to those behind; while the hounds came straggling along like a flock of wild geese, with full half a mile between the leader and the last.  However, they all threw their tongues, and each man flattered himself that the hound he was with was the first.  In vain the galloping Watchorn looked back and tootled his horn; in vain he worked with his cap; in vain the whips rode at the tail hounds, cursing and swearing, and vowing they would cut them in two.

There was no getting them together.  Every now and then the fox might be seen, looking about the size of a marble, as he rounded some distant hill, each succeeding view making him less, till, at last, he seemed no bigger than a pea.

Five-and-twenty minutes best pace over downs is calculated to try the mettle of anything; and, long before the leading hounds reached Cockthropple Dean, the field was choked by the pace.  Sir Harry had long been tailed off; both the brothers Spangles had dropped astern; the horse of one had dropped too; Sawbones, the doctor’s, had got a stiff neck; Willing, the road surveyor, and Mr. Lavender, the grocer, pulled up together.  Muddyman, the farmer’s four-year-old, had enough at the end of ten minutes; both the whips tired theirs in a quarter of an hour; and in less than twenty minutes Watchorn and Sponge were alone in their glory, or rather Sponge was in his glory, for Watchorn’s horse was beat.

‘Lend me your horn!’ exclaimed Sponge, as he heard by the hammer and pincering of Watchorn’s horse, it was all U P with him.

The horse stopped as if shot; and getting the horn, Mr. Sponge went on, the brown laying himself out as if still full of running.  Cockthropple Dean was now close at hand, and in all probability the fox would not leave it.  So thought Mr. Sponge as he dived into it, astonished at the chorus and echo of the hounds.

[Illustration:  ’HE’S AWAY!—­REET ‘CROSS TORNOPS’]

‘Tally ho!’ shouted a countryman on the opposite side; and the road Sponge had taken being favourable to the point, he made for it at a hand-gallop, horn in hand, to blow as soon as he got there.

‘He’s away!’ cried the man as soon as our friend appeared; ’reet ’cross tornops!’ added he, pointing with his hoe.

Mr. Sponge then put his horse’s head that way, and blew a long shrill reverberating blast.  As he paused to take breath and listen, he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs, and presently a stentorian voice, half frantic with rage, exclaimed from behind: 

‘WHO THE DICKENS ARE YOU?’

‘Who the Dickens are you?’ retorted Mr. Sponge, without looking round.

‘They commonly call me the EARL OF SCAMPERDALE,’ roared the same sweet voice, ‘and those are my hounds.’

‘They’re not your hounds!’ snapped Mr. Sponge, now looking round on his big-spectacled, flat-hatted lordship, who was closely followed by his double, Mr. Spraggon.

‘Not my hounds!’ screeched his lordship.  ’Oh, ye barber’s apprentice!  Oh, ye draper’s assistant!  Oh ye unmitigated Mahomedon!  Sing out, Jack! sing out!  For Heaven’s sake, sing out!’ added he, throwing out his arms in perfect despair.