To any one who has ever tried the delusive pastime of following hounds at a distance, with any expectation of coming up with them, I may leave the task of imagining our repeated disappointments and the labour, like that of Sisyphus, undergone by Crafty Kate. The persevering sportsman will have no difficulty in understanding how we drove from field-road to cross-road, and from cross-road to highway; how the little indistinct figures and black hats, dotting and bobbing behind the hedges, were now on our right, now on our left, anon almost within hail, and then hopelessly and provokingly ahead; how we saw the hounds themselves entering Cropley Pastures, and, thinking to nick in upon them at Whitethorns, found they had taken an unexpected turn to Swillingford mill; in short, how surely, as must always be the case in a good run, the further we went, the farther we were left behind, till our hopes, being suddenly raised by a butcher in a tax-cart, who had met them not half-a-mile from where we then were, and thought they must have “got him in a drain,” to be as suddenly dashed into ruins again by a farmer’s lad at the spot indicated, who vowed they had been gone twenty minutes, and “were running like fire,” we gave it up in despair, and turned Crafty Kate’s head, soberly and sadly, on her homeward way. A mouthful of gruel at a road-side public-house for the mare, and a small measure of hot ale, with a glass of gin, a spoonful of brown sugar, and a dash of spice in it, called by the different titles of “lambs’ wool,” “dog’s nose,” and “purl,” but of superlative merit after a three hours’ drive in the wet, restored us all, except Brimstone, to something of our earlier energy. I was glad, I confess, to have got through the drive without an accident, and looked forward to a warm house and a comfortable dressing-room, where my servant, I hoped, had already arrived with my things, more cheerfully than I should have conceived possible in the morning, when I anticipated my enforced visit to The Ashes with considerable distaste. The Jovial, too, having apparently drowned his unpleasant reflections, whatever they might be, in the hot mixture, came out once more in his normal character, accepting one of my cigars with facetious condescension, and sticking it in the extreme corner of his mouth, from which he never once removed it till he had smoked it down to the very stump.