CHAPTER XVI

THE MORNING MEET

OUR friend Tom had put his red coat to bed, that is to say, in the topmost drawer of the wardrobe, and had commenced stripping his horses, when he got the following note from his friend, Sylvanus Bluff:—

“Cavil House

“Dear Scott,—I’m worried alive with Mr. Neville’s foxes, and heartily wish you’d come over and kill me some of them, for I really think they won’t leave me a lamb, or a goose, or a head of game about the place. I have written to Mr. Neville and Old Ben till I’m tired, and it’s perfectly ridiculous expecting me to preserve foxes, which I do most sedulously, when they never come near to hunt them. I have therefore got the Scratchley dogs coming over on Thursday, and we are going to turn out by daybreak to see what we can do with a drag. I wish you would come over and assist, as you know more about these things than I do. Dinner at six.—Yours sincerely,

“S. Bluff”

Bluff—like a great many of us—is a capital fellow in his way—that is to say, if he has his own way—but he doesn’t like to be thwarted; least of all to have any of his live stock injured or destroyed. Still he preserves foxes; indeed he calls himself a sportsman—a sportsman who is content with two hunts a year, one in the spring, the other in the autumn. When among non-hunting men, he talks big about hunting, and his doings with the hounds; but when among members of the hunt, he always parades his patriotism in preserving what are a “downright nuisance to him.” Like a good many other men, he never makes allowances for the seasons, and if he has not the hounds at his house when he wants them he considers himself slighted. Mr. Neville not having got to him, had caused him to worry and fidget himself into a belief that he was in danger of being eaten up by foxes; and, partly as an act of self-preservation, and partly, perhaps, by way of what he calls “keeping Mr. Neville in order,” he had invited Sam Jubberknowl of Badstock to bring over the Scratchley dogs. Jubberknowl is a loose fish of a brewing, inn-keeping saddler at Badstock, who, what they call, “heads the Scratchley dogs”; that is to say, is answerable to the tax-gatherer for the ten couple which they return as seven. It is generally observed that half the Scratchley dogs disappear about taxing time.

When we see a pack of hounds advertised to meet at half-past eight or nine o’clock in the morning, or hear them spoken of in the country as “dogs,” one has a pretty good idea what to expect; and, even if Scott had not known Jubberknowl and his establishment, he would have had little difficulty in picturing the concern. As it was, our friend Tom had often been puzzled to make out whether Jubberknowl is a sportsman, or merely one who busies himself about the “dogs” for the purpose of furthering his other callings of saddler, publican, and sinner. The few times Tom had seen him out with Mr. Neville, he observed that he always came very late, and went away very early, and never passed a public-house without stopping to refresh himself. The latter, however, might be on the reciprocity principle.

It so happened that Scott was going over on the afternoon of the day on which he got Mr. Bluff’s letter to have a field day on the flags with the entry, and he took an early opportunity of telling Mr. Neville about it, expecting nothing but that he would give Bluff, and Jubberknowl, and the Scratchley dogs a good blessing for their intended unceremonious intrusion.

“I’m very glad you’ve mentioned it,” observed Mr. Neville, “for it reminds me that I’ve had two letters from Mr. Bluff about the damage the foxes are doing him, which I have quite forgotten to answer, and Ben has had no end of complaints from Steeltrap his keeper. What can I do? You know,” added he, with a shrug of the shoulders, “I can’t make the season. I should only have been too glad to have gone over and hunted his foxes for him; but we couldn’t go in the snow—we couldn’t go in the frost—we couldn’t go in the wind—and it was no use going when the country got as dry and as hard as these flags,” continued he, stamping upon them as he spoke.

“But what do you say about the Scratchley dogs?” asked Tom, expecting to get Mr. Neville’s bristles up at the very idea of any one invading his country.

“Why, as to that,” replied our master, shaking his head and looking very solemn, “I suppose Mr. Bluff must just do as he thinks right. It’s true he always preserves foxes for us, and he has some good covers in the centre of our country, so that it wouldn’t be prudent to quarrel with him. One can’t tell a non-hunting man like him that he shall not do what he likes with his own, and if he does not kill a vixen, he mayn’t do us any great harm.”

“Perhaps,” added he after a pause, “the best thing you could do would be to go over and see what they do do, and if you should have such a misfortune as to kill a vixen, which is almost the only chance Bluff has of getting blood this dry weather, you could secure the cubs at all events. We are short on the Cannonbridge side of the country, notwithstanding we have killed so few there this season.”

