"In the prigging and grinding line," added Mike, with a nod of comprehension. "And so,” said Peter Parkins, resuming his subject, “I resolved to open another branch of trade. For a man living above his means is sure to find his circumstances in the long run not dissimilar to his corns in a tight shoe-the pressure will pinch him." "No doubt o' that," rejoined Mike. "And what do you think this new branch of trade is?" inquired the razor-grinder. 66 "A rascally one, I'll be answerable," replied his companion with unequivocal candour. ha, ha, ha! “Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mike; 66 What next, I should like to know?" "Those are precisely the words my customers put to me," added Peter. "When I've told them of a circumstance as sure to happen as an over ripe apple is to fall to the ground: they say," continued he, in a mimicking tone, "What next, I should like to know?" "And you pretend to tell them?" observed Mike. "If paid accordingly," replied the razor-grinder; but it quite depends upon the fee." "Do you manage to pick up many crumbs at this game?" asked his companion. "With love-sick lads and lasses I drive a roar ing trade," returned Peter Parkins; "but they must be in love to bite freely; otherwise, they only nibble." "But what you tell them is of course all"-and here Mike conveyed his meaning in the graphic manner of puffing an imaginary feather from the ends of his fingers. "If you'll believe me, when I've no object in telling a lie," replied the razor-grinder, without any affectation in the seriousness of his deportment, "I can, with these cards properly shuffled, dealt, and cut, tell many a thing which the future must bring to pass. Mark me, not all the truth; but many a slip and shaving of it." "How?" said Mike. "Ah!" exclaimed Peter Parkins, turning his eyes upwards, and shaking his head, "that's a puzzler. How has made many a brain giddy; and yet it may seem too easy for the exercise of an infant. I can't tell how these cards reveal some of the secrets of futurity; and yet I know that they do it." Mike expressed his incredulity by commencing a loud and merry whistle. "Doesn't the earth turn round, and the sun rise and set?" said the razor-grinder, warming upon his subject. "Don't the wind blow, and the rivers run, and the tide ebb and flow? and can you tell me how they do so?" "That's a fact," replied Mike, losing many grains of his opposed belief, " and I like facts when they come home to one;" and, as he spoke, he administered a hearty thwack upon his breast. "Then, by the same rule," rejoined Peter, "if you as I understand-admit these effects, without knowing the why or the wherefore, tell me by what logic ye can gainsay others on account of their causes being hidden and mysterious?" "You talk like a book," returned his companion, "and always did, since my acquaintanceship with you." The razor-grinder felt flattered at this compliment, and his overweening vanity was fanned by perceiving that Mike was completely silenced in the discussion. "Do you now," stammered Mike, after a thoughtful pause, "do you now think that you could tell a chap what would be his latter end?" 66 Maybe that I could," replied Peter, with a concealed laugh quivering his nether lip. "Will ye just try, then," returned Mike, taking a seat on the unoccupied handle of the razorgrinder's machine, and stooping forwards, he looked at the cards closely as they were spread in rows upon the grass. Peter Parkins extended the open palm of a hand and said, "In the first place, that must be crossed with silver." “I luckily can do that,” replied Mike, producing a bruised and battered thimble, which he had picked up in one of his journeys of search and discovery. "No, no," rejoined Peter; "it must be crossed with money." "In that case," added Mike, returning the wreck of the thimble to its obscurity, "I can't make the beginning." "You're a cute sharp lad," said Peter Parkins; "and, by way of a novelty, I'll be generous, and tell your fortune for nothing." At this moment the deep note of a hound was heard in the distance. "Hark!” cried Mike, springing from his seat. Again the cry was audible, and soon afterwards a burst of many tongues came ringing on the breeze. "They've found in Wotton wood," continued Mike, and his eyes sparkled as he spoke; "and, if there's an open earth within a ring of fifteen miles, I hope I may be crammed into it and buried alive!" "Sit down," said the razor-grinder; "sit down, and never mind the hounds." "Sit," ejaculated Mike, "who can sit with that music in his ears?" and, without further observation, he climbed the straight, tall trunk of a