CHAPTER XXVI

THE MATCH

LOUNGING past Tattersall’s one baking day in June, I had the good

fortune to encounter Mr. Savage, apparently as busily employed as myself

in the agreeable occupation of doing nothing. If you have ever been

addicted to the fascinating pursuit of fox-hunting, you will understand

how, even in London, the presence of a fellow-enthusiast is as a draught

of water to a pilgrim in the desert sand. Linking arms, we turned

unconsciously down the yard, and were soon mingling with the motley

crowd who fill that locality on a sale-day.

“Any horses you know to be sold here?” I asked, as we stepped into the

office for a list.

“None but Sawyer’s,” answered Mr. Savage; “pretty good nags, too. I

shall bid for one of them myself.”

Then we fell to talking of the grass countries and their delights, of

the different rumours afloat as to this master and that, how one county

was to change hands, and another to be hunted six days a week, how the

young Squire was getting keen, and the old Lord was growing slack, and

how, under all conditions, the foxes were not so stout nor the sport so

brilliant as it used to be. Lastly, we got upon the doings of our Market

Harborough friends. Struggles was as jolly as ever, nothing changed,

putting on weight, and looking for weight-carriers every day. Brush? Oh,

Brush had lost a “cracker” on the Derby, _would_ back “Skittle-Sharper,”

though Savage warned him not, and had been obliged to go on fall pay.

What of the Honourable Crasher? He had appeared in London as usual, and

was gone for a little change of air to New York! I pictured to myself

how enchanted the “Broadway Swells” would be with Crasher’s superfine

languor and general debility; how they would worship him as the “real

article” in dandyism; how they would quote his sayings and imitate his

nonchalance, and how favourable a contrast such an imitation would offer

to their moral state of hurry and confusion, particularly about

dinner-time. But I wondered what could have taken Crasher there, of all

places in the world. Then I mentioned that I had seen nothing of my old

friend Sawyer for a considerable period, and indeed had received no

intelligence of his doings since the steeple-chase, in which he got so

bad a fall.

“Haven’t you heard?” exclaimed Savage. “Why Sawyer’s married, poor

fellow! Married pretty Cissy Dove, that flirting girl, who used to look

so well on a chestnut horse. You must remember Cissy Dove. Why, there’s

the very horse going up to the hammer with Sawyer’s lot. I suppose she’s

given up riding now—got something else to do.”

Sure enough there was the late Miss Dove’s exceedingly clever palfrey,

looking fat and in good case, as horses always do when they are “to be

sold without reserve.” There was Wood-Pigeon, twice his hunting size.

There was the brown and the grey, and one I didn’t know, and

Jack-a-Dandy himself, submitting, not very patiently, to the attentions

of a villainous-looking man in dirty-white cords, who was coughing him

and punching him, and feeling his legs, and narrowly escaped having his

brains knocked out for his pains.

I turned to moralise with Savage, but he was gone. You never can speak

to anybody in London for more than five minutes together, and I walked

out of the yard musing upon man’s weakness and woman’s power, on the

uncertain tenure by which a bachelor holds his freedom, on the common

lot, and how nobody is safe. “I never would have believed it of Sawyer,”

methought, as I turned meditatively into Piccadilly; but then I did not

know he had been out gathering violets in seductive company, with his

arm in a sling.

Turning into Sam’s Library, with intent to secure a stall at the French

play for my niece, I politely awaited the leisure of a very

smartly-dressed lady examining the plan of the Opera House, and bending

studiously over the same at the counter. Her cavalier, a thick-set man,

attired with considerable splendour, was engrossed in a volume which he

had taken up, as it would appear, to wile away a long and tedious

interval of consultation between his companion and the shopman. The lady

looked up first, and under her little white bonnet with its innocent

bride-like lilies-of-the-valley, I discovered a pretty dark-eyed face,

such as ere this has tempted many a son of Adam, forgetful of his

progenitor’s mishaps, into the commission of matrimony.

“An’t you ready yet?” she inquired, addressing her cavalier with just

the slightest possible turn of asperity, to give piquancy, as it were,

to the dregs of honey still remaining from the moon. “An’t you ready?”

she repeated in a sharper key, perceiving the student so engrossed as to

be unconscious of her observation. This time there was more of the

vinegar and less of the honey, and he started to “attention” forthwith.

