him repeatedly at the door; the ladies had reciprocated the eggs and the cuttings, with dahlias, and Sir Harry strawberry runners; and there really seemed very little left about the place wherewith to propitiate a refractory sportsman. At this critical juncture, a too confiding hare was reported by Cicely Bennett, farmer Merry field�s dairymaid, to have taken up her quarters among some tussuckey brambles at the north-east corner of Mr. Wotherspoon�s cow pasture�a most unusual, indeed almost unprecedented circumstance, which was communicated by Wotherspoon in person to the Major at the next meet of the hounds at Girdle Stone Green, and received with unfeigned delight by the latter. �You don�t say so!� exclaimed he, wringing the old dandy�s hand; �you don�t say so!� repeated he, with enthusiasm, for hares were scarce, and the country good; in addition to which the Major knew all the gaps. �_I do_,� replied Spoon, with a confident air, that as good as said, you may take my word for anything connected with hunting. �Well, then, I�ll tell you what we�ll do,� rejoined the Major, poking him familiarly in the ribs with his whip, �I�ll tell you what we�ll do; we�ll have a turn at her on Tuesday�meet at your house, eh? what say you to that?� �With all my heart,� responded the delighted Wotherspoon, adding, in the excitement of the moment, �S�pose you come to breakfast?� �Breakfast,� gasped the Major, feeling he was caught. �Dash it, what would Mrs. Yammerton say? Breakfast!� repeated he, running the matter through his mind, the wigging of his wife, the walk of his hound, the chance of keeping the old boy to the fore if he went�go he would. �With all my heart,� replied he, dashing boldly at the oiler; for it�s of no use a man saying he�s engaged to breakfast, and the Major felt that if the worst came to the worst, it would only be to eat two, one at home, the other with Spoon. So it was settled, much to Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon�s satisfaction, who were afterwards further delighted to hear that our friend Billy had returned, and would most likely be of the party. And most assiduously they applied themselves to provide for this, the great event of their lives. CHAPTER LIV. MR. WOTHERSPOON�S D�JEUNER � LA FOURCHETTE. 404m _Original Size_ IVY BANK Tower (formerly caled Cow gate Hill), the seat of Jeames Wotherspoon Esquire, stands on a gentle eminence about a stone�s throw from the Horseheath and Hinton turnpike road, and looks from the luxuriance of its ivy, like a great Jack-in-the-green. Ivy is a troublesome thing, for it will either not grow at all or it grows far too fast, and Wotherspoon�s had fairly overrun the little angular red brick, red tiled mansion, and helped it to its new name of Ivy Bank Tower. If the ivy flourished, however, it was the only thing about the place that did; for Wotherspoon was no farmer, and the 75A, 3R. 18P., of which the estate consisted, was a very uninviting looking property. Indeed Wotherspoon was an illustration of the truth of Sydney Smith�s observation that there are three things which every man thinks he can do, namely, drive a gig, edit a newspaper, and farm a small property, and Spoon bought Cowgate Hill thinking it would �go of itself,� as they say of a horse, and that in addition to the rent he would get the farmer�s profit as well, which he was told ought to be equal to the rent. Though he had the Farmers� Almanack, he did not attend much to its instructions, for if Mrs. Wotherspoon wanted the Fe-a-ton, as she called it, to gad about the country in, John Strong, the plough-boy footman �loused� his team, and arraying himself in a chocolate-coloured coat, with a red striped vest and black velveteens, left the other horse standing idle for the day. So Spoon sometimes caught the season and sometimes he lost it; and the neighbours used to hope that he hadn�t to live by his land. If he caught the season he called it good management; if he didn�t he laid the blame upon the weather, just as a gardener takes the credit for all the good crops of fruit, and attributes the failures to the seasons. Still Spoon was not at all sensible of his deficiencies, and subscribed a couple of guineas a year to the Harrowford Agricultural Society, in return for which he always had the toast of the healths of the tenant farmers assigned to him, which he handled in a very magnificent and condescending way, acknowledging the obligations the landowners were under to them, and hoping the happy union would long subsist to their mutual advantage; indeed, if he could only have got the words out of his mouth as fast as he got the drink into it, there is no saying but he might some day have filled the presidential chair. Now, however, a greater honour even than that awaited him, namely, the honour of entertaining the great Major Yammerton to breakfast. To this end John Strong was first set to clean the very dirty windows, then to trim the ivy and polish the brass knocker at the door, next to dig the border, in which grew the famous yellow rose, and finally to hoe and rake the carriage-drive up to the house; while Mrs. Wotherspoon, aided by Sally Brown, her maid-of-all-work, looked out the best blue and gold china, examined the linen, selected a tongue, guillotined the poultry, bespoke the eggs, and arranged the general programme of the entertainment. The Major thought himself very sly, and that he was doing the thing very cleverly by nibbling and playing with his breakfast on the appointed morning, instead of eating voraciously as usual; but ladies often know a good deal more than they pretend to do, and Mrs. Yammerton had seen a card from Mrs. Wotherspoon to their neighbour, Mrs. Broadfurrow, of Blossomfield Farm, inviting Broadfurrow and her to a �_déjeuner à la fourchette_� to meet Major Yammerton and see the hounds. However, Mrs. Yammerton kept the fact to herself, thinking she would see how her Major would manoeuvre the matter, and avoid a general acquaintance with the Wotherspoons. So she merely kept putting his usual viands before him, to try to tempt him into indulgence; but the Major, knowing the arduous part he would have to perform at the Tower, kept rejecting all her insidious overtures for eating, pretending he was not altogether right. �Almond pudding hadn�t agreed with him,� he thought. �Never did�should have known better than take it,� and so on. Our dawdling hero rather discontented his host, for instead of applying himself sedulously to his breakfast, he did nothing but chatter and talk to the young ladies, as if there was no such important performance before them as a hare to pursue, or the unrivalled harriers to display. He took cup after cup, as though he had lost his reckoning, and also the little word �no� from his vocabulary. At length the Major got him raised from the table, by telling him they had two miles farther to go than they really had, and making for the stable, they found Solomon and the footman whipper-in ready to turn out with the hounds. Up went our sportsmen on to their horses, and forth came the hounds wriggling and frolicking with joy. The cavalcade being thus formed, they proceeded across the fields, at the back of the house, and were presently passing up the Hollington Lane. The gift grey was the first object of interest as soon as they got well under way, and the Major examined him attentively, with every desire to find fault. �Neatish horse,� at length observed he, half to himself, half to our friend; �neatish horse�lightish of bone below the knee, p�raps, but still by no means a bad shaped �un.� Still though the Major could�nt hit off the fault, he was pretty sure there was a screw loose somewhere, to discover which he now got Billy to trot the horse, aud cauter him, and gallop him, successively. �Humph!� grunted he, as he returned after a brush over the rough ground of Farthingfield Moor; �he has the use of his legs�gets well away; easy horse under you, I dessay?� asked he. Billy said he was, for he could pull him about anywhere; saying which he put him boldly at a water furrow, and landed handsomely on the far side. �Humph!� grunted the Major again, muttering to himself, �May be all right�but if he is, it�s devilish unlike the Baronet, giving him. Wish he would take that confounded moon-eyed brute of mine and give me my forty puns back.� �And he gave him ye, did he?� asked the Major, with a scrutinising stare at our friend. �Why�yarse�no�yarse�not exactly,� replied Billy, hesitating. �The fact is, he offered to give me him, and I didn�t like taking him, and so, after a good deal to do, he said I might give him fifty pounds for him, and pay him when it suited me.� �I twig,� replied the Major, adding, �then you have to pay fifty pounds for him, eh?� �Or return him,� replied Billy, �or return him. He made me promise if over I wanted to part with him, I would give him the refusal of him again.� �Humph!� grunted the Major, looking the horse over attentively. �Fifty puns,� muttered he to himself,��must be worth that if he�s sound, and only eight off. Wouldn�t mind giving fifty for him myself,� thought he; �must be something wrong about him�certain of that�or Sir Moses wouldn�t have parted with him;� with which firm conviction, and the full determination to find out the horse�s weak point, the Major trotted along the Bodenham Road, through the little hamlet of Maywood, thence across Faulder the cattle jobber�s farm, into the Heath-field Road at Gilden Bridge. A quarter of a mile further, and Mr. Wotherspoon�s residence was full in sight. The �Tower� never, perhaps, showed to greater advantage than it did on this morning, for a bright winter�s sun lit up the luxuriant ivy on its angular, gable-ended walls, nestling myriads of sparrows that flew out in flocks at the approach of each visitor. �What place is this?� asked our hero, as, at a jerk of the Major�s head, Solomon turned off the road through the now propped-open gate of the approach to the mansion. �Oh, this is where we meet,� replied the Major; �this is Mr. Wotherspoon�s, the gentleman you remember out with us the day we had the famous run when we lost the hare at Mossheugh Law�the farm by the moor, you know, where the pretty woman was churning�you remember, eh?� �O, ah!� repeated Billy: �but I thought they called his place a Tower,�Ivy something Tower,� thinking this was more like two great sentry boxes placed at right angles, and covered with ivy than anything else. �Well, yes; he calls this a Tower,� replied the Major, seeing by Billy�s face that his friend had not risen in his estimation by the view of his mansion. �Capital feller Spoon, though,� continued he, �must go in and pay our respects to him and his lady.� So saying, he turned off the road upon the closely eaten sward, and, calling to Solomon to stop and let the hounds have a roll on the grass, he dismounted, and gave his horse in charge of a fustian-clad countryman, telling him to walk him about till he returned, and he would remember him for his trouble. Our friend Billy did the same, and knocking the mud sparks off his boots against the well pipe-clayed door-steps, prepared to enter the Tower. Before inducting them, however, let us prepare the inmates for their reception. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon had risen sufficiently early to enable them to put the finishing stroke to their respective arrangements, and then to apparel themselves for the occasion. They were gorgeously attired, vieing with the rainbow in the colour of their clothes. Old Spoon, indeed, seemed as if he had put all the finery on he could raise, and his best brown cauliflower wig shone resplendent with Macassar oil. He had on a light brown coat with a rolling velvet collar, velvet facings and cuffs, with a magnificent green, blue, and yellow striped tartan velvet vest, enriched with red cornelian buttons, and crossed diagonally with a massive Brazilian gold chain, and the broad ribbon of his gold double-eye-glasses. He sported a light blue satin cravat, an elaborately worked ruby-studded shirt front, over a pink flannel vest, with stiff wrist-bands well turned up, showing the magnificence of his imitation India garnet buttons. On his clumsy fingers he wore a profusion of rings�a brilliant cluster, a gold and opal, a brilliant and sapphire, an emerald half-hoop ring, a massive mourning, and a signet ring,�six in all,�genuine or glass as the case might be, equally distributed between the dirty-nailed fingers of each hand. His legs were again encased in the treacherous white cords and woe-begone top-boots that were best under the breakfast table. He had drawn the thin cords on very carefully, hoping they would have the goodness to hang together for the rest of the day. Mrs. Wotherspoon was bedizened with jewellery and machinery lace. She wore a rich violet-coloured velvet dress, with a beautiful machinery lace chemisette, fastened down the front with large Cairngorum buttons, the whole connected with a diminutive Venetian chain, which contrasted with the massive mosaic one that rolled and rattled upon her plump shoulders. A splendid imitation emerald and brilliant brooch adorned her bust, while her well-rounded arms were encircled with a mosaic gold, garnet and turquoise bracelet, an imitation rose diamond one, intermixed with pearl, a serpent armlet with blood-stone eyes, a heavy jet one, and an equally massive mosaic gold one with a heart�s ease padlock. Though in the full development of womanhood, she yet distended her figure with crinoline, to the great contraction of her room. The two had scarcely entered the little parlour, some twelve feet square, and Spoon got out his beloved Morning Post, ere Mr. and Mrs. Broadfurrow were seen wending their way up the road, at the plodding diligent sort of pace an agricultural horse goes when put into harness; and forthwith the Wotherspoons dismissed the last anxieties of preparation, and lapsed into the easy, unconcerned host and hostess. When John Strong threw open the door, and announced Mr. and Mrs. Broadfurrow, they were discovered standing over the fire, as if _d�ejeuner à la fourchette_ giving was a matter of every day�s occurrence with them. Then, at the summons, they turned and came forward in the full glow of cordiality, and welcomed their guests with all the fervour of sincerity; and when Mrs. Wotherspoon mounted the weather for a trot with Mrs. Broadfurrow, old Spoon out with his engine-turned gold snuff-box, and offered Broadfurrow a pinch ere he threw his conversation into the columns of his paper. The offer being accepted, Wotherspoon replenished his own nose, and then felt ready for anything. He was in high feather. He sunk his favourite topic, the doings of the House of Lords, and expatiated upon the Princess Royal�s then approaching marriage. Oh, dear, he was so glad. He was so glad of it�glad of it on every account�glad of it on the Princess�s account�glad of it on her most gracious Majesty�s account. Bless her noble heart! it almost made him feel like an old man when he remembered the Prince Consort leading her to the hymeneal altar herself. Well, well, life was life, and he had seen as much of it as most men; and just as he was going to indulge in some of his high-flown reminiscences, the crack of a hunting whip sounded through the house, and farmer Nettlefold�s fat figure, attired in the orthodox green coat and white cords of the Major Yammerton�s hunt was seen piled on a substantial brown cob, making his way to the stables at the back of the Tower. Mr. Nettlefold, who profanely entered by the back door, was then presently announced, and the same greetings having been enacted towards him, Wotherspoon made a bold effort to get back to the marriage, beginning with �As I was observing,� when farmer Rintoul came trotting up on his white horse, and holloaed out to know if he could get him put up. �Oh, certainly,� replied Wotherspoon, throwing up the window, when a sudden gust of wind nearly blew off his wig, and sadly disconcerted the ladies by making the chimney smoke. Just at this moment our friend appeared in sight, and all eyes were then directed to the now gamboling tongue-throwing hounds, as they spread frisking over the green. �What beauties!� exclaimed Mrs. Wotherspoon, pretending to admire them, though in reality she was examining the Point de Paris lace on Mrs. Broadfurrow�s mantle�wondering what it would be a yard, thinking it was very extravagant for a person like her to have it so broad. Old Spoon, meanwhile, bustled away to the door, to be ready to greet the great men as they entered. �Major Yammerton and Mr. Jingle!� announced John Strong, throwing it open, and the old dandy bent nearly double with his bow. �How are ye, Wotherspoon?� demanded our affable master, shaking him heartily by the hand, with a hail-fellow-well-met air of cordiality. �Mr. Pringle you know,� continued he, drawing our friend forward with his left hand, while he advanced with his right to greet the radiant Mrs. Wotherspoon. The Major then went the round of the party, whole handing Mrs. Broadfurrow, three fingering her husband, presenting two to old Rintonl, and nodding to Nettlefold. �Well, here�s a beautiful morning,� observed he, now Colossus-of-Rhodesing with his clumsily built legs��most remarkable season this I ever remember during the five-and-thirty years that I have kept haryers�more like summer than winter, only the trees are as bare of leaves as boot-trees, _haw, haw, haw_.