neighbouring fir-tree, with about the speed and agility that a cat would use from the hot pursuit of a worrying cur. "Where are ye going?" inquired Peter, astonished at the nimbleness of his companion. "To join the sport," replied Mike, again sliding to the ground; "for I see that I shall be in time to get well away with them." "When shall we see each other again?" asked the razor-grinder, as his companion started off without the ceremony of taking farewell. "Come to the kennel at nightfall!" shouted and at this point, some dozen or more stripes of Mike. riband were fastened, so as to dangle and flutter, "I will!" hallooed back Peter; and thus in the form of streamers, nearly to their ancles: abruptly the two friends separated. above their top-boots, which were pushed as low With his heart keeping time with his heels, as the creased leather would permit, a gap and inand both were strangely quick in their respective termediate space was left to show the knitted hose; actions, -Mike swept through briar and brake, and although this gave an air of negligence, yet and cleared fence, rail, and ditch, and raced over there was a study even in the carelessness: the fallow and mead, until he arrived at the outskirts long ends of the white cravats that were tied in of the cover through which the hounds were press- narrow bands round their necks, were allowed to ing the wary fox, in the ardour and spirit of their remain on the outside of their waistcoats; and, matchless breed. For where was there such a taking them altogether, these prototypes of the pack as the Squire's of the Range? True it is, departed Sykeses alleged that the originals must that they were large and somewhat heavy in pro- have been eccentric images of the human form portions; but nothing would induce their owner divine. There was a peculiarity, too, about the to make the attempt of altering their form and present representative and head of the family, in figure. "No," he would say to a hint of modern his outward man, that would lead a reflective mind improvement. "No: as I first knew them,-and to think that the quaintness of exterior in the that was before I could climb into a saddle,-so Sykeses had not been buried and entombed in oblithey shall remain. My father, and his before him, vion. Job was quite "a character" in his costume were better sportsmen than myself, and it would and general appearance. He was never known to ill become me to change the blood." And then, be without his boots and spurs within the memory indeed, if the Squire had listened with a favourable of the oldest of his neighbours and acquaintance, ear to the suggestion, what would Job Sykes, the except, if the narrative must be in strictness of the huntsman, have said to the matter? Job was a fact, by the respected and respectable Mrs. Sykes, queer old fellow, and regarded every opinion ex-in the black and stilly hour of night. No matter pressed in his hearing, about hounds and hunting, when or where-even on the flagged aisle of as nothing less than a positive insult. "As if I the church, when Job went to confess his sindon't know every move concerning 'em," he re-ful omissions and commissions, the clank of his plied to a remote intimation that any body might spurs was heard; and upon one occasion, being have the hardihood to give him, as what he ought questioned as to the motive of his thus going barbed to do, or what he ought not to do. "As if I in the heel upon all occasions, he proudly replied wasn't up to every wrinkle! By the -! I ex- like a knight of old, that "he considered he was pect we shall have a queer breed of folks presently entitled to 'em." Not that Job was a figure on -something between bull-dogs and sucking quak-which pride would sit at ease. His legs were ers!" Job was certainly any thing but a patient man, and could not brook an affront, as he ever deemed it, of this nature. Thirty years had ma-dinary one of men in general. Of his features, not tured his experience as the huntsman to the Squire, even an enemy-if he possessed one-but would and half that number he had passed in the novi- admit, if in proper dread of adding to his sinful ciate state of whipper-in; for Job was now in the account, that they were singularly regular; and for sere and yellow leaf of life, although, forsooth, one whose locks were bleached by age, few handthere were many green branches yet on the sturdy, somer could be found than those in the possession stalwart trunk. As he had been to his paternal of Job Sykes. Not a single bristle was permitted progenitor, so Job's only son and heir, James to sprout upon his ruddy cheeks; and so smoothly