“Quite ready, dearest,” was the reply in the most submissive of tones,

as he laid his book down upon the counter and disclosed to my astonished

view the features of my old friend John Standish Sawyer.

Our greeting was of the most cordial. I was presented in due form to the

bride, who vouchsafed me so sweet a smile as made me wonder less than

ever at Mr. Sawyer’s subjugation. After putting her into the hired

brougham that was in waiting for them, he lingered for a moment to tell

me of his late-won happiness. “The horses go up to-day,” said he, “and I

cannot affirm that I am sorry for it. With such an attraction at home, a

man don’t want to go out hunting. I don’t think somehow I shall ever

care to ride to hounds again!”

As I turned back into the shop, the book my friend had been studying so

assiduously lay upon the counter. I took it up with a pardonable

curiosity. It was the “Life of Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq.”

I shall expect to hear of Sawyer’s buying two or three hunters yet,

before November.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_INSIDE THE BAR_

------------------------------------------------------------------------

INSIDE THE BAR

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CHAPTER I

“THE GENIUS LOCI”

“I HOPE you feel your arm a little easier, sir, this evening?” says Miss

Lushington, reappearing in her own peculiar department, fresh and

blooming from the revision of her toilet, which usually takes place

about seven P.M. Miss Lushington’s habits are peculiarly regular and

methodical; her attractions of a dazzling, not to say gaudy,

description; she is a thorough woman of business, if indeed such a

designation be not a contradiction in terms; but when she _does_ take a

day’s pleasure, there are few ladies who can produce a more satisfactory

effect than Miss L.

I raise my eyes to reply with becoming gratitude. The object on which

they rest is no everyday sight—a full-bodied, fresh-coloured, buxom

damsel, with shining hair dark and lustrous as ebony, suggestive of no

small expenditure in pomatum; a pair of light-grey eyes, restless and

vivacious, called black by courtesy, because fringed with lashes of jet,

and surmounted by arching eyebrows of the same colour, swarthy and

strong of growth: a straight well-cut nose; a wide mouth, with red lips

and white teeth, large, regular, and wholesome; not forgetting those

captivating manners which spring from habitual good-humour and perfect

self-possession in mixed society, backed by a pair of ear-rings that

would have looked _rich_ even on the Queen of Sheba. All this I take in

at a glance for the twentieth time, and catch myself confessing, also

for the twentieth time, that the barmaid of the Haycock Hotel and

Posting-house, Soakington, is the most fascinating, as doubtless she is

the most fastidious of her sex.

Miss Lushington, I need hardly observe, is no longer young. Barmaids of

tender years, albeit extremely attractive to the usual frequenters of

the snug locality over which they preside, cannot be expected to possess

the _aplomb_ with which mature experience and the rejection of many

offers invest the lady of more autumnal charms. They are apt to be a

little flurried by the attentions of the military, and somewhat

over-excited by their anxiety for the commercial interest; also prone,

if good-looking, to fly away and _better_ themselves matrimonially and

otherwise. But Miss L. is far above all such weaknesses as these. Not a

red-coat in the whole British army could raise a corresponding hue in

her cheek by the most ardent avowal of devotion; nay, even a cornet of

Hussars (and I take an officer of that rank and service to be more at

his ease in female society than other children of men) has been known to

retire abashed and worsted from a little match at quiet _persiflage_

with Miss Lushington. As for the commercial gents! why, though they

worship the very keys she jingles, and the lemons in the nets above her

head, they would no more think of proposing to her than to the mother of

the Gracchi. I have often wondered what Miss Lushington’s early history

can have been. Was she ever a little girl with long tails and frills

above her ankles, swinging a slate to a day-school? Had she a mother,

who washed her face, and scolded her, and taught her to sew, and

eventually launched her on the boards of a minor theatre; for surely

those majestic manners must have been acquired before the foot-lights?

