In less than ten minutes, he managed to get as much down as, with the aid of a knotch of bread that he pocketed, he thought would last him through the day; and, with a hasty adieu, he hurried off to find the stables, to get his hack.

The piebald was saddled, bridled, and turned round in the stall; for all servants that are worth anything like to further hunting operations.

With the aid of the groom's instructions, who accompanied him out of the courtyard, Sponge was enabled to set off at a hard canter, cheered by the groom's observation, that 'he thought he would be there in time.' On, on he went; now speculating on a turn; now pulling a scratch map he had made on a bit of paper out of his waistcoat-pocket; now inquiring the name of any place he saw of any person he met.

So he proceeded for five or six miles without much difficulty; the road, though not all turnpike, being mainly over good sound township ones, It was at the village of Swineley, with its chubby-towered church and miserable hut-like cottages, that his troubles were to begin.

He had two sharp turns to make--to ride through a straw-yard, and leap over a broken-down wall at the corner of a cottage--to get into Swaithing Green Lane, and so cut off an angle of two miles.