all his soul, and with all his strength;
while Jack, still on the grey, came plodding diligently along in the rear,
saving his horse as much as he could. His lordship charged a stiff flight
of rails in the brick-fields; while Jack, thinking to save his, rode at a
weak place in the fence, a little higher up, and in an instant was soused
overhead in a clay-hole.

'Duck under, Jack! duck under!' screamed his lordship, as Jack's head rose
to the surface. 'Duck under! you'll have it full directly!' added he,
eyeing Sponge and the rest coming up.

Sponge, however, saw the splash, and turning a little lower down, landed
safe on sound ground; while poor Blossomnose, who was next, went
floundering overhead also. But the pace was too good to stop to fish them
out.

'Dash it,' said Sponge, looking at them splashing about, 'but that was a
near go for me!'

Jack being thus disposed of, Sponge, with increased confidence, rose in his
stirrups, easing the redoubtable Hercules; and patting him on the shoulder,
at the same time that he gave him the gentlest possible touch of the spur,
exclaimed, 'By the powers, we'll show these old Flat Hats the trick!' He
then commenced humming:

Mister Sponge, the raspers taking,
Sets the junkers' nerves a shaking;

and riding cheerfully on, he at length found himself on the confines of a
wild rough-looking moor, with an undulating range of hills in the distance.

Frostyface and Lord Scamperdale here for the first time diverged from the
line the hounds were running, and made for the neck of a smooth, flat,
rather inviting-looking piece of ground, instead of crossing it, Sponge,
thinking to get a niche, rode to it; and the 'deeper and deeper still' sort
of flounder his horse made soon let him know that he was in a bog. The
impetuous Hercules rushed and reared onwards as if to clear the wide
expanse; and alighting still lower, shot Sponge right overhead in the
middle.

[Illustration]

'_That's_ cooked _your_ goose!' exclaimed his lordship, eyeing Sponge and
his horse floundering about in the black porridge-like mess.

'Catch my horse!' hallooed Sponge to the first whip, who came galloping up
as Hercules was breasting his way out again.

'Catch him yourself,' grunted the man, galloping on.

A peat-cutter, more humane, received the horse as he emerged from the black
sea, exclaiming, as the now-piebald Sponge came lobbing after on foot, 'A,
sir! but ye should niver set tee to ride thr