After surveying the back of the town, we found ourselves rambling in some beautiful picturesque fields in the rear.  Kent is a beautiful county, and the trimly kept gardens, and the clustering vines twining around the neatly thatched cottages, remind one of the rich, luxuriant soil and climate of the South.  Forgetting that we were in search of sea breezes, we continued to saunter on, across one field, over one stile and then over another, until after passing by the side of a snug-looking old-fashioned house, with a beautifully kept garden, the road took a sudden turn and brought us to some parkish-looking well-timbered ground in front, at one side of which Jorrocks saw something that he swore was a kennel.

“I knows a hawk from a hand-saw,” said he, “let me alone for that.  I’ll swear there are hounds in it.  Bless your heart, don’t I see a gilt fox on one end, and a gilt hare on the other?”

Just then came up a man in a round fustian jacket, to whom Jorrocks addressed himself, and, as good luck would have it, he turned out to be the huntsman (for Jorrocks was right about the kennel), and away we went to look at the hounds.  They proved to be Mr. Collard’s, the owner of the house that we had just passed, and were really a very nice pack of harriers, consisting of seventeen or eighteen couple, kept in better style (as far as kennel appearance goes) than three-fourths of the harriers in England.  Bird, the huntsman, our cicerone, seemed a regular keen one in hunting matters, and Jorrocks and he had a long confab about the “noble art of hunting,” though the former was rather mortified to find on announcing himself as the “celebrated Mr. Jorrocks” that Bird had never heard of him before.

After leaving the kennel we struck across a few fields, and soon found ourselves on the sea banks, along which we proceeded at the rate of about two miles an hour, until we came to the old church of Reculvers.  Hard by is a public-house, the sign of the “Two Sisters,” where, having each taken a couple of glasses of ale, we proceeded to enjoy one of the (to me at least) greatest luxuries in life—­viz. that of lying on the shingle of the beach with my heels just at the water’s edge.

The day was intensely hot, and after occupying this position for about half an hour, and finding the “perpendicular rays of the sun” rather fiercer than agreeable, we followed the example of a flock of sheep, and availed ourselves of the shade afforded by the Reculvers.  Here for a short distance along the beach, on both sides, are small breakwaters, and immediately below the Reculvers is one formed of stake and matting, capable of holding two persons sofa fashion.  Into this Jorrocks and I crept, the tide being at that particular point that enabled us to repose, with the water lashing our cradle on both sides, without dashing high enough to wet us.