“Personal appearance,” observed Mrs. Sykes to Will, one evening, sitting in a cozy corner of his parlour, in a dreamy, winking, blinking state, lulled by the influence of a blazing yule log--“personal appearance,” repeated she, somewhat louder, “is necessary for personal respect; and unless we look as if we respected ourselves, it’s unreasonable to suppose that other people will go for to respect us. We must best know,” continued she, “our own in’ards; and if we show, by our out’ards, that they’re all gammon and bacon, rest assured they won’t pass as the _best_ of chitlins.” And was it for this, then--this worldly object--that Mrs. Sykes might be seen on every succeeding Sunday, volume in hand, walking with stately and measured tread along the path leading to the gray-mossed and ivy-twined church? Was it for this that the ribbed silk dress and most treasured bonnet were donned on the seventh day, when the likelihood was great of many eyes beholding them? Was it for this that, from the bright buckle in her shoe to the topmost ribbon stuck jauntily to flutter in the breeze, Mrs. Sykes evinced such elaborate taste and dainty care? Mrs. Sykes, like countless hosts of her betters, would have been justly indignant had such prying interrogatories been put to her for solution, however blandly they might have been effected; and as there is no confession on her part, and no justifiable ground for speculation in the replies, they must remain unanswered to the end of time. Tom Holt, the first whipper-in, and consequently second in command, was a very different _genus homo_ to our huntsman. As may already have been learned from his expressed opinions and sentiments, he possessed strange quirks and notions, and, to use his own graphic description of his imaginary pedigree, might have been “a cross between a bull-dog and a flat iron.” Much nice sophism might be used to support the poetical origin of Tom Holt; but if volumes were written to define his allegory more clearly, the end could not be more satisfactorily arrived at than by briefly saying, “it can far more easily be conceived than described.” Tom was a reflective man; he could not see an infant in its mother’s arms without the endeavour to picture to his vivid imagination how it would look when blear-eyed with age. A piece of thistle-down, whirling here and there, now catching in a bramble, and then skimming along in its varied, uncertain course, would make him think of “cause and effect” for an hour. A dew-drop, a feather in the air, a film of gossamer, often set Tom Holt “a-thinking” for the livelong day. He was a dreamer, and had more strange fantasies, with eyes wide and staring open, than a thousand such will-o’-the wisps fanned by the fairies’ midwife, Queen Mab. And yet Tom Holt, although his face was pale and thin, and his dark hazel eyes always bore a serious look, enjoyed right heartily his duties, and all thereunto pertaining. He studied the