A WRANGLER. 97 



We have all made up our minds that the fox is head- 

 ing for Oakley Heath, probably beguiling the weary 

 way with reflections on the comfortable and commo- 

 dious earths which he imagines are open, though we 

 know better. Suddenl}^, however, we bend away to the 

 right, and gradually come to a check. The fox appa- 

 rently knows the geography of the district better than 

 we do, and at last we are reluctantly forced to the con- 

 clusion that we have lost him ; whereat Crookton takes 

 up his parable against drunken rascals who pass their 

 days guzzling in public-houses, instead of attending to 

 their work, the culprit against whose especial head 

 maledictions are hurled being poor Bob Blake, the most 

 hard-working and sagacious of earth-stoppers. 



Once, however, we got a glorious " rise " out of 

 Crookton, one that was well worth waiting for. 



This was during the Scruton regime, when that quasi- 

 benevolent person, after having had very bad luck, as 

 he considered it, with the cheap screws he managed to 

 pick up in strange places, was making a last desperate 

 effort by the strictest economy to avert the horrid fate 

 of being out of pocket. Scruton had clearly imagined 

 that there must be a balance from the subscriptions 

 which would at least pay his average expenses, but this 

 now seemed improbable, and things were not only cut, 

 but absolutely shaved down, for the purpose of, if 

 possible, making both ends meet. 



The Whip — we had only one — was mounted on a 

 melancholy little dingy bay, which had an extraordi- 



H 



