TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

their coats off in the dappling sunshine for a real
good dig. The crunch of delving spades and the
smell of sandy soil now mingled with the redolence of
the perspiring pack, the crushed bracken that the
horses were munching, and the pungent unmistake-
able odour of foxes. However inlaumane its purpose,
it was a kindly country scene.

Well enough I remember that September morning,
and how, when I offered to take a turn with one of the
spades, Denis Milden looked at me and said, "Haven't
I seen ye somewhere before?" I answered shyly that
perhaps he'd seen me at the point-to-points. It
seemed providential when Will reminded him that
I'd won the Hunt Heavy Weights. Milden casually
remarked, "That must be a good horse of yours."

Emboldened by this, I asked whether by any
chance he remembered meeting me out with the
Dumborough nearly fourteen years before. But for
the life of him he couldn't recollect that. "Ye see
I've seen such a tarrible lot of new people since
then!" he remarked cheerily, pushing his blue velvet
cap up from a heated brow. Nevertheless, I toiled
back to the Rectory well satisfied with the way I'd
managed to remind him of my undistinguished iden-
tity, and Stephen exulted with me that the new
Master was such an absolutely top-hole chap. "Not
an atom of swank about him." It is quite possible
that we may both of us have talked with a slight
Irish accent when we were telling the attentive
Rector all about it during luncheon.

o

II

ICTOBER ARRIVED ; the drought broke with forty-
eight hours' quiet rain; and Dixon had a field
216