CHAPTER XXV. Oh! how they bustled round him, And how stealthily they wound him, Through each dingle and each dell! Oh! how they sped together O'er the moor among the heather, Like birds of the same feather! And their music like a bell. Original Hunting Song. Fool.-Prythee, nuncle, be contented; this is King Lear. A RING at the door-bell-a shuffling of feet-a banging of doors-and that peculiar vibration which, even in the most solidly-built house, heralds " an arrival"-announced that the Doctor had successfully braved the dangers and difficulties of open commons, treacherous fords, muddy lanes, and dubious cross-roads, in defiance of the darkness and the gale. As I rushed into the entrance-hall to greet my guest, he was in the act of "peeling :" nor could "Cheops" himself, though swathed in the multiplied paraphernalia of a "mummy," have rejoiced in a greater number of defensive garments than those which enveloped the careful wayfarer. Off they came: first an oil-skin travelling head-dress, attached, like the mailed hood of some warlike Templar, to a set of waterproof robes that might defy a deluge--then a red silk handkerchief, bound skilfully round the ear-flaps of a fur cap-then a gaudypatterned shawl, which had preserved nose and mouth from contact with the elements-then a series of great coats, commencing with a sporting wrap-rascal, and concluding with the well-known black "Taglioni," which was considered a sufficiently professional costume for the metropolis-lower down, drab mud-boots, and india-rubber goloshes, challenged even the casualties of an upset and a pedestrian pilgrimage through the mud-till, skin after skin being cast off and laid aside, we came to the Doctor at last. "Glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Nogo," was his cheerful reply to my greetings. "Ah! nothing like country air and exercise. This, sir, is indeed a delightful situation (it had been pitch dark for the last ten miles of the Doctor's journey)-so wild, so free, so completely the country. Charmed to be presented to Mrs. Nogo. No more reckless escapadoes now-an altered man, sir, an altered man. The wildest of us tame at last, I say to Mrs. Dott: but the spirit remains the same." And, thus prattling on, the Doctor was ushered into the drawing-room, and set down to the tea-table, where I was agreeably surprised to find Mrs. Nogo was inclined to be extremely affable and condescending. Our good-humoured little guest was enchanted with all he saw and all he heard. The country cream was so rich--the country butter was so good-it was so pleasant to hear the wild wind howling round the house, uninterrupted by the muffin-man's bell, or the roll of the Kennington omnibus; but never shall I forget his delight when, on the retirement of Mrs. Nogo, I announced to him the arrangements I had made for the following day's sport, and the exciting intelligence that I had a "capital mount for him with my harriers.' "A thing I've pined for, for years, Mr. Nogo," exclaimed this theoretical Nimrod. "Fond as I am, sir, of shooting, and other field sports, I despise them all as compared with the chase. Destiny, sir, has made me a doctor; but Nature, Mr. Nogo-'pon my word, I sometimes think, Nature intended me for an Osbaldiston !" And with this comfortable assurance my enthusiastic guest, refusing all offers of wine-and-water on the plea that he wished his nerves to be in tip-top order for the morrow, lit his bed-candle and retired to his chamber in that enviable state of anticipatory excitement which fow of us are fortunate enough to experience after our schoolboy days have been numbered with the past. Notwithstanding our ill-natured remarks upon it, what a climate after all is our own! John Bull thinks it his right to abuse incessantly two things which he considers his peculiar property; and those are, his ministry and his weather; yet if we can get him to reason-no easy task-he must confess, that in no other country are public affairs managed with so much regard to public good, and under no other skies does animal life, whether of man or beast, thrive so well, or attain so high a degree of perfection. "Variety is charming," and that charm no one can deny to the different kinds of weather which successively constitute an English summer's day; yet, with all its fickleness, all its changes, I doubt whether there is any other climate under the sun in which a person may be so many hours out-of-doors and taking exercise as in our own. Either it is too hot during one part of the year, or too cold during another, or there is a stillness which suffocates you, varied by a land-breeze that produces, you know not why, ague, malaria, disease, and death; whilst in England that very mutability which disappoints you of your excursion in the morning, produces in the afternoon an atmosphere such as you have figured to yourself surrounded our first parents in Paradise; whilst a night of wind, rain, and tempest, is succeeded by a soft, sunny, mild, winter's morning, breathing