elf round to the cares of a
neighbouring hunt. The A. R. U. had lost their Master. One Captain
Glomax was going, and the county had been driven to the necessity
of advertising for a successor. "When hunting comes to that," said
Lord Chiltern, "one begins to think that it is in a bad way." It may
always be observed that when hunting-men speak seriously of their
sport, they speak despondingly. Everything is going wrong. Perhaps
the same thing may be remarked in other pursuits. Farmers are
generally on the verge of ruin. Trade is always bad. The Church is in
danger. The House of Lords isn't worth a dozen years' purchase. The
throne totters.

"An itinerant Master with a carpet-bag never can carry on a country,"
said Mr. Spooner.

"You ought really to have a gentleman of property in the county,"
said Lord Chiltern, in a self-deprecating tone. His father's acres
lay elsewhere.

"It should be someone who has a real stake in the country," replied
Mr. Spooner,--"whom the farmers can respect. Glomax understood
hunting no doubt, but the farmers didn't care for him. If you don't
have the farmers with you you can't have hunting." Then he filled a
glass of port.

"If you don't approve of Glomax, what do you think of a man like
Major Tifto?" asked Mr. Maule.

"That was in the Runnymede," said Spooner contemptuously.

"Who is Major Tifto?" asked Lord Chiltern.

"He is the man," said Silverbridge, boldly, "who owned Prime Minister
with me, when he didn't win the Leger last September."

"There was a deuce of a row," said Maule. Then Mr. Spooner, who read
his "Bell's Life" and "Field" very religiously, and who never missed
an article in "Bayley's," proceeded to give them an account of
everything that had taken place in the Runnymede Hunt. It mattered
but little that he was wrong in all his details. Narrations always
are. The result to which he came was nearly right when he declared
that the Major had been turned off, that a committee had been
appointed, and that Messrs. Topps and Jawstock had been threatened
with a lawsuit.

"That comes," said Lord Chiltern solemnly, "of employing men like
Major Tifto in places for which they are radically unfit. I dare say
Major Tifto knew how to handle a pack of hounds,--perhaps almost as
well as my huntsman, Fowler. But I don't think a county would get on
very well which appointed Fowler Master of Hounds. He is an honest
man, and therefore would be better than Tifto. But--it would not do.