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I was in Puckeridge one day, on a matter which I do not now remember, and was going to the stable of the White Hart inn to get my horse to ride back again, when I ran into Mr. Rumbald who was there on the same errand. I was in my country suit, and very much splashed; and it was going on for evening, so he noticed nothing of me but my face. "Why, Mallock," he cried "It is Mr. Mallock, is it not?"
Thoroughbung were to break his neck out hunting with the Puckeridge hounds, an amusement which, after the manner of brewers, he was much in the habit of following. Mrs. Annesley had lived at Buston all her life, having been born at the Hall. She was an excellent mother of a family, and a good clergyman's wife, being in both respects more painstaking and assiduous than her husband.
He invariably recovered, however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the distribution of a certain dole of a loaf and a shilling on boxing day. It was told also that in remote times the Puckeridge hounds had once come that way and that the fox had got into the churchyard.
Fairlawn's body-guard to say that they had drawn the covert in the teeth of Mr. Harkaway, and to achieve this one of the whips thought that he could ride through the Puckeridge men, taking a couple of hounds with him. That would suffice for triumph. But to prevent such triumph on the part of the enemy Joshua Thoroughbung was prepared to sacrifice himself.
When this day comes to be talked about, as I dare say it will be for many a long year, no one will be able to say that the Hitchiners got into that covert." Thoroughbung, with the genuine modesty of an Englishman, would not say that he had achieved by his own prowess all this glory for the Puckeridge Hunt, but he felt it down to the very end of his nails.
The huntsman came up, and at last Mr. Fairlawn also, and considered it to be their duty to pick up Dick, whose breath was knocked out of him by the weight of Joshua Thoroughbung, and the Puckeridge side felt it to be necessary to give their aid to the valiant brewer. There was then no more attempt to draw the covert.
"And what then?" I said. "Well, sir; as I was riding back I kept my eyes about me; and especially in the villages where it might be easy to miss them; and in Puckeridge, as I came by the inn I looked into the yard, and saw there four horses all tied up together." "Did you ask after them?" I said. "No, sir; I thought it best not. But I pushed on as quickly as I could."
The hounds were all astray when we joined them. It's a great question whether they brought their fox into that first covert. There are they who think that Bodkin was just riding across the Puckeridge country in search of a fox." Bodkin was Mr. Fairlawn's huntsman. "If you admit that kind of thing, where will you be? As a hunting country, just nowhere. Then as a sportsman, where are you?
The beds were pretty comfortable, and the ale excellent, so that once more my Cousin Tom drank too much of it. And so, early in the morning we took horse again, and rode through Puckeridge, where we left for the first time the road by which the King went to Newmarket, when he went through Royston; and we found the track very bad thenceforward.
We rode and got to Ware before night; and so resolved to ride on to Puckeridge, which we did, though the way was bad, and the evening dark before we got thither, by help of company riding before us; and among others, a gentleman that took up at the same inn, the Falcon, with me, his name Mr. Brian, with whom I supped, and was very good company, and a scholar.
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