even offer to rise to it, but just stood stock still when she came to it. Three several times we put her at it, with spur and whip and adjuration, before we arrived at an understanding of this most extraordinary thing; and then we felt thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. Of course poor Jenny was so done by her efforts in dragging herself through that dreadful slough that she was literally incapable of rising to the fence, and we had beaten her and spurred her on that account! When we realised the position, we went near to shedding tears, of shame for ourselves and sorrow for Jenny; but in five minutes she had recovered her wind, and went over that bank like a cat.

The hounds were by this time goodness knew where; and, with the exception of goodness, the only being who knew anything at all about their doings during a great part of that run was Authority who, after succeeding in getting his horse over the bank, jumped him backwards and forwards several times before thinking about the hounds at all, and then began to look about him from the vantage post of the high-road. The road here runs along the watershed, giving a view into the lower ground on either side; and on his right he saw the hounds running hard with no one within some fields of them, and at intervals over the country a horse and rider fighting for life in a bog. He trotted along the high-road, watching the hunting hounds, and eventually, putting himself under the guidance of one of the road-riding brigade, cut off the pack, which by that time the huntsman had overtaken, by a cross lane.

Meanwhile Boyhood and Jumping Jenny, coming out on the high-road, met another very sorry fox-hunter, whose experiences had been similar, riding along it. Together we jogged in what we thought the most likely

direction, and by good luck soon fell in with the hounds and the field, the former having lost their fox and the latter being in an advanced stage of demoralisation. It seemed unlikely that more would be done that day, so we set off for a long ride home with Authority. Boyhood, after a twentytwo mile ride with only one stirrup on a dead-tired pony, was glad enough when the white bars of the turnpike gates (for there were pikes in those days) appeared through the gathering dusk to announce that he was nearly at home again.

This, was on the whole a somewhat dismal experience; but for a while at all events we had a greater delight in that hunting than in any other experience that life has ever held for us. It was, of course, the poorest kind of fun imaginable from the Meltonian's point of view; but it required nevertheless a certain amount of riding, and a certain degree of nerve in galloping up and down some very queer places. It was a country in which it was impossible to take your own line, being so intersected with what were locally called "bottoms," steep glens with a stream running through them, that it was almost necessary to follow the guidance of some one familiar with it. One of the most remarkable features about it all was the way in which great heavy fellows would follow the hounds on little Exmoor ponies no bigger than our Jenny. When they came to a bank they would jump off, send their pony over with a smack on the quarters, clamber up after, often by the aid of the pony's tail, then mount again, for the ponies would wait for them on the other side, and so on. This was a style of hunting which gave you fine opportunities of seeing the hounds at their work, though it is to be confessed that this was a very minor consideration to Boyhood, who

loved first and foremost the death of the fox, and secondly, plenty of jump ing. It was not within Boyhood's philosophy that there could be any pleasure in galloping over enormous grass fields; he liked much better the Devonshire plan where the fields were small and the fences plentiful. Now and again we did get a mighty gallop over great unfenced spaces, but then there was a compensating quality of delight that made up to one for the loss of the jumping. Then one raced away over the moorland towards the blue sea, with the sniff of the salt breeze all the time in one's nostrils. They were always stout foxes, too, those that we found on the borders of the moorland and that took us straight away towards their wellknown hold in the great seaward cliffs. There was one of these old fellows that we knew as well as a kelt knows a Jock Scott. We knew him by his brush, which was of a curious dusty gray, and probably he knew us and all the field and the hounds no less well. We found him always in the same covert; he stole out of it always at the same corner, gave just the same defiant wave of his brush as he settled into his stride, and went the same line, fence for fence and gap for gap, every year. After a mile or so we came to the open downs, golden with gorse-bushes in perpetual flower; but the old fox cared not a whit for the covert of the gorse-bushes, always holding on his line until he came to the cliff, where a hound or two generally fell a sacrifice on the beach below, unless the pack could be whipped off in time. At length, one year when we were beginning to be quite big boys, the old fox, sensibly grayer and dustier in the brush than last year, was viewed a mile and a half from his point and pulled down in the open. within half a mile of it. His brush was one of our proudest trophies;

no interfering Diana happened to be in at the death that day to rob Boyhood of its best-deserved spoils; for though we had several other brushes and a mask or two, none had been the adornment of quite so gallant and famous a fox as this one.