Was there ever a time that she came home wearied and saddened, pressing

some girlish treasure to her heart, with a thrill, half joy, half pain,

and looking along an endless vista in the future, containing a house, a

garden, a pig, some rosy children, a couple of bee-hives, and a

fresh-coloured young man at his tea. Was she ever young? or did she

descend from her attic some fine summer’s day, this perfect and finished

creature of for—well! of _between_ thirty and forty, just as Minerva

sprang ready-armed from the brain of Jove, or Venus wet and glowing,

with nothing on but her shells, emerged from the blushing sea? I incline

to the latter supposition. I believe that Caroline Lushington (of

course, with that colour on her cheek, her name is sure to be Caroline;

besides, I saw it on her workbox)—I say I believe that Caroline

Lushington never was the least different from what she is now, and that

I should always have been as much afraid of her as I am at this present

moment. I am a shy man—not too shy to confess it. I blush to the lobes

of my ears, in replying to her kind inquiries; but Miss L. does not

laugh at me; for, woman-like, she has a prejudice in favour of shy men,

and she pities my infirmities, and my arm in a black leather sling.

“Your tea will have drawn in five minutes, sir, and your toast is down

at the fire now,” says she, patting and smoothing the cushions of her

own particular arm-chair in her own particular corner, that I may sit at

ease despite my injuries. How kind, how thoughtful she is! And heavens!

what a _torso_ the woman has! Though her dressmaker lives over the

saddler’s, in the High Street, at Waterborough, that black satin fits as

if it came direct from Paris. Even now, mixing a glass of

brandy-and-water for a customer, the turn of her waist and the cling of

her corset would drive an artist into ecstasies. I am no artist, yet I

cannot but think of Alfred de Musset’s song about his Andalusian

Marquesa, of which, as the language and the sentiments are both French,

I need not write them down here.

Whilst the customer drinks and pays for his glass of brandy-and-water,

it is high time that I should explain how I came to be domiciled in the

bar of the Haycock Hotel and Posting-house, Soakington, with a contused

shoulder, a broken collar-bone, and a black eye.

Since my earliest boyhood I have been enthusiastically fond of hunting.

I am not a skilful horseman; I never was what is called a _fine_ rider,

perhaps not a forward one, though I have tried hard to think so; nor am

I one of those who _know about hunting_ (by the way, I have often

wondered what it is they _do_ know), but in ardent affection for the

pursuit I yield to none. My godfather, one of the old Holderness lot,

and not the worst of those hard-riding East-Riding _undeniables_, used

to say of me, “The lad has a loose seat, and heavy hands, and not an

over-quick eye, but his heart is in it. That’s what gives me hopes of

him—_his heart is in it_!” And my godfather was right; my heart _was_ in

it. As a boy at school, I kept a few beagles, and ran with them on foot,

imitating, as far as a biped can, the actions and motions of a horse. At

Oxford, I was a regular attendant on the far-famed drag, and to this day

can remember vividly the merits of a certain game little chestnut called

Jumping Jemmy, whom I used to ride unmercifully at a pecuniary

consideration which must have cost me less than a shilling a leap. J. J.

could jump like a cat, and had carried too many of us ever to allow an

undergraduate to throw him down. That I never took my degree is the less

to be wondered at, when I remember my favourite course of literature, in

which, unfortunately, the examiner never thought of gauging my

proficiency. I could have taken a “double-first” in all poor Nimrod’s

works, and could have repeated a page or two right on end from any part

of the famous run in the “Quarterly,” knowing the exact places in which

Lord Gardner said, “A fig for the Whissendine!” and Lord Brudenel heard

a cracking of rails behind him, and could not identify the man in the

ditch because “the pace was too good to inquire!”

So they plucked me; but I persevered in my course of study

notwithstanding. Do I not know and love Jorrocks? If I could find out

Soapy Sponge in the flesh, would I not ask him to come and stay with me,

and feed him and mount him, and let him smoke as much as he liked in his

bedroom? Nay, I think I would even have bought the piebald pony of him

as a cover hack; for to ride either Sir ’Ercles or Multum-in-Parvo would

have been beyond my highest aspirations. Nay, with all his absurdities

and affectations, I have a sneaking kindness for the dismounted

sportsman in “Ask Mamma” who hung his wet towel out at window on

doubtful nights, though he had not a horse to his name, and was no more

likely to go out hunting than if he had been bed-ridden. Yes, I like the

whole thing—the hounds, the horses, the servants, the second-horse men,

the splashes on my top-boots, the golden drops on the gorse covert, and

the wreath of cigar-smoke curling upward into the mild soft air.

