but a barren display of prowess without satisfaction was to be reaped. Accordingly, all my craft in strategy was put in practice, and by a most dexterous combination of manœuvres--now advancing, now receding, now stooping _as if_ to seize a stone (incomparable among expedients in canine encounters), for the road here of course was as bare of them as a barn-floor, and now feigning to fling it--I at length contrived to draw the battle from their own ground, and their pugnacity being inversely as their distance from home, had the relief, for by this time I was blowing like a grampus, of seeing them retire in detachments, giving volleys in token of triumph and defiance so long as I remained in view. This brisk affair concluded with the loss only of a mouthful or two of my coat-tails, and the gain of a few trifling transparencies in the legs of my trousers--thank my boots, I have not to add in those of my person--I proceeded to the scene of my next “passage at arms,” about half a mile off. So ruffled was I that at first, after a few score peghs and puffs restorative, I bustled bravely on, desiring nothing so much as an opportunity of wreaking my wrath on some of the odious race, to which purpose I providently deposited a few pretty pebbles in my pocket. But I am pre-eminently a reasoning man, in whom the reign of passion is but brief, and discretion had so far recovered its rightful ascendency as I drew nigh the next “picket,” that I began to think it more prudent, more benevolent I mean, to bottle up, or repress I should say, my indignation, and try what the “gentle charities,” a benign demeanour and a pleasant salutation, might avail in the way of securing a peaceful transit. With this aim I threw a prodigious amount of amiability (if somewhat more than I felt, Heaven forgive the hypocrisy) into my countenance, and accompanied a few familiar fillips of my finger with a most honied, and, as I thought, captivating phraseology of address, to a sinister-faced wretch who lay recumbent on the nearest threshold. But it would not do: up bounced the vile ingrate with obstreperous bay; his myrmidons were forthcoming on the instant, and in a jiffey I, a grave, reserved, and middle-aged man, a short, stout, and not very well-winded man, was in the melée once more, yerking my heels out fore and aft, whacking right and left, puffing, blowing, and altogether cutting such uncouth capers as verily it shames me now to think upon. Whether or not it was that my resentment, and proportionably thereto my prowess, were aggravated by the flagrant ingratitude displayed, I distributed my “dissuaders” on this occasion with such distinguished emphasis as well as science, as speedily to create a considerable diversion in my favour, and make more than one repentant sinner yelp out “devil take the hindmost,” in such vigorous style as to bring a bevy of grandam fogies in wrath from their chimney corners. “An what are yees abusin’ the poor