blow over,' repeated he, adding, 'often rare scents such days as
these. But we must put on,' continued he, looking at his watch, 'for it's
half-past, and we are a mile or more off yet.' So saying, he clapped spurs
to his hack and shot away at a canter, followed by Jack at a long-drawn
'hammer and pincers' trot.

A hunt is something like an Assize circuit, where certain great guns show
everywhere, and smaller men drop in here and there, snatching a day or a
brief, as the case may be. Sergeant Bluff and Sergeant Huff rustle and
wrangle in every court, while Mr. Meeke and Mr. Sneeke enjoy their frights
on the forensic arenas of their respective towns, on behalf of simple
neighbours, who look upon them as thorough Solomons. So with hunts. Certain
men who seem to have been sent into the world for the express purpose of
hunting, arrive at every meet, far and near, with a punctuality that is
truly surprising, and rarely associated with pleasure.

If you listen to their conversation, it is generally a dissertation on the
previous day's sport, with inquiries as to the nearest way to cover the
next. Sometimes it is seasoned with censure of some other pack they have
been seeing. These men are mounted and appointed in a manner that shows
what a perfect profession hunting is with them. Of course, they come
cantering to cover, lest any one should suppose they ride their horses on.

The 'Cross-roads' was like two hunts or two circuits joining, for it
generally drew the picked men from each, to say nothing of outriggers and
chance customers. The regular attendants of either hunt were sufficiently
distinguishable as well by the flat hats and baggy garments of the one, as
by the dandified, Jemmy Jessamy air of the other. If a lord had not been at
the head of the Flat Hats, the Puffington men would have considered them
insufferable snobs. But to our day.

As usual, where hounds have to travel a long distance, the field were
assembled before they arrived. Almost all the cantering gentlemen had cast
up.

One cross-road meet being so much like another, it will not be worth while
describing the one at Dallington Burn. The reader will have the kindness to
imagine a couple of roads crossing an open common, with an armless
sign-post on one side, and a rubble-stone bridge, with several of the
coping-stones lying in the shallow stream below, on the other.

The country round about, if any country could have been seen, would have
shown wild, o