brown) being fixed at fifty, inclusive of hire at the end of the first
month, and gradually rising according to the length of time he kept him
beyond that; while, 'Multum in Parvo,' the resolute chestnut, was booked at
thirty, with the right of buying at five more, a contingency that Buckram
little expected. He, we may add, had got him for ten, and dear he thought
him when he got him home.

The world was now all before Mr. Sponge where to choose; and not being the
man to keep hack horses to look at, we must be setting him a-going.

'Leicesterscheer swells,' as Mr. Buckram would call them, with their
fourteen hunters and four hacks, will smile at the idea of a man going from
home to hunt with only a couple of 'screws,' but Mr. Sponge knew what he
was about, and didn't want any one to counsel him. He knew there were
places where a man can follow up the effect produced by a red coat in the
morning to great advantage in the evening; and if he couldn't hunt every
day in the week, as he could have wished, he felt he might fill up his time
perhaps quite as profitably in other ways. The ladies, to do them justice,
are never at all suspicious about men--on the 'nibble'--always taking it
for granted, they are 'all they could wish,' and they know each other so
well, that any cautionary hint acts rather in a man's favour than
otherwise. Moreover, hunting men, as we said before, are all supposed to be
rich, and as very few ladies are aware that a horse can't hunt every day in
the week, they just class the whole 'genus' fourteen-horse power men,
ten-horse power men, five-horse power men, two-horse power men, together,
and tying them in a bunch, label it '_very rich_,' and proceed to take
measures accordingly.

Let us now visit one of the 'strongholds' of fox and fortune-hunting.

A sudden turn of a long, gently rising, but hitherto uninteresting road,
brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, well-wooded,
beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose fine green pastures are
brightened with occasional gleams of a meandering river, flowing through
the centre of the vale. In the far distance, looking as though close upon
the blue hills, though in reality several miles apart, sundry spires and
taller buildings are seen rising above the grey mists towards which a
straight, undeviating, matter-of-fact line of railway passing up the right
of the vale, directs the eye. This is the famed Laverick Wells, the
resort, as indeed