So unexpected a permission completely staggered our friend Tom, and it was not until he was on his way home that it occurred to him that a visit to Cavil House would again enable him to kill two birds with one stone—see the fun, and consult Mrs. Bluff about the teeth. Accordingly, he so arranged it, and on the Wednesday rode over, “bags and all,” trusting to chance for getting his horse taken care of.

It was a fine afternoon, the weather everything that a farmer could wish, and a fox-hunter object to —warm sun, cold east wind, cracking clays, flying fallows, and parched roads.

When Tom got to Cavil House, he found Mr. Bluff with the now common accompaniment of a country gentleman, a draining-pipe, in his hand, which he flourished about like a fiddlestick, or a field-marshal’s baton. He was in the usual stew of people who have got hold of something they don’t quite understand. We don’t mean his draining-pipe, for with these he is quite at home, but he found that boarding and lodging the Scratchley dogs was not quite so convenient as having Mr. Neville’s well-appointed pack trotted on to his lawn at twenty minutes past ten.

“Most ravenous devils! most ravenous devils!” exclaimed he, grasping Tom’s hand, and flourishing the draining-pipe like the leader of a band, with his face as red as a turkey-cock’s thropple, and his green cut-away thrown back, displaying not only his striped calamanco waistcoat, but his cotton braces at the arm-holes. “Have lapped up all the skim milk! have lapped up all the skim milk! and now they want porridge! and now they want porridge! Glad to see you, however! glad to see you!” and thereupon he again shook Scott heartily by the hand.

Tom was just going to say, “What, they’ve come, have they?” when a most appalling chorus from the back yard saved the question, and caused Bluff to point his draining-pipe towards it.

“By gad, what a row they make!” said he; “by gad, what a row they make! I really think they’ll drive Mrs. Bluff mad, for she hates dogs anyhow, and our youngest boy’s just out of the whooping-cough, and she’ll swear that this will throw him back! and she’ll swear that this will throw him back.”

Another chorus more riotous than its predecessor filled the air, and echo prolonged the sound. “If we are to stand this all night,” observed Bluff, with a solemn shake of the head, grounding his draining-pipe as he spoke, “we might as well have a menagerie at our door.”

“Let’s have them out,” said Scott, getting off his horse, “and see if we can’t quiet them by walking them about a bit.”

“Out!” screamed Bluff. “Out!” repeated he; “but how do you expect to get them in again? We have had to carry them in one by one as it is, and they’ve bitten two of my men desperately. Mrs. Bluff declares they are all mad, and has locked herself into her room, and won’t come out at any price.”

“Well, but where’s Jubberknowl?” asked Scott, seeing poor Bluff’s perturbation — “he can quiet them, at all events.”

“Jubberknowl be hanged,” responded Bluff, “Jubberknowl be hanged,” repeated he with greater emphasis—“he’s behaved very ill! he’s behaved very ill! See what he’s sent! see what he’s sent!” added he, producing a dirty slip of paper with the following:—

“Dear Sir,—I send the dogs, and hop they will answer your purpose. Am sorry he can’t come myself, having got for to go to Croppydock Fair, but Joshua knows all their names, and is very bidly. They had better be coupled before they leave the kennel.—Your dutiful Servant,

“Samuel Jubberknowl”

The “bidly” gentleman now appeared, carrying two pig pails in a stable hoop.

“By Jove, there goes all my pigs’ meat!” ejaculated poor Bluff, inwardly wishing he had let the whole alone. “Might as well have a regiment of soldiers billeted on one — might as well have a regiment of soldiers billeted on one;” adding, “It’s to be hoped he’ll get them pacified at last—it’s to be hoped he’ll get them pacified at last.”

Joshua was a stout-set, square-built, drayman-like fellow, of a uniform breadth from the shoulders to the heels; he was dressed in a sort of third-hand suit of hunting things, the cap being a rusty brown, the scanty coat deep purple, the abundant breeches very dirty, and the almost black boots so short and scant as to keep the majority of his swelling calves above the tops. His square, coarse-featured, freckled face was indicative of little except drink.

We will now take a glance at the internal arrangements of Cavil House.

