156 A BREAKFAST, AND — BROKEN BONES. 



A farmer's boy was holding a gate wide open be- 

 fore them ; for at this point the lane ended in a wide, 

 open pasture, sloping downward, with a wide stretch 

 of grass land below it, to a wide brook, with an osier 

 bed on the farther bank, about a mile and a half to the 

 left, ha.rd before them. The w^hoop had been extracted 

 from the lout by the view of a magnificent dog-fox, 

 who was crossing their paces at about three fields' dis- 

 tance, pointing down to the river bed. And both saw 

 at once that the air must have been alive for ten min- 

 utes at the least with the challenges of single hounds, 

 the crash of the pack, the cheers of the whippers-in, 

 and the squealing yell of Osbaldiston. For Long 

 Rearsby wood lay about a mile distant from them, on 

 the same ridge on which they stood, in their rear, to 

 the right, and midway the declivity between the fox 

 and the wood came the pack, heads up and sterns 

 down, the nucleus of the comet, whose tail of horse- 

 men was scattered already a mile long, back to the 

 skirts of Rearsby. A table cloth might have covered 

 the hounds, so well together did they run. Their 

 pace was tremendous. 



In the same field with them, foremost of the post 

 flight, in which were the Squire, Val. Magher, George 

 Paine, Campbell of Saddell, Goodricke, and Alvanley, 

 and Holyoke, and half a dozen other good ones, rode 

 Jardinier, whose light weight told, while his horse, a 

 splendid bay, well up to fifteen stone, was fresh ; which 

 he did not appear like to be very long, so fiercely, 

 though quite needlessly, was his rider bucketing him 

 along. 



The fact is, that worthy was in a worse temper even 

 than was usual with him. He had, from the first, 

 jealous of Fairfax, conceived a violent dislike to him 

 at being beaten in their first trial of strength as ri- 

 ders, a dislike no wise diminished by his subsequent 



