The description of a run is tedious to all but the narrator. What good wine a man should give his guests, who indulges in minute details of every event that happened!—how they entered this spinny, and skirted that wood, and crossed the common, and finally killed or lost, or ran to ground, or otherwise put an end to the proceedings of which the reality is so engrossing and the account so tedious. I have seen young men, longing to join the ladies, or pining for their cigars, forced to sit smothering their yawns as they pretended to take an interest in the hounds and the huntsman, and the country, and their host’s own doings, and that eternal black mare. I can stand it well enough myself, with a fair allowance of ’41 or ’44, by abstracting my attention completely from the narrative, and wandering in the realms of fancy, cheered by the blushing fluid. But every one may not enjoy this faculty, and you cannot, in common decency, go fast asleep in your Amphitryon’s face. Again, I say, nothing but good wine will wash the infliction down. Let him, then, whose port is new, or whose claret unsound, beware how he thus trespasses on the forbearance of his guests. Of course they killed their fox. After the first check they gradually took to hunting, and so to running once more, Mr. Sawyer distinguishing himself by describing a very perfect semicircle with Hotspur, over some rails near Stanford Hall. The roan was tired, and his rider ambitious, so a downfall was the inevitable result. Nevertheless, he fell honourably enough, and hoped no one but himself knew how completely the accident was occasioned by utter exhaustion on the part of his steed. There is no secret so close as that between a horse and his rider. Up to the first check, Hotspur had realised his owner’s fondest anticipations. “He’s fit for a king!” ejaculated the delighted Sawyer, when they flew so gallantly over the brook. Even after the hounds had run steadily on for the best part of an hour, the animal’s character had only sunk to “not thoroughly fit to go;” but when they arrived at the Hemplow Hills, and the pack, still holding a fair hunting pace, breasted that choking ascent, he could not disguise from himself that the roan was about “told out.” They are indeed no joke, those well-known Hemplow Hills, when they present themselves to astonished steeds and ardent riders after fifty minutes over the strongest part of Northamptonshire. A sufficiently picturesque object to the admirer of nature, they prove an unwelcome obstacle to the follower of the chase, and it was no disgrace to poor Hotspur that, although he struggled gamely to the top, he was reduced to a very feeble and abortive attempt at a trot when he reached the flat ground on the summit. Ere long this degenerated to a walk; and I leave it to my reader, if a sportsman, to imagine with what feelings of relief Mr. Sawyer observed the now distant pack turning short back. The fox was evidently hard pressed, and dodging for his life.