low, if you don't know your own stomach by this time, you did
ought to do,' replied Mr. Sponge.

'I (puff) flatter myself I _do_ (wheeze) my own stomach,' replied
Jogglebury tartly.

They then rumbled on for some time in silence.

When they came within sight of Snobston Green, the coast was clear. Not a
red coat, or hunting indication of any sort, was to be seen.

'I told you so (puff)!' growled Jog, blowing full into his frill, and
pulling up short.

'They be gone to Hackberry Dean,' said an old man, breaking stones by the
roadside.

'Hackberry Dean (puff)--Hackberry Dean (wheeze)!' replied Jog thoughtfully;
'then we must (puff) by Tollarton Mill, and through the (wheeze) village to
Stewley?' 'Y-e-a-z,' drawled the man.

Jog then drove on a few paces, and turned up a lane to the left, whose
finger-post directed the road 'to Tollarton.' He seemed less disconcerted
than Sponge, who kept inwardly anathematizing, not only 'Obin and Ichard,'
but 'Diddle, diddle, doubt'--'Bah, bah, black sheep'--the whole tribe of
nursery ballads, in short.

The fact was, Jog wanted to be into Hackberry Dean, which was full of fine,
straight hollies, fit either for gibbeys or whip-sticks, and the hounds
being there gave him the entree. It was for helping himself there, without
this excuse, that he had been 'county-courted,' and he did not care to
renew his acquaintance with the judge. He now whipped and jagged the old
nag, as if intent on catching the hounds. Mr. Sponge liberated his whip
from the apron-straps, and lent a hand when Jog began to flag. So they
rattled and jingled away at an amended pace. Still it seemed to Mr. Sponge
as if they would never get there. Having passed through Tollarton, and
cleared the village of Stewley, Mr. Sponge strained his eyes in every
direction where there was a bit of wood, in hopes of seeing something of
the hounds. Meanwhile Jog was shuffling his little axe from below the
cushion of the driving-seat into the pocket of his great-coat. All of a
sudden he pulled up, as they were passing a bank of wood (Hackberry Dean),
and handing the reins to his companion, said:

'Just lay hold for a minute whilst I (puff) out.'

'What's happened?' asked Sponge. 'Not sick again, are you?'

'No (puff), not exactly (wheeze) sick, but I want to be out all the (puff)
same.'

So saying, out he bundled, and, crushing through the fern-grown woodbiney
fence, darted into the wood in a way that astonished our hero. P