nt's friend, Stoutheart,
his amiable wife and daughters and strapping sons, received the youthful
limb of the law with that frank hospitality which we are taught to
attribute "to Merrie England in the olden time." The mansion was
old-fashioned and low-roofed, trellis-worked and creeper-loved; addicted
to oak panelling, balustrades, and tapestried walls, and highly suitable
to ghosts of a humorous and agreeable tendency. Indeed it was said that
one of the rooms actually _was_ haunted at that very time; but Queeker
did not see any ghosts, although he afterwards freely confessed to
having seen all the rooms in the house more or less haunted by fairy
spirits of the fair sex, and masculine ghosts in buckskins and
top-boots! The whole air and aspect of the neighbourhood was such that
Queeker half expected to find a May-pole in the neighbouring village,
sweet shepherdesses in straw hats, pink ribbons, and short kirtles in
the fields, and gentle shepherds with long crooks, playing antique
flageolets on green banks, with innocent-looking dogs beside them, and
humble-minded sheep reposing in Arcadian felicity at their feet.

"Where does the meet take place to-day, Tom?" asked Mr Stoutheart
senior of Mr Stoutheart junior, while seated at breakfast the first
morning after their arrival at Jenkinsjoy.

"At Curmersfield," replied young Stoutheart.

"Ah, not a bad piece of country to cross. You remember when you and I
went over it together, Amy?"

"We have gone over it so often together, papa," replied Amy, "that I
really don't know to which occasion you refer."

"Why, that time when we met the hounds unexpectedly; when you were
mounted on your favourite Wildfire, and appeared to have imbibed some of
his spirit, for you went off at a tangent, crying out, `Come along,
papa!' and cleared the hedge at the roadside, crossed Slapperton's farm,
galloped up the lane leading to Curmersfield, took the ditch, with the
low fence beyond at Cumitstrong's turnip-field, in a flying leap--
obliging me to go quarter of a mile round by the gate--and overtook the
hounds just as they broke away on a false scent in the direction of the
Neckornothing ditch."

"Oh yes, I remember," replied Amy with a gentle smile; "it was a
charming gallop. I wished to continue it, but you thought the ground
would be too much for me, though I have gone over it twice since then in
perfect safety. You are far too timid, papa."

Queeker gazed and listened in open