Sykes, more commonly and familiarly called Jem, shaved was his chin, and every part of his face was the whip under his special training and guid- whereon a hair gave evidence of vegetation, that, ance. For it was Job's greatest boast, that the for aught to any appearance to the contrary, he Sykeses inherited, in regular succession, the post might have been as beardless as an unfledged of honour that he then so ably filled; and he fre- younker. Good humour sparkled in his eyes; and quently pointed, with gratified vanity, at a row of although a spirit of determination was expressed very questionable portraits, hung in a line upon in his thin and compressed lips, yet it was seldom the wall of his snug cottage, as the likenesses of that a smile was not engaged in the struggle of se his departed ancestors; who aired the saddle, figu- parating them. And then, in the garments that ratively speaking, that he now had the pleasure of adorned his person, how superlatively clean was sitting in. There were two of these said pictures each and all! From the snowy roll of cambric, that caused an invariable rise in Job's cachinnatory (the very centre and essence of Mrs. Sykes's ampowers whenever his eyes fell upon them. They bition,) twined with the greatest care about his certainly must have been strange-looking originals, throat, in which was invariably stuck a gold horseif the professed semblances were, in the remotest shoe of gigantic size, to the boot polished like a degree, worthy of credit. A bunch of powdered mirror upon his foot, not a thing, not a button, hair, as thick as their arms, was tied at the end not a thread, but was free from sullying dirt as with a large bow of black riband, and this reached industry, soap and water, and friction, could ren to a little below the middle of their spines: waist-der them. Self-opinionated Job certainly was, and coats of the brightest scarlet reached within a nar- exceedingly sensitive upon subjects connected with row width of the knees of their buckskin breeches; his occupation; but, notwithstanding this, he sel remarkably short, while his body was as particu larly long, although his stature was under the or dom expressed a hasty observation in the hearing of those who occasioned a flutter in his temper by some ill-timed and unnecessary remarks; although he often, as he said, damned them heartily between his teeth. Thus keeping the irate sparks of his anger from flying from his tongue, his offences were few and far between; and Job not only became a favourite with all who knew him, but he had the greater advantage of continuing one. With the Squire, from his youth upwards, he had always been more like a companion, albeit a humble one, than a servant; and never, notwithstanding the familiar terms on which they sometimes addressed each other in the field, was respect deeper than that entertained by Job towards his excellent and well-beloved master. Upon Mike arriving at the verge of Wotton wood, and just as he was about mounting a tree to take a hasty survey of the proceedings, he was hailed by the Squire. "Your servant, Sir," deferentially replied Mike, unclasping his arms from the tree, and hastening towards the spot where the Squire stood mounted on a superbly shaped and steady hunter. "Are the earths closed in the Gullyhole gorse?" asked the Squire. "Every one o' them, Sir," replied Mike, taking off the remains of his hat; "but," continued he, turning his quick ear to the quarter of the cover that the hounds were making for, "he'll not point for them.” "D'ye hear that, John?" asked the Squire, addressing his friend, who at this moment was engaged in buckling tighter the girths of his saddle upon a fat, round-quartered, short-legged, romannosed, crop-eared, squabby cob. If ever the spirit of ugliness was condensed in a quadruped, it was in this pet abridgment of a horse belonging to John Hardy. John, after two or three powerful grunts, and a deepening of his complexion in the straining to effect his purpose, managed to press the tongue of the buckle into the desired place, and then offered the full front of his smiling, beaming countenance to the Squire, and replied, "No, Harry, I did not hear any thing except the very great confusion the hounds are creating at this moment." "Mike," rejoined the Squire, "says that the fox will not point for the Gullyhole gorse, as I thought." Indeed!" exclaimed John, remounting with great difficulty, from a preponderance of weight in the behind of his frame. "Indeed!" repeated he. "Goodness gracious, you don't say so." "He's for Snag common, I think," observed Mike, still keeping a watchful ear