as long again as they are?” Shouts of “Yooi over, over, over hounds—­try for him—­yoicks—­wind him! good dogs—­yoicks! stir him up—­have at him there!”—­here interrupted the jawbation, and the whip rode off shaking his sides with laughter.  “Your horse has got a stone in each forefoot, and a thorn in his near hock,” observed a dentist to a wholesale haberdasher from Ludgate Hill, “allow me to extract them for you—­no pain, I assure—­over before you know it.”  “Come away, hounds! come away!” was heard, and presently the huntsman, with some of the pack at his horse’s heels, issued from the wood playing Rule, Britannia! on a key-bugle, while the cracks of heavy-thonged whips warned the stragglers and loiterers to follow.  “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast,” observed Jorrocks, as he tucked the laps of his frock over his thighs, “and I hope we shall find before long, else that quarter of house-lamb will be utterly ruined.  Oh, dear, they are going below hill I do believe! why we shall never get home to-day, and I told Mrs. Jorrocks half-past five to a minute, and I invited old Fleecy, who is a most punctual man.”

Jorrocks was right in his surmise.  They arrived on the summit of a range of steep hills commanding an extensive view over the neighbouring country—­almost, he said, as far as the sea-coast.  The huntsman and hounds went down, but many of the field held a council of war on the top.  “Well! who’s going down?” said one.  “I shall wait for the next turn,” said Jorrocks, “for my horse does not like collar work.”  “I shall go this time,” said another, “and the rest next.”  “And so will I,” said a third, “for mayhap there will be no second turn.”  “Ay,” added a fourth, “and he may go the other way, and then where-shall we all be?” “Poh!” said Jorrocks, “did you ever know a Surrey fox not take to the hills?—­If he does not, I’ll eat him without mint sauce,” again harping on the quarter of lamb.  Facilis descensus Averni—­two-thirds of the field went down, leaving Jorrocks, two horse-dealers in scarlet, three chicken-butchers, half a dozen swells in leathers, a whip, and the Yorkshireman on the summit.  “Why don’t you go with the hounds?” inquired the latter of the whip.  “Oh, I wait here, sir,” said he, “to meet Tom Hills as he comes up, and to give him a fresh horse.”  “And who is Tom Hills?” inquired the Yorkshireman.  “Oh, he’s our huntsman,” replied he; “you know Tom, don’t you?” “Why, I can’t say I do, exactly,” said he; “but tell me, is he called Hills because he rides up and down these hills, or is that his real name?” “Hought! you know as well as I do,” said he, quite indignantly, “that Tom Hills is his name.”