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!”