There is a pack of fox-hounds kept at Montreal, maintained chiefly by officers of the garrison, as a shadowy reminiscence, perhaps, of the real thing, which is essentially of insular Britain and of nowhere else. Button happened to go to Montreal, on one occasion, for the purpose of picking up a race-horse, I think, for the Quebec market. Somebody who used to ride with the hounds had a horse which he wanted to get rid of, on account of headstrong tendencies in general and inability to appreciate the advantages of a bit. I remember the animal well. He was a fiery chestnut, with white about the legs, and very good across a country so long as he was wanted to go; but no common power could stop him when once he began to do that. On this animal--"The Buffer," he was called--Button was persuaded to mount, "just to try him a little," his owner said; and by way of doing that with perfect freedom from restraint, they rode out to where the hounds were to throw off, a couple of miles from the city. Button used to say that the term "throw off," which was new to him in that application, haunted him all the way out, like a bad dream. It was a bag-fox day, I believe: that is, the hunt was provided with a trapped animal, brought upon the ground in a sack and let out when the proper time came,--a process known in sporting parlance as "shaking a fox." The usual amount of "law" having been conceded, the hounds were laid on, and went away, as Button said, like a fire-flake over a prairie. No sooner did "The Buffer" hear the cry of the pack, than he started forward with a suddenness and force by which his wretched rider was jerked back at least a foot behind the saddle, into which place of rest he never once again fell during his many vicissitudes of position in that ride. I have said that Button was bow-legged; and to that providential fact did he attribute the power by which he clung on to various parts of the steed during his wild career of perhaps a mile, but which seemed to the troubled senses of the rider not much less than fifty. It was providential for him, too, that the country was but sparsely intersected by fences, and those not of a very formidable character: nevertheless, at each of these the too confiding Button experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. The hounds had just entered a little grove of young pine-trees, which stood very close together, and bristled with sharp, jagged branches nearly to the root, after the manner of these children of the wood. At this place of torture