� �_He, he, he_,� chuckled old Wotherspoon, �v-a-a-ry good, Major, v-a-a-ry good,� drawled he, taking a plentiful replenishment of snuff as he spoke. Breakfast was then announced, and the Major making up to the inflated Mrs. Wotherspoon tendered his arm, and with much difficulty piloted her past the table into the little duplicate parlour across the passage, followed by Wotherspoon with Mrs. Broadfurrow and the rest of the party. And now the fruits of combined science appeared in the elegant arrangement of the breakfast-table, the highly polished plate vieing with the snowy whiteness of the cloth, and the pyramidical napkins encircling around. Then there was the show pattern tea and coffee services, chased in wreaths and scrolls, presented to Mr. Wotherspoon by the Duke of Thunderdownshire on his marriage; the Louis Quatorze kettle presented to Mrs. Wotherspoon by the Duchess, with the vine-leaf-patterned cake-basket, the Sutherland-patterned toast-rack, and the tulip-patterned egg-stand, the gifts and testimonials of other parties. Nor was the entertainment devoted to mere show, for piles of cakes and bread of every shape and make were scattered profusely about, while a couple of covered dishes on the well polished little sideboard denoted that the fourchette of the card was not a mere matter of form. Best of all, a group of flat vine-leaf encircling Champagne glasses denoted that the repast was to be enlivened with the exhilarating beverage. The party having at length settled into seats, Major Yammerton on Mrs. Wotherspoon�s right, Mr. Pringle on her left, Mrs. Broadfurrow on Spoon�s right, her husband on his left, with Rintoul and Nettlefold filling in the interstices, breakfast began in right earnest, and Mrs. Wotherspoon having declined the Major�s offer of assisting with the coffee, now had her hands so full distributing the beverages as to allow him to apply himself sedulously to his food. This he did most determinedly, visiting first one detachment of cakes, then another, and helping himself liberally to both hashed woodcocks and kidneys from under the covers. His quick eye having detected the Champagne glasses, and knowing Wotherspoon�s reputed connoisseurship in wines, he declined Mrs. Wotherspoon�s tea, reserving himself for what was to follow. In truth, Spoon was a good judge of wine, so much so that he acted as a sort of decoy duck to a London house, who sent him very different samples to the wine they supplied to the customers with whom he picked up. He had had a great deal of experience in wines, never, in the course of a longish life having missed the chance of a glass, good, bad, or indifferent. We have seen many men set up for judges without a tithe of Wotherspoon�s experience. Look at a Club for instance. We see the footman of yesterday transformed into the butler of to-day, giving his opinion to some newly joined member on the next, with all the authority of a professor�talking of vintages, and flavours, and roughs and smooths, and sweets, and drys, as if he had been drinking wine all his life. Wotherspoon�s prices were rather beyond the Major�s mark, but still he had no objection to try his wine, and talk as if he would like to have some of the same sort. So having done ample justice to the eatables he turned himself back in his chair and proceeded to criticise Mrs. Wotherspoon�s now slightly flushed face, and wonder how such a pretty woman could marry such a snuffy old cock. While this deliberate scrutiny was going on, the last of the tea-drinkers died out, and at a pull of the bell, John Strong came in, and after removing as many cups and saucers as he could clutch, he next proceeded to decorate the table with Champagne glasses amid the stares and breath-drawings of the company. While this interesting operation was proceeding, the old dandy host produced his snuff-box, and replenishing his nose passed it on to Broadfurrow to send up the table, while he threw himself back in his chair and made a mental wager that Strong would make a mistake between the Champagne and the Sillery. The glasses being duly distributed, and the Major�s eye at length caught, our host after a prefatory throat-clearing hem thus proceeded to address him, individually, for the good of the company generally. �Major Yammerton,� said he, �I will take the liberty of recommending a glass of Sillery to you.�The sparkling, I believe, is very good, but the still is what I particularly pride myself upon and recommend to my friends.� �Strong!� continued he, addressing the clown, �the Sillery to Major Yammerton,� looking at Strong as much as to say, �you know it�s the bottle with the red cord round the neck.� The Major, however, like many of us, was not sufficiently versed in the delicacies of Champagne drinking to prefer the Sillery, and to his host�s dismay called for the sparkling-stuff that Wotherspoon considered was only fit for girls at a boarding school. The rest of the party, however, were of the Major�s opinion, and all glasses were eagerly held for the sparkling fluid, while the Sillery remained untouched to the master. It is but justice to Wotherspoon to add, that he showed himself deserving of the opportunity, for he immediately commenced taking two glasses to his guest�s one. That one having been duly sipped and quaffed and applauded, and a becoming interval having elapsed between, Mr. Wotherspoon next rose from his chair, and looking especially wise, observed, up the table �that there was a toast he wished�he had�he had�he wished to propose, which he felt certain under any�any (pause) circumstances, would be (pause again) accepted�he meant received with approbation (applause), not only with approbation, but enthusiasm,� continued he, hitting off the word he at first intended to use, amid renewed applause, causing a slight �this is my health,� droop of the head from the Major��But when,� continued the speaker, drawing largely on his snuff-box for inspiration, �But when in addition to the natural and intrinsic (pause) merit of the (hem) illustrious individual� (�Coming it strong,� thought the Major, who had never been called illustrious before,) �there is another and a stronger reason,� continued Wotherspoon, looking as if he wished he was in his seat again��a reason that comes �ome to the �earts and symphonies of us all (applause). (�Ah, that�s the hounds,� thought the Major, �only I �spose he means sympathies.�) �I feel (pause) assured,� continued Mr. Wotherspoon, �that the toast will be received with the enthusiasm and popularity that ever attends the (pause) mention of intrinsic merit, however (pause) �umbly and inadequately the (pause) toast may be (pause) proposed,� (great applause, with cries of no, no,) during which the orator again appealed to his snuff-box. He knew he had a good deal more to say, but he felt he couldn�t get it out. If he had only kept his seat he thought he might have managed it. �I therefore,� said he, helping Mrs. Broadfurrow to the sparkling, and passing the bottle to her husband while he again appealed to the Sillery, �beg to propose, with great sincerity, the �ealth of Her most gracious Majesty The Queen! The Queen! God bless her!� exclaimed Wotherspoon, holding up a brimming bumper ere he sunk in his chair to enjoy it. �With all my heart!� gasped the disgusted Major, writhing with vexation�observing to Mrs. Wotherspoon as he helped her, and then took severe toll of the passing bottle himself, �by Jove, your husband ought to be in Parliament�never heard a man acquit himself better��the Major following the now receding bottle with his eye, whose fast diminishing contents left little hopes of a compliment for himself out of its contents. He therefore felt his chance was out, and that he had been unduly sacrificed to Royalty. Not so, however, for Mr. Wotherspoon, after again charging his nose with snuff, and passing his box round the table while he collected his scattered faculties for the charge, now drew the bell-cord again, and tapping with his knife against the empty bottle as �Strong� entered, exclaimed, �Champagne!� with the air of a man accustomed to have all the wants of life supplied by anticipation. There�s nobody gets half so well waited upon as an old servant. This order being complied with, and having again got up the steam of his eloquence, Mr. Wotherspoon arose, and, looking as wise as before, observed, �That there was another toast he had to propose, which he felt (pause) sure would (pause) would be most agreeable and acceptable to the meeting,�he meant to say the party, the present party (applause)�under any circumstances (sniff, snuff, sneeze); he was sure it would be most (snuff) acceptable, for the great and distinguished (pause), he had almost said illustrious (sniff), gentleman (pause), was�was estimable�� �This is me, at all events,� thought the Major, again slightly drooping his too bashful head, as though the shower-bath of compliment was likely to be too heavy for him. ���was estimable (pause) and glorious in every relation of life (applause), and keeps a pack of hounds second to none in the kingdom (great applause, during which the drooping head descended an inch or two lower). I need not after that (snuff) expression of your (sniff) feelings (pause), undulate on the advantage such a character is of to the country, or in promoting (pause) cheerful hospitality in all its (pause) branches, and drawing society into sociable communications; therefore I think I shall (pause) offer a toast most, most heartily acceptable (sniff) to all your (snuff) feelings, when I propose, in a bumper toast, the health of our most�most distinguished and�and hospitable host�guest, I mean�Major Yammerton, and his harriers!� saying which, the old orator filled himself a bumper of Sillery, and sent the sparkling beverage foaming and creaming on its tour. He then presently led the charge with a loud, �Major! your very good health!� �Major, your very good health!� �Your very good health, Major!� �Major, your very good health!� then followed up as quickly as the glasses could be replenished, and the last explosion having taken place, the little Major arose, and looked around him like a Bantam cock going to crow. He was a man who could make what he would call an off-hand speech, provided he was allowed to begin with a particular word, and that word was �for.� Accordingly, he now began with,� �Ladies and gentlemen, _For_ the very distinguished honour you have thus most unexpectedly done me, I beg to return you my most grateful and cordial thanks. (Applause.) I beg to assure you, that the �steem and approbation of my perhaps too partial friends, is to me the most gratifying of compliments; and if during the five-and-thirty years I have kept haryers, I have contributed in any way to the �armony and good fellowship of this neighbourhood, it is indeed to me a source of unfeigned pleasure. (Applause.) I �ope I may long be spared to continue to do so. (Renewed applause.) Being upon my legs, ladies and gentlemen,� continued he, �and as I see there is still some of this most excellent and exhilarating beverage in the bottle (the Major holding up a half-emptied one as he spoke), permit me to conclude by proposing as a toast the �ealth of our inestimable �ost and �ostess�a truly exemplary couple, who only require to be known to be respected and esteemed as they ought to be. (Applause.) I have great pleasure in proposing the �ealth of Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon! (Applause.) Mrs. Wotherspoon,� continued he, bowing very low to his fair hostess, and looking, as he thought, most insinuating, �your _very_ good �ealth! Wotherspoon!� continued he, standing erect, and elevating his voice, �Your very good �ealth!� saying which he quaffed off his wine, and resumed his seat as the drinking of the toast became general. Meanwhile old Wotherspoon had taken a back hand at the Sillery, and again arose, glass in hand, to dribble out his thanks for the honour the Major and company had done Mrs. Wotherspoon and himself, which being the shortest speech he had made, was received with the greatest applause. All parties had now about arrived at that comfortable state when the inward monitor indicates enough, and the active-minded man turns to the consideration of the �next article, mem,��as the teasing shop-keepers say, The Major�s �next article,� we need hardly say, was his haryers, which were still promenading in front of the ivy-mantled tower, before an admiring group of pedestrians and a few sorrily mounted horsemen,�old Duffield, Dick Trail, and one or two others,�who would seem rather to have come to offer up their cattle for the boiler, than in expectation of their being able to carry them across country with the hounds. These are the sort of people who stamp the farmers� hedges down, and make hare hunting unpopular. �Well, sir, what say you to turning out?� now asked our Master, as Wotherspoon still kept working away at the Sillery, and maundering on to Mr. Broadfurrow about the Morning Post and high life. �Well, sir, what you think proper,� replied Spoon, taking a heavy pinch of snuff, and looking at the empty bottles on the table. �The hare, you say, is close at hand,� observed our master of hounds. �Close at hand, close at hand�at the corner of my field, in fact,� assented Wotherspoon, as if there was no occasion to be in a hurry. �Then let�s be at her!� exclaimed the Major rising with wine-inspired confidence, and feeling that it would require a very big fence to stop him with the hounds in full cry. �Well, but we are going to see you, ain�t we?� asked Mrs. Wotherspoon. �By all means,� replied our Master; adding, �but hadn�t you better get your bonnet on?� �Certainly,� rejoined Mrs. Wotherspoon, looking significantly at Mrs. Broadfurrow; whereupon the latter rose, and with much squeezing, and pardoning, and thank-you-ing, the two succeeded in effecting a retreat. The gentlemen then began kicking their legs about, feeling as though they would not want any dinner that day. CHAPTER LV. THE COUNCIL OF WAR.�POOR PUSS AGAIN! WHILE the ladies were absent adorning themselves, the gentlemen held a council of war as to the most advisable mode of dealing with the hare, aud the best way of making her face a good country. The Major thought if they could set her a-going with her head towards Martinfield-heath, they would stand a good chance of a run; while Broadfurrow feared Borrowdale brook would be in the way. �Why not Linacres?� asked Mr. Rintoul, who preferred having the hounds over any one�s farm but his own. �Linacres is not a bad line,� assented the Major thoughtfully; �Linacres is not a bad line, �specially if she keeps clear of Minsterfield-wood and Dowland preserve; but if once she gets to the preserve it�s all U. P., for we should have as many hares as hounds in five minutes, to say nothing of Mr. Grumbleton reading the riot act among us to boot.� �I�ll tell ye how to do, then,� interposed fat Mr. Nettlefold, holding his coat laps behind him as he protruded his great canary-coloured stomach into the ring; �I�ll tell you how to do, then. Just crack her away back over this way, and see if you can�t get her for Witherton and Longworth. Don�t you mind,� continued he, button-holeing the Major, �what a hunt we had aboot eighteen years since with a har we put off old Tommy Carman�s stubble, that took us reet away over Marbury Plot, the Oakley hill, and then reet down into Woodbury Yale, where we killed?� �To be sure I do!� exclaimed the delighted Major, his keen eyes glistening with pleasure at the recollection. �The day Sam Snowball rode into Gallowfield bog and came out as black as a sweep�I remember it well. Don�t think I ever saw a better thing. If it had been a�a�certain somebody�s hounds (_he, he, he!_), whose name I won�t mention (_haw, haw, haw!_), we should never have heard the last of it (_he, he, he!_).� While this interesting discussion was going on, old Wotherspoon who had been fumbling at the lock of the cellaret, at length got it open, and producing therefrom one of those little square fibre-protected bottles, with mysterious seals and hieroglyphical labels, the particoloured letters leaning different ways, now advanced, gold-dotted liquor-glass in hand, towards the group, muttering as he came, �Major Yammerton, will you �blege me with your �pinion of this Maraschino di Zara, which my wine merchants recommend to me as something very �tickler,� pouring out a glass as he spoke, and presenting it to his distinguished guest. �With all my heart,� replied the Major, who rather liked a glass of liquor; adding, �we�ll all give our opinion, won�t we, Pringle?� appealing to our hero. �Much pleasure,� replied Billy, who didn�t exactly know what it was, but still was willing to take it on trust. �That�s right,� rejoined old Spoon; �that�s right; then �blege me,� continued he, �by helping yourselves to glasses from the sideboard,� nodding towards a golden dotted brood clustering about a similarly adorned glass jug like chickens around a speckled hen. At this intimation a move was made to the point; and all being duly provided with glasses, the luscious beverage flowed into each in succession, producing hearty smacks of the lips, and �very goods� from all. �Well, I think so,� replied the self-satisfied old dandy; �I think so,� repeated he, replenishing his nose with a good pinch of snuff; �Comes from Steinberger and Leoville, of King Street, Saint Jeames�s�very old �quaintance of mine�great house in the days of George the Fourth of festive memory. And, by the way, that reminds me,� continued he, after a long-drawn respiration, �that I have forgotten a toast that I feel (pause) we ought to have drunk, and�� �Let�s have it now then,� interrupted the Major, presenting his glass for a second helping. �If you please,� replied �Wotherspoon, thus cut short in his oration, proceeding to replenish the glasses, but with more moderate quantities than before. �Well, now what�s your toast?� demanded the Major, anxious to be off. �The toast I was about to propose�or rather, the toast I forgot to propose,� proceeded the old twaddler, slowly and deliberately, with divers intermediate sniffs and snuffs, �was a toast that I feel �sured will come �ome to the �arts and symphonies of us all, being no less a�a�(pause) toast than the toast of the illustrious (pause), exalted�I may say, independent�I mean Prince�Royal Highness in fact�who (wheeze) is about to enter into the holy state of matrimony with our own beloved and exalted Princess (Hear, hear, hear). I therefore beg to (pause) propose that we drink the �ealth of His Royal (pause) �Ighness Prince (pause) Frederick (snuff) William (wheeze) Nicholas (sniff) Charles!� with which correct enunciation the old boy brightened up and drank off his glass with the air of a man who has made a clean breast of it. �Drink both their �ealths!� exclaimed the Major, holding up his glass, and condensing the toast into �The �ealths of their Royal Highnesses!� it was accepted by the company with great applause. Just as the last of the glasses was drained, and the lip-smacking guests were preparing to restore them to the sideboard, a slight rustle was heard at the door, which opening gently, a smart black velvet bonnet trimmed with cerise-coloured velvet and leaves, and broad cerise-coloured ribbons, piloted Mrs. Wotherspoon�s pretty face past the post, who announced that Mrs. Broadfurrow and she were ready to go whenever they were. �Let�s be going, then,� exclaimed Major Yammerton, hurrying to the sideboard and setting down his glass. �How shall it be, then? How shall it be?� appealing to the company. �Give them a view or put her away quietly?�give them a view or put her away quietly?� �Oh, put her away quietly,� responded Mr. Broadfurrow, who had seen many hares lost by noise and hurry at starting. �With her �ead towards Martinfield?� asked the Major. �If you can manage it,� replied Broadfurrow, well knowing that these sort of feats are much easier planned than performed. ��Spose we let Mrs. Wotherspoon put her away for us,� now suggested Mr. Rintonl. �By all means!� rejoined the delighted Major; �by all means! She knows the spot, and will conduct us to it. Mrs. Wotherspoon,� continued he, stumping up to her as she now stood waiting in the little passage, �allow me to have the honour of offering you my arm;� so saying, the Major presented it to her, observing confidentially as they passed on to the now open front door, �I feel as if we were going to have a clipper!� lowering the ominous hat-string as he spoke. �Solomon! Solomon!� cried he, to the patient huntsman, who had been waiting all this time with the hounds. �We are going! we are going!� �Yes, Major,� replied Solomon, with a respectful touch of his cap. �Now for it!� cried the Major, wheeling sharp round with his fair charge, and treading on old Wotherspoon�s gouty foot, who was following too closely behind with Mrs. Broadfurrow on his arm, causing the old cock to catch up his leg and spin round on the other, thus splitting the treacherous cords across the knee. 419m _Original Size_ �_Oh-o-o-o!