“So I have,” replied the magistrate; “but unfortunately the guns had been discharged in the morning on some boys and girls who had gone to look for nuts; and as one of the boys was nearly killed, the under keeper took it into his fool’s head that he would not charge the guns again; so I gave him his discharge.” “You have been very unfortunate in your servants, Sir George.” So spake the colonel, who was more than usually eloquent and voluble; and Sir George was especially delighted with him, for he seemed to enter so fully into all the magistrate’s feelings upon the subject of game and poaching. It is astonishing that, notwithstanding all the pains which the legislature has taken upon the subject of the game laws, which are so essential to national prosperity and the Protestant succession, still there is a possibility that gentlemen may be deprived of their sport by the intervention of a poacher. The laws are too lenient by half; and till it is made felony without benefit of clergy to be suspected of poaching, we shall never be free from this dreadful calamity. Our legislators have done a great deal, certainly; but they ought to take up the subject with as much zeal as if the cause were their own. Now while Colonel Crop was sympathising with Sir George Aimwell on his great and serious calamity, Lord Spoonbill was gradually withdrawing himself from his companions, and moving towards the side of the field which lay nearest to the road, and looking with great earnestness in the direction of the village of Neverden. It was not long before his eye caught the object for which he had been looking. There came clumsily cantering towards him a quadruped, the appearance of which would have puzzled Buffon, and on its back there sat a biped as unclassable as the beast on which he rode. The two were usually called Nick Muggins and his pony. Lord Spoonbill took great pains to see Nick by accident. “Have you any letters for the castle, Muggins?” said the heir of Smatterton. “Isser,” replied Muggins, and forthwith he produced two letters, one of which was addressed to the Right Honorable the Earl of Smatterton, and the other to the Right Honorable Lord Spoonbill. “I will take charge of them,” said his lordship. To which proposal Nick Muggins made no objection. His lordship then, just by way of condescendingly noticing the humble post-boy, said-- “There now, I have saved you the trouble of riding any farther, unless you have any letters for the parsonage?” “Here is one, sir, for the young lady as lives at Parson Grindle’s.” Muggins looked rather significantly at Lord Spoonbill when he thus spoke, and his lordship replied-- “You may give that to me, and I will take care of it.”