to the working of the pack. "Why, that's twenty-two miles from here," said John Hardy. "I cannot think of riding so far as that." "He may not have the chance of getting the distance," replied the Squire, laughing. "But he may," returned John, seriously, "and then where shall I be ?" "Nowhere," added the Squire, "that's a cer tainty." "I'll be your pad-groom, Sir," returned Mike, "and I think that I can lift ye there or thereabouts." "Ay," added the Squire, "that you can. Hark!" "Tally-ho, tally-ho!" rang wide and far in a shrill and loud, yet musical voice, from the farthest end of the cover. "Dear me, if that isn't Tom's voice!" observed John Hardy. "That it is," replied the Squire, tightening his reins, and thrusting his feet more forwards in his stirrups, "and I'll be answerable the halloo's as true as the sun," "No fear o' that," rejoined Mike, and he spoke with pride of his apt pupil in sports of the flood and the field. Job's horn sounded like music from well-prac→ tised lips. "Come away, come away!" "Hoik halloo, hoik halloo !" cried the whipperin, cracking his heavy thong; but the gallant hounds flew more to the cheer than to the threat, and crashed through the furze like whistling bullets. Then, with a bunch of noble fellows, Job dashed along, cap in hand, and coming to the spot where sly reynard broke from the thicket, he laid them on with a voice that made many a heart beat quicker than was its wont. "Hold hard," cried the Squire, as a few of the young and ardent began to exhibit symptoms of impatience; "hold hard," repeated he, "let them get well at it." "Upon my word," remarked John Hardy, tugging upon his bridle rein, for Blossom, the squabby cob, was one of the most pig-headed, obstinate, hard-mouthed brutes that ever man exhibited his equestrian accomplishments across; upon my word," and John spoke in trepidation, "it's very difficult to hold hard. Be quiet, Blossom. What do you mean, sir?" 66 Now, it would appear that Blossom had no particular meaning as the main-spring to his action, except the intention of rendering himself as decidedly annoying and disagreeable to his master as possible; for although he tugged with outstretched neck, and his head buried between his knees, yet he continued to back himself as fast as such a reversed movement would permit. "I'll persuade him to different manners than those," said Mike, going to the rear of the perverse Blossom, and administering such a thwack with his cudgel upon his round quarters, that it sounded like a flail coming upon the naked plank of a barn-floor. Unprepared for this species of persuasion, the squabby cob flew forwards, and as nearly sent John Hardy flying over his ears as well could be, without absolutely accomplishing the feat. John, however, by clutching his mane with one hand, and seizing hold of the pummel with the other, managed to regain his equilibrium. "For'ard, for'ard!" cried Job. "Hark-away, hark-away!" responded the Squire, giving his horse his head, and on he stretched with a speed that quickly made him a leader of the van, now thundering in his rear. Mounted on a neat and pretty white galloway, with quill-tipp'd ears, and legs like willow-wands, John Hardy's protegé, Master Tom, held the conspicuous position of riding side by side with the huntsman. From a whim of his patron that the costume was particularly conducive to health, he was dressed like a young Highlander, from Scotia's rock-ribbed, cloud-capped soil; and as he flew along in the spirit and hardihood of fearless youth, with his long brown curls dancing from under his close scull-cap, and his throat rivalling the bleached collar turned deeply over his shoulders, he looked more like a picture from the easel of some imaginative painter than a creature of flesh and blood. "Do you see how they settle to it?" said Job, pointing with his whip to the pack as they rattled along in so close a body that a table-cloth might have covered the whole of them. "Yes, Job," replied Master Tom, digging his heels into the flank of his pony, as they neared a ditch with a yawning gape. "Hie over!" shouted he, throwing out his whip arm, and clearing the obstruction with the ease that a pigeon would have winged across it. "That's the way," observed the huntsman, "that's the way to ride straight to hounds. Never flinch, swerve, or crane; but cram them at it!" Master Tom's blood rose and flushed his already crimson cheek at the eulogium, and he resolved, that during this day at least he would dim none of the glory already won. Like a merry peal of bells, each tongue ringing under each, the hounds pressed the fox with every nerve and sinew