Mrs. Bluff is anything but what the name indicates. Indeed she seems to have made a serious mistake in changing her maiden one of Green—Rosamond Green—for that of Bluff. The roses and lilies of youth having fled, she is left the most nervous, pallid, washed-out-looking creature that ever was seen. The slightest thing throws her into convulsions. She is one of those ailing sort of bodies with whom nothing is really ever the matter. Still she always lives in dread; and whatever ailment happens to be uppermost, she immediately invests herself and family with it. When the cholera was astir, she had it many times; typhus fever is a standing dish with her, and measles, whooping-cough, influenza, are all frequent visitors. She buys all the quack books that are published, and all the quack medicines that are sold, and experimentalises upon the poor people in the neighbourhood.

No sooner did the news of the men having been bit reach her than she conjured up all sorts of horrors respecting hydrophobia, and resolutely barricadoed herself and children into her room. Even poor Bluff was only permitted to hold communion sweet through the key-hole. Of course the party at Cavil House had not her company at dinner; and almost equally of course, Bluff, Tom Scott, and the few neighbours Bluff had assembled, drank more wine than they ought. We don’t mean to say they got drunk; but having no break, caused either by the retirement of the ladies or by their summoning them to tea, they settled more determinedly to the bottle, added to which, they drank the first three bottles as two, without finding out the mistake. Indeed it was not until he got three-quarters of a bottle aboard, that Bluff could fairly be said to be himself again, when, having got his waistcoat loose all but the two bottom buttons, they gradually got his conversation coaxed through the medium of his favourite subject, draining, on to that of fox-hunting itself. It was plain, however, that his inclination was for the destruction, and not the pursuit, of the animal. He was uncommonly bloodthirsty. The blood of his lambs and his leverets seemed to call for vengeance, and the number of victims increased as the evening advanced, until he got the lambs up from ten to near thirty. The shepherd told Tom in confidence that they had lost three, but one he believed had been worried by a greyhound. The neighbours gradually dropt off until Bluff and Tom were at last left alone, when, having fixed the time for turning out, said everything they could think of, and some things twice over, they both seemed to think they might as well save the fatigue of further conversational effort by going to bed; and pulling out their watches simultaneously, they found it was on the point of striking twelve.

Accordingly off they bundled.

Tom had scarcely got into bed when the violent bang of the door in the next room, which was only separated from his by a thin lath and plaster wall, followed by a heavy footstep, and an ejaculation that sounded very like “D—d fool,” announced that his host was hard by. Bluff stumped and banged about, hitting this, knocking that, occasionally letting fall an oath or an observation, such as, “Curse the table”— “Absurd nonsense”—“Women such fools”—“D—n the boot-jack!”—until at length a creak and a heavy souse proclaimed that he had turned into bed.

The poor man was condemned to sleep in his dressing-room, for fear he might be mad. Tom Scott might be included in the list of unfortunates, for he was victimised by the arrangement. His room, though an extremely good one, was not that terrible bugbear, the best one, with a lofty bed as big as a field, but a cosy, comfortable, easily-got-ready one, looking to the north, or back of the house. It so happened that the Scratchley dogs were lodged in the brewhouse just below; and these unruly spirits, unused to the restraint of civilised packs, kept howling and yelling throughout the night. It was not the cheery chorus of hounds in kennel filling the air with their merry voices, but a sort of melancholy drawl resembling what is called the death-howl. This they set up about every half-hour, bursting out in full chorus at first, with the sound of scratching and gnawing at the door and wood-work, until the howl gradually died out in a moan. Nor was this the worst; for Tom’s host could hear them also, though not so distinctly as Tom did; and what with the drink, the noise of the hounds, and the strange bed he was in, Bluff evidently could not get to sleep. This was plainly indicated by his tossings and talkings. First he began calculating the number of draining tiles to an acre, at various distances, a calculation that was interrupted every now and then by abusing the hounds, wishing they were all in a warmer place than the brewhouse; then he banged over against the wall, and snorted, as if trying to get to sleep with a snore. The next thing Tom heard was, “Curse the thing,” and apparently stripping off the counterpane. Then there was another lull, and the dogs had their turn; after which Tom heard his friend at the novel recreation of saying his multiplication table—twice two’s four, twice three’s six, twice four’s eight, and so on. This Bluff carried on very perseveringly till he got into the fifth column, when, after boggling at five times six, he was regularly brought up at five times eight, and the multiplication table seemed to die away in a mutter. Tom really thought they would both accomplish a sleep about this time, and he was as near dropping off as could be, when the vagabonds in the “lock-up” fell a-fighting, and if there had been fifty couple they could not have made a greater noise. They yelled, and they tore, and they bit, and they worried, and they howled, and they growled, and they rattled and knocked the butts, and tubs, and casks about, as if they would destroy everything in the place.

