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that the whip followed me as well as he could; and that the rest nicked, crept, crawled, and looked on until we arrived at one of those plain-speaking, anti-humbugging contrivances, a brook—a brook, be it understood: not one of those ditch-water affairs we hear so much about after dinner, but a real brook, or a river if you like, twenty feet full in the only practicable place, and deep enough to float a frigate. Well, what with skilful manoeuvring and the fortune of war, the militaire, who exhibited, I must say, a vast deal more of MacAdamised mud than proper glory about his equipment, got the first offer at it, and worked away with his long legs in a desperate energy, that certainly meant mischief on his part; but this was the full extent of it-there was none in his little mare, who beat to a stand still, never even made an effort, but tumbled, utterly powerless, into the middle, and was out of sight in an instant; while just as the gallant Captain came sputtering and puffing to the top again, I went slap, "clean and clever," over his head!

"By the powers!" I exclaimed, in an ecstacy, as I rammed in the spurs and ran up to the very sterns of the pack, "By the powers, Blue Peter, but you're mine, now and for ever!"

How long or how far we had been running were matters on which I could give but a very vague opinion. My total ignorance of the country preventing any decent estimate of the one, and the excitement I was labouring under, of the other. Whether, again, Master Reynard would ever evince any signs of sinking appeared equally dubious. But from these considerations my attention was quickly taken in another quarter. To my great astonishment, I really began to fancy I was getting a peep at, what Mr. Green would call, "the left-hand" side of my horse: he hit an oak-stile I put him at, with every leg he had to his body, only just saving himself from further effects in a listless, Devil-me-care way, that spoke infinite danger; then he followed this up by refusing, three times in succession, so unequivocally and determinedly, that I felt fain to give in to him. And when, thanks to a burning scent, the pack made one of those beautifully sudden and simultaneous turns right across the point I was steering for, and compelled me to pull him in to a trot, he hung so heavy on my hand, and went in such a mechanical, deadly-lively manner, that I was all but convinced I had been judging too hastily:-uncertain at timber, a resolute refuser, want of bottom, and a bad mouth.

"Come, come, Peter, my boy!" said I, clapping to him again, on entering one of those doomed domains of the public, an open common, "Come, cone, it will never do to go and rub out all the fine things we have been performing to-day, in this fashion!" For a few strides he answered me gallantly enough; but the roads, cross roads, diggings for turf, and deep cart-ruts, soon brought us to the trot again; in which he at length made a mistake, and, after tottering forward for a few yards, fell, without caring to recover himself, heavily on his side. I was on my legs in an instant, and catching short hold of his bridle, endeavoured, but in vain, to rouse him to a like position. Directly I loosened the rein, his head dropped perfectly inanimate, and, with a deep groan, or rather sigh, he stretched himself out in a way that at once stopt me from any further attempt."

"He's DEAD BEAT, sure enough," thought I aloud, after looking at him for a minute or so in silence.

"Hur's dead enough any-hows," responded a countryman at my shoulder; who seemed, like one of the armed men of old, to have risen from the earth at a moment's notice. "Hur's dead enough anyhows, I reckon."

"Good heavens! d'ye think so?"

"No, I don't; I be sure on't."

He was and then all the events of the day at once came across me: the two or three hours' work in the sticky rides of the cover, the subsequently terrific pace and distance we had travelled, the indisputable style in which I had beaten every thing else out of sight, and the courage and readiness with which my poor horse did go as long as he could go, all rose to reproach me. Under any circumstances, my case was unpleasant in the extreme; but what rendered it still more so was the unpalatable truth that would force itself upon me-the horse was'nt mine!