No doubt we had our black letter as well as our red letter days. It happened to us once and again to be pounded; to come across a post and rails, though such obstacles were rare in our country, which Jumping Jenny, with the best heart in the world, could not negotiate. Then we had to go sadly round by a gap or a gateway, and by the time we had our heads straight again the hounds might be clean gone from sight and hearing. But this happened seldom, for Devonshire is the special happy huntingground of a boy on a small pony. Rider and steed of this quality are there equal to any others, and often it was a positive advantage to be able to creep through a small place in a hedge or bottom. We had hunted several times before it ever happened to us to come face to face with an obstacle in the nature of timber, and on this first occasion Jumping Jenny was more equal to the situation than her rider. Jenny landed deftly enough over the fence; but Boyhood found itself strangely dislodged from the saddle and perched on Jenny's neck in a manner at once undignified and uncomfortable. A hasty scramble back into the saddle was followed by a quick glance round to see whether the unfortunate adventure had been observed. A sardonic smile on the face of Authority was the only comment; but it was comment sufficient to make Boyhood swear in its heart that before next taking the field it would be a finished timber-jumper. In pursuance of this resolve we asked that a line of hurdles should be set up for practice on the lawn before the house. But

here Authority's acquiescence was qualified by a stringent condition: the hurdles might be put up and we might practise over them at will; but it was to be clearly understood that if Jenny refused them, as might happen in cold blood, we were to keep on putting her at those hurdles so long as the daylight lasted. We agreed, perforce, to this condition, and started, with some qualms, on the emprise. Boyhood was a trifle more cunning than Authority had expected. Authority,

with the sardonic smile on his face, watched Boyhood riding down from the stables in the expectation that Jumping Jenny would be called on, then and there, to show that her title was merited. We were not quite so green as that. Our favourite reading, in this phase of our career, was the glorious and immortal history of Mr. John Jorrocks, M.F.H. Our hero of romance was Mr. James Pigg, and our very phrases were borrowed from this inspired book. Each fox we viewed was the biggest fox whatever was seen ; our verdict on each night, as we looked out upon it from the window, was "hellish dark and smells of cheese." From so sapient a work it is impossible but that we should have picked up a certain share of cunning in matters pertaining to the horse, the hound, and the chase. Therefore, instead of bringing Jenny right down on the line of hurdles at the outgoing, we took her a little round about the lawn and into the next field first; and then, bringing her back towards the hurdles, with her head towards her stables, set her going at them in a canter, and over she hopped like a bird. Boyhood was disconcerted: the seat in the saddle was insecure for a moment, no doubt; but it had been drilled into us to sit well back, and after two or three further trials we enjoyed going over a hurdle a great deal better than

sitting in an armchair. After this no fence that we met in the hunting-field could puzzle us except, of course, those that beat us by their quantity rather than quality.

The quaintest incident that memory retains of our hunting days was the finish of a pottering run in a heavily wooded country where no fox would face the open. We had hunted him

up and down the rides for the greater part of a day, and finally, with the scent at its hottest, we seemed to have lost the fox in the neighbourhood of a little cottage, with a pigstye tacked on to it. The hounds were giving tongue round the pigstye, while its occupants protested with no less noise. The hubbub was tremendous, and the tumult increased tenfold when the second whip climbed the stye palings and began to search the tenement for the missing fox. There was no sign of him. Still the hounds kept giving tongue around the dwelling as if the fox were there. The whip, after drawing the pigstye blank, knocked at the cottage door and, receiving no answer, entered. The sole inmate was a bed-ridden old woman who protested with vehemence equal to the pigs' against this invasion of her privacy; adding that no fox could possibly have come in, for the door had not been opened since her grandson had gone out to work in the morning. The man in pink was about to retire with apologies, when a bold hound burst in through the door, with a terrible burst of melody. He stopped to ask no questions of the poor old lady, but went under the bed like a tiger. More hounds dashed in; there was a scuffle and a worry under the bed, shrieks from the poor old woman that lay on it, furious death-notes of the hounds, and in a second or two all was over. It took a deal of silver and consolation to make the lady realise that the hounds

had not killed her as well as the fox. She still protested solemnly that the fox could not have entered the cottage because the door had been shut all the time; but it was obvious enough, from the sootiness of the old fellow's coat, that his way in had been, not through the door, but down the chimney. The old lady suffered no harm; indeed, the shock and the hubbub did her a world of good. Her grandson reported afterwards that he had never known her so well and lively for years as she was for a few days after this excitement.