fragrance from saturated sward and dripping hawthorn, and reminding you, if a sportsman, of bounding steed and echoing hound, and the many fine runs you have seen and enjoyed, during that golden period of the foxhunter's calendar, the sport-producing month of February. Such a morning greeted the Doctor and myself as we started -after a voluminous breakfast, to which I thought my guest did but scant justice-on our way to the meet. My hounds had gone on early. As we were to hunt in a wild moorland district several miles from the farm, and with a praiseworthy regard for his unaccustomed frame, and a due consideration of the "loss of leather" sustained by the sportsman who can only obtain "an occasional day," I thought it best to take the Doctor " on wheels" to the place of meeting, and thereby save him as large a portion as possible of that equestrian exercise which, when freely indulged in without proper preparation, makes "the rack of a too easy chair" anything but an ironical metaphor, or a poetic exaggeration. As we drove along through the fresh morning air, my companion was loud in his anticipations of sport, and his implied compliments to his own prowess in the field, though I thought I detected a shade of nervousness in the rapidity of his utterance and the many questions he put to me as to the temperate deportment of his "mount." The Doctor's costume, too, though doubtless well adapted to encounter the "moving accidents of flood and field," was hardly what we should call workmanlike in its general character and the way in which it was put on : drab cord trowsers, thrust into the recesses of large jack-boots, the latter appendages adorned with huge brass spurs, harmonized but ill with a black frock-coat and moleskin waistcoat; nor did the addition of a velvet hunting-cap, purchased for the occasion, at once confer upon the wearer that sporting air of distinction which he evidently desired to assume. However, the Doctor's dress was his own affair; it was my business, if possible, to show him a run and when we drove up to our appointed "rendezvous ". a small clump of firs on a wide open common-and found hounds, horses, one or two well-mounted gentlemen, a country horse-breaker, and several farmers, grouped about in picturesque confusion, I began to feel that my reputation, too, was at stake as a master of hounds, and to experience a sort of nervous anxiety to show them a fine day's sport! The first thing, however, was to give the Doctor a fair start; and in order to do so, it was necessary to get him well established in the saddle. With this view my grey horse Blueskin, the soberest and most tractable animal in my stable, was sidled up to the step of the dog-cart, in order that the Doctor might get upon him, in true Melton fashion, without soiling the brilliancy of his jack-boots-a manoeuvre which the grey resented by putting his ears back, tucking in his tail, and looking very much inclined to kick. Why is it that whenever you have been boasting of any peculiar excellence in your steed, he should invariably take the first opportunity of showing himself to be in a diametrically opposite humour to that for which you have been praising him? Why is it that no sooner are the words out of your lips, "This horse has never yet given me a fall," than down he goes neck-and-heels over a contemptible place at which a donkey would be ashamed to make a mistake? and that the docile animal, whom you have been recommending for his immoveable steadiness and general good conduct to carry a nervous lady or timid elderly gentleman, should, in the immediate presence of the disbelieving purchaser, think it necessary to squeal and gambol like the veriest two-year-old that ever ran unbroken in his paddock? As are other horses, so was Blueskin. Contrary to all previous experience, he was evidently in that disagreeable state which ladies call “frisky," and apologists "fresh ;" and when I saw the awkward manner in which the Doctor climbed into the saddle, and gathered his reins up all of a heap, I confess I began to have misgivings as to the result. "I say, he's-he's very quiet, isn't he?" asked the breathless equestrian, as the horse sidled away amongst his old friends the hounds, snorting, shaking his head, and "reaching" at his bridle, in a manner which much discomposed the security of his rider's seat. "These large horses require a deal of holding," added he, half ashamed of his want of skill ́ in the manége, as, with mounting colour, he knotted his reins and crammed his hat down upon his head in a "do-or-die" sort of fashion which was anything but suggestive of a pleasant excursion; but the Doctor was now in for it, and being a gallant little fellow at heart, there was a game sparkle in his eye that, with all his misgivings as to the result, showed he "meant mischief." My attention, however, was soon taken up with the many and onerous duties of my position; and, after much consultation with the sporting agriculturists who constituted my field, |