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.