It was not till he had turned over, and yawned twice or thrice, that he comprehended the actual position in which he was placed. Then, for the first time, the magnitude of the undertaking on which he had embarked presented itself to his mind; and then did he realise the deficiencies of his stud, the difficulties he was about to encounter, the rashness and perplexity of the whole proceeding. A feeling of loneliness stole over him; and he even experienced a want of confidence in himself. For an instant, he almost wished he was back at home, and the dastardly possibility of returning there flashed across his mind. All these unworthy thoughts, however, were dissipated by the entrance of Isaac, with a pair of boots in one hand, and a glimmering bedroom candle in the other, as the mists of morning are dispelled by the rising sun; and, even as the shrinking combatant gathers confidence from the flash of his drawn sword, so, at the first glimpse of those long-rowelled spurs of which Marathon knew too well the persuasive powers, John Standish Sawyer was himself again. “Half after eight, sir,” said Isaac, setting down the candle, and proceeding to pour cold water into the tub—a process that by no means tempted his master to rise on the instant. “Half after eight, sir; and the grey’s got a bit of a cough. It’s that strange stable as done it. And you was to let me know in the morning which of them I was to take on.” “What sort of a day is it?” asked our friend, in a sleepy voice, turning, like Dr. Watts’s sluggard, into a more comfortable position. At that moment, it would not have broken his heart to be told that it was too hard to hunt. “Can’t see your hand,” was the encouraging reply: “it’s one of these regular Leicester-sheer fogs, as the grooms tells me, as is wery prevalent hereabouts. The lamps is lit now in the streets; but it’ll be wusser up on the high ground. They’ll hunt, though, just the same, says they. Weather never stops them here, unless it be the sewerest of frost and snow, as I understand. Shall I open the shutters, sir?” Isaac threw them back as he spoke, and drew up the blind, disclosing to Mr. Sawyer’s view about eighteen feet of tiles, a weathercock pointing east-south-east, and a chimney adorned with what is called an “old woman”—an ingenious contrivance to prevent it from smoking, but in this instance, to judge by the smell of soot which pervaded the apartment, by no means a successful piece of mechanism—the whole wrapped in a mantle of the densest and _wettest_ fog he ever remembered to have seen.