ught to an auspicious end
three weeks since,--and such gentlemen as Thomas Spooner had time on
their hands to look about their other concerns. When a man hunts five
days a week, regardless of distances, and devotes a due proportion
of his energies to the necessary circumstances of hunting, the
preservation of foxes, the maintenance of good humour with the
farmers, the proper compensation for poultry really killed by
four-legged favourites, the growth and arrangement of coverts, the
lying-in of vixens, and the subsequent guardianship of nurseries, the
persecution of enemies, and the warm protection of friends,--when
he follows the sport, accomplishing all the concomitant duties of a
true sportsman, he has not much time left for anything. Such a one
as Mr. Spooner of Spoon Hall finds that his off day is occupied from
breakfast to dinner with grooms, keepers, old women with turkeys'
heads, and gentlemen in velveteens with information about wires and
unknown earths, His letters fall naturally to the Sunday afternoon,
and are hardly written before sleep overpowers him. Many a large
fortune has been made with less of true devotion to the work than is
given to hunting by so genuine a sportsman as Mr. Spooner.

Our friend had some inkling of this himself, and felt that many of
the less important affairs of his life were neglected because he
was so true to the one great object of his existence. He had wisely
endeavoured to prevent wrack and ruin among the affairs of Spoon
Hall,--and had thoroughly succeeded by joining his cousin Ned with
himself in the administration of his estate,--but there were things
which Ned with all his zeal and all his cleverness could not do for
him. He was conscious that had he been as remiss in the matter of
hunting, as that hard-riding but otherwise idle young scamp, Gerard
Maule, he might have succeeded much better than he had hitherto done
with Adelaide Palliser. "Hanging about and philandering, that's what
they want," he said to his cousin Ned.

"I suppose it is," said Ned. "I was fond of a girl once myself, and I
hung about a good deal. But we hadn't sixpence between us."

"That was Polly Maxwell. I remember. You behaved very badly then."

"Very badly, Tom; about as bad as a man could behave,--and she was as
bad. I loved her with all my heart, and I told her so. And she told
me the same. There never was anything worse. We had just nothing
between us, and nobody to give us anything."

"It do