strained to gain upon his flight and pull him down; while he, with praiseworthy regard for life, as valuable to the rat as to the emperor, raced along on the pads of fear, determined that the victory should be to the swift, let fate decree it for him or against him. Now over the deep fallows he took his pursuers a merry bat, testing the soundness of their lungs and powers of endurance. Then away he went with increased speed over moor and mead, skirting the hill-tops, and dipping through the valleys, and flashing through wood and copse, without a check to the chase, or even a momentary puzzle as to the course he had taken. "'Tis a burning scent," said Job. "I'll be sworn there'll be bellows to mend presently." "The Squire holds his place," replied Master Tom, glancing round as they entered a large On went the hunt. Mile after mile was scoured, and left far behind almost as soon as gained. Fences, rails, bars, gates, banks, brooks, and ditches were cleared with the ease of thought by the select few, bold and daring in the course they took; but by far the greater number pulled up here and there, and were seen measuring the distance of the respective impediments by stretching themselves in their stirrups, and taking a look on the side of the barriers so fruitlessly desired to be passed. "I can't do it," remarked one, shaking his head, "my horse is not up to the mark." "If I only had my spurs on," observed another, turning the head of his eager and willing animal from a leap that quailed the rider, but not the horse, "I shouldn't hesitate a moment. As it is, I must lift hard along the road, and try to nick in by an' by." "Confound it!" exclaimed a third, "my nag here is blown already, and it would be madness to proceed any farther. When I go home," continued he, with well-assumed indignation, “ I shall discharge my head-groom, for really he's had more than sufficient time to get my stud in condition." Thus with excuses the many were compelled to say, "hold, enough!" while the choice spirits held their way with little less deviation from the course than a shaft from the good yew-bow of Robin Hood of yore. The Squire, it should be stated, did not take every thing as it pleased Heaven to send. There had been a time that he did so; but the day was gone when rude health and sinewy strength were constant attendants upon him; and he now depended more upon his judgment and knowledge of the country over which his hounds scoured, than on his boldness. Not but that he could and did brush many a rasper that would have turned a younger and stronger man; still prudence dictated his avoiding them whenever an opportunity presented itself. "Dear me!" ejaculated John Hardy, arriving at the mouth of a drain, under the able pilotage of Mike, and coming to a dead stand-still, “how am I to get over this?" "Put him at it, Sir," replied his pad-groom, encouragingly; "it isn't a couple of feet or so, at most." "I don't think it's more, certainly," rejoined John, scanning the leap; "but I fear I shall be thrown; Blossom jolts so in his style of fencing." "I'm sure you'll be all right, Sir," ventured Mike. "Do you believe, religiously believe," returned John Hardy, with marked emphasis, "that I shall not find my nose grinding against the grass if I make the attempt?" "I do," was Mike's firm reply, although he had secret misgivings as to its honesty. "Then assist Blossom in the trial,” added John. This assistance, by the way, meant nothing more nor less than a vigorous drubbing in the rear from Mike's trusty staff, without an application of which Blossom would do and endeavour to do nothing that he was required. "Hold teight, Sir," cautioned Mike, raising the ponderous weapon in a posture of immediate offence. John fixed his hands as before in Blossom's luxuriant and flowing mane, and griped the saddle and ribs of the squabby cob with his knees and legs, and gluing his lips together, as if in desperate purpose fixed, he was prepared for the ordeal. Crack came Mike's cudgel; high, very high-to an unnecessary perpendicular, Blossom reared himself, and after effectually compelling his rider to slide out of the saddle upon his haunches, he gave an abrupt bounce forwards, and, by the sudden counter action, sent John Hardy scrambling upon the pommel. "All right, Sir!" shouted Mike, perceiving that his patron had, after a doubtful struggle, regained his balance. "All right, Sir," repeated Mike; "give him his head." Running fleetly, (for he could have outstripped Blossom,) Mike urged the self-opinionated cob to his best speed, and, what with opening of gates, lifting hurdles, tearing down rails, and