troduction.

"Ah! looks like a Yorkshire tyke," muttered Rake, with a volume of
meaning condensed in these innocent words. "A nice, dry, cheerful sort
of place to meet your cousin in, too; uncommon lively; hope it'll raise
his spirits to see all his cousins a-grinning there; his spirits don't
seem much in sorts now," continued the ruthless inquisitor, with a
glance at the "keeper's tree" by which they stood, in the middle of dank
undergrowth, whose branches were adorned with dead cats, curs, owls,
kestrels, stoats, weasels, and martens. To what issue the passage of
arms might have come it is impossible to say, for at that moment the
colt took matters into his own hands, and bolted with a rush that even
Rake could not pull in till he had had a mile-long "pipe-opener."

"Something up there," thought that sagacious rough-rider; "if that
red-haired chap ain't a rum lot, I'll eat him. I've seen his face, too,
somewhere; where the deuce was it? Cousin; yes, cousins in Queer Street,
I dare say! Why should he go and meet his 'cousin' out in the fog there,
when, if you took twenty cousins home to the servants' hall, nobody'd
ever say anything? If that Willon ain't as deep as Old Harry----"

And Rake rode into the stable-yard, thoughtful and intensely suspicious
of the rendezvous under the keeper's tree in the out-lying coverts. He
would have been more so had he guessed that Ben Davis' red beard and
demure attire, with other as efficient disguises, had prevented even his
own keen eyes from penetrating the identity of Willon's "Cousin" with
the welsher he had seen thrust off the course the day before by his
master.

CHAPTER VI.

THE END OF A RINGING RUN.

"Tally-ho! is the word, clap spurs and let's follow. The world has no
charm like a rattling view-halloa!"

Is hardly to be denied by anybody in this land of fast bursts and
gallant M. F. H.'s, whether they "ride to hunt," or "hunt to ride," in
the immortal distinction of Assheton Smith's old whip; the latter class,
by the bye, becoming far and away the larger, in these days of rattling
gallops and desperate breathers. Who cares to patter after a sly old dog
fox, that, fat and wary, leads the pack a tedious, interminable wind,
in and out through gorse and spinney, bricks himself up in a drain, and
takes an hour to be dug out, dodges about till twilight, and makes
the hounds pick the scent slowly and wretchedly over marsh and through
water? Who would not give fifty