after."

"I suppose he has his hands pretty full," said Mr. Amblethwaite. "I
know I have mine just at this time of the year. Where do you think
these hounds ran their fox to last Friday? We found him outside
of the Lowther Woods, near the village of Clifton. They took him
straight over Shap Fell, and then turning sharp to the right, went
all along Hawes Wall and over High Street into Troutbeck."

"That's all among the mountains," said Hampstead.

"Mountains! I should think so. I have to spend half my time among the
mountains."

"But you couldn't ride over High Street?"

"No, we couldn't ride; not there. But we had to make our way round,
some of us, and some of them went on foot. Dick never lost sight of
the hounds the whole day." Dick was the boy who rode the ragged pony.
"When we found 'em there he was with half the hounds around him, and
the fox's brush stuck in his cap."

"How did you get home that night?" asked Hampstead.

"Home! I didn't get home at all. It was pitch dark before we got the
rest of the hounds together. Some of them we didn't find till next
day. I had to go and sleep at Bowness, and thought myself very lucky
to get a bed. Then I had to ride home next day over Kirkstone Fell.
That's what I call something like work for a man and horse.--There's
a fox in there, my lord, do you hear them?" Then Mr. Amblethwaite
bustled away to assist at the duty of getting the fox to break.

"I'm glad to see that you're fond of this kind of thing, my lord,"
said a voice in Hampstead's ear, which, though he had only heard
it once, he well remembered. It was Crocker, the guest at the
dinner-party,--Crocker, the Post Office clerk.

"Yes," said Lord Hampstead, "I am very fond of this kind of thing.
That fox has broken, I think, at the other side of the cover." Then
he trotted off down a little lane between two loose-built walls,
so narrow that there was no space for two men to ride abreast. His
object at that moment was to escape Crocker rather than to look after
the hounds.

They were in a wild country, not exactly on a mountain side, but
among hills which not far off grew into mountains, where cultivation
of the rudest kind was just beginning to effect its domination over
human nature. There was a long spinney rather than a wood stretching
down a bottom, through which a brook ran. It would now cease,
and then renew itself, so that the trees, though not absolutely
continuous, were nearly so for the distance of