ake your station by the
old earths there away, under the tall dead pine; and you, Bill, make
tracks there, straight through the middle cart-way, down to the other
meadow, and sit you down right where the two streams fork; there'll be
an old red snooping down that side afore long, I reckon. We'll go on,
Mr. Forester; here's a big rail fence now; I'll throw off the top rail,
for be darned if I climb any day when I can creep--there, that'll do, I
reckon; leastwise if you can ride like Archer--he d--ns me always if I
so much as shakes a fence afore he jumps it--you've got the best horse,
too, for lepping. Now let's see! Well done! well done!" he continued,
with a most boisterous burst of laughter--"well done, horse, any how!"--
as Peacock, who had been chafing ever since he parted from his comrade
Bob, went at the fence as though he were about to take it in his stroke
--stopped short when within a yard of it, and then bucked over it,
without touching a splinter, although it was at least five feet, and
shaking me so much, that, greatly to Tom's joy, I showed no little
glimpse of day-light.

"I reckon if they run the meadows, you'll hardly ride them, Forester,"
he grinned; "but now away with you. You see the tall dark pin oak, it
hasn't lost one leaf yet; right in the nook there of the bars you'll
find a quiet shady spot, where you can see clear up the rail fence to
this knob, where I'll be. Off with you, boy--and mind you now, you keep
as dumb as the old woman when her husband cut her tongue out, 'cause she
had too much jaw."

Finishing his discourse, he squatted himself down on the stool of a
large hemlock, which, being recently cut down, cumbered the woodside
with its giant stem, and secured him, with its evergreen top now lowly
laid and withering, from the most narrow scrutiny; while I, giving the
gallant horse his head, went at a brisk hand-gallop across the firm
short turf of the fair sloping hill-side, taking a moderate fence in my
stroke, which Peacock cleared in a style that satisfied me Harry had by
no means exaggerated his capacity to act as hunter, in lieu of the less
glorious occupation, to which in general he was doomed.

In half a minute more I reached my post, and though an hour passed
before I heard the slightest sound betokening the chase, never did I
more thoroughly enjoy an hour.

The loveliness of the whole scene before me--the broad rich sweep of
meadowland lying, all bathed in dew, under the pale gr