Fortunately their din had the effect of waking Joshua, and presently he began clattering with a broomstick at the door, and rating and calling to them by name. “Miscreant!” shouted he; “Miscreant!” he repeated in a still louder tone. “Mis-creant!” roared he, with a tremendous rat, tat, tat, tat, tan, of the broomstick against the door, adding, “Ord, dom ye, ha don! Ord, dom ye, be quiet! Oh! Prowler, it’s you, is it! Prowler! ar say, ha don! Prowler, for shame of yoursel! Plunderer! what are you after there?” inquired he, as the scene of action shifted to another quarter. “Whistler! Whistler! ar say. Flasher! for shame! Towler, be quiet! Guider, ha don! ord dom ye! ar’ll hang ye all, and put the rest i’ the small debt coourt!” added he, with a kick at the door that made it shake again; and after rating, and rat, tat, tanning, and kicking and clattering for some quarter of an hour, peace was at length restored.

Still Bluff couldn’t get to sleep. He, however, abandoned the multiplication table, and tried another tack: he took to saying over the kings and queens of England—William the Conqueror, William Rufus, William Rufus, William the Conqueror, and so on down to Stephen, where he stuck. He then skipped on to Edward the Fourth, from whom he brought them on with a very fair hunting scent down to Queen Victoria. Still that wouldn’t do. He then began spouting — “My name is Norval! on the Grampian hills,” etc., but that did not seem to answer any better, and he presently struck off with—

“D—n those hounds!” roared he, as the brutes again fell a-fighting. Tom then heard him groping for his bell, which, having found, he gave such a pull as left the rope in his hand. This presently went smash through the window.

Bluff then lay quiet for some time, and Tom was in hopes he had fallen asleep; but he had most likely only been listening if his footman was coming, for in less than ten minutes he was back at his multiplication table, trying to put his memory over the leap it had stuck at before. It wouldn’t do, however, so he at last turned away from it again, and began spouting; and two o’clock found him most appropriately rehearsing Henry the Fourth’s soliloquy to sleep—

which really seemed to operate beneficially, for a few incoherent noises were followed by a deep snore; and having got rid of his nearest persecutor, our friend dropped asleep too, though when the servant called him at five, he was ready to swear that he hadn’t had “a wink of sleep.”

Poor Sylvanus looked ten years older when he came down the next morning than he did when he went to bed. Instead of the healthy, ruddy complexion he generally has, and the full bright eye, he was a sort of a bad green, much of the colour of the cushions in the library of the Conservative Club, with eyes like boiled gooseberries. His chin was all jagged and hacked with the scrapings of a blunt razor, or the shakings of an unsteady hand. Nevertheless he had got himself into the old swallow-tailed scarlet and yellow ochres that Tom Scott remembers ever since he (Tom) was a boy. A red coat is a red coat with some people, and year after year we see them putting themselves into the most old-fashioned, extraordinary articles with the self-satisfied air. Sylvanus’s had been made when mother-of-pearl buttons were the fashion, and he had great black animals engraved upon them that might pass either for wolves or foxes. The collar stood right up, in a sort of Gothic arch, half-way up his head, and the closely-set-on waist-buttons were about half-way between his shoulder-blades and where the small of his back would be if it had any small—Bluff’s outline is pretty straight.

“Well, Scott, old boy, how are you?” exclaimed he, with ill-assumed gaiety, extending a feverish hand as they met in the passage leading into the breakfast-room; “hope you slept well?”

“Pretty well, thank you,” replied Tom, adding, “The hounds rather disturbed me at one time.”

He sunk “my name is Norval,” the “kings and queens,” “multiplication table,” and all that sort of thing.

“Curse the hounds!” muttered Bluff, adding, “They disturbed me too. One would have thought all that pigs’ meat would have kept them quiet; however, let’s to breakfast, and go and take our change out of them.”

Very little breakfast did for Bluff. A devil’d kidney and two cups of coffee were all he could master, though, as Tom slipped up the back stairs for his gloves, he detected him in the butler’s pantry, getting a bottle of soda-water on the sly.

