Mr Sponge then procured a messenger to take a note to Hanby House, for Mr Leather, and having written it, amused himself for a time with his cigars and his Mogg in his bedroom, and then turned out to see the stable got ready, and pick up any information about the hounds, or anything else, from anybody he could lay hold of. As luck would have it, he fell in with a groom travelling a horse to hunt with Sir Harry Scattercash’s hounds, which, he said, met at Snobston Green, some eight or nine miles off, the next day, and whither Mr Sponge decided on going.

Mr Jogglebury’s equanimity returning at dinner time, Mr Sponge was persuasive enough to induce him to accompany him, and it was finally arranged that Leather should go on with the horses, and Jog should drive Sponge to cover in the phe-a-ton.