Another day comes back to us, the brightest of all the triumphs shared by Jenny and Boyhood. We were waiting, while hounds were drawing a big covert, on the far side from that where most of the field were watching. There was a fox at home, for the hounds threw their tongues bravely and continuously, and yet, while the greater volume of sound grew distant, it seemed that nearer at hand an echo of it still sounded in the covert. Therefore we stayed, while every nerve of Jenny's little body quivered in her excitement. Nearer and nearer came this lesser chorus until, almost beneath our nose, a fine red fox slunk stealthily out and away over the stubble before us. We waited, as we had been well warned to do, until he was a hundred yards out in the open, before crying tally-ho with all the force of our young lungs. At the same moment there burst from the covert two hounds, no more, hot on the scent. Larger experience might have taught us that these could be but two stragglers from the pack, that the rest were away out on the far side of the covert after another fox larger experience might have taught us that our duty was to whip off these two errant ones and send

them back to the body of the pack; but Boyhood does not always know, or heed, its duty, and if Jenny knew better, she told us nothing. Such a run we had! Across that stubble, out over the grass field beyond, and on to a plough, only ourselves, Jenny, and those two hounds-and there they viewed the fox. They raced, and the fox, being fresh, raced too. How long he might have kept away from them one cannot say, for at the far end of that plough a stark obstacle confronted him. In that country they build the walls of their fruit-gardens of a clayish concrete, with a straw thatch on top to keep the rain out. Fruit-trees grow better on these than on any other walls, and it was one of these that our fox had before him across the plough. He went at it bravely, but the take-off was none too good. Still he clung a moment, with teeth and pads, on the thatching; then the treacherous straw gave way, and he slid scrambling down the wall. Again he went at it, but in a hurried, hustled fashion, for now the two hounds were hard on him. Again he

clung a moment to the thatch, then down again he slid almost into the hounds' mouths. There was a snarl, a worry, and all was over. Boyhood, alone, with a single couple of hounds had killed a fox. With enormous labour, and much scolding, we managed to perform the obsequies with a pocket-knife, and trotted off in fine feather with the trophies, after the two hounds had munched the carcase. The errant couple followed, with sterns proudly erect, and when, later in the day, we succeeded in falling in with the rest of the field, neither the Master nor other Authority had the heart to say a word to spoil Boyhood's sense of triumph.

"IT is perfectly monstrous ! said I. "This is the fourth letter I have written to Her Majesty's Office of Works on the want of a proper chair from which to dispense even-handed justice to the British public."

66

"My love," suggested Mrs. de Lex, why not take one of the chairs from your study?"

I made

some observation about dangerous precedent," but Mrs. de Lex said "Stuff," in a tone which quenched argument. "Well, my dear," said I, "I'll, I'll write to the Department." I did write, a forcible, and, I flatter myself, also an elegant letter, setting forth the discomfort of myself and my brother Justice during the long hours we were on the Bench, begging the Board to take the matter into their favourable consideration and supply the Court with a suitable seat of justice. A week passed and I received an answer from the Secretary. BOARD OF WORKS.

1896 B

SIR,

May 27, 189-.

I have the honour to acknowledge your letter of the 20th inst., requesting that the article named in margin may be supplied by this department, and in reply I have to inform you that I will lay the letter before the Board at their next meeting, and communicate to you their decision on the subject.

I have the honour to be, your most humble Servant, JOHN P. ROBINSON (Secretary to the Board).

To C. de Lex, Esq.,

Police Magistrate,

S.W. District.

This, so far, was satisfactory, and I triumphantly snubbed my wife who had ventured to hint that I should find my application treated with contempt. Weeks, however, rolled away

and the decision of the Board was still unrevealed. I sent another despatch, another, and yet a third; but to none came any answer. Then I grew angry, and penned a sarcastic note. This had the desired result.

BOARD OF WORKS. July 28, 189-.

2994 No. C. SIR, I have the honour, by the direction of the Board of Works, to acknowledge the correspondence cited in the margin, and to inform you in reply that the Board has given your application their full and most complete attention. The practice, however, of supplying judicial Chairs to Justices is one which has not hitherto obtained in this Department. I am directed, however, to inform you that the Board will again consider this somewhat important matter with a view to bringing it under the notice of the Right Honourable the Secretary for the Home Department at an early date.

I am further instructed to say that your sarcastic observations are not only incorrect, but considered by the Board to be quite uncalled for.

I have the honour to be, &c., JOHN P. ROBINSON.

I was

was staggered. What vast machinery had I not set in motion ! Heaven knows I had no desire to trouble the Right Honourable the Secretary for the Home Department. I would write to him and apologise ; like an ass I did so.

In three months' time I received back my letter, marked in red, in blue, and in green ink, minuted in all directions, and commented upon in all kinds of handwriting. "Noted and returned. M.P.S."-" Not on the business of this department. O.G.S."

-"Refer to the Paste and Scissors Office. M.B."- "Apparently forwarded in error. L.B.O."-Across the right