tsman and his integrity as
a man,' meaning his indifference to his master's interests; while the
first-whip had gone to visit his aunt, and the groom was away negotiating
the exchange of a cow. With things in this state, Wily Tom of Tinklerhatch,
a noted fox-stealer in Lord Scamperdale's country, had arrived with a great
thundering dog fox, stolen from his lordship's cover near the cross roads
at Dallington Burn, which being communicated to our friends about midnight
in the smoking-room at Nonsuch House, it was resolved to hunt him
forthwith, especially as one of the guests, Mr. Orlando Bugles, of the
Surrey Theatre, was obliged to return to town immediately, and, as he
sometimes enacted the part of Squire Tallyho, it was thought a little of
the reality might correct the Tom and Jerry style in which he did it.
Accordingly, orders were issued for a hunt, notwithstanding the hounds were
fed and the horses watered. Sir Harry didn't 'care a rap; let them go as
fast as they could.'

All these circumstances conspired to make them late; added to which, when
Watchorn, the huntsman, cast up, which he did on a higgler's horse, he
found the only sound one in his stud had gone to the neighbouring town to
get some fiddlers--her ladyship having determined to compliment Mr. Bugles'
visit by a quadrille party. Bugles and she were old friends. When Mr.
Sponge cast up at half-past eleven, things were still behind-hand.

Sir Harry and party had had a wet night of it, and were all more or less
drunk. They had kept up the excitement with a champagne breakfast and
various liqueurs, to say nothing of cigars. They were a sad
debauched-looking set, some of them scarcely out of their teens, with
pallid cheeks, trembling hands, sunken eyes, and all the symptoms of
premature decay. Others--the sock-and-buskin ones--were a made-up, wigged,
and padded set. Bugles was resplendent. He had on a dress scarlet coat,
lined and faced with yellow satin (one of the properties, we believe, of
the Victoria), a beautifully worked pink shirt-front, a pitch-plaster
coloured waistcoat, white ducks, and jack-boots, with brass heel spurs. He
carried his whip in the arm's-length-way of a circus master following a
horse. Some dozen of these curiosities were staggering, and swaggering, and
smoking in front of Nonsuch House, to the edification of a lot of gaping
grooms and chawbacons, when Mr. Sponge cantered becomingly up on the
piebald. Lady Scattercash, with several