and eight or ten ladies are galloping in an extended line along this
route, riding hardest, as often happens, when the hounds are quiet, that
they may be ready when the chiding commences.

Suddenly the labourers exclaim and point, the hounds open, and the
farmers, knowing from the direction they point where to ride, are off. But
this time the fox has doubled, so that the squadrons hitherto behind are
now closest up, and the farmers in the rear: thus the fortune of war
changes, and the race is not to the swift. The labourers on the rick,
which stands on the side of a hill, are fully as excited as the riders,
and they can see what the hunter himself rarely views, _i.e._ the fox
slipping ahead before the hounds. Then they turn to alternately laugh at,
and shout directions to a disconsolate gentleman, who, ignorant of the
district, is pounded in a small meadow. He is riding frantically round and
round, afraid to risk the broad brook which encircles it, because of the
treacherous bank, and maddened by the receding sound of the chase. A boy
gets off the rick and runs to earn sixpence by showing a way out. So from
the rick Hodge has his share of the sport, and at that elevation can see
over a wide stretch of what he--changing the 'd' into a 'j'--calls 'the
juke's country.'

It is a famous land. There are spaces, which on the map look large, and
yet have no distinctive character, no individuality as it were. Such broad
expanses of plain and vale are usefully employed in the production of
cattle and corn. Villages, hamlets, even towns are dotted about them, but
a list of such places would not contain a single name that would catch the
eye. Though occupying so many square miles, the district, so far as the
world is concerned, is non-existent. It is socially a blank. But 'the
juke's country' is a well-known land. There are names connected with it
which are familiar not only in England, but all the world over, where