CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, 

 who have the food brought to their very mouth in 

 preserves, and are out of breath with five minutes' 

 scamper among themselves to the middle-sized, 

 hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel-legged, long-winded 

 mawkins of Scotland, that scorn to taste a leaf of a 

 single cabbage in the wee moorland yardie that shel- 

 ters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breath- 

 ing every gloaming along the mountain-breast, un- 

 tired as young eagles ringing the sky for pastime, 

 and before the dogs seem not so much scouring for 

 life as for pleasure, with such an air of freedom, lib- 

 erty, and independence, do they fling up the moss 

 and cock their fuds in the faces of their pursuers. 

 Yet stanch are they to the spine strong in bone, 

 and sound in bottom see, see how Tickler clears that 

 twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird- 

 tops that hedge that would turn any hunter that 

 ever stabled in Melton Mowbray and then, at full 

 speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his 

 own length, and close upon his haunches, without 

 losing a foot, off within a point of due south. A ken- 

 nel ! He never was and never will be in a kennel all 

 his free joyful days. He has walked and run and 

 leaped and swam about at his own will, ever since 

 he was nine days old and he would have done so 

 sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking 

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