_� shrieked he, wrinkling his face up like a Norfolk biffin, and hopping about as if he was dancing a hornpipe. �_Oh-o-o-o!_� went he again, on setting it down to try if he could stand. �I really beg you ten thousand pardons!� now exclaimed the disconcerted Major, endeavouring to pacify him. �I really beg you ten thousand pardons; but I thought you were ever so far behind.� �So did I, I�m sure,� assented Mrs. Wotherspoon. �You�re such a gay young chap, and step so smartly, you�d tread on any body�s heels,� observed the Major jocularly. �Well, but it was a pincher, I assure you,� observed Wotherspoon, still screwing up his mouth. At length he got his foot down again, and the assault party was reformed, the Major and Mrs. Wotherspoon again leading, old Spoon limping along at a more respectful distance with Mrs. Broadfurrow, while the gentlemen brought up the rear with the general body of pedestrians, who now deserted Solomon and the hounds in order to see poor puss started from her form. Solomon was to keep out of sight until she was put away. Passing through the little American blighted orchard, and what Spoon magnificently called his kitchen garden, consisting of a dozen grass-grown gooseberry bushes, and about as many winter cabbages, they came upon a partially-ploughed fallow, with a most promising crop of conch grass upon the unturned part, the hungry soil looking as if it would hardly return the seed. �Fine country! fine country!� muttered the Major, looking around on the sun-bright landscape, and thinking he could master it whichever way the hare went. Up Sandywell Lane for Martinfield Moor, past Woodrow Grange for Linacres, and through Farmer Fulton�s fold-yard for Witherton. Oh, yes, he could do it; and make a very good show out of sight of the ladies. �Now, where have you her? where have you her?� whispered he, squeezing Mrs. Wotherspoon�s plump arm to attract her attention, at the same time not to startle the hare. �O, in the next field,� whispered she, �in the next field,� nodding towards a drab-coloured pasture in which a couple of lean and dirty cows were travelling about in search of a bite. They then proceeded towards it. The gallant Major having opened the ricketty gate that intervened between the fallow and it, again adopted his fair charge, and proceeded stealthily along the high ground by the ragged hedge on the right, looking back and holding up his hand for silence among the followers. At length Mrs. Wotherspoon stopped. �There, you see,� said she, nodding towards a piece of rough, briary ground, on a sunny slope, in the far corner of the field. �I see!� gasped the delighted Major; �I see!� repeated he, �just the very place for a hare to be in�wonder there�s not one there always. Now,� continued he, drawing his fair charge a little back, �we�ll see if we can�t circumvent her, and get her to go to the west. Rintoul!� continued he, putting his hand before his mouth to prevent the sound of what he said being wafted to the hare. �Rintoul! you�ve got a whip�you go below and crack her away over the hill, that�s a good feller, and we�ll see if we can�t have something worthy of com-mem-mo-ration��the Major thinking how he would stretch out the run for the newspapers�eight miles in forty minutes, an hour and twenty with only one check�or something of that sort. The pause thrilled through the field, and caused our friend Billy to feel rather uncomfortable, he didn�t appreciate the beauties of the thing. Rintoul having now got to his point, and prepared his heavy whip-thong, the gallant band advanced, in semicircular order, until they came within a few paces of where the briars began. At a signal from the Major they all hailed. The excitement was then intense. �I see her!� now whispered the Major into Mrs. Wotherspoon�s ear. �I see her!� repeated he, squeezing her arm, and pointing inwardly with his thong-gathered whip. Mrs. Wotherspoon�s wandering eyes showed that she did not participate in the view. �Don�t you see the tuft of fern just below the thick red-berried rose bush a little to the left here?� asked the Major; �where the rushes die out?� Mrs. Wotherspoon nodded assent. �Well, then, she�s just under the broken piece of fern that lies bending this way. You can see her ears moving at this moment.� Mrs. Wotherspoon�s eyes brightened as she saw a twinkling something. �_Now then, put her away!_� said the Major gaily. �She won�t bite, will she?� whispered Mrs. Wotherspoon, pretending alarm. �Oh, bite, no!� laughed the Major; �hares don�t bite�not pretty women at least,� whispered he. �Here take my whip and give her a touch behind,� handing it to her as he spoke. Mrs. Wotherspoon having then gathered up her violet-coloured velvet dress a little, in order as well to escape the frays of the sharp-toothed brambles as to show her gay red and black striped petticoat below, now advanced cautiously into the rough sea, stepping carefully over this tussuck and t�other, avoiding this briar and that, until she came within whip reach of the fern. She then paused, and looked back with the eyes of England upon her. �_Up with her!�_ cried the excitcd Major, as anxious for a view as if he had never seen a hare in his life. Mrs. Wotherspoon then advanced half a step farther, and protruding the Major�s whip among the rustling fern, out sprang�what does the reader think?�A GREAT TOM CAT! �_Tallyho!_� cried Billy Pringle, deceived by the colour. �_Hoop, hoop, hoop!_� went old Spoon, taking for granted it was a hare. _Crack!_ resounded Rintoul�s whip from afar. �_Haw, haw, haw!_ never saw anything like that!� roared the Major, holding his sides. �Why, it�s a cat!� exclaimed the now enlightened Mrs. Wotherspoon, opening wide her pretty eyes as she retraced her steps towards where he stood. �Cat, ay, to be sure, my dear! why, it�s your own, isn�t it?� demanded our gallant Master. �No; ours is a grey�that�s a tabby,� replied she, returning him his whip. �Grey or tab, it�s a cat,� replied the Major, eyeing puss climbing up a much-lopped ash-tree in the next hedge. �Why, Spoon, old boy, don�t you know a cat when you see her?� demanded he, as his chagrined host now came pottering towards them. �I thought it was a hare, �pon honour, as we say in the Lords,� replied the old buck, bowing and consoling himself with a copious pinch of snuff. �Well, it�s a sell,� said the Major, thinking what a day he had lost. �D-a-a-vilish likely place for a hare,� continued old Wotherspoon, reconnoitring it through his double eye-glasses; �D-a-a-vilish likely place, indeed.� �Oh, likely enough,� muttered the Major, with a chuck of his chin, �likely enough,�only it isn�t one, _that�s all!_� �Well, I wish it had been,� replied the old boy. �So do I,� simpered his handsome wife, drawing her fine lace-fringed kerchief across her lips. The expectations of the day being thus disappointed, another council of war was now held, as to the best way of retrieving the misfortune. Wotherspoon, who was another instance of the truth of the observation, that a man who is never exactly sober is never quite drunk, was inclined to get back to the bottle. �Better get back to the house,� said he, �and talk matters quietly over before the fire;� adding, with a full replenishment of snuff up his nose, �I�ve got a batch of uncommonly fine Geisenheimer that I would like your �pinion of, Major,� but the Major, who had had wine enough, and wanted to work it off with a run, refused to listen to the tempter, intimating, in a whisper to Mrs. Spoon, who again hung on his arm, that her husband would be much better of a gallop. And Mrs. Wotherspoon, thinking from the haziness of the old gentleman�s voice, and the sapient twinkling of his gooseberry eyes, that he had had quite enough wine, seconded this view of the matter; whereupon, after much backing and bowing, and shaking of hands, and showing of teeth, the ladies and gentlemen parted, the former to the fire, the latter to the field, where the performance of the pack must stand adjourned for another chapter. CHAPTER LVI. A FINE RUN!�THE MAINCHANCE CORRESPONDENCE. 424m _Original Size_ HE worst of these _dejeuners à la fourchette_, and also of luncheons, is, that they waste the day, and then send men out half-wild to ride over the hounds or whatever else comes in their way. The greatest funkers, too, are oftentimes the boldest under the influence of false courage; so that the chances of mischief are considerably increased. The mounted Champagne bottle smoking a cigar, at page 71, is a good illustration of what we mean. We doubt not Mr. Longneck was very forward in that run. All our Ivy Tower party were more or less primed, and even old Wotherspoon felt as if he could ride. Billy, too, mounted the gallant grey without his usual nervous misgivings, and trotted along between the Major and Rintoul with an easy Hyde Park-ish sort of air. Rintonl had intimated that he thought they would find a hare on Mr. Merryweather�s farm at Swayland, and now led them there by the fields, involving two or three little obstacles�a wattled hurdle among the rest�which they all charged like men of resolution. The hurdle wasn�t knocked over till the dogs�-meatmen came to it. Arrived at Swayland, the field quickly dispersed, each on his own separate hare-seeking speculation, one man fancying a fallow, another a pasture: Rintonl reserving the high hedge near the Mill bridle-road, out of which he had seen more than one whipped in his time. So they scattered themselves over the country, flipping and flopping all the tufts ard likely places, aided by the foot-people with their sticks, and their pitchings and tossings of stones into bushes and hollows, and other tempting-looking retreats. The hounds, too, ranged far and wide, examining critically each likely haunt, pondering on spots where they thought she had been, but which would not exactly justify a challenge. While they were all thus busily employed, Rintoul�s shallow hat in the air intimated that the longed-for object was discerned, causing each man to get his horse by the head, and the foot-people to scramble towards him, looking anxiously forward and hurriedly back, lest any of the riders should be over them. Rintoul had put her away, and she was now travelling and stopping, and travelling and stopping, listening and wondering what was the matter. She had been coursed before but never hunted, and this seemed a different sort of proceeding. The terror-striking notes of the hounds, as they pounced upon her empty form, with the twang of the horn and the cheers of the sportsmen urging them on, now caused her to start; and, laying back her long ears, she scuttled away over Bradfield Green and up Ridge Hill as hard as ever she could lay legs to the ground. �Come along, Mr. Pringle! come along, Mr. Pringle!� cried the excited Major, spurring up, adjusting his whip as if he was going to charge into a solid square of infantry. He then popped through an open gate on the left. The bustling beauties of hounds had now fallen into their established order of precedence, Lovely and Lilter contending for the lead, with Bustler and Bracelet, and Ruffler and Chaunter, and Ruin and Restless, and Dauntless and Driver, and Dancer and Flaunter and others striving after, some giving tongue because they felt the scent, others, because the foremost gave it.�So they went truthfully up the green and over the hill, a gap, a gate, and a lane serving the bustling horsemen. The vale below was not quite so inviting to our �green linnets� as the country they had come from, the fields being small, with the fences as irregular as the counties appear on a map of England. There was none of that orderly squaring up and uniformity of size, that enables a roadster to trace the line of communication by gates through the country.�All was zigzag and rough, indicating plenty of blackthorns and briers to tear out their eyes. However, the Champagne was sufficiently alive in our sportsmen to prevent any unbecoming expression of fear, though there was a general looking about to see who was best acquainted with the country. Rintoul was now out of his district, and it required a man well up in the line to work them satisfactorily, that is to say, to keep them in their saddles, neither shooting them over their horses� heads nor swishing them over their tails. Our friend Billy worked away on the grey, thinking, if anything, he liked him better than the bay. He even ventured to spur him. The merry pack now swing musically down the steep hill, the chorus increasing as they reach the greener regions below. The fatties, and funkers, and ticklish forelegged ones, begin who-a-ing and g-e-e-ntly-ing to their screws, holding on by the pommels and cantrells, and keeping their nags� heads as straight as they can. Old Wotherspoon alone gets off and leads down. He�s afraid of his horse slipping upon its haunches. The sight of him doing so emboldens our Billy, who goes resolutely on, and incautiously dropping his hand too soon, the grey shot away with an impetus that caused him to cannon off Broadfurrow and the Major and pocket himself in the ditch at the bottom of the hill. Great was the uproar! The Richest Commoner in England was in danger! Ten thousand a-year in jeopardy! �Throw yourself off!� �Get clear of him!� �Keep hold of him!� �Mind he doesn�t strike ye!� resounded from all parts, as first the horse�s head went up, and then his tail, and then his head again, in his efforts to extricate himself. At length Billy, seizing a favourable opportunity, threw himself off on the green sward, and, ere he could rise, the horse, making a desperate plunge, got out, and went staring away with his head in the air, looking first to the right and then to the left, as the dangling reins kept checking and catching him. 427m _Original Size_ �Look sharp or you�ll loss him!� now cried old Duffield, as after an ineffectual snatch of the reins by a passing countryman, the horse ducked his head and went kicking and wriggling and frolicking away to the left, regardless of the tempting cry of the hounds. The pace, of course, was too good for assistance�and our friend and the field were presently far asunder. Whatever sport the hounds had�and of course they would have a clipper�we can answer for it Mr. Pringle had a capital run; for his horse led him a pretty Will-o�-the-wisp sort of dance, tempting him on and on by stopping to eat whenever his rider�or late rider, rather�seemed inclined to give up the chase, thus deluding him from field to lane and from lane to field until our hero was fairly exhausted.�Many were the rushes and dashes and ventures made at him by hedgers and ditchers and drainers, but he evaded them all by laying back his ears and turning the battery of his heels for the contemplation, as if to give them the choice of a bite or a kick. At length he turned up the depths of the well-known Love Lane, with its paved _trottoir_, for the damsels of the adjoining hamlets of East and West Woodhay to come dry-shod to the gossip-shop of the well; and here, dressed in the almost-forgotten blue boddice and red petticoat of former days, stood pretty Nancy Bell, talking matrimonially to Giles Bacon, who had brought his team to a stand-still on the higher ground of the adjoining hedge, on the field above. Hearing the clatter of hoofs, as the grey tried first the hard and then the soft of the lane, Bacon looked that way; and seeing a loose horse he jumped bodily into the lane, extending his arms and his legs and his eyes and his mouth in a way that was very well calculated to stop even a bolder animal than a horse. He became a perfect barrier. The grey drew up with an indignant snort and a stamp of his foot, and turning short round he trotted back, encountering in due time his agitated and indignant master, who had long been vowing what a trimming he would give him when he caught him. Seeing Billy in a hurry,�for animals are very good judges of mischief, as witness an old cock how he ducks when one picks up a stone,�seeing Billy in a hurry we say, the horse again wheeled about, and returned with more leisurely steps towards his first opponent. Bacon and Nancy were now standing together in the lane; and being more pleasantly occupied than thinking about loose horses, they just stood quietly and let him come towards them, when Giles�s soothing w-ho-o-ays and matter-of-course style beguiled the horse into being caught. Billy presently came shuffling up, perspiring profusely, with his feet encumbered with mud, and stamping the thick of it off while he answered Bacon�s question as to �hoo it happened,� and so on, in the grumpy sort of way a man does who has lost his horse, he presented him with a shilling, and remounting, rode off, after a very fine run of at least twenty minutes. The first thing our friend did when he got out of sight of Giles Bacon and Nancy, was to give his horse a good rap over the head with his whip for its impudent stupidity in running away, causing him to duck his head and shake it, as if he had got a pea or a flea in his ear.�He then began wheeling round and round, like a dog wanting to lie down, much to Billy�s alarm, for he didn�t wish for any more nonsense. That performance over, he again began ducking and shaking his head, and then went moodily on, as if indifferent to consequences. Billy wished he mightn�t have hit him so hard. When he got home, he mentioned the horse�s extraordinary proceedings to the Major, who, being a bit of a vet. and a strong suspector of Sir Moses� generosity to boot, immediately set it down to the right cause�megrims�and advised Billy to return him forthwith, intimating that Sir Moses was not altogether the thing in the matter of horses; but our friend, who kept the blow with the whip to himself, thought he had better wait a day or two and see if the attack would go off.�In this view he was upheld by Jack Rogers, who thought his old recipe, �leetle drop gin,� would set him all right, and proceeded to administer it to himself accordingly. And the horse improved so much that he soon seemed himself again, whereupon Billy, recollecting Sir Moses�s strenuous injunctions to give him the refusal of him if ever he wanted to part with him, now addressed him the following letter:� �Yammerton Grange. �Dear Sir Moses, _�As I find I must return to town immediately after the hunt ball, to which you were so good as invite me, and as the horse you were so good as give me would be of no use to me there, I write, in compliance with my promise to offer him back to you if ever I wanted to part with him, to say that he will be quite at your service after our next day�s hunting, or before if you like, as I dare say the Major will mount me if I require it. He is a very nice horse, and I feel extremely obliged for your very handsome intentions with regard to him, which, under other circumstances, I should have been glad to accept. Circumstanced as I am, however, he would be wasted upon me, and will be much better back in your stud. _ �I will, therefore, send him over on hearing from you; and you can either put my I.O.U. in the fire, or enclose it to me by the Post. �Again thanking you for your very generous offer, and hoping you are having good sport, I beg to subscribe myself, �Dear Sir Moses, �Yours very truly, �Wm. PRINGLE �To Sir Moses Mainchance, Bart., �Pangburn Park.