Did you ever see a more truculent fence than that on your right, which stretches along continuously for twelve hundred yards or more, on the Rylstone side of the road on which we are standing? The double rails, both sloping outwards, are much higher and wider apart than usual, and the charge of a squadron would hardly break the new tough oak timber; to go in and out is impossible, for there is a deep ditch in the middle fringed by meagre, stunted quick-set; and on the landing side there is actually another trench, vast enough to swallow up horse and rider, if by any chance they got so far. The only outlet is through double gates, with a bridge of treacherous planks between them. There was malice prepense in the mind that contrived that fearful barrier. The owner of the farm is a morose hard-fisted Scotch presbyterian, who regards all sport as a snare and device of the Evil One, and acts according to his narrow light, viciously. When he came into the country a year ago, he was afraid to warn the hounds off his land, but went to a considerable expense to stop them, as he thought, quite as effectually. The pleasant innovation of wiring the fences was unknown in those days (soon, I suppose, they will strew calthrops along the headlands, and conceal spring-guns cunningly, to explode if you hit the binders); but David Macausland did his worst after the fashion of the period; and so sat down behind his entrenchments with the grim satisfaction of a consummate engineer, waiting for the enemy to come on. You know the occupants of that low phaeton that sweeps round the corner so smoothly and rapidly, pulling up within a hundred yards of us? Miss Vavasour's ponies are too fiery to be trusted in a crowd, so she has listened to Maud Brabazon's suggestion that they should take their chance of seeing something of the run, instead of going to the meet--yielding the more readily because her own fancy, to-day, inclines to comparative solitude. There they are, left entirely to their own devices, with only a staid elderly groom to keep them out of mischief.