he had come down to two.  Nevertheless, those two, provided he could but make them ‘go,’ were well calculated to do the work of four.  And hack horses, of all sorts, it may be observed, generally do double the work of private ones; and if there is one man in the world better calculated to get the work out of them than another, that man most assuredly is Mr. Sponge.  And this reminds us, that we may as well state that his bargain with Buckram was a sort of jobbing deal.  He had to pay ten guineas a month for each horse, with a sort of sliding scale of prices if he chose to buy—­the price of ‘Ercles’ (the big brown) being fixed at fifty, inclusive of hire at the end of the first month, and gradually rising according to the length of time he kept him beyond that; while, ‘Multum in Parvo,’ the resolute chestnut, was booked at thirty, with the right of buying at five more, a contingency that Buckram little expected.  He, we may add, had got him for ten, and dear he thought him when he got him home.

The world was now all before Mr. Sponge where to choose; and not being the man to keep hack horses to look at, we must be setting him a-going.

‘Leicesterscheer swells,’ as Mr. Buckram would call them, with their fourteen hunters and four hacks, will smile at the idea of a man going from home to hunt with only a couple of ‘screws,’ but Mr. Sponge knew what he was about, and didn’t want any one to counsel him.  He knew there were places where a man can follow up the effect produced by a red coat in the morning to great advantage in the evening; and if he couldn’t hunt every day in the week, as he could have wished, he felt he might fill up his time perhaps quite as profitably in other ways.  The ladies, to do them justice, are never at all suspicious about men—­on the ’nibble’—­always taking it for granted, they are ‘all they could wish,’ and they know each other so well, that any cautionary hint acts rather in a man’s favour than otherwise.  Moreover, hunting men, as we said before, are all supposed to be rich, and as very few ladies are aware that a horse can’t hunt every day in the week, they just class the whole ‘genus’ fourteen-horse power men, ten-horse power men, five-horse power men, two-horse power men, together, and tying them in a bunch, label it ‘very rich,’ and proceed to take measures accordingly.

Let us now visit one of the ‘strongholds’ of fox and fortune-hunting.

A sudden turn of a long, gently rising, but hitherto uninteresting road, brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, well-wooded, beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose fine green pastures are brightened with occasional gleams of a meandering river, flowing through the centre of the vale.  In the far distance, looking as though close upon the blue hills, though in reality several miles apart, sundry spires and taller buildings are seen rising above the grey mists towards which a straight, undeviating, matter-of-fact line of railway passing up the right of the vale, directs the eye.  This is the famed Laverick Wells, the resort, as indeed all watering-places are, according to newspaper accounts, of