Mr Bragg had talked himself into several good places, Lord Reynard’s and the Duke of Downeybird’s among others. He had never been able to keep any beyond his third season, his sauce or his science being always greater than the sport he showed. Still he kept up appearances, and was nothing daunted, it being a maxim of his, that ‘as one door closed another opened.’

Mr Puffington’s was the door that now opened for him.

What greater humiliation can a free-born Briton be subjected to than paying a man eighty or a hundred pounds a-year, and finding him house, coals, and candles, and perhaps a cow, to be his master?

Such was the case with poor Mr Puffington, and such, we grieve to say, is the case with nine-tenths of the men who keep hounds; with all, indeed, save those who can hunt themselves, or who are blessed with an aspiring whip, ready to step into the huntsman’s boots if he seems inclined to put them off in the field. How many portly butlers are kept in subjection by having a footman ready to supplant them. Of all cards in the servitude pack, however, the huntsman’s is the most difficult one to play. A man may say, ‘I’m dim’d if I won’t clean my own boots or my own horse, before I’ll put up with such a fellow’s impudence;’ but when it comes to hunting his own hounds, it is quite another pair of shoes, as Mr Bragg would say.

Mr Bragg regularly took possession of poor Puff; as regularly as a policeman takes possession of a prisoner. The reader knows the sort of feeling one has when a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, or anyone whom we have called in to assist, takes the initiative and treats one as a nonentity, pooh-poohing all one’s pet ideas, and upsetting all one’s well-considered arrangements.

Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated Puff accordingly. If a ‘perfect servant’ is only to be got out of the establishments of the great, Mr Bragg might be looked upon as a paragon of perfection, and now combined in his own person all the bad practices of all the places he had been in. Having ‘accepted Mr Puffington’s situation,’ as the elegant phraseology of servitude goes, he considered that Mr Puffington had nothing more to do with the hounds, and that any interference in ‘his department’ was a piece of impertinence. Puffington felt like a man who has bought a good horse, but which he finds on riding is rather more of a horse than he likes. He had no doubt that Bragg was a good man, but he thought he was rather more of a gentleman than he required. On the other hand, Mr Bragg’s opinion of his master may be gleaned from the following letter which he wrote to his successor, Mr Brick, at Lord Reynard’s:

Hanby House, Swillingford

Dear Brick -- If your old man is done daffling with your draft, I should like to have the pick of it. I’m with one Mr Puffington, a city gent. His father was a great confectioner in the Poultry, just by the Mansion House, and made his money out of Lord Mares. I shall only stay with him till I can get myself suited in the rank of life in which I have been accustomed to move; but in the meantime I consider it necessary for my own credit to do things as they should be. You know my sort of hound; good shoulders, deep chests, strong loins, straight legs, round feet, with plenty of bone all over. I hate a weedy animal; a small hound, light of bone, is only fit to hunt a kat in a kitchen.

I shall also want a couple of whips -- not fellows like waiters from Crawley’s hotel, but light, active men, not boys. I’ll have nothin’ to do with boys; every boy requires a man to look after him. No; a couple of short, light, active men -- say from five-and-twenty to thirty, with bow-legs and good cheery voices, as nearly of the same make as you can find them. I shall not give them large wage, you know; but they will have opportunities of improving themselves under me, and qualifying themselves for high places. But mind, they must be steady -- I’ll keep no unsteady servants; the first act of drunkenness, with me, is the last.

I shall also want a second horseman; and here I wouldn’t mind a mute boy who could keep his elbows down and never touch the curb; but he must be bred in the line; a huntsman’s second horseman is a