of
the horsemen as were not too frightened to laugh.

'I think I'll stay where I am,' observed Mr. Bugles, preparing for a
bird's-eye view where he was. 'This hunting,' said he, getting off the
fidgety Arab, 'seems dangerous.'

The parties who accomplished the descent had now some fine plain sailing
for their trouble. The line lay across the open downs, composed of sound,
springy, racing-like turf, extremely well adapted for trying the pace
either of horses or hounds. And very soon it did try the pace of them, for
they had not gone above a mile before there was very considerable tailing
with both. To be sure, they had never been very well together, but still
the line lengthened instead of contracting. Horses that could hardly be
held downhill, and that applied themselves to the turf, on landing, as if
they could never have enough of it, now began to bear upon the rein and
hang back to those behind; while the hounds came straggling along like a
flock of wild geese, with full half a mile between the leader and the last.
However, they all threw their tongues, and each man flattered himself that
the hound he was with was the first. In vain the galloping Watchorn looked
back and tootled his horn; in vain he worked with his cap; in vain the
whips rode at the tail hounds, cursing and swearing, and vowing they would
cut them in two.

There was no getting them together. Every now and then the fox might be
seen, looking about the size of a marble, as he rounded some distant hill,
each succeeding view making him less, till, at last, he seemed no bigger
than a pea.

Five-and-twenty minutes best pace over downs is calculated to try the
mettle of anything; and, long before the leading hounds reached
Cockthropple Dean, the field was choked by the pace. Sir Harry had long
been tailed off; both the brothers Spangles had dropped astern; the horse
of one had dropped too; Sawbones, the doctor's, had got a stiff neck;
Willing, the road surveyor, and Mr. Lavender, the grocer, pulled up
together. Muddyman, the farmer's four-year-old, had enough at the end of
ten minutes; both the whips tired theirs in a quarter of an hour; and in
less than twenty minutes Watchorn and Sponge were alone in their glory, or
rather Sponge was in his glory, for Watchorn's horse was beat.

'Lend me your horn!' exclaimed Sponge, as he heard by the hammer and
pincering of Watchorn's horse, it was all U P with him.

The horse stopped as if shot; and getting the