� And having sealed it with the great seal of state, he handed it to Rougier to give to the postman, without telling his host what he had done. The next post brought the following answer:� �_Many, very many thanks to you, my dear Pringle, for your kind recollection of me with regard to the grey, which I assure you stamps you in my opinion as a most accurate and excellent young man.�You are quite right in your estimate of my opinion of the horse; indeed, if I had not considered him something very far out of the common way, I should not have put him into your hands; but knowing him to be as good as he�s handsome, I had very great satisfaction in placing him with you, as well on your own account as from your being the nephew of my old and excellent friend and brother baronet, Sir Jonathan Pringle�to whom I beg you to make my best regards when you write._ _�Even were it not so, however, I should be precluded from accepting your kind and considerate offer for only yesterday I sent Wetun into Doubleimupshire, to bring home a horse I�ve bought of Tom Toweler, on Paul Straddler�s recommendation, being, as I tell Paul, the last I�ll ever buy on his judgment, unless he turns out a trump, as he has let me in for some very bad ones._ _�But, my dear Pringle, ain�t you doing yourself a positive injustice in saying that you would have no use for the grey in town? Town, my dear fellow, is the very place for a horse of that colour, figure, and pretension; and a very few turns in the Park, with you on his back, before that best of all pennyworths, the chair-sitting swells, might land you in the highest ranks of the aristocracy�unless, indeed, you are booked elsewhere, of which, perhaps, I have no business to inquire._ _�I may, however, as a general hint, observe to the nephew of my old friend, that the Hit-im and Hold-imshire Mammas don�t stand any nonsense, so you will do well to be on your guard. No; take my advice, my dear fellow, and ride that horse in town.�It will only be sending him to Tat.�s if you tire of him there, and if it will in any way conduce to your peace of mind, and get rid of any high-minded feeling of obligation, you can hand me over whatever you get for him beyond the £50 �And that reminds me, as life is uncertain, and it is well to do everything regularly, I�ll send my agent, Mr. Mordecai Nathan, over with your I.O.U., and you can give me a bill at your own date�say two or three months�instead, and that will make us all right and square, and, I hope, help to maintain the truth of the old adage, that short reckonings make long friends,�which I assure you is a very excellent one._ _�And now, having exhausted both my paper and subject, I shall conclude with repeating my due appreciation of your kind recollection of my wishes; and with best remembrances to your host and hostess, not forgetting their beautiful daughters, whom I hope to see in full feather at the ball, I remain,_ _�My dear Pringle._ _�Very truly and sincerely, yours,_ _�Moses Mainchance._ _�To Wm. Pringle�_ We need scarcely add that Mr. Mordecai Nathan followed quickly on the heels of the letter, and that the I. 0. U. became a short-winded bill of exchange, thus saddling our friend permanently with the gallant grey. And when Major Yammerton heard the result, all the consolation Billy got from him was, �_I told you so_,� meaning that he ought to have taken his advice, and returned the horse as unsound. With this episode about the horse, let us return to Pangburn Park. CHAPTER LVII. THE ANTHONY THOM TRAP. SIR Moses was so fussy about his clothes, sending to the laundry for this shirt and that, censuring the fold of this cravat and that, inquiring after his new hunting ties and best boots, that Mrs. Margerum began to fear the buxom widow, Mrs. Vivian, was going to be at Lord Repartee�s, and that she might be saddled with that direst of all dread inflictions to an honest conscientious housekeeper, a teasing, worreting, meddling mistress. That is a calamity which will be best appreciated by the sisterhood, and those who watch how anxiously �widowers and single gentlemen� places are advertised for in the newspapers, by parties who frequently, not perhaps unaptly, describe themselves as �thoroughly understanding their business.� Sir Moses, indeed, carried out the deception well; for not only in the matter of linen, but in that of clothes also, was he equally particular, insisting upon having all his first-class daylight things brought out from their winter quarters, and reviewing them himself as they lay on the sofa, ere he suffered Mr. Bankhead to pack them. At length they were sorted and passed into the capacious depths of an ample brown leather portmanteau, and the key being duly turned and transferred to the Baronet, the package itself was chucked into the dog-cart in the unceremonious sort of way luggage is always chucked about. The vehicle itself then came to the door, and Sir Moses having delivered his last injunctions about the hounds and the horses, and the line of coming to cover so as to avoid public-houses, he ascended and touching the mare gently with the whip, trotted away amid the hearty��well shut of yous� of the household. Each then retired to his or her private pursuits; some to drink, some to gamble, some to write letters, Mrs. Margerum, of course, to pick up the perquisites. Sir Moses, meanwhile, bowled away ostentatiously through the lodges, stopping to talk to everybody he met, and saying he was going away for the night. Bonmot Park, the seat of Lord Repartee, stands about the junction of Hit-im and Hold-imshire, with Featherbedfordshire. Indeed, his great cover of Tewington Wood is neutral between the hunts, and the best way to the park on wheels, especially in winter time, is through Hinton and Westleak, which was the cause of Sir Moses hitting upon it for his deception, inasmuch as he could drive into the Fox and Hounds Hotel; and at Hinton, under pretence of baiting his mare without exciting suspicion, and there make his arrangements for the night. Accordingly, he took it very quietly after he got clear of his own premises, coveting rather the shades of evening that he had suffered so much from before, and as luck would have it by driving up Skinner Lane, instead of through Nelson Street, he caught a back view of Paul Straddler, as for the twenty-third time that worthy peeped through the panes of Mrs. Winship, the straw-bonnet maker�s window in the market-place, at a pretty young girl she had just got from Stownewton. Seeing his dread acquaintance under such favourable circumstances, Sir Moses whipped Whimpering Kate on, and nearly upset himself against the kerb-stone as he hurried up the archway of the huge deserted house,�the mare�s ringing hoofs alone, announcing his coming. _Ostler! Ostler! Ostler!_ cried he in every variety of tone, and at length the crooked-legged individual filling that and other offices, came hobbling and scratching his head to the summons. Sir Moses alighting then, gave him the reins and whip; and wrapper in hand, proceeded to the partially gas-lit door in the archway, to provide for himself while the ostler looked after the mare. Now, it so happened, that what with bottle ends and whole bottles, and the occasional contributions of the generous, our friend Peter the waiter was even more inebriated than he appears at page 263; and the rumbling of gig-wheels up the yard only made him waddle into the travellers� room, to stir the fire and twist up a bit of paper to light the gas, in case it was any of the despised brotherhood of the road.�He thought very little of bagmen�Mr. Customer was the man for his money. Now, he rather expected Mr. Silesia, Messrs. Buckram the clothiers� representative, if not Mr. Jaconette, the draper�s also, about this time; and meeting Sir Moses hurrying in top-coated and cravated with the usual accompaniments of the road, he concluded it was one of them; so capped him on to the commercial room with his dirty duster-holding hand. �Get me a private room, Peter; get me a private room,� demanded the Baronet, making for the bottom of the staircase away from the indicated line of scent. �Private room,� muttered Peter. �Why, who is it?� �Me! me!� exclaimed Sir Moses, thinking Peter would recognise him. �Well, but whether are ye a tailor or a draper?� demanded Peter, not feeling inclined to give way to the exclusiveness of either. �Tailor or draper! you stupid old sinner�don�t you see it�s me�me Sir Moses Mainchance?� �Oh, Sir Moses, Sir, I beg your pardon, Sir,� stammered the now apologising Peter, hurrying back towards the staircase. �I really begs your pardon, Sir; but my eyes are beginning to fail me, Sir�not so good as they were when Mr. Customer hunted the country.�Well Sir Moses, Sir, I hope you�re well, Sir; and whether will you be in the Sun or the Moon? You can have a fire lighted in either in a minute, only you see we don�t keep fires constant no ways now, �cept in the commercial room.�Great change, Sir Moses, Sir, since Mr. Customer hunted the country; yes, Sir, great change�used to have fires in every room, Sir, and brandy and�� �Well, but,� interrupted Sir Moses, �I can�t sit freezing up stairs till the fire�s burnt up.�You go and get it lighted, and come to me in the commercial-room and tell me when it�s ready; and here!� continued he, �I want some dinner in an hour�s time, or so.� �By all means, Sir Moses. What would you like to take, Sir Moses?� as if there was everything at command. _Sir Moses_��Have you any soup?� _Peter_��Soup, Sir Moses. No, I don�t think there is any soup.� _Sir Moses_��Fish; have you any fish?� _Peter_��Why, no; I don�t think there�ll be any fish to-day, Sir Moses.� _Sir Moses_��What have you, then?� _Peter_�(Twisting the dirty duster), �Mutton chops�beef steak�beef steak�mutton chops�boiled fowl, p�raps you�d like to take?� _Sir Moses_��No. I shouldn�t (_muttering_, most likely got to be caught and killed yet.) Tell the cook,� continued he, speaking up, �to make on a wood and coal fire, and to do me a nice dish of mutton chops on the gridiron; not in the frying-pan mind, all swimming in grease; and to boil some mealy potatoes.� _Peter_��Yes, Sir Moses; and what would you like to have to follow?� �_Cheese!_� said Sir Moses, thinking to cut short the inquiry. �And hark�e.� continued Sir Moses: Don�t make a great man of me by bringing out your old battered copper showing-dishes; but tell the cook to send the chops up hot and hot, between good warm crockery-ware plates, with ketchup or Harvey sauce for me to use as I like.� �Yes, Sir Moses,� replied Peter, toddling off to deliver as much of the order as he could remember. And Sir Moses having thawed himself at the commercial-room fire, next visited the stable to see that his mare had been made comfortable, and told the ostler post-boy boots to be in the way, as he should most likely want him to take him out in the fly towards night. As he returned, he met Bessey Bannister, the pretty chambermaid, now in the full glow of glossy hair and crinoline, whom he enlisted as purveyor of the mutton into the Moon, in lieu of the antiquated Peter, whose services he was too glad to dispense with.�It certainly is a considerable aggravation of the miseries of a country inn to have to undergo the familiarities of a dirty privileged old waiter. 435m _Original Size_ So thought Sir Moses, as he enjoyed each succeeding chop, and complimented the fair maiden so on her agility and general appearance, that she actually dreamt she was about to become Lady Mainchance. CHAPTER LVIII. THE ANTHONY THOM TAKE. SIR Moses Mainchance, having fortified himself against the night air with a pint of club port, and a glass of pale brandy after his tea, at length ordered out the inn fly, without naming its destination to his fair messenger. These vehicles, now so generally scattered throughout the country, are a great improvement on the old yellow post-chaise, that made such a hole in a sovereign, and such a fuss in getting ready, holloaing, �Fust pair out!� and so on, to give notice to a smock-frocked old man to transform himself into a scarlet or blue jacketed post-boy by pulling off his blouse, and who, after getting a leg-up and a ticket for the first turnpike-gate, came jingling, and clattering, and cracking his dog-whip round to the inn door, attracting all the idlers and children to the spot, to see who was going to get into the �chay.� The fly rumbles quietly round without noise or pretension, exciting no curiosity in any one�s mind; for it is as often out as in, and may only be going to the next street, or to Woodbine Lodge, or Balsam Bower, on the outskirts of the town, or for an hour�s airing along the Featherbedfordshire or the old London road. It does not even admit of a pull of the hair as a hint to remember the ostler as he stands staring in at the window, the consequence of which is, that the driver is generally left to open the door for his passenger himself. Confound those old iniquities of travelling!�a man used never to have his hand out of his pocket. Let not the rising generation resuscitate the evil, by contravening the salutary regulation of not paying people on railways. Sir Moses hearing the sound of wheels, put on his wraps; and, rug in hand, proceeded quietly down stairs, accompanied only by the fair Bessy Bannister, instead of a flight of dirty waiters, holloaing �Coming down! coming down! now then! look sharp!� and so on. The night was dark, but the ample cab-lamps threw a gleam over the drab and red lined door that George Beer the driver held back in his hand to let his customer in. �Good night, my dear,� said Sir Moses, now slyly squeezing Miss Bannister�s hand, wondering why people hadn�t nice clean quiet-stepping women to wait upon them, instead of stuck-up men, who thought to teach their masters what was right, who wouldn�t let them have their plate-warmers in the room, or arrange their tables according to their own desires.�With these and similar reflections he then dived head-foremost into the yawning abyss of a vehicle. �Bang� went the door, and Beer then touched the side of his hat for instructions where to go to. �Let me see,� said Sir Moses, adjusting his rug, as if he hadn�t quite made up his mind. �Let me see�oh, ah! drive me northwards, and I�ll tell you further when we stop at the Slopewell turnpike-gate:� so saying Sir Moses drew up the gingling window, Beer mounted the box, and away the old perpetual-motion horse went nodding and knuckling over the uneven cobble-stone pavement, varying the motion with an occasional bump and jump at the open channels of the streets. Presently a smooth glide announced the commencement of Macadam, and shortly after the last gas-lamp left the road to darkness and to them. All was starlight and serene, save where a strip of newly laid gravel grated against the wheels, or the driver objurgated a refractory carter for not getting out of his way. Thus they proceeded at a good, steady, plodding sort of pace, never relaxing into a walk, but never making any very vehement trot. At the Slopewell gate Sir Moses told Beer to take a ticket for the Winterton Burn one; arrived at which, he said, �Now go on and stop at the stile leading into the plantation, about half a mile on this side of my lodges,� adding, �I�ll walk across the park from there;� in obedience to which the driver again plied his whip along the old horse�s ribs, and in due time the vehicle drew up at the footpath along-side the plantation.�The door then opened, Sir Moses alighted and stood waiting while the man turned his fly round and drove off, in order to establish his night eyes ere he attempted the somewhat intricate passage through the plantation to his house. The night, though dark, was a good deal lighter than it appeared among the gloom of the houses and the glare of the gaslights at Hinton; and if he was only well through the plantation, Sir Moses thought he should not have much difficulty with the rest of the way. So conning the matter over in his mind, thinking whereabouts the boards over the ditch were, where the big oak stood near which the path led to the left, he got over the stile, and dived boldly into the wood. The Baronet made a successful progress, and emerged upon the open space of Coldnose, just as the night breeze spread the twelve o�clock notes of his stable clock through the frosty air, upon the quiet country. �All right,� said he to himself, sounding his repeater to ascertain the hour, as he followed the tortuous track of the footpath, through cowslip pasture, over the fallow and along the side of the turnip field; he then came to the turn from whence in daylight the first view of the house is obtained. A faint light glimmered in the distance, about where he thought the house would be situate. �Do believe that�s her room,� said Sir Moses, stopping and looking at the light. �Do believe that�s her signal for beloved Anthony Thom. If I catch the young scoundrel,� continued he, hurrying on, �I�ll�I�ll�I�ll break every bone in his skin.� With this determination, Sir Moses put on as fast as the now darker lower ground would allow, due regard being had to not missing his way. At length he came to the cattle hurdles that separated the east side of the park from the house, climbing over which he was presently among the dark yews and hollies, and box-bushes of the shrubbery. He then paused to reconnoitre.�The light was still there.�If it wasn�t Mrs. Margerum�s room, it was very near it; but he thought it was hers by the angle of the building and the chimneys at the end. What should he do?�Throw a pebble at the window and try to get her to lower what she had, or wait and see if he could take Anthony Thom, cargo and all? The night was cold, but not sufficiently so, he thought, to stop the young gentleman from coming, especially if he had his red worsted comforter on; and as Sir Moses threw his rug over his own shoulders, he thought he would go for the great haul, at all events; especially as he felt he could not converse with Mrs. Margerum à la Anthony Thom, should she desire to have a little interchange of sentiment. With this determination he gathered his rug around him, and proceeded to pace a piece of open ground among the evergreens, like the Captain of a ship walking the quarter-deck, thinking now of his money, now of his horses, now of Miss Bannister, and now of the next week�s meets of his hounds.�He had not got half through his current of ideas when a footstep sounded upon the gravel-walk; and, pausing in his career, Sir Moses distinctly recognised the light patter of some one coming towards him. He down to charge like a pointer to his game, and as the sound ceased before the light-showing window, Sir Moses crept stealthily round among the bushes, and hid behind a thick ground-sweeping yew, just as a rattle of peas broke upon the panes. The sash then rose gently, and Sir Moses participated in the following conversation:� _Mrs. Margerum_ (from above)��O, my own dearly beloved Anthony Thom, is that you, darling! But don�t, dear, throw such big �andfulls, or you�ll be bricking the winder.� _Master Anthony Thom_ (from below)��No, mother; only I thought you might be asleep.