72 TALES AND TRAITS OF SPORTING LIFE. 



undertaker's man out for a lioliday : — " The chase was all 

 squared ; The Weaver was meant ; and as for the others 

 in ag'en him" — lang'uage was'nt powerful enough to ex- 

 press the little g-entleman's feeling-s here, and so he g'ave 

 a most expressive and contemptuous snap of his fing-ers ; 

 answered h}' as peculiar a grunt from his companion, a 

 fifteen-stone piece of solidity, with an acre or so of coun- 

 tenance, on which was legibly inscribed this simple re- 

 cord — that he was ever willing- to hear anything- anybody 

 had g'ot to say, but that he should reserve to himself that 

 g-lorious privilege of an Englishman, of beheving- just as 

 much as he liked of it, and no more. The grunt was but 

 an echo of the expression. 



"The thing is all squared, then, is it ?" thought I, as I 

 looked at poor Archy, who was looking at himself, and 

 gradually fitting his neck to a bit of well-folded cambric 

 that ^'the Dean" himself might have taken a notion from. 

 Still I had too much tact to tell him what I had learned, 

 and so on we went to business. Rumour was right on the 

 other tack too ; the line was a stiff" one — not a merely plas- 

 tered and pointed make-up, but a regular home-made 

 rough one, with some very curious doubles — a lane that 

 was neither good to get into or out of — and a brook about 

 a mile from home, with very much the same kind of re- 

 commendation. Of course we weren't going to grumble ; 

 and whatever the Weavers thought, they didn't. In fact, 

 their jockey, a good-tempered, black-whiskered, dark- 

 visaged fellow, whom ever^'body seemed to know, and 

 everybody as regularly hailed as '^ Tom," had a reputation 

 for riding at anything required, while The Weaver himself 

 was a known good-hearted one. I cannot say I troubled 

 myself much about the other four, who, with these two, 

 were taken some way down to fight it out, while I went 