It was fortunate Mrs. Bluff’s room did not command a view of the back yard; for if she had seen the great bloody, dirty, sooty, unruly devils rush out full cry, and scour the yards and courts, and outhouses, tearing here, there, and everywhere, regardless of Joshua’s yells and threats, and screams and tootles, and the cracks of his great flail-like whip, she might well have thought they were mad.

“Give us a leg up?” exclaimed Joshua, as, after shooting the bolt of the brewhouse door, he stood beside a wretched, iron-marked, bay Rosinante, whose galled back was protected from the puddingey saddle by a piece of old green and yellow Scotch carpeting.

“Which way’s the cover?” inquired he as he thrust his great feet into the rusty stirrup irons.

“Up the hill,” replied the gardener, telegraphing with his arm; and forthwith Joshua tickled the old nag with his solitary spur, and hobbled off the stones at a most woebegone shuffle, blowing, and hooping, and hallooing as he went. It was hard to say which leg the old nag was lamest on.

“They certainly are very unsteady, those hounds, I should say,” observed Mr. Bluff, whose black cob seemed to have caught the infection and began kicking and capering, regardless of Bluff’s remonstrances and the diggings of his spurless heels.—“Quick” was the word, and having mounted, our friends hurried after the noise made by Jos as he led the charge.

“D—n the fellow! he’s not going to put them into Reislip plantation, surely!” exclaimed poor Bluff, as, on clearing the well-wooded avenue, they saw Joshua careering over the turf in that direction with some six or seven couple of hounds apparently hunting his horse, for they were going full cry.—“Oh my God!” exclaimed Bluff, looking the very picture of misery: “they’ll kill every hare in the place. Oh dear! oh dear! whatever shall I do! Scott, my good fellow! Scott, my good fellow! your horse can gallop! do get forward and turn them, or they’ll utterly ruin me.”

Tom shot off at best pace, and just got within ear-shot of Joshua as the resolute devils tore past his horse and rushed full cry into cover. Stopping them was quite out of the question; half a dozen Jos’s couldn’t have done it; no, not even a Jos to each hound, mounted at least as this Jos was.

In they went as if they would eat it.

“A! they gan in bonny!” exclaimed Jos, pulling up his cripple, apparently pleased at the feat. “If he’s there, they’ll soon rout him out. Forrard in! forrard in, Tapster, old boy!” continued he, as a great black and white devil came lobbing along, towling and howling as he went.

“They’ll all be here enow,” added Jos, looking down upon the surrounding country, where one hound was baying the cows, another chasing a jackass, a third running a muck at the geese, and a couple of beagles that had been beat by the pace of their great four-and-twenty-inch cousins were establishing a little rabbit hunt of their own.

Poor Bluff’s prophecy was speedily fulfilled; for the hounds had not been in cover a minute ere the most lamentable screams and cries began to issue from all parts, as first one poor hare and then another was chopped by the savage invaders. Pheasants rose in clouds with noisy whir, and hares streamed wildly out in all directions, some rushing into the very jaws of the arriving stragglers; and when Bluff’s cob got him to the scene, every dog had his hare, either dead or alive.

Steeltrap, the keeper, was frantic. He abused Joshua like a pickpocket, asking him in the most open way if Joshua “thought he was such a fool as to allow a fox to set foot in the preserves?” It was, however, no time for talking. The screams of the hares still continued; and the keeper and the foot people having armed themselves with sticks and rails, and whatever they could lay hands on, rushed to the rescue, and presently there was a rare battering, and scrambling, and howling, and fighting in the plantation, as the savage hounds disputed the possession of the mangled pussy remains with the assailants.

At length, by dint of blows from the cudgels and blows from the horn, some six or seven couple of hounds were got out of cover; and the only plan with scratch packs being to keep moving when you get a majority, Joshua again set off over the downs in the direction of Hailweston Woods, which were pointed to him in the distance as the place where he ought to have gone to throw off.

When they got to Hailweston Woods they found the field consisting of a few neighbouring farmers, a keeper, and a blacksmith or two, who had been waiting some time for the hounds, each man, according to his own account, having winded a fox as he came. Some of them were ardent admirers of the Scratchley dogs, and anticipated their throwing Mr. Neville’s completely into the shade. “Mr. Neville’s dogs are very good when there is a scent,” observed Willie Wanderhead, “but they can’t work a fox in dry weather like these,” said he, eyeing the great bloody-faced savages as they passed.

