Naturally one is struck with so novel an arrangement in dilapidated head-gear, and in a weak moment, perhaps, one asks "What on earth those old hats are for? Are they used in the summer to keep the birds from the peas, or what?"
"Peas, my dear fellow; no, by gad," will be the ready reply. "They are the hats I have come to grief in. I keep them for old lang syne. In that one on the right I rode the famous Willowfield run. Fourteen falls, and finished up in the Swill. On my honour, I thought I never should have got out. Horse got on the top of me, and I was under water for a minute;" and then, taking down the other three in succession, Story will relate the romance attached to each.
Ill-natured slander says that their present shape is attributable to having been violently sat upon in the garden after two days' rain, and the authority of a discharged valet, who remonstrated on this wholesale destruction of his perquisites, is given. But then there is nothing that ill-natured slander will not say.
One good point about the Boaster is that he is a most stanch preserver of foxes, and although his property is not a large one, Lappington is always perfectly certain of finding in his coverts. It is a great-day for him when the hounds meet in the village. No general commanding a division feels half such a great man as Mr. Story, who, having confidentially informed Sir John that there are no less than five foxes in the wood, takes charge of Tom and the pack and leads them on to victory.
Should they not find immediately, the various stages of anxiety depicted on his face are intensely amusing, and the triumphant "I-told-you-so" expression he assumes when at last the swelling chorus proclaims the varmint at home, is well worth coming any distance to see.
No sooner are they well away than the highroad claims him for its own, and, followed by a small detachment, Story's figure is seen vanishing through the toll-gate, making for some distant point which he seems to know by intuition the fox is bound for. His knowledge of the country and the lanes thereof is wonderful, and having, by slipping down a byway, shaken off his retinue, he arrives on the high ground just as the fox crosses the bottom and crawls into Watson's osiers.
The hounds are not yet in sight though he can hear them in the distance, so he has time to let himself into the field through the gate, and inspect the low wattle fence at the far end, over which he knows the line will be. Finding it is very plain sailing, and that there is a most convenient gap again into the lane which leads direct to the osiers, he gets behind a haystack, and waits the arrival of Tom and the pack. Most men would holloa the fox, but Story knows a trick worth two of that. He has a reputation to keep up, and a history to tell of "those big rails by Brown's farm," and "that double after we came out of the water-meadows," which would hardly sound so well if he was known to have arrived at his present position in front of the hounds.
Presently the hounds come up, and he notes with glee that there are but four or five anywhere near them. As they top the wattle he dashes round the haystack as if he had ridden all the way wide on their left, and flying the fence is in the same field with them—alone.
"Dang 'im, how did ay get theer? Ay never rode along wi' us, I know," mutters Tom to himself; but the pace is too hot to think about it at the moment.