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did not walk amiss. For when we were in Jackson Stoneman's little crib, such as any man of nous, with a big roof over his head, is fain to keep for his own better moments, there was something which no magnificence can bring home into the simple human breast. Who is the most delightful writer of our race, since Heaven took Shakespeare away in hot haste, when his hand was too close on the Tree of Life? The answer, although so long in coming, comes louder, as every year adds to the echo"William Makepeace Thackeray." That man of vast brain, with the fresh heart of a child, would have been pleased to see what I beheld; and his tender touch only could have touched it off. A bright fire was burning in a low plain grate, there was not a whiff of smoke throughout it, and in front of the red clear glow, at a distance nicely calculated, stood a beautiful machine with its back to us. Kneeling on the rug was a long-sided man, so intent on his work that he never heard the door, with a silver spoon (once Apostolic perhaps) in his right hand, and a long slender crook in his left. What he was tending could not be seen as yet; but a glorious fragrance held possession of the air, and wafted a divine afflatus to any heart not utterly insensible. Sûr Imar's broil was not a patch upon it.

"Ach! it is to spoil everyting dat you are here." The artist frowned and grunted, without getting up, as Stoneman introduced me. "My name is Hopmann; but dese bairds, what will dere names be, if I interrupt?"

Peeping in over the lid of the alcove, which had an enamel lining, I saw four partridges hung skilfully from hooks, with a swivel to each; so that every bird might revolve with zeal, or pause with proper

feeling, as his sense of perfection and of duty bade him. While in the tray beneath them some clear brown gravy was simmering, with a beaded eddy where the basting trickled. In and out among them, the silver spoon was gliding most skilfully and impartially, administering a drip to each, as sweetly and fairly as their own dear mother did it, in their happy nest. But instead of their dear mother, alas it was not even an Englishman who was tending them, but a German doctor with a very red face, gazing most severely at them through big silver spectacles. "Not you look! Not you come near!" this gentleman cried, as he gave me a push, in return for the bow I offered him.

"Come in here, George," said Stoneman, with a wink at me. "Let him alone; and I will tell you all about him. He is the best fellow that ever lived; but you will never get it out of his head that almost everything we do is wrong."

"Everyting, everyting! Not almost, but everyting the Englishman do wrong," the Herr Doctor shouted, as Stoneman led me into the next room, where a snug suppertable was set out for the three of us.

"Rather a queer customer, isn't he?" said my host; "but I have known him more than ten years now, and got ten times as fond of him every year. He is the kindesthearted fellow I ever came across; and there is scarcely anything he cannot do. He is well known in London; he might be Professor of this, that, and the other. But he has not a particle of ambition, though he values his profession mightily. He is fond of money, of course; but chiefly for the sake of his widowed mother, and two sisters whom he supports. You know that old Chalker of Cobstone Hill went the way of all flesh last

month, leaving a large practice all abroad. Well, I persuaded Hopmann to take to it, for they were paying him shamefully in London, for a lot of work at one of the hospitals. He has only been here about a fortnight yet, but he is sure to get on; he must get on; nothing comes amiss to him. And I want you to help him, wherever you can you need have no fear, he is quite tip-top-too good a great deal for a country practice. But he would never do in London; he is too honest sees through any humbug in a moment, and would tell the patient so, though he were of the Royal family. But you should see Hopmann with some old woman, who will never say 'thank you,' or pay him sixpence. That is what I admire in a man; and that tells for him too in the end, you may be sure. But come along, he is calling us, and he will be in a fury, if we let all his beautiful cookery spoil. All right, Hopmann, hop along, old fellow. A metal dish apiece for us, piping hot."

"And ze last baird, he stay here and keep hot himself! And he become ze property of ze first gent zat is ready. Now, Mr Cranleigh, you tell truth! You never taste bartrich before. For why? Because you cannot cook them in this land. You take away everyting that gives what you call ze flavour, that penetrates ze whole system of ze baird. Ach! I will cook again for you, you shall see. Shackson is not half so wise."

I was fortunate enough to please him, and not in words alone, for the effect of my bit of lunch had quite worn off. In a very short time (as happens now and then when two men widely different in their main lines meet) our little corners, which are the clinging points, had fitted very nicely into

one another; and I longed to know more of the man, because I knew so much of him already. For who cares to get nearer to a man who keeps his distance?

