‘You’ll have a fine day, my dear Mr. Sponge,’ said he, extending a hand, as he found our friend brown-booted and red-coated, working away at the breakfast.

‘Yes,’ said Sponge, munching away for hard life.  In less than ten minutes, he managed to get as much down as, with the aid of a knotch of bread that he pocketed, he thought would last him through the day; and, with a hasty adieu, he hurried off to find the stables, to get his hack.  The piebald was saddled, bridled, and turned round in the stall; for all servants that are worth anything like to further hunting operations.  With the aid of the groom’s instructions, who accompanied him out of the courtyard, Sponge was enabled to set off at a hard canter, cheered by the groom’s observation, that ‘he thought he would be there in time.’  On, on he went; now speculating on a turn; now pulling a scratch map he had made on a bit of paper out of his waistcoat-pocket; now inquiring the name of any place he saw of any person he met.  So he proceeded for five or six miles without much difficulty; the road, though not all turnpike, being mainly over good sound township ones, It was at the village of Swineley, with its chubby-towered church and miserable hut-like cottages, that his troubles were to begin.  He had two sharp turns to make—­to ride through a straw-yard, and leap over a broken-down wall at the corner of a cottage—­to get into Swaithing Green Lane, and so cut off an angle of two miles.  The road then became a bridle one, and was, like all bridle ones, very plain to those who know them, and very puzzling to those who don’t.  It was evidently a little-frequented road; and what with looking out for footmarks (now nearly obliterated by the recent rains) and speculating on what queer corners of the fields the gates would be in, Mr. Sponge found it necessary to reduce his pace to a very moderate trot.  Still he had made good way; and supposing they gave a quarter-of-an-hour’s law, and he had not been deceived as to distance, he thought he should get to the meet about the time.  His horse, too, would be there, and perhaps Lord Scamperdale might give a little extra law on that account.  He then began speculating on what sort of a man his lordship was, and the probable nature of his reception.  He began to wish that Jawleyford had accompanied him, to introduce him.  Not that Sponge was shy, but still he thought that Jawleyford’s presence would do him good.

Lord Scamperdale’s hunt was not the most polished in the world.  The hounds and the horses were a good deal better bred than the men.  Of course his lordship gave the tone to the whole; and being a coarse, broad, barge-built sort of man, he had his clothes to correspond, and looked like a drayman in scarlet.  He wore a great round flat-brimmed hat, which being adopted by the hunt generally, procured it the name of the ‘F.H.H.,’ or ‘Flat Hat Hunt.’  Our readers, we dare say, have noticed it figuring away, in the list of hounds during