Presently Mr. Leather knocked at Mr. Sponge’s bedroom door, and, being invited in, announced the fact.

’Sir ’Arry’s ’ounds ‘unt,’ said he, twisting the door handle as he spoke.

‘What time?’ asked Mr. Sponge, with his half-shaven face turned towards him.

‘Meet at eleven,’ replied Leather.

‘Where?’ inquired Mr. Sponge.

’Nonsuch House, ‘bout nine miles off.’

It was thirteen, but Mr. Leather heard the malt liquor was good and wanted to taste it.

‘Take on the brown, then,’ said Mr. Sponge, quite pompously;’ and tell Bartholomew to have the hack at the door at ten—­or say a quarter to.  Tell him, I’ll lick him for every minute he’s late; and, mind, don’t let old Rory O’More here know,’ meaning our friend Jog, ’or he may take a fancy to go, and we shall never get there,’ alluding to their former excursion.

‘No, no,’ replied Mr. Leather, leaving the room.

Mr. Sponge then arrayed himself in his hunting costume—­scarlet coat, green tie, blue vest, gosling-coloured cords, and brown tops; and was greeted with a round of applause from the little Jogs as he entered the breakfast-room.  Gustavus James would handle him; and, considering that his paws were all over raspberry jam, our friend would as soon have dispensed with his attentions.  Mrs. Jog was all smiles, and Jog all scowls.

A little after ten our friend, cigar in mouth, was in the saddle.  Mrs. Jog, with Gustavus James in her arms, and all the children clustering about, stood in the passage to see him start, and watch the capers and caprioles of the piebald, as he ambled down the avenue.

‘Nine miles—­nine miles,’ muttered Mr. Sponge to himself, as he passed through the Lodge and turned up the Quarryburn road; ’do it in an hour well enough,’ said he, sticking spurs into the hack, and cantering away.

Having kept this pace up for about five miles, till he thought from the view he had taken of the map it was about time to be turning, he hailed a blacksmith in his shop, who, next to saddlers, are generally the most intelligent people about hounds, and asked how far it was to Sir Harry’s?

‘Eight miles,’ replied the man, in a minute.  ‘Impossible!’ exclaimed Mr. Sponge.  ’It was only nine at starting, and I’ve come I don’t know how many.’

The next person Mr. Sponge met told him it was ten miles; the third, after asking him where he had come from, said he was a stranger in the country, and had never heard of the place; and, what with Mr. Leather’s original mis-statement, misdirections from other people, and mistakes of his own, it was more good luck than good management that got Mr. Sponge to Nonsuch House in time.

[Illustration:  MR. SPONGE STARTING FROM THE BOWER]