"Hopmann is a queer fellow in his way, but in a very good sort of but a way, " said Jackson Stoneman, as we two filled our pipes, and he lit his half-a-crown cigar, which I would not have smoked for half-acrown; "I am glad to see you enter into each other's merits. Now, will you fall in with a little plan which I have conceived for the good of us all? My German friend is an excellent shot. He can knock a bird over, as well as he can cook it. He was out with us on the first, when George Cranleigh would not come. Two or three swells were inclined to laugh, but he very soon turned the laugh on them. Garrod said that he never saw such a hand, which was not very graceful to the man who pays his wages. I have not yet found anything that Hopmann cannot do."

Shackson, there are two tings vot he cannot do. He cannot ride very well ze horse; and he cannot listen to his own braises."

"Never mind, he will very soon learn both accomplishments, and then he will be absolutely perfect. But we have a little campaign in view for the day after to-morrow. We have only been round the outskirts yet, we have not touched the best part of the shooting. Herr Doctor, will you come with your 16-bore, that wiped the eye of several of our thundering twelves, and show us straight powder on Thursday?"

"I vill only come on ze onderstandings of before that all ze bairds I do shoot shall belong to me, to take home."

"You shall carry off, and cook with their trails in, every blessed

bird you knock over. And now about you, George. I have never seen you shoot, but I hear you are very good. Are you afraid to try your hand against this mighty Gernian?"

This put me a little on my mettle, as was meant. Not that I ever cared to shoot in competition; for that, as with fishing or any other friendly sport, to my mind kills the enjoyment. Moreover I had refused Stoneman's invitation, from a sort of pride a very false pride it might be about walking by his leave upon land that had been ours. And I had taken no certificate, this year.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," I said. "I won't bring my gun, for I have taken no licence, and I would not shoot without. But I'll come and work the dogs for you; they know me as well as they know Garrod, and I shall enjoy it quite as much."

"But Hopmann has taken no licence, either. As if any one would dare to ask you about that, for shooting round here! I should like to see them ask him even, when he is with me."

"For me it is to my conscience so," the German had a great gift of winking both eyes, through his spectacles, with rapid alternation; "I am not a subject of this realm. I make game of ze Gamelaws."

However, I was not to be persuaded; and when the day came, there were guns enough without mine, and far too many as it seemed to me, for a free beat and small enclosure. Luckily there was no covert - shooting yet; but one or two of the dogs had most narrow escapes, and I was obliged to inter

fere

sometimes, and declare that I would walk them all back to kennel, unless the men tried to be

more careful. One dog was my own, a very handsome lemon-andwhite setter-bitch, who dropped to shot almost before you could see the smoke; and yet somebody put a shot through her ear, though I did not find it out till afterwards, or home she would have gone, whatever they might think at losing the best of the bunch, as one might say.

For there were six guns, sometimes close together a dangerous affair for a country like that, even when every man knows his neighbour, and each is an experienced and careful shot; most Cockneyfied too, for the look of the thing; and I had a great mind to keep away from them. But Stoneman would not hear of that; he had invited Lord Melladew, so he said, purely as a compliment to me, and how could I refuse to come with him? To this I could make no reply; being taken up with my own affairs to such a degree that I was not at home concerning other people's doings. The young Earl of Melladew was staying at the "Bell "which used to be called the "Cranleigh Arms," until we went down in the world-and there he had his valet, and artistic outfit, and all his large ideas, in the long room with the magnificent view, where our tenant used to dry his onions. Now I am the very last to say a word against people who have gone up in life, by merits which have been denied to us. His grandfather proved himself a fine man of business, and made an exemplary fortune by lucrative Army-contracts during the Crimean war. If he compressed some dead cows in his hay, and compelled his old sheepdogs to serve their time still by posthumous fidelity in the form of mutton-as war-correspondents on very short commons were ungrateful enough at that time to aver-all

those and greater errors he had redeemed by having a grandson as unlike him as possible.

This young nobleman (for so he might be called) had many very excellent and amiable points. He was gentle, generous, and upright, more eager to please than is altogether safe, except in a very rustic neighbourhood; and even less conceited and affected in his manners than a young man of good looks, fair position, and literary tendencies ought to be, for his friends to consider him natural. Everybody in our village said that without Farmer Jarge to certify it, they never could have taken his Lordship for a Lord; though, considering the Boards, and the Hyænas this and that, and the Parson that couldn't turn his coat-tails up till a secondary motion put him into his own chair in the Vestry, there was no call for any one to feel surprise if the great folk came down, and made the little ones go up. Lord Melladew also was enthusiastic as to the delights of country-life, and the glories of British industry; and this helped him much with my sister, who never could understand why we should be starved by foreign produce, when the land, and the people, and the sky above our heads were exactly the same as she could remember always, and there was as much to pay for everything as

ever.

