The field is now reduced to six, and two of the number, Mr. Spareneck and Caingey Thornton, become marked in their attention to our hero.  Thornton is riding Mr. Waffles’ crack steeple-chaser ‘Dare-Devil,’ and Mr. Spareneck is on a first-rate hunter belonging to the same gentleman, but they have not been able to get our friend Sponge into grief.  On the contrary, his horse, though lathered goes as strong as ever, and Mr. Sponge, seeing their design, is as careful of him as possible, so as not to lose ground.  His fine, strong, steady seat, and quiet handling, contrasts well with Thornton’s rolling bucketing style, who has already begun to ply a heavy cutting whip, in aid of his spurs at his fences, accompanied with a half frantic ‘g—­u—­r—­r—­r along!’ and inquires of the horse if he thinks he stole him?

The three soon get in front; fast as they go, the hounds go faster, and fence after fence is thrown behind them, just as a girl throws her skipping-rope.

Tom and the whips follow, grinning with their tongues in their cheeks, Tom still screeching ‘F—­o—­o—­o—­rard!—­F—­o—­o—­o—­rard!’ at intervals.

A big stone wall, built with mortar, and coped with heavy blocks of stone, is taken by the three abreast, for which they are rewarded by a gallop up Stretchfurrow pasture, from the summit of which they see the hounds streaming away to a fine grass country below, with pollard willows dotted here and there in the bottom.

‘Water!’ says our friend Sponge to himself, wondering whether Hercules would face it.  A desperate black bullfinch, so thick that they could hardly see through it, is shirked by consent, for a gate which a countryman opens, and another fence or two being passed, the splashing of some hounds in the water, and the shaking of others on the opposite bank, show that, as usual, the willows are pretty true prophets.

Caingey, grinning his coarse red face nearly double, and getting his horse well by the head, rams in the spurs, and flourishes his cutting whip high in air, with a ’g—­u—­u—­ur along! do you think I’—­the ‘stole you’ being lost under water just as Sponge clears the brook a little lower down.  Spareneck then pulls up.

When Nimrod had Dick Christian under water in the Whissendine in his Leicestershire run, and someone more humane than the rest of the field observed, as they rode on,

‘But he’ll be drowned.’

‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ exclaimed another.

‘But the pace,’ Nimrod added, ‘was too good to inquire.’

Such, however, was not the case with our watering-place cock, Mr. Sponge.  Independently of the absurdity of a man risking his neck for the sake of picking up a bunch of red herrings, Mr. Sponge, having beat everybody, could afford a little humanity, more especially as he rode his horse on sale, and there was now no one left to witness the further prowess of the steed.  Accordingly, he availed himself of a heavy, newly-ploughed