People talk about hunting going out; being on its last legs; civilised

away before the advance of railroads, the march of intellect, &c. All

this is sheer nonsense. There are more men hunt to-day than hunted

twenty years ago, twice as many as hunted thirty, and probably ten times

as many as hunted fifty years ago. Hounds run harder than they did in

the time of our fathers; horses are better bred, better kept, better

bridled, and better ridden. The country is also more enclosed, and there

is consequently a deal more jumping, and more occasion for skill and

quickness, than when High Leicestershire was an open upland, and Naseby

field an unfenced marsh. The best of the old ones could not have gone “a

cracker” in higher form than the dozen or so of men who may be seen any

morning in the week with any of our crack packs of hounds in a quick

thing; and in the “days of Old Meynell” there was a good deal more room

for those who liked to try. It really is by no means an easy matter to

thread a crowd of a hundred horsemen in a narrow lane, all going racing

pace, and then to jockey the best ten or a dozen of these for the

easiest place in the first fence. The actual feat of keeping near hounds

when they run hard requires skill and quickness; but the difficulty is

much enhanced when it has to be performed by a score of men where there

is only comfortable space for five. It is a pleasant sensation, too,

when the first impediment has been disposed of, and a man feels what the

fast ones of the present day call “landed,” to sail away with the

hounds, always supposing he is riding a hunter, and to feel that he will

not now be interfered with till they check, but can do his own places at

his own pace, without pulling his horse out of his stride, and gain all

the advantages of seeing the hounds turn, while he has all the pleasure

of watching them as they shoot across the fields, in swift, streaming

line.

Great artists, indeed, boast that under such favourable circumstances,

they can distinguish and criticise the performances of each individual

of the pack: but for myself I confess that I never had either coolness

or leisure for such details. By the time I have marked the best place in

the next fence, chosen the soundest ridge, or the wettest furrow, by

which to get there, given my hat a firm push down on my head, and

arranged my four reins, which are apt to get confused together and

entangled with the thong of my hunting-whip, in the manner I am

accustomed to hold them, I have small attention to spare for anything

else; and I have always been of opinion that the cheering to particular

hounds in a rapid burst, from huntsmen and other professionals striving

hopelessly to catch them, is the offspring of a vivid imagination, and a

happy audacity in guess-work.

This forward riding, however, to a man who means to ride at all, is

decidedly the best method of crossing a country, both on the

considerations of pleasure and profit. Horses take their leaps in a more

collected form when they see none of their own species in front of them;

the hounds create quite excitement enough in a hunter to make him do his

utmost; while the emulation he conceives of his own kind is apt to

degenerate into a jealousy, that makes him foolhardy and careless. Also

a great amount of unnecessary exertion is entailed upon him, by being

pulled off and set going again, which must be done repeatedly in a run

by a man who follows another, however straight and well his leader may

ride. Also, the sportsman’s nerves are spared much needless anxiety and

misgiving. Can anything be more distressing than to see our front-rank

man fall, in the _uncertainty_ he has attained on the further side of a

thick fence, or cover it with an obvious effort and struggle? Caution

whispers, we had better decline. Shame urges that “what one horse can do

another can.” Self-esteem implores us not to fall back into “the ruck”

behind. So we first of all check our horse from hesitation, and then

hurry him from nervousness. The probable result is a “cropper,” with the

additional disgrace of having been incurred at a place which the pioneer

cleared easily, and an assumption, as unjust as it is unwelcome, that

our horse is not so good as his. Now, in riding _for himself_ a man

preserves his confidence till he is _in the air_. Should he be luckless

enough to light in a chasm, he has at least the advantage of not being

frightened to death in advance; and I am convinced that all the

extraordinary leaps on record have thus been made by these forward

horsemen, who, trusting dame Fortune implicitly, find that she nearly

always pulls them through. With regard to the distance a horse can cover

when going a fair pace and leaping from sound ground, even with thirteen

or fourteen stone on his back, it is scarcely credible to those who have

not witnessed it. Two- and three-and-thirty feet from footmark to

footmark and on a dead level have often been measured off. There are few

fences in any country that would let us in, if we could trust to such a

bound as this; and the activity displayed by a good horse, when he finds

the ditch on the landing side wider than he calculated, is perhaps the

noblest effort of the bodily powers of the animal.[2]

Footnote 2:

In the Black Forest in Germany there are two stones standing to this

day, _sixty feet_ apart, to commemorate the leap made across a chasm

by a hunted deer, attested by several sportsmen who were eye-witnesses

of the wonderful and desperate effort.

