he had been told was the duke, for he is no more like him than we are.

Tom had dodged them for nearly an hour, till they pinned him in the corner of a field from whence there was no escape but over a high stone wall.

"Scott, let me introduce my friend Mr. Tugtail,” said Muff, bringing Tuggey up.

"Happy to make the acquaintance of Mr. Scott," said the "cretur" with a most patronising bow, just such a bow as Tom made to him on the former occasion.

Tom sky-scraped in return.

After a common-place or two, the "cretur" thus began:

"Do you know, Mr. Scott, I was very nearly making a most ridiculous mistake just now ?" observed he.

"What was that, Sir?" asked Tom, with a pretty good idea of what was coming.

"Why, do you know when I first saw you, I absolutely took you for my friend the Duke of Devonshire."

"That would have been a mistake, indeed," observed Tom.

"Well, I assure you it was so," replied he. "Our friend Muff will tell you the same. 'That's the Duke of Devonshire!' said I, as you rode up. 'Nonsense!' said Muff; it's Mr. Scott.' By the

U

way, may I ask if you are any way related to the great Sir Walter ?"

"Not that I know of," replied Tom.

"Most likely, I should think," observed the "cretur," anxious to make the best of our friend. "Most likely, I should think," repeated he. "Pray do you spell your name with two t's ?"

"You don't know my friend the Duke of Devonshire, then," observed Tugtail, after a minute scrutiny of Tom's features.

"No," replied Tom; "I never saw him."

"Ah! well, you'd know him if you were to see him, for there's certainly a resemblance between you," observed he; "and your voice is something similar. It must be so, indeed, or I couldn't have mistaken you for a man I know so well."

"Does his grace hunt ?" asked Tom, thinking to "trot Tuggey out" a little.

"Oh, yes," replied he; "rides well, too; I should say, but his mind inclines more to shooting."

"He'll have good shooting, I suppose," observed Scott.

"Capital," replied his—not friend, but persecutor. "He's great with his gun," added he. "Indeed it is in the shooting way that I see most of him. I've a room at Chatsworth whenever I like to go," added Tugtail.

"Which you will occupy pretty often, I ima

gine," observed Tom; adding, "at least I would, I know."

"I've many other friends," replied Tugtail, "desirous of my company."

"Ay, but I'd always go to the biggest," observed Tom.

"Well, there's something in that," replied Tugtail, with a sagacious nod of his now puice-coloured head.

Here Tom managed to shove in between old Trumper and Tom Hobbletrot, and escaped the "cretur" for half an hour or so.

After the usual promiscuous rambling about of a "wild draw," going first to one nameless place and then to another, just as they turned up, and seemed likely for a fox, the field arrived at Willowby Brake, the first really plausible-looking place they had been at.

Here the "cretur" pinned poor Tom again. "You don't know Chatsworth, I think you say, Mr. Scott?" observed Tugtail.

"No I don't," grunted Tom.

"Beautiful place," observed Tugtail; "at least will be, when the duke makes his grand alterations."

Tugtail then entered into a long and confidential communication with Tom respecting the Pavilion, which, singular enough, was then lately stated in the papers to have been sold, or for sale, detailing how, "by his advice," the duke, having

held off for some years, had now got it at his own price, and how his grace was going to establish an ostrich hunt, and have battues of peacocks; a

rechauffe," in short, of the information Tom had given him four years ago, with a few variations tending to Tuggey's own glorification and exemplification of his intimacy with the Duke.

So the "cretur" persecuted poor Tom from cover to cover, throughout a long blank day, who declares that if everybody suffers as much for telling a lie as he did, he's sure they won't tell any

more.

Now, if that isn't a blank day, we don't know what a blank day is.

293

CHAP. XV.

THE SEASON 1846-7.

"WHAT queer books

you

write!" observed our excellent but rather matter-of-fact friend, Sylvanus Bluff, the other day, who seeing us doubling up a sheet of paper in a rather unceremonious way, concluded we were at what he calls our "old tricks." "I buy all your books," added he with a solemn shake of the head, as though we were beggaring him-"I bought your 'Jorrocks, Jaunts, and Jollities,' I bought 'Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt,' I bought Hillingdon Hall, or the Cockney Squire;' but I don't understand them. I don't see the wit of them. I don't see the use of them. I wonder you don't write something useful. I should think now," added he seriously, "you could do something better. I should say now you would be quite equal to writing a dictionary, or a book upon draining, and those would be really useful works, and your friends would get something for their money."

Gentle reader! we plead guilty to the charge of writing most egregious nonsense. Nay, we are sometimes surprised how such stuff can ever enter our head, astonished that we should be weak enough to commit it to paper, amazed that there should be