Canter, canter, canter, went Jawleyford, with an arm a-kimbo, head well up, legs well down, toes well pointed, as if he were going to a race, where his work would end on arriving, instead of to a fox-hunt, where it would only begin.

‘You are rather hard on the old nag, aren’t you?’ at length asked Sponge, as, having cleared the rushy, swampy park, they came upon the macadamised turnpike, and Jawleyford selected the middle of it as the scene of his further progression.

‘Oh no!’ replied Jawleyford, tit-tup-ing along with a loose rein, as if he was on the soundest, freshest- legged horse in the world; ‘oh no! my horses are used to it.’

‘Well, but if you mean to hunt him,’ observed Sponge, ‘he’ll be blown before he gets to cover.’

‘Get him in wind, my dear fellow,’ replied Jawleyford, ‘get him in wind,’ touching the horse with the spur as he spoke.

‘Faith, but if he was as well on his legs as he is in his wind, he’d not be amiss,’ rejoined Sponge.

So they cantered and trotted, and trotted and cantered away, Sponge thinking he could afford pace as well as Jawleyford. Indeed, a horse has only to become a hack, to be able to do double the work he was ever supposed to be capable of.

But to the meet.

Scrambleford Green was a small straggling village on the top of a somewhat high hill, that divided the vale in which Jawleyford Court was situated, from the more fertile one of Farthinghoe, in which Lord Scamperdale lived.

It was one of those out-of-the-way places at which the meet of the hounds, and a love feast or fair, consisting of two fiddlers (one for each public-house), a few unlicensed packmen, three or four gingerbread stalls, a drove of cows and some sheep, form the great events of the year, among a people who are thoroughly happy and contented with that amount of gaiety. Think of that, you ‘used up’ young gentlemen of twenty, who have exhausted the pleasures of the world! The hounds did not come to Scrambleford Green often, for it was not a favourite meet; and when they did come, Frosty and the men generally had them pretty much to themselves. This day, however, was the exception; and Old Tom Yarnley, whom age had bent nearly double, and who hobbled along on two sticks, declared, that never in the course of his recollection, a period extending over the best part of a century, had he seen such a ‘sight of red coats’ as mustered that morning at Scrambleford Green. It seemed as if there had been a sudden rising of sportsmen. What brought them all out? What brought Mr Puffington, the master of the Hanby hounds, out? What brought Blossomnose again? What Mr Wake, Mr Fossick, Mr Fyle, who had all been out the day before?

Reader, the news had spread throughout the country that there was a great writer down, and they wanted to see what he would say of them -- they had come to sit for their portraits, in fact. There was a great gathering, at least for the Flat Hat Hunt, who seldom mustered above a dozen. Tom Washball came, in a fine new coat and new flat-fliped hat with a broad binding; also Mr Sparks of Spark Hall; Major Mark; Mr Archer of Chean Lodge; Mr Reeves of Coxwell Green; Mr Bliss of Boltonshaw; Mr Joyce of Ebstone; Dr Capon of Calcot; Mr Dribble of Hook; Mr Slade of Three-Burrow Hill; and several others. Great was the astonishment of each as the other cast up.

‘Why, here’s Joe Reeves!’ exclaimed Blossomnose. ‘Who’d have thought of seeing you?’

‘And who’d have thought of seeing you?’ rejoined Reeves, shaking hands with the jolly old nose.

‘Here’s Tom Washball in time for once, I declare!’ exclaimed Mr Fyle, as Mr Washball cantered up in apple-pie order.