Of course, we must fall sometimes. Of course, without that little spice

of what we can hardly call _danger_, but which produces what we may

safely call _funk_, it wouldn’t be half the fan it is. Going down,

indeed! Look at the column of advertisements, weather permitting, in the

_Times_; look at the price of hay and corn; look at the collector’s

accounts of assessed taxes for saddle-horses (if you can get them); look

at Poole’s trade in coats, and Anderson’s in breeches, and Peel’s (not

Sir Robert’s) in boots. Why, the very shoemakers, though on foot, hunt

regularly. So do the tradesmen and the farmers, and all the liberal

professions; the army, the navy, the House of Commons, the Peers of the

realm, her Majesty’s Ministers, and the principal Commissioner of the

Court of Bankruptcy; nay, the heir to the crown is an enthusiastic

sportsman, and an excellent rider; and so _Floreat Diana!_ and God save

the Queen!

Talking of falls brings me back to my broken collar-bone, and the bar of

the Haycock. I must explain, then, how I came to be established as the

habitual inhabitant of that snuggery.

After so wet a summer as that of 1860, I confess I was sanguine as to an

open winter: I have always supported the doctrine of compensation. If we

don’t get it in one way, we do in another. A deal of warmth was

doubtless due on the year, and what was more natural than to anticipate

an open season, and plenty of sport? With this conviction, I kept my

eyes open all the summer, and raising my modest stud from the complement

of three to five, was fortunate enough to purchase at Tattersall’s two

raw-boned, Roman-nosed animals, called respectively “Apple-Jack” and

“Tipple Cider,” who turned out to be sound, useful, and well-trained

hunters. Lest I should delude the unwary into thinking it a good plan

thus to put one’s hand into “the Lucky-bag,” let me observe, that I paid

the full value for them, and esteem myself unusually fortunate not to

have been “stuck,” or, in plain English, cheated out of good money for a

bad horse.

I then sent my stud down to the stables I had taken for them at

Soakington, under the care of a steady old groom, who is as sagacious as

he is obstinate, and engaging for myself the large parlour and the

little blue bedroom at the Haycock, prepared for a comfortable five

months’ spell at hunting and nothing else. No society to distract me; no

books that I couldn’t go to sleep over, if I was tired; above all, no

female influence to make one late in the mornings, restless in the

day-time, and sleepless at night—an effect I have remarked as the usual

consequence of a quiet bachelor suffering himself to be deluded into the

company of that insidious creature, woman.

“Beautiful she is,

The serpent’s voice less subtle than her kiss,

The snake but vanquished dust; and she will draw

Another host from heaven, to break heaven’s law.”

I did not then know of Miss Lushington’s presidency at the board of

control. I had not even pictured to myself the possibility of such a

Siren in such a collection of satins, more innocent than Ulysses—who, I

am convinced, was a finished profligate from the first, and only went to

Troy to get away from Penelope—I did not even mistrust the cup of Circe.

Ah! she made a pig of her admirer, that ancient enchantress; and in Miss

Lushington’s presence the admirer makes an ass of himself: that is all

the difference. But I anticipate.

Soakington is a delightful situation for hunting; though perhaps for

other purposes the extremely wet nature of the soil and dampness of the

atmosphere might make it a less desirable locality. The village consists

of a few buildings, of which the Haycock with its stables and out-houses

forms far the largest part: there are half-a-dozen straggling cottages,

a dilapidated barn, always open and always empty; a pair of stocks with

no foot-hold, and a pound; the church is three-quarters-of-a-mile off,

and it always rains on a Sunday, except when it snows.