� _Mrs. Margerum_��Sleep, darling, and you coming! I never sleep when my own dear Anthony Thom is coming! Bless your noble heart! I�ve been watching for you this�I don�t know how long.� _Master Anthony Thom_��Couldn�t get Peter Bateman�s cuddy to come on.� _Mrs. Margerum_��And has my Anthony Thom walked all the way?� _Master Anthony Thom_��No; I got a cast in Jackey Lishman the chimbley-sweep�s car as far as Burnfoot Bridge. I�ve walked from there.� _Mrs. Margerum_��Bless his sweet heart! And had he his worsted comforter on?� _Master Anthony Thom_��Yes; goloshes and all.� _Mrs. Margerum_��Ah, goloshes are capital things. They keep the feet, warm, and prevent your footsteps from being heard. And has my Anthony Thom got the letter I wrote to him at the Sun in the Sands?� _Master Anthony Thom_��No, never heard nothin� of it.� _Mrs. Margerum��No!_ Why what can ha� got it?� _Master Anthony Thom_��Don�t know.�Makes no odds.�I got the things all the same.� _Mrs. Margerum_��O, but my own dear Anthony Thom, but it does. Mr. Gerge Gallon says it�s very foolish for people to write anything if they can �elp it�they should always send messages by word of mouth. Mr. Gallon is a man of great intellect, and I�m sure what he says is right, and I wish I had it back.� _Master Anthony Thom_��O, it�ll cast up some day, I�ll be bound.�It�s of no use to nobody else.� _Mrs. Margerum_��I hope so, my dear. But it is not pleasant to think other folks may read what was only meant for my own Anthony Thom. However, it�s no use crying over spilt milk, and we must manish better another time. So now look out, my beloved, and I�ll lower what I have.� So saying, a grating of cord against the window-sill announced a descent, and Master Anthony Thom, grasping the load, presently cried, �All right!� _Mrs. Margerum_,��It�s not too heavy for you, is it, dear?� _Master Anthony Thom_ (hugging the package)��O, no; I can manish it. When shall I come again, then, mother?� asked he, preparing to be off. _Mrs. Margerum_��Oh, bless your sweet voice, my beloved. When shall you come again, indeed? I wish I could say very soon; but, dearest, it�s hardly safe, these nasty pollis fellers are always about, besides which, I question if old Nosey may be away again before the ball; and as he�ll be all on the screw for a while, to make up for past expense, I question it will be worth coming before then. So, my own dear Anthony Thom, s�pose we say the ball night, dear, about this time o� night, and get a donkey to come on as far as the gates, if you can, for I dread the fatigue; and if you could get a pair of panniers, so much the better, you�d ride easier, and carry your things better, and might have a few fire-bricks or hearth-stones to put at the top, to pretend you were selling them, in case you were stopped�which, however, I hope won�t be the case, my own dear; but you can�t be too careful, for it�s a sad, sinful world, and people don�t care what they say of their neighbours. So now, my own dearest Anthony Thom, good night, and draw your worsted comforter close round your throat, for colds are the cause of half our complaints, and the night air is always to be dreaded; and take care that you don�t overheat yourself, but get a lift as soon as you can, only mind who it is with, and don�t say you�ve been here, and be back on the ball night. So good night, my own dearest Anthony Thom, and take care of yourself whatever you do, for��� �Good night, mother,� now interrupted Anthony Thom, adjusting the bundle under his arm, and with repeated �Good night, my own dearest,� from her, he gave it a finishing jerk, and turning round, set off on his way rejoicing. Sir Moses was too good a sportsman to holloa before his game was clear of the cover; and he not only let Anthony Thom�s footsteps die out on the gravel-walk, but the sash of Mrs. Margerum�s window descend ere he withdrew from his hiding-place and set off in pursuit. He then went tip-toeing along after him, and was soon within hearing of the heavily laden lad. �Anthony Thom, my dear! Anthony Thom,� whispered he, coming hastily upon him as he now turned the corner of the house. Anthony Thom stopped, and trembling violently exclaimed, �O Mr. Gallon, is it you?� �Yes, my dear, it�s me,� replied Sir Moses, adding, �you�ve _got_ a great parcel, my dear; let me carry it for you,� taking it from him as he spoke. 441m _Original Size_ �_Shriek! shriek! scream!_� now went the terrified Thom, seeing into whose hands he had fallen. �O you dom�d young rascal,� exclaimed Sir Moses, muffling him with his wrapper,��I�ll draw and quarter you if you make any noise. Come this way, you young miscreant!� added he, seizing him by the worsted comforter and dragging him along past the front of the house to the private door in the wall, through which Sir Moses disappeared when he wanted to evade Mon s. Rougier�s requirements for his steeple-chase money. That passed, they were in the stable-yard, now silent save the occasional stamp of the foot or roll of the halter of some horse that had not yet lain down. Sir Moses dragged his victim to the door in the corner leading to the whipper-in�s bedroom, which, being open, he proceeded to grope his way up stairs. �Harry! Joe! Joe! Harry!� holloaed he, kicking at the door. Now, Harry was away, but Joe was in bed; indeed he was having a hunt in his sleep, and exclaimed as the door at length yielded to the pressure of Sir Moses� foot. ��Od rot it! Don�t ride so near the hounds, man!� �Joe!� repeated Sir Moses, making up to the corner from whence the sound proceeded. �Joe! Joe!� roared he still louder. �O, I beg your pardon! I�ll open the gate!� exclaimed Joe, now throwing off the bed-clothes and bounding vigorously on to the floor. �Holloa!� exclaimed he, awaking and rubbing his eyes. �Holloa! who�s there?� �Me,� said Sir Moses, �me,��adding: �Don�t make a row, but strike a light as quick as you can; I�ve got a bag fox I want to show you.� �Bag fox, have you?� replied Joe, now recognising his master�s voice, making for the mantel-piece and feeling for the box. �Bag fox, have you? Dreamt we were in the middle of a run from Ripley Coppice, and that I couldn�t get old Crusader over the brook at no price.� He then hit upon the box, and with a scrape of a lucifer the room was illuminated. Having lit a mould candle that stood stuck in the usual pint-bottle neck, Joe came with it in his hand to receive the instructions of his master. �Here�s a dom�d young scoundrel I�ve caught lurking about the house,� said Sir Moses, pushing Anthony Thom towards him �and I want you to give him a good hiding.� �Certainly, Sir Moses; certainly,� replied Joe, taking Anthony Thom by the ear as he would a hound, and looking him over amid the whining and whimpering and beggings for mercy of the boy. �Why this is the young rascal that stole my Sunday shirt off Mrs. Saunders�s hedge!� exclaimed Joe, getting a glimpse of Anthony Thom�s clayey complexioned face. �No, it�s not,� whined the boy. �No, it�s not. I never did nothin� o� the sort.� �Nothin� o� the sort!� retorted Joe, �why there ain�t two hugly boys with hare lips a runnin� about the country,� pulling down the red-worsted comforter, and exposing the deformity as he spoke. �It�s you all over,� continued he, seizing a spare stirrup leather, and proceeding to administer the buckle-end most lustily. Anthony Thom shrieked and screamed, and yelled and kicked, and tried to bite; but Joe was an able practitioner, and Thom could never get a turn at him. Having finished one side, Joe then turned him over, and gave him a duplicate beating on the other side. �There! that�ll do: kick him down stairs!� at length cried Sir Moses, thinking Joe had given him enough; and as the boy went bounding head foremost down, he dropped into his mother�s arms, who, hearing his screams, had come to the rescue. Joe and his master then opened the budget and found the following goods:� 2 lb. of tea, 1 bar of brown soap in a dirty cotton night-cap, marked C. F.; doubtless, as Sir Moses said, one of Cuddy Flintoff�s. �Dom all such dripping,� said Sir Moses, as he desired Joe to carry the things to the house. �No wonder that I drank a great deal of tea,� added he, as Joe gathered them together. �Who the deuce would keep house that could help it?� muttered Sir Moses, proceeding on his way to the mansion, thinking what a trouncing he would give Mrs. Margerum ere he turned her out of doors. 1 lb. of coffee 3 lb. of brown sugar 3 lb. of starch 1 lb. of currants 1 lb. of rushlights 1 roll of cocoa 2 oz. of nutmegs 1 lb. of mustard 1 bar of pale soap 1 lb. of orange peel 1 bottle of capers 1 quail of split pras CHAPTER LIX. ANOTHER COUNCIL OF WAR.�MR. GALLON AT HOME. MRS. Margerum having soothed and pressed her beautiful boy to her bosom, ran into the house, and hurrying on the everlasting pheasant-feather bonnet in which she was first introduced to the reader, and a faded red and green tartan cloak hanging under it, emerged at the front door just as Sir Moses and Joe entered at the back one, vowing that she would have redress if it cost her a fi� pun note. Clutching dear Anthony Thom by the waist, she made the best of her way down the evergreen walk, and skirting the gardens, got upon the road near the keeper�s lodge. �Come along, my own dear Anthony Thom,� cried she, helping him along, �let us leave this horrid wicked hole.�Oh, dear! I wish I�d never set foot in it; but I�ll not have my Anthony Thom chastised by any nasty old clothesman�no, that I won�t, if it cost me a fifty pun note��continued she, burning for vengeance. But Anthony Thom had been chastised notwithstanding, so well, indeed, that he could hardly hobble�seeing which, Mrs. Margerum halted, and again pressing him to her bosom, exclaimed, �Oh, my beloved Anthony Thom can�t travel; I�ll take him and leave him at Mr. Hindmarch�s, while I go and consult Mr. Gallon.��So saying, she suddenly changed her course, and crossing Rye-hill green, and the ten-acre field adjoining, was presently undergoing the _wow-wow wow-wow_ of the farmer lawyer�o dog, Towler. The lawyer, ever anxious for his poultry, was roused by the noise; and after a rattle of bolts, and sliding of a sash, presented his cotton night-capped head at an upper window, demanding in a stentorian voice �who was there?� �Me! Mr. Hindmarch, me! Mrs. Margerum; for pity�s sake take us in, for my poor dear boy�s been most shemfully beat.� �Beat, has he!� exclaimed the lawyer, recognising the voice, his ready wit jumping to an immediate conclusion; �beat, has he!� repeated he, withdrawing from the window to fulfil her behest, adding to himself as he struck a light and descended the staircase, �that�ll ha� summut to do with the dripping, I guess�always thought it would come to mischief at last.� The rickety door being unbolted and opened, Mrs. Margerum and her boy entered, and Mrs. Hindmarch having also risen and descended, the embers of the kitchen fire were resuscitated, and Anthony Thom was examined by the united aid of a tallow candle and it. �Oh, see! see!� cried Mrs. Margerum, pointing out the wales on his back,��was there ever a boy so shemfully beat? But I�ll have revenge on that villainous man,�that I will, if it cost me a hundred pun note.��The marks seen, soothed, and deplored, Mr. Hindmarch began inquiring who had done it. �Done it! that nasty old Nosey,� replied Mrs. Margerum, her eyes flashing with fire; �but I�ll make the mean feller pay for it,� added she,��that I will.� �No, it wasn�t old No-No-Nosey, mo-mo-mother,� now sobbed Anthony Thom, �it was that nasty Joe Ski-Ski-Skinner.� �Skinner, was it, my priceless jewel,� replied Mrs. Margerum, kissing him, �I�ll skin him; but Nosey was there, wasn�t he, my pet?� �O, yes, Nosey was there,� replied Anthony Thom, �it was him that took me to Ski-Ski-Skinner��the boy bursting out into a fresh blubber, and rubbing his dirty knuckles into his streaming eyes as he spoke. �O that Skinner�s a bad un,� gasped Mrs. Margerum, �always said he was a mischievous, dangerous man; but I�ll have satisfaction of both him and old Nosey,� continued she, �or I�ll know the reason why.� The particulars of the catastrophe being at length related (at least as far as it suited Mrs. Margerum to tell it), the kettle was presently put on the renewed fire, a round table produced, and the usual consolation of the black bottle resorted to. Then as the party sat sipping their grog, a council of war was held as to the best course of proceeding. Lawyer Hindmarch was better versed in the law of landlord and tenant�the best way of a tenant doing his landlord,�than in the more recondite doctrine of master and servant, particularly the delicate part relating to perquisites; and though he thought Sir Moses had done wrong in beating the boy, he was not quite sure but there might be something in the boy being found about the house at an unseasonable hour of the night. Moreover, as farming times were getting dull, and the lawyer was meditating a slope _à la_ Henerey Brown & Co.? he did not wish to get mixed up in a case that might bring him in collision with Sir Moses or his agent, so he readily adopted Mrs. Margerum�s suggestion of going to consult Mr. George Gallon. He really thought Mr. Gallon would be the very man for her to see. Geordey was up to everything, and knew nicely what people could stand by, and what they could not; and lawyer Hindmarch was only sorry his old grey gig-mare was lame, or he would have driven her up to George�s at once. However, there was plenty of time to get there on foot before morning, and they would take care of Anthony Thom till she came back, only she must be good enough not to return till nightfall; for that nasty suspicious Nathan was always prowling about, and would like nothing better than to get him into mischief with Sir Moses.�And that point being settled, they replenished their glasses, and drank success to the mission; and having seen the belaboured Anthony Thom safe in a shakedown, Mrs. Margerum borrowed Mrs. Hindmarch�s second best bonnet, a frilled and beaded black velvet one with an ostrich feather, and her polka jacket, and set off on foot for the Rose and Crown beer-shop, being escorted to their door by her host and hostess, who assured her it wouldn�t be so dark when she got away from the house a bit. And that point being accomplished, lawyer and Mrs. Hindmarch retired to rest, wishing they were as well rid of Anthony Thom, whom they made no doubt had got into a sad scrape, in which they wished they mightn�t be involved. A sluggish winter�s day was just dragging its lazy self into existence as Mrs. Margerum came within sight of Mr. Gallon�s red-topped roof at the four lane ends, from whose dumpy chimney the circling curl of a wood fire was just emerging upon the pure air. As she got nearer, the early-stirring Mr. Gallon himself crossed the road to the stable, attired in the baggy velveteen shooting-jacket of low with the white cords and shining pork-butcher�s top-boots of high life. Mr. Gallon was going to feed Tippy Tom before setting off for the great open champion coursing meeting to be held on Spankerley Downs, �by the kind permission of Sir Harry Fuzball, Baronet,� it being one of the peculiar features of the day that gentlemen who object to having their game killed in detail, will submit to its going wholesale, provided it is done with a suitable panegyrick. �By the kind permission of Sir Harry Fuzball, Baronet,� or �by leave of the lord of the manor of Flatshire,� and so on; and thus every idler who can�t keep himself is encouraged to keep a greyhound, to the detriment of a nice lady-like amusement, and the encouragement of gambling and poaching. Mr. Gallon was to be field steward of this great open champion meeting, and had been up betimes, polishing off Tippy Tom; which having done, he next paid a similar compliment to his own person; and now again was going to feed the flash high-stepping screw, ere he commenced with his breakfast. Mrs. Margerum�s �_hie Mr. Gallon, hie!_� and up-raised hand, as she hurried down the hill towards his house, arrested his progress as he passed to the stable with the sieve, and he now stood biting the oats, and eyeing her approach with the foreboding of mischief that so seldom deceives one. �O Mr. Gallon! O Mr. Gallon!� cried Mrs. Margerum, tottering up, and dropping her feathered head on his brawny shoulder. �_What�s oop? What�s oop?_� eagerly demanded our sportsman, fearing for his fair character. �O Mr. Gallon! _such_ mischief! _such_ mischief!� �Speak, woman! speak!� demanded our publican; �say, _has he cotched ye?_� �Yes, Gerge, yes,� sobbed Mrs. Margerum, bursting into tears. �To devil he has!� exclaimed Mr. Gallon, stamping furiously with his right foot, �Coom into it hoose, woman; coom into it hoose, and tell us arl aboot it.� So saying, forgetting Tippy Toni�s wants, he retraced his steps with the corn, and flung frantically into the kitchen of his little two-roomed cottage. �Here, lassie!� cried he, to a little girl, who was frying a dish of bubble-and-squeak at the fire. �Here, lassie, set doon it pan loike, aud tak this corn to it huss, and stand by while it eats it so saying he handed her the sieve, and following her to the door, closed it upon her. �Noo,� said he to Mrs. Margerum, �sit doon and tell us arl aboot it. Who cotched ye? Nosey, or who?� �0 it wasn�t me! It was Anthony Thom they caught, and they used him most shemful; but I�ll have him tried for his life ofore my Lord Size, and transported, if it costs me all I�m worth in the world.� �Anthony Thom was it?� rejoined Mr. Gallon, raising his great eye-brows, and staring wide his saucer eyes, �Anthony Thom was it? but he�d ha� nothin� upon oi �ope?� �Nothin�, Gerge,� replied Mrs. Margerum, �nothin��less now it might just appen to be an old rag of a night-eap of that nasty, covetous body Cuddy Flintoff; but whether it had a mark upon it or not I really can�t say.� �O dear, but that�s a bad job,� rejoined Mr. Gallon, biting his lips and shaking his great bull-head; �O dear, but that�s a bad job. you know I always chairged ye to be careful �boot unlawful goods.� �You did, Gerge! you did!� sighed Mrs. Margerum; �and if this old rag had a mark, it was a clear oversight. But, O dear!� continued she, bursting into tears, �how they did _beat_ my Anthony Thom!� With this relief she became more composed, and proceeded to disclose all the particulars. �Ah, this �ill be a trick of those nasty pollis fellers,� observed Mr. Gallon thoughtfully, �oi know�d they�d be the ruin o� trade as soon as ever they came into it country loike�nasty pokin�, pryin�, mischievous fellers. Hoosomiver it mun be seen to, aud that quickly,� continued he. �for it would damage me desp�rate on the Torf to have ony disturbance o� this sorrt, and we mun stop it if we can. �Here, lassie!