nt with them when I have no young blood near to spur me. Sir Jeoffry
Wildairs will be with them--if he has not yet broke his neck."

The country they hunted over proved indeed rough, and the sport
exciting. Roxholm had never seen wilder riding and more daring leaps,
and it had also happened that he had not yet gone a-hunting with so
boisterous and rollicking a body of gentlemen. Their knowledge of dogs,
foxes, and horseflesh was plainly absolute, but they had no Court
manners, being of that clan of country gentry of which London saw but
little. Nearly all the sportsmen were big men and fine ones, with
dare-devil bearing, loud voices, and a tendency to loose and profane
language. They roared friendly oaths at each other, had brandy flasks
on their persons on which they pulled freely, and, their spirits being
heightened thereby, exchanged jokes and allusions not too seemly.

Before the fox was found, Roxholm had marked this and observed also
that half a dozen more of the best mounted men were the roughest on the
field, being no young scapegraces and frolickers, but men past forty,
who wore the aspect of reprobate livers and hard drinkers, and who were
plainly boon companions and more intimate with each other than with
those not of their party.

They seemed to form a band of themselves, which those not of it had an
air of avoiding, and 'twas to be seen that their company was looked at
askance, and that in the bearing of each member of the group there was
a defiance of the general opinion. Roxholm sat on his horse somewhat
apart from this group watching it, his kinsman and a certain Lord
Twemlow, who was their host for the day, conversing near him.

My Lord Twemlow, who took no note of them, but by the involuntary
casting on them of an occasional glance, when some wild outburst
attracted his attention, wore a grave and almost affronted look.

"'Tis the Wildairs cronies," Roxholm heard him say to his Lordship of
Dunstanwolde. "I hunt but seldom, purely through disgust of their
unseemliness."

"Wildairs!" exclaimed my Lord Dunstanwolde.

"Ay," answered Twemlow, turning his horse slightly and averting his
eyes; "and there cometh my reputable kinsman, Sir Jeoffry, even as we
speak."

Roxholm turned to look with some stir of feeling in his breast, since
this was the man who had so early roused in him an emotion of anger and
rebellion. Across the field came pounding a great black horse, a fine
big-boned brute; on him rod