When the first Monday in November came Harry was still living at the rectory. Indeed, what other home had he in which to live? Other friends had become shy of him besides his uncle. He had been accustomed to receive many invitations. Young men who are the heirs to properties, and are supposed to be rich because they are idle, do get themselves asked about here and there, and think a great deal of themselves in consequence. "There\'s young Jones. He is fairly good-looking, but hasn\'t a word to say for himself. He will do to pair off with Miss Smith, who\'ll talk for a dozen. He can\'t hit a hay-stack, but he\'s none the worse for that. We haven\'t got too many pheasants. He\'ll be sure to come when you ask him,—and he\'ll be sure to go."

So Jones is asked, and considers himself to be the most popular man in London. I will not say that Harry\'s invitations had been of exactly that description; but he too had considered himself to be popular, and now greatly felt the withdrawal of such marks of friendship. He had received one "put off"—from the Ingoldsbys of Kent. Early in June he had promised to be there in November. The youngest Miss Ingoldsby was very pretty, and he, no doubt, had been gracious. She knew that he had meant nothing,—could have meant nothing. But he might come to mean something, and had been most pressingly asked. In September there came a letter to him to say that the room intended for him at Ingoldsby had been burnt down. Mrs. Ingoldsby was so extremely sorry, and so were the "girls!" Harry could trace it all up. The Ingoldsbys knew the Greens, and Mrs. Green was Sister to Septimus Jones, who was absolutely the slave,—the slave, as Harry said, repeating the word to himself with emphasis,—of Augustus Scarborough. He was very unhappy, not that he cared in the least for any Miss Ingoldsby, but that he began to be conscious that he was to be dropped.

He was to be taken up, on the other hand, by Joshua Thoroughbung. Alas! alas! though he smiled and resolved to accept his brother-in-law with a good heart, this did not in the least salve the wound. His own county was to him less than other counties, and his own neighborhood less than other neighborhoods. Buntingford was full of Thoroughbungs, the best people in the world, but not quite up to what he believed to be his mark. Mr. Prosper himself was the stupidest ass! At Welwyn people smelled of the City. At Stevenage the parsons\' set began. Baldock was a caput mortuum of dulness. Royston was alive only on market-days. Of his own father\'s house, and even of his mother and sisters, he entertained ideas that savored a little of depreciation. But, to redeem him from this fault,—a fault which would have led to the absolute ruin of his character had it not been redeemed and at last cured,—there was a consciousness of his own vanity and weakness. "My father is worth a dozen of them, and my mother and sisters two dozen," he would say of the Ingoldsbys when he went to bed in the room that was to be burnt down in preparation for his exile. And he believed it. They were honest; they were unselfish; they were unpretending. His sister Molly was not above owning that her young brewer was all the world to her; a fine, honest, bouncing girl, who said her prayers with a meaning, thanked the Lord for giving her Joshua, and laughed so loud that you could hear her out of the rectory garden half across the park. Harry knew that they were good,—did in his heart know that where the parsons begin the good things were likely to begin also.

He was in this state of mind, the hand of good pulling one way and the devil\'s pride the other, when young Thoroughbung called for him one morning to carry him on to Cumberlow Green. Cumberlow Green was a popular meet in that county, where meets have not much to make them popular except the good-humor of those who form the hunt. It is not a county either pleasant or easy to ride over, and a Puckeridge fox is surely the most ill-mannered of foxes. But the Puckeridge men are gracious to strangers, and fairly so among themselves. It is more than can be said of Leicestershire, where sportsmen ride in brilliant boots and breeches, but with their noses turned supernaturally into the air. "Come along; we\'ve four miles to do, and twenty minutes to do it in. Halloo, Molly, how d\'ye do? Come up on to the step and give us a kiss."

"Go away!" said Molly, rushing back into the house. "Did you ever hear anything like his impudence?"

"Why shouldn\'t you?" said Kate. "All the world knows it." Then the gig, with the two sportsmen, was driven on. "Don\'t you think he looks handsome in his pink coat?" whispered Molly, afterward, to her elder sister. "Only think; I have never seen him in a red coat since he was my own. Last April, when the hunting was over, he hadn\'t spoken out; and this is the first day he has worn pink this year."

Harry, when he reached the meet, looked about him to watch how he was received. There are not many more painful things in life than when an honest, gallant young fellow has to look about him in such a frame of mind. It might have been worse had he deserved to be dropped, some one will say. Not at all. A different condition of mind exists then, and a struggle is made to overcome the judgment of men which is not in itself painful. It is part of the natural battle of life, which does not hurt one at all,—unless, indeed, the man hate himself for that which has brought upon him the hatred of others. Repentance is always an agony,—and should be so. Without the agony there can be no repentance. But even then it is hardly so sharp as that feeling of injustice which accompanies the unmeaning look, and dumb faces, and pretended indifference of those who have condemned.

When Harry descended from the gig he found himself close to old Mr. Harkaway, the master of the hounds. Mr. Harkaway was a gentleman who had been master of these hounds for more than forty years, and had given as much satisfaction as the county could produce. His hounds, which were his hobby, were perfect. His horses were good enough for the Hertfordshire lanes and Hertfordshire hedges. His object was not so much to run a fox as to kill him in obedience to certain rules of the game. Ever so many hinderances have been created to bar the killing a fox,—as for instance that you shouldn\'t knock him on the head with a brick-bat,—all of which had to Mr. Harkaway the force of a religion. The laws of hunting are so many that most men who hunt cannot know them all. But no law had ever been written, or had become a law by the strength of tradition, which he did not know.

To break them was to him treason. When a young man broke them he pitied the young man\'s ignorance, and endeavored to instruct him after some rough fashion. When an old man broke them, he regarded him as a fool who should stay at home, or as a traitor who should be dealt with as such. And with such men he could deal very hardly. Forty years of reigning had taught him to believe himself to be omnipotent, and he was so in his own hunt. He was a man who had never much affected social habits. The company of one or two brother sportsmen to drink a glass of port-wine with him and then to go early to bed, was the most of it. He had a small library, but not a book ever came off the shelf unless it referred to farriers or the res venatica. He was unmarried. The time which other men gave to their wives and families he bestowed upon his hounds. To his stables he never went, looking on a horse as a necessary adjunct to hunting,—expensive, disagreeable, and prone to get you into danger. When anyone flattered him about his horse he would only grunt, and turn his head on one side. No one in these latter years had seen him jump any fence. But yet he was always with his hounds, and when any one said a kind word as to their doings, that he would take as a compliment. It was they who were there to do the work of the day, which horses and men could only look at. He was a sincere, honest, taciturn, and withal, affectionate man, who could on an occasion be very angry with those who offended him. He knew well what he could do, and never attempted that which was beyond his power. "How are you, Mr. Harkaway?" said Harry.

"How are you, Mr. Annesley? how are you?" said the master, with all the grace of which he was capable. But Harry caught a tone in his voice which he thought implied displeasure. And Mr. Harkaway had in truth heard the story,—how Harry had been discarded at Buston because he had knocked the man down in the streets at night-time and had then gone away. After that Mr. Harkaway toddled off, and Harry sat and frowned with embittered heart.

"Well, Malt-and-hops, and how are you?" This came from a fast young banker who lived in the neighborhood, and who thus intended to show his familiarity with the brewer; but when he saw Annesley, he turned round and rode away. "Scaly trick that fellow played the other day. He knocked a fellow down, and, when he thought that he was de............