ved at home till seven o'clock that morning, and was in
a fit state to appreciate the feelings of our grandfathers, when,
after the third bottle of port, they used to put the black silk
tights into their pockets, slip on the leathers and boots, and ride
the crop-tailed hack thirty miles on a winter's night, to meet the
hounds in the next county by ten in the morning. They are 'gone
down to Hades, even many stalwart souls of heroes,' with John Warde
of Squerries at their head--the fathers of the men who conquered at
Waterloo; and we their degenerate grandsons are left instead, with
puny arms, and polished leather boots, and a considerable taint of
hereditary disease, to sit in club-houses, and celebrate the
progress of the species.

Whether Lancelot or his horse, under these depressing circumstances,
fell asleep; or whether thoughts pertaining to such a life, and its
fitness for a clever and ardent young fellow in the nineteenth
century, became gradually too painful, and had to be peremptorily
shaken off, this deponent sayeth not; but certainly, after five-and-
thirty minutes of idleness and shivering, Lancelot opened his eyes
with a sudden start, and struck spurs into his hunter without due
cause shown; whereat Shiver-the-timbers, who was no Griselda in
temper--(Lancelot had bought him out of the Pytchley for half his
value, as unrideably vicious, when he had killed a groom, and fallen
backwards on a rough-rider, the first season after he came up from
Horncastle)--responded by a furious kick or two, threw his head up,
put his foot into a drain, and sprawled down all but on his nose,
pitching Lancelot unawares shamefully on the pommel of his saddle.
A certain fatality, by the bye, had lately attended all Lancelot's
efforts to shine; he never bought a new coat without tearing it
mysteriously next day, or tried to make a joke without bursting out
coughing in the middle . . . and now the whole field were looking on
at his mishap; between disgust and the start he turned almost sick,
and felt the blood rush into his cheeks and forehead as he heard a
shout of coarse jovial laughter burst out close to him, and the old
master of the hounds, Squire Lavington, roared aloud--

'A pretty sportsman you are, Mr. Smith, to fall asleep by the cover-
side and let your horse down--and your pockets, too! What's that
book on the ground? Sapping and studying still? I let nobody come
out with my hounds