making gaps, he managed to get John much closer to the hounds than, under ordinary circumstances, he might be supposed capable of being. "Have you seen my friend Lawrence, lately?" inquired he, a little puffed for breath, as Blossom was bumping him, with a truly vindictive spirit, over a wide and rough common. "The last time I saw him," replied Mike, "was as he cleared the woodlands; and the Squire did that in style." "How so?" "Ay, we're up to them again, now, Sir," said Mike, entertaining a visionary glimpse of a halfcrown for his trouble in thus rendering such successful assistance. John appeared to learn by sympathy, or by some such sensitive process, the thought and mental image raised in Mike's cerebrum; for without a single word passing upon the subject, he dived a finger and thumb into the corner of his waistcoat pocket, and extracted the coin before referred to. "There," said he, giving Mike the money, "take that, and at the end of the day you shall have another." "Many thanks," replied the beneficiary, accepting the reward, "and I hope to deserve the promised addition, Sir, in what I may call the cool of the evening." but Well, well!" rejoined John, "I've no doubt you will." The hounds now skirted the brow of the hill, facing the spot where John Hardy stood spunging and mopping the trickling drops of perspiration coursing down his rubicund, fat, and chubby cheeks; and although they were mute, and every note of music of their tongues was stilled, yet, by the waving of their plumed sterns, and the greedy way in which each drew his dew-lapped jowl along, it was obvious that something pleased their refined and exquisite senses, although of an uncertain nature. "Let 'em alone," said Job, viewing the working of his darlings with the look of an enthusiast,— "let 'em alone," repeated he, "they'll hit it off presently. Give 'em time, and they won't want a moment more than's as necessary as milk is to suckers." Throwing up his head a leading hound announced the conviction of his forethought by giving a deep, "He flew that double line of rail you see there to your left, Sir," continued Mike; "an ox-fence we call it, and nobody but him, Mr. Sykes, and Master Tom, had the pluck to brush it." "Did-did that boy have the hardihood to clear, and ringing cry. jump that?" stammered John. "Indeed he did, Sir," returned Mike. "Very good!" observed John, as if a resolution had been suddenly taken,-" very good. Then, all I have to say is, that the next time I consent to his hunting, except I hold a leading rein, I hope I may be flogged." Mike could not refrain from tittering at this determination on the part of John Hardy. There was something about it which seemed to please his imagination with a concealed but excessive relish; for he continued to laugh for many more steps than there are seconds in three minutes. 66 Hark, hark to Capable!" hallooed Job. "Hark to Capable. Hoik, hoik!" Then Fearless, and Vexer, and Prudence, and Ruin, and Trimbush, and Valentine flew to the unerring signal, and off the whole went like a flock of pigeons, again in the right track of their prey. There was not a moment to be lost; for he who lost one could never retrieve it. Away, away! and scarcely had John Hardy sufficient time to take a refreshing sob of breath, when not a hound nor a horseman was in sight, and even he strained an ear fruitlessly to catch the faintest sound of the far-gone chase. 66 Come, Sir," said Mike, we must be stirring, or we shall see no more of them.” On the opposite side of the heath, there was a deep and fertile valley, flanked by two steep and precipitous hills. Down this the fox had dipped, and, from some artful double or inexplicable "Bless my life! ejaculated John Hardy, cause, the hounds were at fault. Every one, how-"this is the worst of fox-hunting. No sooner does ever, was at work in the endeavour to hit the one, by dint of great exertion, get with the hounds, scent off; and, as Job remarked in the fulness of than off they are again, no one can tell where or his confidence, "If the varmint hadn't sunk into whither. Stir up Blossom." the earth, it was a horse to a hay-seed that they found him again." "Come, come," exclaimed John, in a triumphant tone, "they're checked, I see. Egad," continued he, "I love checks. They give one breathing time, and all that sort of thing." Strong and vigorously Mike applied his weighty and knotty stick to Blossom's hide, and with the desired effect; for the squabby cob entertained a mortal dread of a repetition of the cause. surly blundering half canter, half trot, now threatening to pitch upon his nose, and then recovering In a |