But the surrounding district for many miles would gladden a sportsman’s

heart. There are large wild pastures, all overgrown with rushes, and not

half-drained, that cannot fail to carry a scent; the arable land is

badly cultivated, and badly cared for; boys never combine the scaring of

crows and heading of foxes in this favoured region, and when you do see

a plough, it is generally lying stranded in an unfinished furrow,

deserted by man and horse. Large woods, with deep clay ridings, holding

no end of foxes, lie at intervening distances from each other, to afford

a succession of famous gallops, and a certainty of hounds being left to

work for themselves. Ay, and in the month of May, when the primroses are

out, and the violets scenting the air, and other hounds have left off

for the season, you may still follow up the chase, in these deep dark

glades, with an ardour proportioned to the heat of the sun over your

head. Large straggling ill-conditioned fences are the obstacles with

which the hunter has to contend; and nothing but a good horse, with

discretion as well as courage, is likely to see a run in safety; whilst

for the latter quality there is no lack of occasion, inasmuch as the

Sludge, a deep, wide, and treacherous brook, winds and doubles through

the whole country, where it is least expected, and obtrudes itself in

the most unwelcome manner, as one of the principal features, in every

run that takes place. I have said enough to show that Soakington is no

bad billet for a man who means to devote himself to the sport; and when

I add that the field is usually small in number, consisting principally

of hard-riding farmers, and the lords of the soil, whilst the hounds

themselves are of the best blood in England, and established in the same

kennels for half a century, it is no wonder that I looked forward to my

season’s amusement with considerable anticipations of delight.

I pass over my first fortnight’s doings. It takes at least that period

at the beginning of the season for a man to renew his familiarity with

his old horses, and make acquaintance with his new ones. I have always

envied the nerve and address of those who can jump on a strange hunter’s

back at a moment’s notice, twist and turn him at will in any direction,

and lark him over every description of fence, with a confidence as

surprising as it is usually successful. This is a gift, however, that I

do not myself enjoy. It takes me a week at least to feel really at home

in boots and breeches; nor, until I have ridden each of my horses

_twice_ in his turn, do I consider that _he_ is fit to go, or that _I_

have acquired thorough confidence in his abilities. By the third week in

November, when the ditches are beginning to get clear of tangled grass,

and it is possible to see _through_ a fence, that you cannot see _over_,

I consider myself fairly embarked on the sport.

There were but three days without rain, to the best of my recollection,

during the whole of the above-named month, in the year of grace 1860.

Behold me, then, congratulating myself on the prospect of at last

reaching the covert-side without being wet through, as I mounted my

horse at the door of the Haycock, and caught a glimpse of Miss

Lushington’s black head above the window-blinds, not wholly uninterested

in my departure. The fixture was at Claybridge, less than three miles

from Soakington; and as the famous pack to which I almost exclusively

confine my attentions meets at half-past ten, I had ample time to

breakfast comfortably, and ride my hunter on.

Although not sufficiently Spartan in my habits to do without a

covert-hack for long distances, I have found out, in common with most

men, I believe, that one’s horse never carries one so pleasantly as when

one has ridden him to covert oneself. Apple-Jack is a calm and

deliberate animal enough, with none of the crotchets and fancies

peculiar to so many superior hunters; and yet even he seems always a

little less staid and careful than usual when he has carried my groom a

dozen miles or so along the road. Few sensations are more enjoyable than

to jog quietly to the meet, after a leisurely breakfast, with a good

cigar in one’s mouth, a horse that feels like a hunter under one, and

the satisfactory conviction that one is in plenty of time.

It is not my province nor my intention to describe minutely the

Castle-Cropper hounds. All the world knows that the Earl of

Castle-Cropper is a thorough sportsman; that you might hunt with him

from year’s end to year’s end, and, except to beg you civilly to “hold

hard,” never hear him open his lips; and that he is supposed to be as

facetious and agreeable in private life as he is reserved and silent in

his public capacity. The same world knows, too, that Will Hawk, who was

with his father, the old Earl, in the famous days of Musters and Tom

Smith, a sort of heroic period “_ante Agamemnona_” is the prince of

huntsmen, and the flower of veterans; that the horses are undeniable,

the servants respectable, well dressed, and trustworthy, though scarcely

so quick as they might be; the whole thing goes like clockwork, and the

hounds are beyond all praise. Well they may be; they have had that

advantage which is so indispensable to the perfection of a pack, and, in

these days of change, so often denied it, viz., time. In the best part

of a century, a uniform height, an equal excellence, and a family

likeness are to be attained, with constant perseverance and unlimited

expense. From generation to generation the Earls of Castle-Cropper have

devoted their leisure, their money, and their attention, to this

favourite hobby. The present successor may well be satisfied with the

result.