� cried he to the little girl who had now returned from the stable, �lay cloth i� next room foike, and then finish the fryin�; and oi�ll tell ve what,� continued he, laying his huge hand on Mrs. Margerum�s shoulder, �oi�ve got to go to it champion cooursin� meetin�, so I�ll just put it hus into harness and droive ye round by it Bird-i�-the-Bush, where we�ll find Carroty Kebbel, who�ll tell us what te do, for oi don�t like the noight-cap business some hoo,� so saying Mr. Gallon took his silver plated harness down from its peg in the kitchen, and proceeded to caparison Tippy Tom, while the little girl, now assisted by Mrs. Margerum, prepared the breakfast, and set it on the table. Rather a sumptuous repast they had, considering it was only a way-side beer-shop; bubble-and-squeak, reindeer-tongue, potted game, potted shrimps, and tea strikingly like some of Sir Moses�s. The whole being surmounted with a glass a-piece of pure British gin, Mr. Gallon finished his toilette, and then left to put the high-stepping screw into the light spring-cart, while Mrs. Margerum reviewed her visage in the glass, and as the openworks clock in the kitchen struck nine, they were dashing down the Heatherbell-road at the rate of twelve miles an hour. CHAPTER LX. MR. CARROTY KEBBEL. MR. Carroty Kebbel was a huge red-haired, Crimean-bearded, peripatetic attorney, who travelled from petty sessions to petty sessions, spending his intermediate time at the public houses, ferreting out and getting up cases. He was a roistering ruffian, who contradicted everybody, denied everything, and tried to get rid of what he couldn�t answer with a horse-laugh. He was in good practice, for he allowed the police a liberal per-centage for bringing him prosecutions, while his bellowing bullying insured him plenty of defences on his own account. He was retained by half the ragamuffins in the country. He had long been what Mr. Gallon not inaptly called his �liar,� and had done him such good service as to earn free quarters at the Rose and Crown whenever he liked to call. He had been there only the day before, in the matter of an _alibi_ he was getting up for our old hare-finding friend Springer, who was most unhandsomely accused of night-poaching in Lord Oilcake�s preserves, and that was how Mr. Gallon knew where to find him. The Crumpletin railway had opened out a fine consecutive line of petty sessions, out of which Carrots had carved a �home circuit� of his own. He was then on his return tour. With the sprightly exertions of Tippy Tom, Gallon and Mrs. Margerum were soon within sight of the Bird-in-the-Bush Inn, at which Gallon drew up with a dash. Carrots, however, had left some half-hour before, taking the road for Farningford, where the petty sessions were about to be held; and though this was somewhat out of Gallon�s way to Spankerley Downs, yet the urgency of the case determined him to press on in pursuit, and try to see Carrots. Tippy Tom, still full of running, went away again like a shot, and bowling through Kimberley toll-bar with the air of a man who was free, Gallon struck down the Roughfield road to the left, availing himself of the slight fall of the ground to make the cart run away with the horse, as it were, and so help him up the opposing hill. That risen, they then got upon level ground; and, after bowling along for about a mile or so, were presently cheered with the sight of the black wide-awake crowned lawyer striding away in the distance. Carrots was a disciple of the great Sir Charles Napier, who said that a change of linen, a bit of soap, and a comb were kit enough for any one; and being only a two-shirts-a-week man, he generally left his �other� one at such locality as he was likely to reach about the middle of it, so as to apportion the work equally between them. This was clean-shirt day with him, and he was displaying his linen in the ostentatious way of a man little accustomed to the luxury. With the exception of a lavender-and-white coloured watch-ribbon tie, he was dressed in a complete suit of black-grounded tweed, with the purple dots of an incipient rash, the coat having capacious outside pockets, and the trousers being now turned up at the bottoms to avoid the mud; �showing� rhinoceros hide-like shoes covering most formidable-looking feet. Such was the monster who was now swinging along the highway at the rate of five miles an hour, in the full vigour of manhood, and the pride of the morning. At the sight of him in advance, Mr. Gallon just touched Tippy Tom with the point of the whip, which the animal resented with a dash at the collar and a shake of the head, that as good as said, �You�d better not do that again, master, unless you wish to take your vehicle home in a sack.� Mr. Gallon therefore refrained, enlisting the aid of his voice instead, and after a series of those slangey-whiney _yaah-hoo! yaah-hoo�s!_ that the swell-stage-coachmen, as they called the Snobs, used to indulge in to clear the road or attract attention, Mr. Gallon broke out into a good downright �Holloa, Mr. Kebbel! Holloa!� At the sound of his name, Carrots, who was spouting his usual exculpatory speech, vowing he felt certain no bench of Justices would convict on such evidence, and so on, pulled up; and Mr. Gallon, waving his whip over his head, he faced about, and sat down on a milestone to wait his coming. The vehicle was presently alongside of him. �Holloa, George!� exclaimed Carrots, rising and shaking hands with his client. �Holloa! What�s up? Who�s this you�ve got?� looking intently at Mrs. Margerum. �I�ll tell you,� said George, easing the now quivering-tailed Tippy Tom�s head; �this is Mrs. Margerum you�ve heard me speak �boot; and she�s loike to get into a little trooble loike; and I tell�d her she�d best see a �liar� as soon as she could.� �Just so,� nodded Kebbel, anticipating what had happened. �You see,� continued Mr. Gallon, winding his whip thong round the stick as he spoke �in packing up some little bit things in a hurry loike, she put up a noight cap, and she�s not quoite sure whether she can stand by it or not, ye know.� �I see,� assented Carrots; �and they�ve got it, I �spose?� �I don�t know that they got it,� now interposed Mrs. Margerum; �but they got my Anthony Thom, and beat him most shameful. Can�t I have redress for my Anthony Thom?� �We�ll see,� said Carrots, resuming his seat on the milestone, and proceeding to elicit all particulars, beginning with the usual important inquiry, whether Anthony Thom had said anything or not. Finding he had not, Carrots took courage, and seemed inclined to make light of the matter. �The groceries you bought, of course,� said he, �of Roger Rounding the basket-man�Roger will swear anything for me; and as for the night-cap, why say it was your aunt�s, or your niece�s, or your sister�s�Caroline Somebody�s�Caroline Frazer�s, Charlotte Friar�s, anybody�s whose initials are C. F.� �O! but it wasn�t a woman�s night-cap, sir, it was a man�s; the sort of cap they hang folks in; and I should like to hang Old Mosey for beating my Anthony Thom,� rejoined Mrs. Margerum. �I�m afraid we can�t hang him for that,� replied Mr. Kebbel, laughing. �Might have him up for the assault, perhaps.� �Well, have him up for the assault,� rejoined Mrs. Margerum; �have him up for the assault. What business had he to beat my Anthony Thom?� �Get him fined a shilling, and have to pay your own costs, perhaps,� observed Mr. Kebbel; �better leave that alone, and stick to the parcel business�better stick to the parcel business. There are salient points in the case. The hour of the night is an awkward part,� continued he, biting his nails; �not but that the thing is perfectly capable of explanation, only the Beaks don�t like that sort of work, it won�t do for us to provoke an inquiry into the matter.� �Just so,� assented Mr. Gallon, who thought Mrs. Margerum had better be quiet. �Well, but it�s hard that my Anthony Thom�s to be beat, and get no redress!� exclaimed Mrs. Margerum, bursting into tears. �Hush, woman! hush!� muttered Mr. Gallon, giving her a dig in the ribs with his elbow; adding, �ye mun de what it liar tells ye.� �I�ll tell you what I can do,� continued Mr. Kebbel, after a pause. �They�ve got my old friend Mark Bull, the ex-Double-im-up-shire Super, into this force, and think him a great card. I�ll get him to go to Sir Moses about the matter; and if Mark finds we are all right about the cap, he�s the very man to put Mosey up to a prosecution, and then we shall make a rare harvest out of him,� Carrots rubbing his hands with glee at the idea of an action for a malicious prosecution. �Ay, that�ll be the gam,� said Mr. Gallon, chuckling,��that�ll be the gam; far better nor havin� of him oop for the �sult.� �I think so,� said Mr. Kebbel, �I think so; at all events I�ll consider the matter; and if I send Mark to Sir Moses, I�ll tell him to come round by your place and let you know what he does; but, in the meantime,� continued Kebbel, rising and addressing Mrs. Margerum earnestly, �_don�t you answer any questions_ to anybody, and tell Anthony Thom to hold his tongue too, and I�ve no doubt Mr. Gallon and I�ll make it all right;� so saying, Mr. Kebbel shook hands with them both, and stalked on to his petty-sessional practice. Gallon then coaxed Tippy Turn round, and, retracing his steps as far as Kimberley gate, paid the toll, and shot Mrs. Margerum out, telling her to make the best of her way back to the Rose and Crown, and stay there till he returned. Gallon then took the road to the right, leading on to the wide-extending Spankerley Downs; where, unharnessing Tippy Tom under lea of a secluded plantation, he produced a saddle and bridle from the back of the cart, which, putting on, he mounted the high-stepping white, and was presently among the coursers, the greatest man at the meeting, some of the yokels, indeed, taking him for Sir Harry Fuzball himself. But when Mr. Mark Bull arrived at Sir Moses�s, things had taken another turn, for the Baronet, in breaking open what he thought was one of Mrs. Margerum�s boxes, had in reality got into Mr. Bankhead�s, where, finding his ticket of leave, he was availing himself of that worthy�s absence to look over the plate prior to dismissing him, and Sir Moses made so light of Anthony Thom�s adventure that the Super had his trouble for nothing. Thus the heads of the house�_the_ Mr. and Mrs. in fact, were cleared out in one and the same day, by no means an unusual occurrence in an establishment, after which of course Sir Moses was so inundated with stories against them, that he almost resolved to imitate his great predecessor�s example and live at the Fox and Hounds Hotel at Hinton in future. To this place his mind was now more than ordinarily directed in consequence of the arrangements that were then making for the approaching Hunt Ball, to which long looked-for festival we will now request the company of the reader. CHAPTER LXI. THE HUNT BALL.�MISS DE GLANCEY�S REFLECTIONS. 452m _Original Size_ THE Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt balls had long been celebrated for their matrimonial properties, as well for settling ripe flirtations, as for bringing to a close the billing and cooing of un-productive love, and opening fresh accounts with the popular firm of �Cupid and Co.� They were the greenest spot on the memory�s waste of many, on the minds of some whose recollections carried them back to the romping, vigorous Sir Roger de Coverley dances of Mr. Customer�s time,�of many who remembered the more stately glide of the elegant quadrille of Lord Martingal�s reign, down to the introduction of the once scandalising waltz and polka of our own. Many �Ask Mamma�s� had been elicited by these balls, and good luck was said to attend all their unions. Great had been the changes in the manners and customs of the country, but the one dominant plain gold ring idea remained fixed and immutable. The Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt ball was expected to furnish a great demand for these, and Garnet the silversmith always exhibited an elegant white satin-lined morocco case full in his window, in juxtaposition with rows of the bright dress-buttons of the hunt, glittering on beds of delicate rose-tinted tissue paper. All the milliners far and wide used to advertise their London and Parisian finery for the occasion, like our friend Mrs. Bobbinette,�for the railway had broken through the once comfortable monopoly that Mrs. Russelton and the Hinton ones formerly enjoyed, and had thrown crinoline providing upon the country at large. Indeed, the railway had deranged the old order of things; for whereas in former times a Doubleimnpshire or a Neck-and-Crop shire sportsman was rarely to be seen at the balls, aud those most likely under pressure of most urgent �Ask Mamma� circumstances, now they came swarming down like swallows, consuming a most unreasonable quantity of Champagne�always, of course, returning and declaring it was all �gusberry.� Formerly the ball was given out of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt funds; but this unwonted accession so increased the expense, that Sir Moses couldn�t stand it, dom�d of he could; and he caused a rule to be passed, declaring that after a certain sum allowed by the club, the rest should be paid by a tax on the tickets, so that the guest-inviting members might pay for their friends. In addition to this, a sliding-seale of Champagne was adopted, beginning with good, and gradually relaxing in quality, until there is no saying but that some of the late sitters might get a little gooseberry. Being, however, only a guest, we ought not perhaps to be too critical in the matter, so we will pass on to the more general features of the entertainment. We take it a woman�s feelings and a man�s feelings with regard to a ball are totally different and distinct. Men�unmarried men, at least�know nothing of the intrinsic value of a dress, they look at the general effect on the figure. Piquant simplicity, something that the mind grasps at a glance and retains�such as Miss Yammerton�s dress in the glove scene�is what they like. Many ladies indeed seem to get costly dresses in order to cover them over with something else, just as gentlemen build handsome lodges to their gates, and then block them out of sight by walls. But even if ball-dresses were as attractive to the gentlemen as the ladies seem to think them, they must remember the competition they have to undergo in a ball-room, where great home beauties may be suddenly eclipsed by unexpected rivals, and young gentlemen see that there are other angels in the world besides their own adored ones. Still balls are balls, and fashion is fashion, and ladies must conform to it, or what could induce them to introduce the bits of black of the present day into their coloured dresses, as if they were just emerging from mourning. Even our fair friends at Yammerton Grange conformed to the fashion, and edged the many pink satin-ribboned flounces of their white tulle dresses with narrow black lace�though they would have looked much prettier without. Of all the balls given by the members of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, none had perhaps excitcd greater interest than the one about to take place, not only on account of its own intrinsic merits as a ball, but because of the many tender emotions waiting for solutions on that eventful evening. Among others it may be mentioned that our fat friend the Woolpack, whose portrait adorns page 241, had confided to Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, who kept a sort of register-office for sighers, his admiration of the fair auburn-haired Flora Yammerton; and Mrs. Rocket having duly communicated the interesting fact to the young lady, intimating, of course, that he would have the usual �ten thousand a year,� Flora had taken counsel with herself whether she had not better secure him, than contend with her elder sister either for Sir Moses or Mr. Pringle, especially as she did not much fancy Sir Moses, and Billy was very wavering in his attentions, sometimes looking extremely sweet at her, sometimes equally so at Clara, and at other times even smiling on that little childish minx Harriet. Indeed Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, in the multiplicity of her meddling, had got a sort of half-admission from that young owl, Rowley Abingdon, that he thought Harriet very pretty, and she felt inclined to fan the flame of that speculation too. Then Miss Fairey, of Yarrow Court, was coming, and it was reported that Miss de Glancey had applied for a ticket, in order to try and cut her out with the elegant Captain Languisher, of the Royal Hollyhock Hussars. Altogether it was expected to be a capital ball, both for dancers and lookers-on. People whose being�s end and aim is gaiety, as they call converting night into day, in rolling from party to party, with all the means and appliances of London, can have little idea of the up-hill work it is in the country, getting together the ingredients of a great ball. The writing for rooms, the fighting for rooms�the bespeaking of horses, the not getting horses�the catching the train, the losing the train�above all, the choosing and ordering those tremendous dresses, with the dread of not getting those tremendous dresses, of their being carried by in the train, or not fitting when they come. Nothing but the indomitable love of a ball, as deeply implanted in a woman�s heart as the love of a hunt is in that of a man, can account for the trouble and vexation they undergo. But if �tis a toil to the guests, what must it be to the givers, with no friendly Grange or Gunter at hand to supply everything, guests included, if required, at so much per head! Youth, glorious youth, comes to the aid, aud enters upon the labour with all the alacrity that perhaps distinguished their fathers. Let us now suppose the absorbing evening come; and that all-important element in country festivities, the moon shining with silvery dearness as well on the railway gliders as on the more patient plodders by the road. What a converging there was upon the generally quiet town of Hinton; reminding the older inhabitants of the best days of Lord Martingal and Mr. Customer�s reigns. What a gathering up there was of shining satins and rustling silks and moire antiques, white, pink, blue, yellow, green, to say nothing of clouds of tulle; what a compression of swelling eider-down and watch-spring petticoats; and what a bolt-upright sitting of that happy pride which knows no pain, as party after party took up and proceeded to the scene of hopes and fears at the Fox and Hounds Hotel and Posting House. The ball-room was formed of the entire suite of first-floor front apartments, which, on ordinary occasions, did duty as private rooms�private, at least, as far as thin deal partitions could make them so�and the supper was laid out in our old acquaintance the club-room, connected by a sort of Isthmus of Suez, with a couple of diminutive steps towards the end to shoot the incautious becomingly, headforemost, into the room. Carriages set down under the arched doorway, and a little along the passage the Blenheim was converted into a cloak-room for the ladies, where the voluminous dresses were shook out, and the last hurried glances snatched amid anxious groups of jostling arrivals. Gentlemen then emerging from the commercial room rejoined their fair friends in the passage, and were entrusted with fans and flowers while, with both hands, they steered their balloon-like dresses up the red druggetted staircase. 