Mr. and Lady Thomasma Clinker. 45 



masina said with feeling; southerly wind, cloudy sky, and 

 the rest of it all complete) at Cropperton Gate, one of the 

 very best meets of his lordship's hounds. Johnnie and 

 his wife have sent their best horses on, and have duly 

 started for the meet, taking a short cut well known to 

 them. Now through this farm, now through that, now- 

 over a couple of fences to save a mile of road, and so on. 

 They have done about four miles of the distance, are 

 through Oakover Wood, and then proceed in Indian file 

 down the steep and narrow pathway of a little spinney. 

 Johnnie lifts confidently the latch of the small bridle-gate, 

 and emerges into the valley. 



What horrible sight is this that meets his eye ? 

 Johnnie and his wife can scarcely believe their senses. 

 Why,it was only a month or six weeks since they werehere. 

 What has become then of the fat-looking pasture, with the 

 prosperous-looking lot of beasts and a horse or two, all 

 scattered about ? — the rich-looking grass almost seeming 

 to say, "Now then, my boys and girls, give your horses 

 their heads, and have a good gallop over us." The pas- 

 ture is there certainly, but how changed ! The cows and 

 horses have disappeared, and are replaced by a couple of 

 hundred or so of that important class of British workmen 

 commonly called "navvies," with their huts, and theirhorses, 

 and their carts, and their wheelbarrows, and who are one 

 and all as busy at work as a colony of bees. Tipping and 

 shunting, wheeling and digging, measuring and planning, 

 cussing and swearing ; and all at the instigation of the wor- 

 shipful body of directors belonging to the Great Smashem 

 and Crumple-em-up Railway Company. 



By way of marking the limits of the land they have ac- 

 quired for the new line, so that there might be no mistake 



