life, one's feet upon the fender, compared to five such golden minutes as these? The hounds stop suddenly, and after scattering and spreading themselves into the form of an open fan, look up in my face with an air of mute bewilderment. The huntsman and the field come up, the gentlemen in a high state of delight and confusion; but Mr. Tippler in the worst of humours, and muttering as he trots off to a corner of the meadow with the pack about his horse's heels,-- "Rode 'em slap off the scent--drove 'em to a check--wish she was at home and abed and asleep, and be d----d to her!" A grim old lady who has but one eye, and answers to the name of "Jezebel," has threaded the fence, and proclaims in anything but a sweet voice to her comrades, that she has discovered the line of our fox. They join her in an instant, down go their heads in concert, and away we all speed again, through an open gate, across a wide common, into a strip of plantation, over a stile and foot-board that leads out of it, and I find myself once more following Captain Lovell with Cousin John alongside of me, and all the rest far, far behind. This is indeed glorious. I should like it to go on till dinnertime. How I hope we shan't kill the fox! "Take hold of his head, Kate," says my cousin, whose horse has just blundered on to his nose through a gap. "Even White Stockings won't last for ever, and this is going to be something out of the common." "Forward!" is my reply as I point with my whip towards the lessening pack, now a whole field ahead of us. "Forward!" If we hadn't been going such a pace I could have sung for joy. There is a line of pollarded willow trees down in that hollow, and the hounds have already left these behind them; they are rising the opposite ground. Again Frank Lovell looks anxiously back at me, but makes no sign. "We _must_ have it, Kate!" says John; "there's your best place, under the tree; send him at it as hard as he can lay legs to the ground." I ply my whip and loosen my reins in vain. White Stockings stops dead short, and lowers his nose to the water, as if he wanted to drink; all of a sudden the stream is behind me, and with a flounder and a struggle we are safe over the brook. Not so Cousin John; I see him on his legs on the bank, with his horse's head lying helplessly between his feet, the rest of that valuable animal being completely submerged.