farmer who uses padlocks.

As he trots along the road, occasionally breaking into a gallop
when he perceives from some sign known to him that the hunt is
turning from him, he is generally accompanied by two or three
unfortunates who have lost their way and have straggled from the
hounds; and to them he is a guide, philosopher, and friend. He is
good-natured for the moment, and patronizes the lost ones. He
informs them that they are at last in the right way, and consoles
them by assurances that they have lost nothing.

"The fox broke, you know, from the sharp corner of Granby-wood,"
he says; " the only spot that the crowd had left for him. I saw
him come out, standing on the bridge in the road. Then he ran up-
wind as far as Green's barn." " Of course he did," says one of
the unfortunates who thinks he remembers something of a barn in
the early part of the performance. "I was with the three or four
first as far as that." "There were twenty men before the hounds
there," says our man of the road, who is not without a grain of
sarcasm, and can use it when he is strong on his own ground.
"Well, he turned there, and ran back very near the corner; but he
was headed by a sheep-dog, luckily, and went to the left across
the brook." "Ah, that's where I lost them," says one unfortunate.
" I was with them miles beyond that," says another. "There were
five or six men rode the brook," continues our philosopher, who
names the four or five, not mentioning the unfortunate who had
spoken last as having been among the number. "Well; then he went
across by Ashby Grange, and tried the drain at the back of the
farmyard, but Bootle had had it stopped. A fox got in there one
day last March, and Bootle always stops it since that. So he had