But our young nobleman proved most clearly, with an elegant sonnet in the 'Cobham Comet,' entitled "Sit down to your own desserts," that prosperity was to return to our land, and the Frenchman and Pelgian be blown away by volleys of grape- and apple-shot from the bulwark of Britain at Farmer Bandilow's farm. Half a million fruittrees would be planted in October, and ten million bushels of apples, melons, peaches, plums, grapes,

pine-apples, apricots, pears, &c., would confront the poor foreigner next August if he dared to attempt a landing.

My father was scarcely so sanguine, but said, "Let them have their try, George, if rich people find the money. Things can be no worse, and some poor fellows may find employment for the winter. Perhaps Mr Stoneman will take it up."

Stoneman, however, instead of doing that, showed an unaccountable contempt and bitterness, not only towards the scheme itself, but all who took any share in it. There seemed to be something in the matter that touched him far more closely than any question of agriculture. Was it Lord Melladew's long sojourn at the "Bell," and his frequent visits at our cottage? Even now, with this young man his guest for the day, and behaving most inoffensively, the grim stockbroker marched on in such a manner, that I thought it my duty to remonstrate. "You haven't shot him yet," I said, as we stood behind the others, "because it is not dark enough. But if he gets peppered in the dusk, I shall know whose pot it came from."

Stoneman gave me a grin, and behaved a little better, and did his best to be polite at luncheon-time, and after the narrow shaves of the morning things went on more carefully; for the men who knew nothing about a gun had now learned to be afraid of it. Until, with the sun setting low behind a wood, we came to a bit of gorseland having a steep fall towards a valley, favourite harbour for a fox, in the days when my chief business was such pleasant sport and jollity. There were narrow rides cut through the furze down hill, and across them tussocks of welted fern, and strigs of moots that cropped up again, after the fuelling had been cleared.

"Why, this is the place where the yellow bunnies live," said Stoneman, as he opened a gate for us, and we stood on the crest of the furzy slope. "I know a man, and a clever fellow too, who has offered a guinea apiece for them. He has given up business, and set up his staff in a wild part of Wales; and there he is going in for a breed of these yellow rabbits. He has got a big name for the fur, and expects to cut out Chinchilla with it. I have heard of our golden bunnies lots of times, and seen some of them once or twice. Shall we get a sample for him, and then offer him live bunnies, if he jumps at it?"

All agreed cheerfully to this, and the dogs were taken up, while the men peeping down the steep ridges got a shot or two at any of the coney race who might be dining carelessly. Then, as all of these proved to be of the common grey sort, Garrod's boy was sent home for a couple of rough terriers, to run the furze thickets, while the guns should watch the rides, for two or three yellow fellows had skipped away unscathed.

That boy took a long time in carrying out his message, and when he came back with his father behind him, the dusk of September was settling in the valley, while a wisp of silvery vapour stole along the brown halberds of the gorse, and the russet clumps of bramble.

But the hillside now was ringing with the merry yelps of dogs, or the squeak of some puppy in a tangled grip, while the low covert ruffled, or was channelled here and there, with the sway of some resolute terrier hot in chase.

This holiday had been a rare enjoyment to me, though crossed with anxiety now and then, among so many barrels governed less by experience than excitement. Most

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXVI.

of all, as I said, about Lord Melladew, who strode along so poetically, clad in green velveteen, beautifully made, but terminating unluckily in very smart buff gaiters short and spruce concerning him I had prayed all day that he were safe back in the onion loft. Not that he carried a gun to his own disadvantage as the reckless do, neither did he fire at random, but was well content, in the manner of the public, to shout according to the hit or miss.

"Shut up all," I called out sharply; "too dark, too dark! I expect to see at least a dog shot, every moment."

A dog indeed! If I had said a man, and that man a live Earl-for bang bang went the guns, just as if I had never spoken, and four or five puffs of smoke, as if the hillside were on fire, rose from the avenues poor bunny had to cross. "Yellow! Did you see, Shorje? yellow as ze gold is!" The German doctor shouted as he pointed down a ride. "Shackson shot too, but ze rabbit is to me. I will have ze guinea. Ach, mein Gott!"

Instead of a rabbit giving the last kick of death, what did we see half-way down the slope but two buff coneys flying ever so much faster than any coney ever flew before, each flashing in front of each other, as if father fox were after both of them. "I am blowed if it isn't my Lord," cried Garrod; "the foreigner have shot him morshial!"

"Vatt you know, ze clods-havingto-hop-by-night-as-well-as-by-day feloe? But keep your business, good fe-loe. If I have put ze shot in, I can pull him out again. You shall

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