mede Fox-Hounds, and was thus enabled to write the letters
M.F.H. after his name. The gentlemen who rode with the Runnymede were
not very liberal in their terms, and had lately been compelled to
change their Master rather more frequently than was good for that
quasi-suburban hunt; but now they had fitted themselves well. How he
was to hunt the country five days a fortnight, finding servants and
horses, and feeding the hounds, for eight hundred pounds a year, no
one could understand. But Major Tifto not only undertook to do it,
but did it. And he actually succeeded in obtaining for the Runnymede
a degree of popularity which for many years previous it had not
possessed. Such a man,--even though no one did know anything of his
father or mother, though no one had ever heard him speak of a brother
or a sister, though it was believed that he had no real income,--was
felt by many to be the very man for the Beargarden; and when his name
was brought up at the committee, Lord Silverbridge was able to say so
much in his favour that only two blackballs were given against him.
Under the mild rule of the club, three would have been necessary to
exclude him; and therefore Major Tifto was now as good a member as
any one else.

He was a well-made little man, good-looking for those who like such
good looks. He was light-haired and blue-eyed, with regular and
yet not inexpressive features. But his eyes were small and never
tranquil, and rarely capable of looking at the person who was
speaking to him. He had small well-trimmed, glossy whiskers, with the
best-kept moustache, and the best-kept tuft on his chin which were to
be seen anywhere. His face still bore the freshness of youth, which
was a marvel to many, who declared that, from facts within their
knowledge, Tifto must be far on the wrong side of forty. At a first
glance you would hardly have called him thirty. No doubt, when, on
close inspection, you came to look into his eyes, you could see the
hand of time. Even if you believed the common assertion that he
painted,--which it was very hard to believe of a man who passed the
most of his time in the hunting-field or on a race-course,--yet the
paint on his cheeks would not enable him to move with the elasticity
which seemed to belong to all his limbs. He rode flat races and
steeple chases,--if jump races may still be so called; and with his
own hounds and with the Queen's did incredible things on horseback.
He could jump over chairs t