“That’s Rollocker!” exclaimed Toby Butcher, as a great mastiff-headed creature, half-foxhound, half-bloodhound, came throwing his tongue as he travelled. “Ah, what a fine note he has!” and so they were severally criticised in detail as they passed into cover. Joshua was already in, “yoicking” and cheering such as were inclined to listen to his voice.

Several of the stanch dogs giving tongue as they drew, and all being desperately addicted to hare, they had kept up a pretty continuous noise in different parts of the cover before a decided stream of melody indicated anything better than riot, when a loud, oft-repeated, most masterly “Tallyho!” to the south announced that reynard had been seen. Away they all cut to the place, where they found a young ploughman, purple with shouting, in the act of loosing a horse from the harrows to join in the chase, leaving t’other ar’d nag to follow with the harrows, if it liked. The ground was very dry, but there was a good scent in cover, and not a bad one out; indeed, if truth must be told, wet is not indispensable to scent, and one of the best scenting days we ever saw was when the ground was as dry as in summer. But to the hunt.

The great business of a huntsman to a scratch pack is to lay his dogs on the scent—“casting,” and “lifting,” and “throwing in at head”; all scientific manœuvres, in short, are only for your fifteen hundred or two thousand a year packs. What can you expect for eight pound ten? The scratch gentleman puts his hounds on the scent, and it is their business to tell which way the owner of the scent goes, and not his. So it was with Joshua. His poor, half-starved, broken-down steed was quite done by the time it got to the holloa, and, instead of setting to, and riding in the naughty way Mr. Holyoake did in the “Quarterly,” with a couple of hounds or so on the scent, Joshua very deliberately got off, and sitting astride the fence rails, began puffing and blowing his horn to get all the redoubtable dogs out of cover that he could. That feat being accomplished, at least as far as he could judge by the absence of noise, he shifted his saddle back off the poor galled jade’s withers, readjusted the piece of carpeting, and proceeded at a gentle trot along the higher ground of the line they had gone; his next business being to catch and couple the dogs at the end, for which purpose he carried two most formidable bunches of couples at his saddle. So he hobbled and jingled away at his leisure.

The majority of our readers, we dare say, will have had experience enough of the elongated, straggling style in which scratch packs do their “splendid work”; the difficulty there is in telling which field has the head, and which the tail. Perhaps some of them may have unpleasant reminiscences connected therewith, so, as our paper is short, and our dinner we sincerely hope nearly ready, we will wind up this part of our sketch by describing the scene that burst on Joshua’s astonished vision as, on rounding Fourburrow Hill, he came all at once upon Woolridge Valley.

What “strange confusion there was in the vale below!” as the poet sings.

First and foremost were Mr. Sylvanus Bluff’s swallow tails flying out, as, horsewhip in hand, he hurried from one upturned ewe to another, rescuing herself or her lamb from the fury of the savage pack. Others were similarly engaged, while their horses fled or grazed at their leisure. Dead ewes and lambs were scattered around, while some of the more depraved of the pack actually did battle with the rescuers for the bodies of their victims. Others sneaked stealthily around, diving up to the very eyes in blood as opportunity offered, and those that had gorged themselves with tender lamb, curved their distended sides, and sought repose among the bushes on the hill.

So the last state of Mr. Sylvanus Bluff was a deal worse than the first.

MORAL

All you kindly disposed, generous-minded, country gentlemen who encourage fox-hunting without partaking of it yourselves, make allowances for masters, and beware, oh! beware of the Scratchley dogs.

And now we really think, what with the chapter on the weather and this moral on the “muttons,” we have done something to rescue our work from the charge of utter uselessness. It is somewhat singular that we should extract a moral from the misfortunes of the man who made the complaint; but truth is stronger than fiction, and performs far more unaccountable feats. The obligations we were under to Mr. Bluff for buying all our works, without wanting them, made us desirous of showing him some little civility in return; accordingly, we dispatched our friend Phiz to make the sketch illustrative of the scene we have described, and which we hope the worthy man will like. We have kept a proof before letter on India paper, which we purpose framing and presenting to Mrs. Bluff, for her boudoir or physic-room rather. Phiz, when down on this errand, made a sketch of Hawbuck Grange on speculation, which, as things have turned out, was fortunate.

Our friend Scott doffed his red coat on his return to Hawbuck Grange with very different feelings to what sportsmen generally experience on parting with their “pinks,” and as he replaced the breeches with tweed trousers, and the dusty tops with good honest double-soled shoes, he felt rather glad than otherwise that there was at last an end to the humbug of hunting.

