lordship.  “Could you ride my horse?” “He’s very big,” said Kate.  “You’d look like a tom-tit on a haystack,” said his lordship.  “And if you got on my pony, you’d look like a haystack on a tom-tit,” said Kate.  Then it was felt that Kate Masters had had the best of that little encounter.  “Yes;—­I got one there,” said Lord Rufford, while his friends were laughing at him.

At length Captain Glomax was seen in the road and Tony was with him at once, whispering in his ear that the hounds if allowed to go on would certainly run into Dillsborough Wood.  “D—­ the hounds,” muttered the Captain; but he knew too well what he was about to face so terrible a danger.  “They’re going home,” he said as soon as he had joined Lord Rufford and the crowd.

“Going home!” exclaimed a pink-coated young rider of a hired horse which had been going well with him; and as he said so he looked at his watch.

“Unless you particularly wish me to take the hounds to some covert twenty miles off,” answered the sarcastic Master.

“The fox certainly went on to Littleton,” said the elder Botsey.

“My dear fellow,” said the Captain, “I can tell you where the fox went quite as well as you can tell me.  Do allow a man to know what he’s about some times.”

“It isn’t generally the custom here to take the hounds off a running fox,” continued Botsey, who subscribed 50 pounds, and did not like being snubbed.

“And it isn’t generally the custom to have fox-coverts poisoned,” said the Captain, assuming to himself the credit due to Tony’s sagacity.  “If you wish to be Master of these hounds I haven’t the slightest objection, but while I’m responsible you must allow me to do my work according to my own judgment” Then the thing was understood and Captain Glomax was allowed to carry off the hounds and his ill-humour without another word.

But just at that moment, while the hounds and the master, and Lord Rufford and his friends, were turning back in their own direction, John Morton came up with his carriage and the Senator.  “Is it all over?” asked the Senator.

“All over for to-day,” said Lord Rufford.  “Did you catch the animal?”

“No, Mr. Gotobed; we couldn’t catch him.  To tell the truth we didn’t try; but we had a nice little skurry for four or five miles.”

“Some of you look very wet” Captain Glomax and Ned Botsey were standing near the carriage; but the Captain as soon as he heard this, broke into a trot and followed the hounds.

“Some of us are very wet,” said Ned.  “That’s part of the fun.”

“Oh;—­that’s part of the fun.  You found one fox dead and you didn’t kill another because you didn’t try.  Well; Mr. Morton, I don’t think I shall take to fox hunting even though they should introduce it in Mickewa.  “What’s become of the rest of the men?”

“Most of them are in the brook,” said Ned Botsey as he rode on towards Dillsborough.