"Where?" exclaims one.

66

Why there there to be sure!" replies the viewer, as if the fox's line was set out like a railway.

Our friend hadn't much "where"-ing to-day, everybody being satisfied that Mr. Neville knew a fox from a cur, and the hunting of the hounds held out every expectation that they would shortly have a closer inspection of the one they were after. Moreover, a few of the nags had begun to sob, and Mr. Trumper thought it well to take the castle off the elephant, and lead up the hill.

On reaching the rising ground, after easing their horses, grinning and holding on by the manes up the hill, they all saw the fox sailing away down the other side towards the river. Nor did his pace and action give much prospect of speedy relief to the now panting and perspiring steeds. On the contrary, he went high, and though he had lowered his standard, he kept on at an even pace that looked very like lasting.

The hounds hunted him as true as beagles over the wretched starvation land that he had now chosen for his course, stuff that one would be sorry to take at two-and-sixpence an acre. Little advantage was perceptible on either side, so long as they kept on the high land, but when the fox descended, and ran the river margin, the hounds evidently gained upon him, until Dangerous and Hannibal caught view, when, as if by magic, the

whole pack flew from their noses to the worry, and rolled one over another with their victim into the river.

"God bless us, what a f-o-i-n-e run!" exclaimed Mr. Trumper, pulling up, his horse and himself all running down with sweat. The lathered Golumpus gave himself a hearty shake, as much as to say to his master, "Why don't you get off, you great slush-bucket?"

Mr. Trumper then plumped down, and the scraping of his whip-stick under the horse's belly was followed by a regular flow of water.

How different the poor dripping rat-like fox looked as he was brought out of the river to the dashing, staring, brush-whisking, high-going flyer they had started with an hour or so before-an hour, a glorious hour! What a deal had been compressed into that time! The field had done a week's work in it.

How variously we estimate time! We knew a man who went to a dentist's to get his dinner set overhauled, and after having been some twenty minutes in the chair he went away declaring he had been three hours. And he was a man of veracity too, but doubtless calculated the time by the pain. So with a run. The ground we go over, the incidents of each moment, the change of scene, the varieties of pace, all tend to magnify the time— especially if there happen to be two or three checks, when every minute is like a half hour, except when

one's nag is rather blown, or there is a big leap that we don't yet see how to avoid.

"One hour and ten minutes, exactly," observed Mr. Neville, shutting his gold hunter against his cheek.

"So," replied Mr. Trumper, "I thought it had been more."

"Well hunted he was," said Mr. Neville, alighting from his horse.

“Oh well!" rejoined Trumper in ecstasics.

"What an old villain he is!" exclaimed Ben, opening the fox's mouth as he lay distended on the ground. "He's hardly a tooth in his head. He's had many a turkey poult, I'll be bound."

Ben then proceeded to the usual ceremony of decapitation, de-paditation, and brush-i-tation.

"Give me that!" said Mr. Neville, as Ben was proceeding to pocket the yet dripping brush.

"Now, Mr. Trumper," said he, wringing it out, "you often send me a very fine hunted hare-let me present you with the brush of the animal I hunt."

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Trumper, receiving it with a low bow. "I'll put this in a glass case, and write the particklars below it."

"Ay, you may say it was a tickler,'" observed Mr. Neville.

"So it was!" replied Trumper, "a reglar one." The pads were then distributed to Jellyhead and

the Dazzlegoose gentlemen, who in the harmony of the kill buried the jealousies of country.

It was carried unanimously that he was a good fox, had shown them a good run, over a good country, and Ben very truly observed, that he was just as likely to be one of Mr. Neville's foxes as one belonging to the Dazzlegoose country.

So the mixed field parted in the greatest har

Let us now take a glance at the absentees. “Aw—yaw—aw-they say Neville's had a run," said Captain Rasher, throwing his cap into the corner, as he rolled into the mess-room in the tight-laced ease of a full-figged heavy.

"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Lieutenant Scrimagour.

"Aw-yaw-aw-why I don't much," said Rasher, twirling his resolute mustachios, a process that he generally has recourse to when short of ideas.

"People tell such lies about hunting," observed Major Tinhead, who had done somebody out of a dinner, it being band day.

"They do," exclaimed little Cornet Muttonjaw.

"There isn't one man in fifty knows what a run ought to be," said Tinhead.

Aw-yaw-aw-I defy them to have a run from such a place as that Chase," observed Rasher;