455m _Original Size_ Gentlemen�s balls have the advantage over those given by ladies, inasmuch as the gentlemen must be there early to receive their fair guests; and as a ball can always begin as soon as there are plenty of gentlemen, there are not those tedious delays and gatherings of nothing but crinoline that would only please Mr. Spurgeon. The large highly-glazed, gilt-lettered, yellow card of invitation, intimated nine o�clock as the hour; by which time most of the Hinton people were ready, and all the outlying ones were fast drawing towards the town. Indeed, there was nothing to interfere with the dancing festivities, for dinner giving on a ball night is not popular with the ladies�enough for the evening being the dance thereof. Country ladies are not like London ones, who can take a dinner, an opera, two balls, and an at-home in one and the same night. As to the Hinton gentlemen, they were very hospitable so long as nobody wanted anything from them; if they did, they might whistle a long time before they got it. If, for instance, that keeper of a house of call for Bores, Paul Straddler, saw a mud-sparked man with a riding-whip in his hand, hurrying about the town, he would after him, and press him to dine off, perhaps, �crimped cod and oyster sauce, and a leg of four year old mutton, with a dish of mince pies or woodcocks, whichever he preferred;� but on a ball night, when it would be a real convenience to a man to have a billet, Paul never thought of asking any one, though when he met his friends in the ball, and heard they had been uncomfortable at the Sun or the Fleece, he would exclaim, with well-feigned reproach, �Oh dash it, man, why didn�t you come to me?� But let us away to the Fox and Hounds, and see what is going on. To see the repugnance people have to being early at a ball, one would wonder how dancing ever gets begun. Yet somebody must be there first, though we question whether any of our fair readers ever performed the feat; at all events, if ever they did, we will undertake to say they have taken very good care not to repeat the performance. The Blurkinses were the first to arrive on this occasion, having only themselves to think about, and being anxious, as they said, to see as much as they could for their money. Then having been duly received by Sir Moses and the gallant circle of fox-hunters, and passed inwardly, they took up a position so as to be able to waylay those who came after with their coarse compliments, beginning with Mrs. Dotherington, who, Blurkins declared, had worn the grey silk dress she then had on, ever since he knew her. Jimmy Jarperson, the Laughing Hyæna, next came under his notice, Blurkins telling him that his voice grated on his ear like a file; asking if any body else had ever told him so. Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, who was duly distended in flaming red satin, was told she was like a full-blown peony; and young Treadcroft was asked if he knew that people called him the Woolpack. Meanwhile Mrs. Blurkins kept pinching and feeling the ladies� dresses as they passed, making a mental estimate of their cost. She told Miss Yammerton she had spoilt her dress by the black lace. A continuously ascending stream of crinoline at length so inundated the room, that by ten o�clock Sir Moses thought it was time to open the ball; so deputing Tommy Heslop to do the further honours at the door, he sought Lady Fuzball, and claimed the favour of her hand for the first quadrille. This was a signal for the unmated ones to pair; and forthwith there was such a drawing on of gloves, such a feeling of ties, such a rising on tiptoes, and straining of eyes, and running about, asking for Miss This, and Miss That, and if anybody had seen anything of Mrs. So-and-so. At length the sought ones were found, anxiety abated, and the glad couples having secured suitable _vis-à-vis_, proceeded to take up positions. At a flourish of the leader�s baton, the enlivening �La Traviata� struck up, and away the red coats and black coats went sailing and sinking, and rising and jumping, and twirling with the lightly-floating dresses of the ladies. The �Pelissier Galop� quickly followed, then the �Ask Mamma Polka,� and just as the music ceased, and the now slightly-flushed couples were preparing for a small-talk promenade, a movement took place near the door, and the elegant swan-like de Glancey was seen sailing into the room with her scarlet-geranium-festooned dress set off with eight hundred yards of tulle! Taking her chaperone Mrs. Roseworth�s arm, she came sailing majestically along, the men all alive for a smile, the ladies laughing at what they called her preposterous dimensions. But de Glancey was not going to defeat her object by any premature condescension; so she just met the men�s raptures with the slightest recognition of her downcast eyes, until she encountered the gallant Captain Languisher with lovely Miss Fairey on his arm, when she gave him one of her most captivating smiles, thinking to have him away from Miss Fairey in no time. But Miss de Glancey was too late! The Captain had just �popped the question,� and was then actually on his way to �Ask Mamma,� and so returned her greeting with an air of cordial indifference, that as good as said, �Ah, my dear, you�ll not do for me.� Miss de Glancey was shocked. It was the first time in her life that she had ever missed her aim. Nor was her mortification diminished by the cool way our hero, Mr. Pringle, next met her advances. She had been so accustomed to admiration, that she could ill brook the want of it, and the double blow was too much for her delicate sensibilities. She felt faint, and as soon as she could get a fly large enough to hold herself and her chaperone, she withdrew, the mortification of this evening far more than counterbalancing all the previous triumphs of her life. One person more or less at a ball, however, is neither here nor there, and the music presently struck up again, and the whirling was resumed, just as if there was no such person as Miss de Glancey in existence. And thus waltz succeeded polka, and polka succeeded quadrille, with lively rapidity�every one declaring it was a most delightful ball, and wondering when supper would be. At length there was a lull, and certain unmistakeable symptoms announced that the hour for that superfluous but much talked of meal had arrived, whereupon there was the usual sorting of consequence to draw to the cross table at the top of the room, with the pairing off of eligible couples who could be trusted alone, and the shirking of Mammas by those who were not equally fortunate. Presently a movement was made towards the Isthmus of Suez, on reaching which the rotund ladies had to abandon their escorts to pilot their petticoats through the straits amid the cries of �take care of the steps!� �mind the steps at the end!� from those who knew the dangers of the passage. And thus the crinoline came circling into the supper room�each lady again expanding with the increased space, and reclaiming her beau. Supper being as we said before a superfluous meal, it should be light and airy, something to please the eye and tempt the appetite; not composed of great solid joints that look like a farmer�s ordinary, or a rent-day dinner with �night mare� depicted on every dish. The Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt balls had always been famous for the elegance of their supper, Lord Ladythorne kindly allowing his Italian confectioner, Signor Massaniello, to superintend the elegancies, that excited such admiration from the ladies as they worked their ways or wedged themselves in at the tables, but whose beauty did not save them from destruction as the evening advanced. At first of course the solids were untouched, the tongues, the hams, the chickens, the turkeys, the lobster salads, the nests of plover eggs, the clatter patter being relieved by a heavy salvo of Champagne artillery. Brisk was the demand for it at starting, for the economical arrangement was as well known as if it had been placarded about the room. When the storm of corks had subsided and clean plates been supplied, the sweets, the jellies, the confectionery were attacked, and occasional sly sorties were made against the flower sugar vases and ornaments of the table. Then perspiring waiters came panting in with more Champagne fresh out of the ice, and again arm-extended the glasses hailed its coming, though some of the Neck-and-Crop-shire gentlemen smacked their lips after drinking it, and pronounced it to be No. 2. Nevertheless they took some more when it came round again. At length the most voracious cormorant was appeased, and all eyes gradually turned towards the sporting president in the centre of the cross table. We have heard it said that the House of Commons is the most appalling and critical assembly in the world to address, but we confess we think a mixed party of ladies and gentlemen at a sit-down supper a more formidable audience. We don�t know anything more painful than to hear a tongue-tied country gentleman floundering for words and scrambling after an idea that the quick-witted ladies have caught long before he comes within sight of his subject. Theirs is like the sudden dart of the elastic greyhound compared to the solemn towl of the old slow-moving �southern� hound after its game. Sir Moses, however, as our readers know, was not one of the tongue-tied sort�on the contrary, he had a great flow of words and could palaver the ladies as well as the gentlemen. Indeed he was quite at home in that room where he had coaxed and wheedled subscriptions, promised wonders, and given away horses without the donees incurring any �obligation.� Accordingly at the fitting time he rose from his throne, and with one stroke of his hammer quelled the remaining conversation which had been gradually dying out in anticipation of what was coming. He then called for a bumper toast, and after alluding in felicitous terms to the happy event that so aroused the �symphonies� of old Wotherspoon, he concluded by proposing the health of her Majesty the Queen, which of course was drunk with three times three and one cheer more. The next toast, of course, was the ladies who had honoured the Ball with their presence, and certainly if ever ladies ought to be satisfied with the compliments paid them, it was on the present occasion, for Sir Moses vowed and protested that of all beauties the Hit-im and Hold-im shire beauties were the fairest, the brightest, and the best; and he said it would be a downright reflection upon the rising generation if they did not follow the Crown Prince of Prussia�s excellent example, and make that ball to be the most blissful and joyous of their recollections. This toast being heartily responded to, Sir Moses leading the cheers, Sir Harry Fuzball rose to return thanks on behalf of the ladies, any one of whom could have done it a great deal better; after which old Sir George Persiflage, having arranged his lace-tipped tie, proposed the health of Sir Moses, and spoke of him in very different terms to what Sir Moses did of Sir George at the hunt dinner, and this, answer affording Sir Moses another opportunity�the good Champagne being exhausted�he renewed his former advice, and concluded by moving an adjournment to the ball-room. Then the weight of oratory being off, the school broke loose as it were, and all parties paired off as they liked. Many were the trips at the steps as they returned by the narrow passage to the ball-room. The �Ask Mamma� Polka then appropriately struck up, but polking being rather beyond our Baronet�s powers he stood outside the ring rubbing his nose and eyeing the gay twirlers, taking counsel within himself what he should do. The state of his household had sorely perplexed him, aud he had about come to the resolution that he must either marry again or give up housekeeping and live at Hinton. Then came the question whom he should take? Now Mrs. Yammerton was a noted good manager, and in the inferential sort of way that we all sometimes deceive ourselves, he came to the conclusion that her daughters would be the same. Clara was very pretty�dom�d if she wasn�t�She would look very well at the head of his table, and just at the moment she came twirling past with Billy Pringle, the pearl loops of her pretty pink wreath dancing on her fair forehead. The Baronet was booked; �he would have her, dom�d if he wouldn�t,� and taking courage within himself as the music ceased, he claimed her hand for the next quadrille, and leading her to the top of the dance, commenced joking her about Billy, who he said would make a very pretty girl, and then commenced praising herself. He admired her and everything she had on, from the wreath to her ribbon, and was so affectionate that she felt if he wasn�t a little elevated she would very soon have an offer. Then Mammas, and Mrs. Rocket Larkspurs, and Mrs. Dotherington, and Mrs. Impelow, and many other quick-eyed ladies followed their movements, each thinking that they saw by the sparkle of Clara�s eyes, and the slight flush of her pretty face, what was going on. But they were prématuré. Sir Moses did not offer until he had mopped his brow in the promenade, when, on making the second slow round of the room, a significant glance with a slight inclination of her handsome head as she passed her Mamma announced that she was going to be Lady Mainchance! 463m _Original Size_ Hoo-ray for the Hunt Ball! Sold again and the money paid! as the trinket-sellers say at a fair. Another offer and accepted say we. Captain and Mrs. Languisher, Sir Moses and Lady Mainchance. Who wouldn�t go to a Hit-im-and-Hold-im-shire hunt ball? Then when the music struck up again, instead of fulfilling her engagements with her next partner. Clara begged to be excused�had got a little headache, and went and sat down between her Mamma and her admiring intended; upon which the smouldering fire of surmise broke out into downright assertion, and it ran through the room that Sir Moses had offered to Miss Yammerton. Then the indignant Mammas rose hastily from their seats and paraded slowly past, to see how the couple looked, pitying the poor creature, and young gentlemen joked with each other, saying��Go thou and do likewise.� and paired off to the supper room to acquire courage from the well iced but inferior Champagne. And so the ardent ball progressed, some laying the foundations for future offers, some advancing their suits a step, others bringing them to we hope, a happy termination. Never was a more productive hunt ball known, and it was calculated that the little gentleman who rides so complacently on our first page exhausted all his arrows o the occasion. 465m _Original Size_ When the mortified Miss de Glancey returned to her lodgings at Mrs. Sarsnet the milliner�s, in Verbena Crescent, she bid Mrs. Roseworth good-night, and dismissing her little French maid to bed, proceeded to her own apartment, where, with the united aid of a chamber and two toilette-table candles, she instituted a most rigid examination, as well of her features as her figure, in her own hand-mirror and the various glasses of the room, and satisfied herself that neither her looks nor her dress were any way in fault for the indifference with which she had been received. Indeed, though she might perhaps be a little partial, she thought she never saw herself looking better, and certainly her dress was as stylish and looming as any in the ball-room. Those points being satisfactorily settled, she next unclasped the single row of large pearls that fastened the bunch of scarlet geraniums into her silken brown hair; and taking them off her exquisitely modelled head, laid them beside her massive scarlet geranium bouquet and delicate kid gloves upon the toilette-table. She then stirred the fire; and wheeling the easy-chair round to the front of it, took the eight hundred yards of tulle deliberately in either hand and sunk despondingly into the depths of the chair, with its ample folds before her. Drawing her dress up a little in front, she placed her taper white-satined feet on the low green fender, and burying her beautiful face in her lace-fringed kerchief, proceeded to take an undisturbed examination of what had occurred. How was it that she, in the full bloom of her beauty and the zenith of her experience, had failed in accomplishing what she used so easily to perform? How was it that Captain Langnisher seemed so cool, and that supercilious Miss eyed her with a side-long stare, that left its troubled mark behind, like the ripple of the water after a boat. And that boy Pringle, too, who ought to have been proud and flattered by her notice, instead of grinning about with those common country Misses? All this hurt and distressed our accomplished coquette, who was unused to indifference and mortification. Then from the present her mind reverted to the past; aud stirring the fire, she recalled the glorious recollections of her many triumphs, beginning with her school-girl days, when the yeomanry officers used to smile at her as they met the girls out walking, until Miss Whippey restricted them to the garden during the eight days that the dangerous danglers were on duty. Next, how the triumph of her first offer was enhanced by the fact that she got her old opponent Sarah Snowball�s lover from her�who, however, she quickly discarded for Captain Capers�who in turn yielded to Major Spankley. Dicer, and the grave Mr. Woodhouse all in tow together, each thinking himself the happy man and the others the cat�s-paw, until the rash Hotspur Smith exploded amongst them, and then suddenly dwindled from a millionaire into a mouse. Other names quickly followed, recalling the recollections of a successful career. At last she came to that dread, that fatal day, when, having exterminated Imperial John, and with the Peer well in hand, she was induced, much against her better judgment, to continue the chase, and lose all chance of becoming a Countess. Oh, what a day was that! She had long watched the noble Earl�s increasing fervour, and marked his admiring eye, as she sat in the glow of beauty and the pride of equestrianism; and she felt quite sure, if the chase had ended at the check caused by the cattle-drover�s dog, he would have married her. Oh, that the run should ever have continued! Oh, that she should ever have been lured on to her certain destruction! Why didn�t she leave well alone? And at the recollection of that sad, that watery day, she burst into tears and sobbed convulsively. Her feelings being thus relieved, and the fire about exhausted, she then got out of her crinoline and under the counterpane. CHAPTER LXII. LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT.�CUPID�S SETTLING DAY. A sudden change now came over the country.�The weather, which had been mild and summer-like throughout, changed to frost, binding all nature up in a few hours. The holes in the streets which were shining with water in the gas-lights when Miss de Glancey retired to bed, had a dull black-leaded sort of look in the morning, while the windows of her room glistened with the silvery spray of ferns and heaths and fancy flowers.�The air was sharp and bright, with a clear blue sky overhead, all symptomatic of frost, with every appearance of continuing.