earlier hour, and natty tigers to kick about in buckskins prior to
departing with hunters, good, bad, and indifferent.

Each man had told his partner at Miss Jumpheavy's ball of the capital trick
they were going to play the stranger; and a desire to see the stranger, far
more than a desire to see the trick, caused many fair ones to forsake their
downy couches who had much better have kept them.

The world is generally very complaisant with regard to strangers, so long
as they _are_ strangers, generally making them out to be a good deal better
than they really are, and Mr. Sponge came in for his full share of stranger
credit. They not only brought all the twenty horses Leather said he had
scattered about to Laverick Wells, but made him out to have a house in
Eaton Square, a yacht at Cowes, and a first-rate moor in Scotland, and
some said a peerage in expectancy. No wonder that he 'drew,' as theatrical
people say.

Let us now suppose him breakfasted, and ready for a start.

He was 'got up' with uncommon care in the most complete style of the severe
order of sporting costume. It being now the commencement of the legitimate
hunting season--the first week in November--he availed himself of the
privileged period for turning out in everything new. Rejecting the now
generally worn cap, he adhered to the heavy, close-napped hat, described in
our opening chapter, whose connexion with his head, or back, if it came
off, was secured by a small black silk cord, hooked through the band by a
fox's tooth, and anchored to a button inside the haven of his low
coat-collar. His neck was enveloped in the ample folds of a large white
silk cravat, tied in a pointing diamond tie, and secured with a large
silver horse-shoe pin, the shoe being almost large enough for the foot of a
young donkey.

His low, narrow-collared coat was of the infinitesimal order; that is to
say, a coat, and yet as little of a coat as possible--very near a jacket,
in fact. The seams, of course, were outside, and were it not for the
extreme strength and evenness of the sewing and the evident intention of
the thing, an ignorant person might have supposed that he had had his coat
turned. A double layer of cloth extended the full length of the outside of
the sleeves, much in the fashion of the stage-coachmen's greatcoats in
former times; and instead of cuffs, the sleeves were carried out to the
ends of the fingers, leaving it to the fancy of the wearer to sport a long
cu