“I wouldn’t give twopence to have any day over again,” said he, running the winter quickly through his mind as he sat changing his stockings, when his thoughts were suddenly directed into another channel by the protrudance of a big toe through a great hole.

“Confound the thing!” exclaimed he, pulling the stocking off again and throwing it from him, “that’s the care one’s housekeeper takes of one”; whereupon his thoughts immediately flew to Snailswell and matrimony, and if he had not wanted most particularly to see how his drainers were getting on, and whether Jack Hoggers had harrowed out the oat field or not, we have little doubt he would have trotted over to Snailswell, and finished the day with a little tea and courtship.

“I’ll go to-morrow, anyhow,” said he: “I’ll not bother mother Bluff about her teeth: at all events I’ll go over and see her,” continued he, relapsing into cautiousness, and thinking he could make the old excuse of trying the brother’s three-year-old serve again, as it had already served him very often.

Having at length equipped himself for country exercise, he broke cover and proceeded downstairs.

On the centre of a most bachelor-like little table in the middle of the parlour, conspicuous on the green baize cover, lay a note—pink paper with a blue seal, a woman’s all over!

“Why, here’s a letter from her!” exclaimed Tom, darting to where it lay.

He opened and read it. Thus it ran:—

“Snailswell, Friday

“My dear Mr. Scott,—The kind, I may say fatherly, interest you have ever taken in my welfare makes me anxious to give you the earliest intelligence of a matter deeply affecting my future prospects. My cousin, Harry Crow, to whom you doubtless know I have long been deeply attached, has at length made sufficient money to enable him to quit the sea, and we are about to be married forthwith. I would not for the world that you should hear of this from any one but myself. I have therefore sent the boy over on the young horse at exercise; and with the repeated expression of my sincere gratitude for all your kindness, believe me to remain, my dear Mr. Scott, ever yours most sincerely,

“Lydia Clifton

“P.S.—Would you have the kindness to ask your housekeeper for her receipt for making gooseberry fool, and send it by post, as the boy must not wait.”

“Curse those cousins!” exclaimed Tom, dropping the note and sinking into his easy-chair.

“No man’s safe with them, I declare!” continued he, thumping the stuffed arm as he rose.—“This young vagabond’s been running about the house just like a domestic cat when he was ashore, for I don’t know how many years, without ever raising the slightest suspicion, and now it turns out—

“Fatherly interest, indeed,” muttered he, eyeing himself in the glass,—“that’s a precious piece of impudence too.—Not so old as all that comes to, either.—D—n all cousins, say I!” exclaimed he, pacing hurriedly up and down the room, adding, “No man’s safe where they are.

“Gooseberry fool, indeed!” exclaimed he, tearing up the note and committing it to the flames. “I wonder who’s been the fool in this business. Dare say she wants to feed that young water-rat upon it;” adding, as he turned away, “I hope she’ll make him sick if she does.”

But we will not pursue the painful subject.—The old ladies will doubtless say—“sarved him right,” while the young ones—to whom we now address ourself—will, we hope, take a kinder view of the case, especially as our friend Tom is now in the market. We alluded to the fortunate circumstance of “Phiz” having made a sketch of Hawbuck Grange, and the little dears will see why we thought it so. Addressing ourself personally to them we may say, it is all very well for you to give yourselves airs among other girls,—say, “I wouldn’t have this man,”—“I wouldn’t think of that,” and so on; but when it comes to a downright case of tangible matrimony, few of you are such fools as to throw away a chance. Here then is a chance. Our young friend, and we are confident your mammas will tell you that all men are young till they are married, our young friend Tom Scott wants a wife, and, as we have shown, he is not imperative about money. That is putting the case, we believe, in its true light. He doesn’t say, “No girl with money need apply;” far from it. He would rather have one with money, but money is not a “sine quâ non”—which is French for indispensable.

“Up then and at him!” as the Duke of Wellington said to the Guards at Waterloo.

Of Hawbuck Grange we need not say much; indeed, Phiz has saved us the trouble of saying anything, for, as poor Hood sang of Tom Rounding the huntsman, when he exhibited him as a frontispiece to his Epping Hunt—

so Phiz serves up Hawbuck Grange in a similar way.

N.B.—Only purchasers of this work will be entitled to view Hawbuck Grange. They must come, Hawbuck Grange in hand, in fact.