the statement, but finding none, was
resolved to be candid, and make a clean
breast of it. "It is, sir, at Haymoor, is
Sack's farm. I can't say no otherways."

"Whew!" whistled the captain. "Who'd
have thought of a fox out of the Hammick
cover, making for Haymoor! With the
wind as it is, too—and as it has been all
day."

"Why shouldn't he?" asked Herbert
Snowe, whose foreign education had left
him lamentably ignorant on certain matters
of which Captain Sheardown conceived
that an English gentleman ought to know
a good deal.

"Why shouldn't he?" echoed the
captain, screwing up his eyes and mouth into
an expression of comical vexation, and
thereby deepening the finely-graven lines
before mentioned. "Why shouldn't he?
Bless my soul, Herbert! Because a fox
going from Hammick to Haymoor to-day,
must have run straight up wind the
whole time! That's why. Why shouldn't
he? Tshah!"

"A dog-fox, sir," put in Mugworthy,
solemnly, "will sometimes run up wind at
this time of year when he's agoing home,
sir."

"Well, well," said the vicar, with the
slightest possible air of contempt for the
whole subject: "we will suppose that this
was a Haymoor fox, who had been visiting
his relations at Hammick. But about the
accident, Mugworthy?"

"Jemmy Sack, he seen it, sir. Come up
here, Jemmy, and tell his reverence about
the gentleman as was precipitated off of
his horse alongside of the five-acre field."

Jemmy Sack, a lank lad of thirteen,
came and stood before the vicar, and with
many writhings, and in agonies of bashfulness,
delivered himself of his story.

The story simply amounted to his having
seen a gentleman flung from his horse with
a good deal of violence. The others had
ridden on, either not seeing or not heeding.
After a while the gentleman's servant
had galloped up to his assistance.
The gentleman had risen and mounted
again: but not the same horse. He took
the beast that his servant had been riding,
and sent the groom away with the animal
that had thrown him. The gentleman had
then ridden after the rest of the hunt
towards Upper Haymoor.

"Ah! Well, there was not much harm
done, I'm happy to find. If the gentleman
went on following the hounds, he could not
have been much hurt," said the vicar.
"You didn't know the gentleman by
sight, Jemmy, did you?"

Jemmy did not know the gentleman's
name; but he knowed that he was a staying
at the Crown Inn, Shipley Magna, and that
he had four horses in the stables there,
and that the people said as he was a
friend of Lord George Segrave's, him as
had taken Hammick Lodge for the hunting
season. And Jemmy, becoming accustomed
to the sound of his own voice addressing
gentlefolks, and finding himself listened
to, began to grow loquacious, and to volunteer
his opinion that the gentleman had
a-got a oogly spill, for he turned welly
green, and seemed all queer in his head
like. But he was a good plucked 'un, for
he would go on a-horseback again, and he
(Jemmy) had run nigh enough to hear him
a-cussin' and a-swearin' at the groom like
foon.

In fact so loquacious and graphic in his
narrative did Jemmy become, that
Mugworthy peremptorily ordered him to hold
his tongue, and begone, with the other lads.

The boys shuffled out, glad to be
released, and were presently heard whooping
down the lane after the manner of their
kind.

AS THE CROW FLIES.
DUE EAST. NORWICH TO CROMER.

NORWICH originally rose out of the decay of
the adjacent Roman station, and in early ages
became a fishing town of such importance,
that in Edward the Confessor's time it boasted
one thousand three hundred and twenty
burgesses, and twenty-five churches. The place
was roughly handled by the Conqueror, who
hated opposition from Saxon boors who did
not know what was good for them. When he
levied his contribution, the twenty-five
original churches had grown to fifty-four. In
1122, Henry the First kept royal Christmas
in the Norfolk capital, and pleased with
himself and the world, endowed Norwich with
a franchise equal to that of London. About
this time Jews began to settle in Norwich;
but the wealth and heresy of the bearded
men "of the wandering foot and weary eye,"
alarmed the bigotted monks, and the
suspicious citizens, and the populace, roused by
the story of a Christian child having been
crucified by the Jews, at their Paschal, a
horrible massacre ensued. In the same reign a
colony of Flemings brought a blessing to the
hospitable city that opened its arms to them.
They introduced woollen manufactures into the
city, and getting their long wool spun at a
village called Worsted, about nine miles north of
Norwich, drew from the place a name for their
goods there prepared. Norwich has ever since
remained a great mart for crape, bombazine,