"The field is coming up," said Mike eagerly. "Get ready, Sir, for very few will attempt that jump, I know; and, then, as they crane and stare about, how jealous you'll make 'em of place." The tail hounds passed at this juncture, and Job was thundering close to their sterns, and cheering the leaders as they were running their fox down from scent to view. The critical moment had arrived. "Ride, Sir, ride for your soul's salvation!" hallooed Mike. "Now's your time, or never!" Heels, cudgel, arms, and voice, went to work with a vengeance that Blossom never before experienced. The squabby cob felt, without a doubt, that "e'en must when the devil drives," and therefore put his full pressure of steam on at the beginning. With a flirt of his tail, and bearing his under jaw nearly to the ground, Blossom sprung forwards, and bore his rider with the speed, and after the mode, of a hungry pig to a well-supplied trough. "Go it! Well done! That's it!" shouted the earth-stopper, urging the squabby cob forwards with various kinds of frightful sounds and gestures. To the utter astonishment of Job, who saw John Hardy flying in front for the first time in his life at nearly the end of a run, and everybody else in the rear, the huntsman gave his horse an involuntary pull. "Is it his ghost?" said he, "or an accidental nick in ?" "Who-whoop!" cried John Hardy, in accordance with the directions received from Mike, as the earth-stopper dragged the fox from the jaws of his victorious enemies. "Whowhoop!" repeated he, with the smile of a conqueror. "How strangely remarkable," continued he;" and yet how excessively gratifying to one's feelings." CHAPTER IV. "Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; A choking gale, and a preserving sweet." AT the entrance of Job Sykes's cottage, was one of those little rural arches composed of lattice work, over which honeysuckle and woodbine crept, and in the summer evenings this was a favourite spot for the huntsman to sit and smoke his well-loved pipe in, secure from the alloy to the pleasure of Mrs. Sykes's tongue. Occasionally, it is true, the good dame wheezed and coughed from the inside by way of supporting her perogative to oppose the ob band. jectionable propensity on the part of her husConsidering all thing, however, Job was a free and happy man, when, ensconced in his bower, he sat puffing the sweet and narcotic weed and his cares to the winds at one and the same moment. It was sunset on one of those glowing days in early autumn, which leaves all nature parched and athirst. The flowers drooped and flagged upon the ground, and the scorched leaves hung flapping in the faint breath of the wind, with feverish heat in every fibre. Gaping cracks divided the solid earth as if it opened its jaws for drink; and even the brook, instead of the pure and crystal draught, offered nothing but a series of thick, pasty, muddy pools. The lowing herds, with out-stretched tongues, sought every oozy spot, and bellowed forth their dissatisfaction at the failure of their seeking. The very birds were silent, and sat perched aloft with open bills, and all things of the earth craved assuaging water. At his ease-most particularly at his easesat Job Sykes in his bower, in company with that portly and apoplectic figure, Edward Dixon, the worthy host of the Lion. Whether the former or the latter had set the example is not exactly known, and, happily, forms no matter of import in the connecting of links concerning this history, but both of the boon companions were divested of their coats and cravats, and were reclining, with their feet elevated on the couple of benches placed as fixtures in the recess, in the least stiff and formal manner possible to be imagined or described. A tankard of ale with frothing head, looking as much like the person of Edward Dixon as any inanimate body could do, stood on a miniature table placed between the topers and smokers, and for miserable sinners taking their ease and rest from the transitory wretchedness of this heart-ache world, few, perhaps, ever looked less miserable than Job Sykes and Edward Dixon. A by-stander, without possessing much keen |