"It was Trimbush and not him," returned the irate Ned.

"Oh!" added Will Sykes. "It was Trimbush, eh? It wasn't worth while then, I suppose, to get to the head of one without the other, and yet, if I am told rightly, it would have been a difficult job to have separated them."

The second whip was evidently chafed at this bantering, and turned away with a flushed cheek, and a tongue muttering anything but his prayers.

Upon entering the kennel again, all my companions came round me, and each, in turn, licked my torn ears and eyes, and were as kind and friendly as if I had been a brother to each.

"I'm glad to see you back again," observed Trimbush, raising himself from a corner of the court, and stretching his limbs. I began to think some danger had befallen ye.

"No thanks to you for having escaped it," replied I somewhat sharply.

"Oh!" rejoined the old hound carelessly; "in a run it's every hound for himself, and a kick for the hindmost. There's no consideration then."

"What did you do with the varmint ?" inquired I, anxious to learn the result of our hunt.

"Within five minutes of tailing you off," replied he, “I ran him from scent to view, and if he had not gone to ground I'd have broken him up without any sharers in the feast. As it was, he continued,

"he was so hot and beaten that he couldn't lie more than a few inches from the mouth of the earth, and there we remained, with our red rags out, panting and grinning at each other for hours. Now and then I had a scratching dig for him; but, finding that I could make no progress for the roots, left at last reluctantly, and pointed for home, where I arrived when the stars were twinkling.

"Did you see Ned Adams upon your return?" I inquired.

"No," replied Trimbush. Mark, the feeder, was waiting for me, knowing that I should be back in the course of the night, let the distance be ever so great; and the good old fellow examined my feet and gave me a good supper, without the least show of bad temper from having kept him from bed."

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The second whip would not have treated ye so," I observed.

Perhaps not," returned he. "You mustn't suppose, however, that Ned bears any malice. He might feel vexed and chafed at not being able to obey orders, but he always lets bygones be bygones."

In the course of discussion relative to the events of our stolen run, and during which the remainder of our companions formed a willing auditory, I asked Trimbush how he discovered the difference between the scent of a dog-fox and that of a vixen.

"In the first place," responded he, "it is never so strong; and when she has either laid down her cubs, is about to do so, or has not left off suckling them, there is a peculiar odour with her which cannot be mistaken. Now most animals," continued he, "as I observed yesterday, have an aversion to kill those in any of the situations just described; but I should have added, when the purpose is to eat them. For instance, a stoat will not touch a rabbit when about to litter; but a terrier would kill her in a moment. This is the reason that so few

birds are killed whose nests are on the ground. The weazel avoids the partridge and lark whilst setting, and the fox passes the pheasant. "What " exclaimed I. "Won't a fox snap a pheasant from her nest ?"

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Gamekeepers," resumed Trimbush, "would tell you, 'always when an opportunity presents itself.' But I know better. A vixen, with a large litter, and food scanty, will do so now and then, I don't deny ; but what does she get? Skin, bone, and feathers-a most unsavoury morsel, for which the cubs will scarcely care to fight. The mother knows this well enough, and, unless driven to extremities, never takes any kind of bird from her nest."

"The farmer's wife tells a different story," I observed.

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The farmer's wife, like the gamekeeper, is a sworn enemy to foxes," returned Trimbush, "and with equally groundless cause. If a single head of poultry is missed, the robbery is always ascribed to reynard, and, however devoid of foundation, never forgotten. The old trot dates her subsequent life from the event, and begins her tale with, about six months after the fox took my duck,' and so keeps the matter fresh and vivid to the end of her days.

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'One would think you were a preserver instead of a killer of foxes," said I.

'Aye," rejoined the speaker;" if it was not for preserving we should have no opportunities of killing."

(To be continued.)

"THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON."

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, from a PAINTING BY J. C. HANCOCK.

"Come where the heather-bloom
Woos, with its wild perfume;

Fragrant and blithesome thy welcome shall be:

Gaily the fountain sheen

Leaps from the mountain green;

Come to our home of the moorland and lea."

Recreations in Shooting.

"The compliments of the season" to be sure; that's it, no doubt; but may fortune frown on us, Master Paint-brush, if you haven't fixed on as open-handed an address for your handiwork as ever entered the academy; and that's a big word too, all things considered. "The compliments of the season!" Why, ask twenty different people what they are, and we'll take very short odds but you get twenty different answers in no time at all. The compliments of the season are

"Geraniums and dahlias from the Horticultural Society," simpers sweet Mrs. Marjoram, the nicest foot and figure in the village.

"Potatoes and peaches the rather," argues her own gude man, the best judge of a dinner, and a bottle of wine after it, in the county.

Yacht-club cups and commodore's compliments, par excellence," affirms our esteemed friend Mr. Smith, who makes no secret of his success, although we all know his success is the Secret.

39

"If it must be a secret,' joins in Leatherlungs, "let's have the favour of a strong pot for the Leger, or anything in that line between this and Christmas."

Or a Wye salmon, fresh caught and carriage free.

Or the haunch of a Houghton buck, on just the same ditto ditto

terms.

On an introduction to Ibrahim Pasha.

Or a sinecure seat in the new cabinet.

Or the last number of the magazine, or anything you like, from an invitation from Osborne-house to a ticket for soup to Jullien's grand finale masquerade.

So you see, after all, the brace or two of grouse is scarcely quite as much a matter of course as Messrs. Hancock and Hacker, or Young Norval on the Grampians, would have us suppose. The fact is, this said month of August is mighty propitious in all that's enjoyable, though still we are free to confess that few things can come more grateful to hand about the fourteenth or fifteenth than the originals of our illustration. Game brought to bag or to table with the silver shot never can eat well, while the simple sense of the compliment, per contra, gives a dainty relish even to birds that have been kept a week or so too long. Think of that, Master Brook, as you prepare the nice new wedding-cake looking box, with a stall a piece for every head you mean to inclose in it; think of the honour implied in a first offering, and argue the point right manfully ere you dispose of so important a question. Shall it be the editor? Can even a box of grouse touch the heart of so systematic a stoic, and will it really add a guinea a page to "the Gillie Guide" we are bound down to him for? But avaunt with such selfish give-and-take kind of pleading, and hand us over a card at once to write out the direction for that good fellow the Reverend Curate of Beacon Regis, whose fair daughters, we rather reckon, will guess at the II. C. we have insinuated into one corner. Ay, Sam, start it off just as it is, and don't bother us any more with your prior claims of friends and relations. What is an editor, we should like to know, but he may give place and be talked over like any other man? And as to aunt Deborah and her three per cents., let her do her worst, and die and be-buried forthwith, leaving "the sonals," as we are pretty certain they will be sooner or later equally divided between Pompey the old poodle, and Evans the head butler.

per

If railroads, as the oracles assure us, will eventually put the stopper on fox-hunting, they will as certain sure rub off no little of the wild and the wonderful in, what it is the fashion to class as the companion-sport, grouse-shooting. The moors no longer entertain the select few for whom, not many years since, it seemed they were especially invented; but are rapidly sinking to the same level as Boulogne, up the Rhine, Herne Bay, and such like steam-approachable places of public amuseThe "City, Bank" sportsman now-a-days, instead of biding his time for the brown 'uns in Sussex and September, leaves the same hour as my Lord Tom Noddy to open on the real black game of the High

ment.