�That, however, is more a gentleman�s question than a lady�s, so we will return within doors. Flys being scarce at Hinton, and Miss de Glancey wishing to avoid the gape and stare of the country town, determined to return by the 11.30 train; so arose after a restless night, and taking a hurried breakfast, proceeded, with the aid of her maid, to make one of those exquisite toilettes for which she had so long been justly famous. Her sylph-like figure was set off in a bright-green terry-velvet dress, with a green-feathered bonnet of the same colour and material, trimmed with bright scarlet ribbons, and a wreath of scarlet flowers inside.�A snow-white ermine tippet, with ermine cuffs and muff, completed her costume. Having surveyed herself in every mirror, she felt extremely satisfied, and only wished Captain Languisher could see her. With that exact punctuality which constant practice engenders, but which sometimes keeps strangers sadly on the fret, the useful fly was at length at the door, and the huge box containing the eight hundred yards of tulle being hoisted on to the iron-railed roof, the other articles were huddled away, and Miss de Glancey ascending the steps, usurped the seat of honour, leaving Mrs. Roseworth and her maid to sit opposite to her. A smile with a half-bow to Mrs. Sarsnet, as she now stood at the door, with a cut of the whip from the coachman, sent our party lilting and tilting over the hard surface of the road to the rail. The line ran true and smooth this day, and the snorting train stopped at the pretty Swiss cottage station at Fairfield just as Mrs. Roseworth saw the last of the parcels out of the fly, while Miss de Glancey took a furtive peek at the passengers from an angle of the bay window, at which she thought she herself could not be seen. Now, it so happened that the train was in charge of the well-known Billy Bates, a smart young fellow, whose good looks had sadly stood in the way of his preferment, for he never could settle to anything; and after having been a footman, a whipper-in, a watcher, a groom, and a grocer, he had now taken up with the rail, where he was a great favourite with the fair, whom he rather prided himself upon pairing with what he considered appropriate partners. Seeing our lovely coquette peeping out, it immediately occurred to him, that he had a suitable _vis-à-vis_ for her�a dashing looking gent., in a red flannel Emperor shirt, a blue satin cravat, a buff vest, aud a new bright-green cut-away with fancy buttons; altogether a sort of swell that isn�t to be seen every day. �This way, ladies!� now cried Billy, hurrying into the first-class waiting-room, adjusting the patent leather pouch-belt of his smart grcen-and-red uniform as he spoke. �This way, ladies, please!� waving them on with his clean white doeskin-gloved hand towards the door; whereupon Miss de Glancey, drawing herself up, and primming her features, advanced on to the platform, like the star of the evening coming on to the stage of a theatre. Billy then opened the frosty-windowed door of a carriage a few paces up the line; whereupon a red railway wrapper-rug with brown foxes� heads being withdrawn, a pair of Bedford-corded legs dropped from the opposite seat, and a dogskin gloved hand was protruded to assist the ascent of the enterer. A pretty taper-fingered primrose-kidded one was presently inside it; but ere the second step was accomplished, a convulsive thrill was felt, and, looking up, Miss de Glancey found herself in the grasp of her old friend Imperial John! �O Mr. Hybrid!� exclaimed she, shaking his still retained hand with the greatest cordiality; �O Mr. Hybrid! I�m so _glad_ to see you! I�m so _glad_ to meet somebody I know!� and gathering herself together, she entered the carriage, and sat down opposite him. Mrs. Roseworth then following, afforded astonished John a moment to collect his scattered faculties, yet not sufficient time to compare the dread. �_Si-r-r-r!_ do you _mean to insult me!_� of their former meeting, with the cordial greeting of this. Indeed, our fair friend felt that she had a great arrear of politeness to make up, and as railway time is short, she immediately began to ply her arts by inquiring most kindly after His Highness�s sister Mrs. Poppeyfield and her baby, who she heard was _such_ a sweet boy; and went on so affably, that before Billy Bates arrived with the tickets, which Mrs. Roseworth had forgotten to take, Imperial John began to think that there must have been some mistake before, and Miss de Glancey couldn�t have understood him. Then, when the train was again in motion, she applied the artillery of her eyes so well�for she was as great an adept in her art as the Northumberland horse-tamer is in his�that ere they stopped at the Lanecroft station, she had again subjugated Imperial John;�taken his Imperial reason prisoner! Nay more, though he was going to Bowerbank to look at a bull, she actually persuaded him to alight and accompany her to Mrs. Roseworth�s where we need scarcely say he was presently secured, and in less than a week she had him so tame that she could lead him about, anywhere. The day after the ball was always a busy one in Hit-im-and-Hold-em-shire. It was a sort of settling day, only the parties scattered about the country instead of congregating at the �corner.� Those who had made up their minds overnight, came to �Ask Mamma� in the morning, and those who had not mustered sufficient courage, tried what a visit to inquire how the young lady was after the fatigue of the ball would do to assist them. Those who had got so far on the road as to have asked both the young lady and �Mamma,� then got handed over to the more business-like inquiries of Papa�when Cupid oft �spreads his light wings and in a moment flies.� Then it is that the terrible money exaggerations come out�the great expectations dwindling away, and the thousands a-year becoming hundreds. We never knew a reputed Richest Commoner�s fortune that didn�t collapse most grievously under the �what have you got, and what will you do?� operation. But if it passes Papa, the still more dread ordeal of the lawyer has to be encountered when one being summoned on either side, a hard money-driving bargain ensues, one trying how much he can get, the other how little he can give�until the whole nature and character of the thing is changed. Money! money! money! is the cry, as if there was nothing in the world worth living for but those eternal bits of yellow coin. But we are getting in advance of our subject, our suitor not having passed the lower, or �Ask-Mamma� house. Among the many visited on this auspicious day were our fair friends at Yammerton Grange, our Richest Commoner having infused a considerable degree of activity into the matrimonial market. There is nothing like a little competition for putting young gentlemen on the alert. First to arrive was our friend Sir Moses Mainchance, who dashed up to the door in his gig with the air of a man on safe ground, saluting Mamma whom he found alone in the drawing-room, and then the young ladies as they severally entered in succession. Having thus sealed and delivered himself into the family, as it were, he enlarged on the delights of the ball�the charming scene, the delightful music, the excellent dancing, the sudden disappearance of de Glancey and other the incidents of the evening. These topics being duly discussed, and cake and wine produced, �Mamma� presently withdrew, her example being followed at intervals by Flora and Harriet. Scarcely had she got clear of the door ere the vehement bark of the terrier called her attention to the front of the house, where she saw our fat friend the Woolpack tit-tup-ing up on the identical horse Jack Rogers so unceremoniously appropriated on the Crooked Billet day. There was young Treadcroft with his green-liveried cockaded groom behind him, trying to look as unconcerned as possible, though in reality he was in as great a fright as it was well possible for a boy to be. Having dismounted and nearly pulled the bell out of its socket with nervousness, he gave his horse to the groom, with orders to wait, and then followed the footman into the dining-room, whither Mrs. Yammerton had desired him to be shown. Now, the Woolpack and the young Owl (Rowley Abingdon), had been very attentive both to Flora and Harriet at the ball, the Woolpack having twice had an offer on the tip of his tongue for Flora, without being able to get it off. Somehow his tongue clave to his lips�he felt as if his mouth was full of claggum. He now came to see if he could have any better luck at the Grange. Mrs. Yammerton had read his feelings at the ball, and not receiving the expected announcement from Flora, saw that he wanted a little of her assistance, so now proceeded to give it. After a most cordial greeting and interchanges of the usual nothings of society, she took a glance at the ball, and then claimed his congratulations on Clara�s engagement, which of course led up to the subject, opening the locked jaw at once; and Mamma having assured the fat youth of her perfect approval and high opinion of his character, very soon arranged matters between them, and produced Flora to confirm her. So she gained two sons-in-law in one night. Miss Harriet thus left alone, took her situation rather to heart, and fine Billy, forgetful of his Mamma�s repeated injunctions and urgent entreaties to him to return now that the ball was over, and the hunting was stopped by the frost, telling him she wanted him on most urgent and particular business, was tender-hearted enough on finding Harriet in tears the next day to offer to console her with his hand, which we need not say she joyfully accepted, no lady liking to emulate �the last rose of summer and be left blooming alone.� So all the pretty sisters were suited, Harriet perhaps the best off, as far as looks at least went. But, when in due course the old �what have you got and what will you do?� inquiries came to be instituted, we are sorry to say our fine friend could not answer them nearly so satisfactorily as the Woolpack, who had his balance-sheets nearly off by heart. Billy replying in the vacant _negligè_ sort of way young gentlemen do, that he supposed he would have four or five thousand a-year, though when asked why he thought he�d have four or five thousand a-year, he really could not tell the reason why. Then when further probed by our persevering Major, he admitted that it was all at the mercy of uncle Jerry, and that his Mamma had said their lawyer had told her he did not think pious Jerry would account except under pressure of the Court of Chancery, whereupon the Major�s chin dropped, as many a man�s chin has dropped, at the dread announcement. It sounds like an antidote to matrimony. Even Mrs. Yammerton thought under the circumstances that the young Owl might be a safer speculation than fine Billy, though she rather leant to fine Billy, as people do lean to strangers in preference to those they knew all about. Still Chancery was a choker. Equity is to the legal world what Newmarket is to the racing world, the unadulterated essence of the thing. As at Newmarket there is none of the fun and gaiety of the great race-meetings, so in Chancery there is none of the pomp and glitter and varied incident that rivets so many audiences to the law courts. All is dull, solemn, and dry�paper, paper, paper�a redundancy of paper, as if it were possible to transfer the blush of perjury to paper. Fifty people will make affidavits for one that will go into a witness-box and have the truth twisted out of them by cross-examination. The few strangers who pop into court pop out again as quickly as they can, a striking contrast to those who go in in search of their rights�though wrestling for one�s rights under a pressure of paper, is very like swimming for one�s life enveloped in a salmon-net. It is juries that give vitality to the administration of justice. A drowsy hum pervades the bar, well calculated for setting restless children to sleep, save when some such brawling buffoon as the Indian juggler gets up to pervert facts, and address arguments to an educated judge that would be an insult to the mind of a petty juryman. One wonders at men calling themselves gentlemen demeaning themselves by such practices. Well did the noble-hearted Sir William Erie declare that the licence of the bar was such that he often wished the offenders could be prosecuted for a misdemeanour. We know an author who made an affidavit in a chancery suit equal in length to a three-volume novel, and what with weighing every word in expectation of undergoing some of the polished razors keen of that drowsy bar, he could not write fiction again for a twelvemonth. As it was, he underwent that elegant extract Mr. Verde, whose sponsors have done him such justice in the vulgar tongue, and because he made an immaterial mistake he was held up to the Court as utterly unworthy of belief! We wonder whether Mr. Verde�s character or the deponent�s suffered most by the performance. But enough of such worthies. Let all the bullies of the bar bear in mind if they have tongues other people have pens, and that consideration for the feelings of others is one of the distinguishing characteristics of gentlemen. CHAPTER LXIII. A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT. 473m _Original Size_ HE proverbial serenity of Poodles was disturbed one dull winter afternoon by our old friend General Binks banging down the newly-arrived evening paper with a vehemence rarely witnessed in that quiet quarter. Mr. Dorfold, who was dosing as usual with outstretched leg�s before the fire, started up, thinking the General was dying. Major Mustard�s hat dropped off, Mr. Proser let fall the �Times Supplement,� Mr. Crowsfoot ceased conning the �Post..� Alemomh, the footman, stood aghast, and altogether there was a general cessation of every thing�Beedles was paralyzed. The General quickly followed up the blow with a tremendous oath, and seizing Colonel Callender�s old beaver hat instead of his own new silk one, flung frantically out of the room, through the passage and into St. James�s Street, as if bent on immediate destruction. All was amazement! What�s happened the General? Something must have gone wrong with the General! The General�the calmest, the quietest, the most, placid man in the world�suddenly convulsed with such a violent paroxysm. He who had neither chick nor child, nor anything to care about, with the certainty of an Earldom, what _could_ have come over him? �I�ll tell you,� exclaimed Mr. Bullion who had just dropped in on his way from the City: �I�ll tell you,� repeated he. taking up the paper which the General had thrown down. �_His bank�s failed!_ Heard some qweerish hints as I came down Cornhill:� and forthwith! Bullion turned to the City article, and ran his accustomed eye down its contents. �Funds opened heavily. Foreign stocks quiet. About £20,000 in bar gold. The John Brown arrived from China. Departure of the Peninsular Mail postponed,� and so on; but neither failures, nor rumours of failures, either of bankers or others, were there. Very odd�what could it be, then? must be something in the paper. And again the members resolved themselves into a committee of the whole house to ascertain what it was. The first place that a lady would look to for the solution of a mystery of this sort, is, we believe, about the last place that a man would look to, namely, the births, deaths, and marriages; and it was not until the sensation had somewhat subsided, and Tommy White was talking of beating up the General�s quarter in Bury Street, to hear what it was, that his inseparable�that �nasty covetous body Cuddy Flintoff,� who had been plodding very perseveringly on the line, at length hit off what astonished him as much as we have no doubt it will the reader, being neither more nor less than the following very quiet announcement at the end of the list of marriages:� �This morning, at St. Barnabas, by the Rev. Dr. Duff, the Right Hon. The Earl of Ladythorne, to Emma, widow of the late Wm, Pringle, Esq.� The Earl of Ladythorne married to Mrs. Pringle! Well done our fair friend of the frontispiece! The pure white camellias are succeeded by a coronet! The borrowed velvet dress replaced by anything she likes to own. Who would have thought it! But wonders will never cease; for on this eventful day Mr. George Gallon was seen driving the Countess�s old coach companion, Mrs. Margerum, from Cockthorpe Church, with long white rosettes flying at Tippy Tom�s head, and installing her mistress of the Rose and Crown, at the cross roads; thus showing that truth is stranger than fiction. �George,� we may add, has now taken the Flying Childers Inn at Eversley Green, where he purposes extending his �Torf� operations, and we make no doubt will be heard of hereafter. Of our other fair friends we must say a few parting words on taking a reluctant farewell. Though Miss Clara, now Lady Mainchance, is not quite so good a housekeeper as Sir Moses could have wished, she is nevertheless extremely ornamental at the head of his table; and though she has perhaps rather exceeded with Gillow, the Major promises to make it all right by his superior management of the property. Mr. Mordecai Nathan has been supplanted by our master of �haryers,� who has taken a drainage loan, and promises to set the water-works playing at Pangburn Park, just as he did at Yammerton Grange. He means to have a day a week there with his �haryers,� which, he says, is the best way of seeing a country. Miss de Glancey has revised Barley Hill Hall, for which place his Highness now appears in Burke�s �Landed Gentry,� very considerably; and though she has not been to Gillow, she has got the plate out of the drawing-room, and made things very smart. She keeps John in excellent order, and rides his grey horse admirably. Blurkins says �the grey mare is the better horse,� but that is no business of ours. 475m _Original Size_ Of all the brides, perhaps, Miss Flora got the best set down; for the Woolpack�s house was capitally furnished, and he is far happier driving his pretty wife about the country with a pair of pyebald ponies, making calls, than in risking his neck across country with hounds�or rather after them. Of all our beauties, and thanks to Leech we have dealt in nothing else, Miss Harriet alone remains unsettled with her two strings to her bow�fine Billy and Rowley Abingdon; though which is to be the happy man remains to be seen. We confess we incline to think that the Countess will be too many for the Yammertons; but if she is, there is no great harm done; for Harriet is very young, and the Owl is a safe card in the country where men are more faithful than they are in the towns. Indeed, fine Billy is almost too young to know his own mind, and marrying now would only perhaps involve the old difficulty hereafter of father and son wanting top boots at the same time, supposing our friend to accomplish the difficult art of sitting at the Jumps. So let us leave our hero open. And as we have only aimed at nothing but the natural throughout, we will finish by proposing a toast that will include as well the mated and the single of our story, as the mated and the single all the world over, namely, the old and popular one of �The single married, and the married happy!� drunk with three times three and one cheer more! HOO-RAY! THE END.