350 MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



shut the gates after him. He set all my young stock wrong the 

 last time he was here." 



" I will," replied Mr. Sponge, riding off. 



Mr. Peastraw's directions were well calculated to confuse a 

 clearer head than Mr. Sponge then carried ; and the reader will 

 not be surprised to learn that, long before he reached the Winslow 

 Woods, he was regularly bewildered. Indeed, there is no surer 

 way of losing oneself than trying to follow a long train of direc- 

 tions in a strange country. It is far better to establish one's own 

 landmarks, and make for them as the natural course of the 

 country seems to direct. Our forefathers had a wonderful knack 

 of getting to points with as little circumlocution as possible. Mr. 

 Sponge, however, knew no points, and was quite at sea ; indeed, 

 even if he had, they would have been of little use, for a fitful and 

 frequently obscured moon threw such bewildering lights and 

 shades around, that a native would have had some difficulty in 

 recognising the country. The frost grew more intense, the stars 

 shone clear and bright, and the cold took our friend by the nape 

 of the neck, shooting across his shoulder-blades and right down 

 his back. Mr. Sponge wished and wished he was anywhere 

 but where he was — flattening his nose against the coffee-room 

 window of the Bantam, tooling in a hansome as hard as he could 

 go, squaring along Oxford-street criticising horses — nay, he 

 wouldn't care to be undergoing Gustavus James himself — any- 

 thing, rather than rambling about a strange country in a cold 

 winter's night, with nothing but the hooting of owls and the 

 occasional bark of shepherds' dogs to enliven his solitude. The 

 houses were few and far between. The lights in the cottages had 

 long been extinguished, and the occupiers of such of the farm- 

 houses as would come to his knocks were gruff in their answers 

 and short in their directions. At length, after riding, and riding, 

 and riding, more with a view of keeping himself awake than in 

 the expectation of finding his way, just as he was preparing to 

 arouse the inmates of a cottage by the roadside, a sudden gleam of 

 moonlight fell upon the building, revealing the half-Swiss, half- 

 Gothic lodge of Puddingpote Bower. 