What followed I need not dilate upon. I had found out his failing he was'nt immortal. Let me merely add that, in my journey back, I fully sympathized with that unhappy gentleman who, tradition reports, once advertised for "an agreeable companion in a post chaise." I am afraid indeed just now to name the sum I would have given for any one of any kind-the amiable Baronet who employs his "Kentish fire" in shooting the foxes, or the reverend gentleman who stopped the fun and the funds for Cheltenham races, providing they promised to rigmarole incessantly on the road, should not have been refused a seat by my side. My friend, who, on first seeing me, imagined I had sold his favourite, an idea on which I was quickly compelled to sell him, bore it like an English-man or a Spartan woman, only remarking on my concluding, "He died, Sir, the death of a hero, for he died on the field." Offering consolation at such times is always a ticklish affair: some vulgar-minded men would tender it in a pecuniary sense; but the sufferer, with his mind harassed quite enough already, is devilish apt to take any such intent as an insult, and I am sure my good tact and consideration will be properly appreciated when I declare I did not.

That night I went to bed with the full determination of never trying another horse without I actually wanted one; but maybe the reader has heard the story of the "Jolly Companions" who, on meeting a fellow-spirit at the cover side, inquired when he was drunk last. To which the other seriously replied that he had left off drinking; and, when pressed again as to how long, ingenuously answered, since three o'clock that morning. This much resembles my vow: the next day but one I threw my leg over a brown mare, which in a sharp thing of five-and-twenty minutes, went nearly as well as the departed Peter: she had, however, a trick of pricking her ears and fixing her eye while hounds were running in cover, that to me looked very like vice, and I consequently was reluctantly forced to decline her. On that evening, too, I bade my friend adieu, returning to town to try a wall-eyed Velocipede filly, which Beau Shackell wrote me word was "the very thing for me;" a confident assurance which in my own mind I felt much inclined to doubt.

THE FRUITS OF "THE FIRST."

ENGRAVED BY J. B. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY J. BATEMAN.

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"Ah, that's it! Come hither, come hither,' as John Waggoner says. And now then, whey-who-a-whut, bring the old pony to a halt, my young friend, just here, all under the greenwood tree,' and let's see what sort of a face the bags will warrant us in assuming when we come to face them at home!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Yes, sir, either affirmatively, interrogatively, or cheerfully; any reading, in fact, of that very comprehensive and common American interjection, but the negative. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good; and so let's proceed: one-two-three-Come, for a six-hours' beat of six-hundred acres, thirteen brace of birds, and what with such a plumper,' as this, we may well call a leash and a half of hares, shan't be considered such very bad first-fruits, as we'll be bound our old friend Farmer Fine-ear will affirm when you take him those birds-that monster beast-and my compliments." "Yes, sir."

"And mind to recollect that you wait for an answer; and I, for whatever shape it may appear in, at the back of the beech copse: so that if "the rejoiner," as we say at Furnival's-inn, should smack of cakes and ale, why you can bring it, and we can receive it 'down, down, where the dead men be!"

"Yes, sir."

There isn't a pleasanter month in the whole year than September, and there isn't a pleasanter sport in the whole month-perhaps it would be but justice to add year again-than partridge shooting. But then a man must have the proper spirit to appreciate it, and the proper tact in practising it. What a pity that such a nice, social, round-the-farm sort of amusement should ever become the outra geously magnified toil and trouble some people are so fond of making

it.

What really reasonable reason can be given for a man knocking himself up at half-past four A.M., to knock down partridges on his own home in England, because such a virtue is necessary for the snipe-shooting in the swamps of the Indies? Or why, forsooth, should the man who does not disdain the aid of Jasper or Juno to find his game, refuse that of Gimcrack or Jim Styles to carry it? Follow, then, the plan of our friend before us, ye juvenile sportsmen; feign not the labours of Hercules in your labour of love, but be you satisfied to kill, and others to carry; so shall it tend to your conve nience even in gathering the fruits of the First, and tell pound and stone in your favour, when later in the season the coveys are broken, and the practice of shooting, sharper and more fatiguing.

And the worthy reader, whom we have somehow or other forced into attendance, if not attention, touches his hat involuntarily as he proceeds to unpack our bag for the First, and joins in with his "Yes, sir!"

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