aults.

And now, turning through a woodland path, they descend toward the river,
till they can hear voices below them; Scoutbush laughing quietly,
Trebooze laying down the law at the top of his voice.

"How noisy the fellow is, and how he is hopping about!" says Campbell.

"No wonder: he has been soaking, I hear, for the last fortnight, with
some worthy compeers, by way of keeping off cholera. I must have my eye
on him to-day."

Scrambling down through the brushwood, they found themselves in such a
scene as Creswick alone knows how to paint: though one element of
beauty, which Creswick uses full well, was wanting; and the whole place
was seen, not by slant sun-rays, gleaming through the boughs, and
dappling all the pebbles with a lacework of leaf shadows, but in the
uniform and sober grey of dawn.

A broad bed of shingle, looking just now more like an ill-made turnpike
road than the bed of Alva stream; above it, a long shallow pool, which
showed every stone through the transparent water; on the right, a craggy
bank, bedded with deep wood sedge and orange-tipped king ferns,
clustering beneath sallow and maple bushes already tinged with gold; on
the left, a long bar of gravel, covered with giant "butter-bur" leaves;
in and out of which the hounds are brushing--beautiful black-and-tan
dogs, of which poor Trebooze may be pardonably proud; while round the
burleaf-bed dances a rough white Irish terrier, seeming, by his frantic
self-importance, to consider himself the master of the hounds.

Scoutbush is standing with Trebooze beyond the bar, upon a little lawn
set thick with alders. Trebooze is fussing and fidgetting about, wiping
his forehead perpetually; telling everybody to get out of the way, and
not to interfere; then catching hold of Scoutbush's button to chatter in
his face; then, starting aside to put some part of his dress to rights.
His usual lazy drawl is exchanged for foolish excitement. Two or three
more gentlemen, tired of Trebooze's absurdities, are scrambling over the
rocks above, in search of spraints. Old Tardrew waddles stooping along
the line where grass and shingle meet, his bulldog visage bent to his
very knees.

"Tardrew out hunting?" says Campbell. "Why, it is but a week since his
daughter was buried!"

"And why not? I like him better for it. Would he bring her back again by
throwing away a good day's sport? Better turn out, as he has done, and
forget his feelings, if he has any."

"He has fe