profession hunting is with them. Of course, they come cantering to cover, lest anyone should suppose they ride their horses on.

The ‘Crossroads’ was like two hunts or two circuits joining, for it generally drew the picked men from each, to say nothing of outriggers and chance customers. The regular attendants of either hunt were sufficiently distinguishable as well by the flat hats and baggy garments of the one, as by the dandified, Jemmy Jessamy air of the other. If a lord had not been at the head of the Flat Hats, the Puffington men would have considered them insufferable snobs. But to our day.

As usual, where hounds have to travel a long distance, the field were assembled before they arrived. Almost all the cantering gentlemen had cast up.

One crossroad meet being so much like another, it will not be worth while describing the one at Dallington Burn. The reader will have the kindness to imagine a couple of roads crossing an open common, with an armless sign-post on one side, and a rubblestone bridge, with several of the coping-stones lying in the shallow stream below, on the other.

The country round about, if any country could have been seen, would have shown wild, open, and cheerless. Here a patch of wood, there a patch of heath, but its general aspect bare and unfruitful. The commanding outline of Beechwood Forest was not visible for the weather. Time now, let us suppose, half-past ten, with a full muster of horsemen and a fog making unwonted dullness of the scene -- the old sign-pole being the most conspicuous object of the whole.

Hark! what a clamour there is about it. It’s like a betting-post at Newmarket. How loud the people talk! what’s the news? Queen Ann dead, or is there another French Revolution, or a fixed duty on corn? Reader, Mr Puffington’s hounds have had a run, and the Flat Hat men are disputing it.

‘Nothing of the sort! nothing of the sort!’ exclaims Fossick, ‘I know every yard of the country, and you can’t make more nor eight of it anyhow, if eight.’

‘Well, but I’ve measured it on the map,’ replied the speaker (Charley Slapp himself), ‘and it’s thirteen, if it’s a yard.’

‘Then the country’s grown bigger since my day,’ rejoins Fossick, ‘for I was dropped at Stubgrove, which is within a mile of where you found, and I’ve walked, and I’ve ridden, and I’ve driven every yard of the distance, and you can’t make it more than eight, if it’s as much. Can you, Capon?’ exclaimed Fossick, appealing to another of the ‘flat brims,’ whose luminous face now shone through the fog.

‘No,’ replied Capon; adding, ‘not so much, I should say.’

Just then up trotted Frostyface with the hounds.

‘Good-morning, Frosty! good-morning!’ exclaim half a dozen voices, that it would be difficult to appropriate from the denseness of the fog. Frosty and the whips make a general salute with their caps.

‘Well, Frosty, I suppose you’ve heard what a run we had yesterday?’ exclaims Charley Slapp, as soon as Frosty and the hounds are settled.

‘Had they, sir -- had they?’ replies Frosty, with a slight touch of his cap and a sneer. ‘Glad to hear it, sir -- glad to hear it. Hope they killed, sir -- hope they killed?’ with a still slighter touch of the cap.

‘Killed, aye? -- killed in the open just below Crabstone Green, in your country;’ adding, ‘It was one of your foxes I believe.’

‘Glad of it, sir -- glad of it, sir,’ replies Frosty. ‘They wanted blood sadly -- they wanted blood sadly. Quite welcome to one of our foxes, sir -- quite welcome. That’s a brace and a ’alf they’ve killed.’