They are rather large, solemn-looking hounds, extremely rich in colour;

the dark and tan, both in dogs and bitches, predominating. They have a

strong family likeness in the depth of their girth, the width of their

loins, and the quality of the timber on which they stand. You might seek

through the kennels at the Castle for a summer’s day without finding a

pair of legs that were not as straight and square as a dray-horse’s,

with feet as round as a cat’s. In hunting they run well together,

without flashing to the front; and although other hounds may seem to

make their way quicker across a field, the Castle-Croppers keep

continuously on, over a country, seldom _hovering_, as it is called, for

a moment, and carrying the scent with them, as it were, in defiance of

all obstacles. Old Hawk assists them but little, and holloas to them not

at all. These hounds are never seen with ears erect and heads up,

waiting for information. If they want to know where their fox is gone,

they put their noses down, and find out for themselves. Also, they come

home with their sterns waving over their backs; and finally, I cannot

describe their uniformity of appearance and general strength and

efficiency better than by saying, that the bitches are so like the dogs,

you can hardly tell the one pack from the other, but by the shriller

music of its tones.

A dozen sportsmen, including the master, constituted our field at

Claybridge. There were half-a-dozen red-coats, one belonging to an

undergraduate, on for the first time; two or three farmers; a

horse-breaker, who kept at a most respectful distance from the pack, and

a nondescript. The latter might have been anything you please. I believe

he _was_ a grocer. He wore a pair of low shoes, a grey frieze

shooting-jacket, a black satin waistcoat, and a hunting-cap! His horse,

a mealy bay, had a long coat, a long tail, a long pedigree, and long

legs. The man rode with one spur, an ash stick, and a snaffle bridle.

Nevertheless, I saw him jump a locked gate just after they found, with

considerable address and determination.

Although I arrived at half-past ten to a minute, ere I could look about

me, a nod from the silent Earl motioned Will Hawk to begin. Eagerly, yet

under perfect control, twenty couple of dog-hounds dashed into a wood of

some seventy or eighty acres, the noble master and his huntsman

accompanying them down a ride, that seemed to take them up to their

girths at every stride. The first whip galloped off in another direction

without a word; and the second, before plunging into the obscurity of

the forest, posted the small and obedient field in a corner by a

hand-gate, from which we were forbidden to stir upon any provocation

whatsoever.

Though you often wait several anxious minutes by the side of a patch of

gorse the size of a flower-garden, in these large woods, you almost

always find instantaneously; and we had not occupied our station for

many seconds ere the note of a hound brought our hearts into our mouths.

Another and another certified the truth of the declaration, and

presently a grand crash and peal of deep-mouthed music proclaimed that

there was a capital scent. Twice they forced their fox to the very gate

at which we were standing. Twice huntsmen and master came splashing and

floundering up the deep ride, to go away with them; but the third time

the fox made his point good, as these game woodland gentlemen will, and

whisking his brush gallantly, put his head straight for the open within

twenty yards of us.

I had just turned to holloa; nay, was opening my mouth for the purpose,

when a low, quiet voice in my ear whispered, “Don’t make a noise;” and

the Earl was close to me. How he got there I never knew; but he seemed

to have an instinctive perception of my intention, and a morbid fear

lest I should “get their heads up.”

In another moment the music, increasing in volume, reached the edge of

the wood, and then the whole pack (not one missing, for I heard the Earl

say so to the second whip) came pouring out over the fence, and

proceeded to run in a steady, business-like stream over the adjacent

field.

“Give them a moment!” said the master; and away he went alongside of

them—best pace.

There was none of the usual hurry and confusion that may be witnessed in

most fields, when a fox goes away. The red-coats dropped at once into

their places, the undergraduate taking the lead gallantly, in a line of

his own. The farmers caught hold of their horses, and proceeded as if

they meant business. The nondescript charged the gate I have mentioned,

in preference to a straggling hedge with an awkward bank, and seemed

determined to see all the fun while he could; and I followed his

Lordship hoping to take advantage of his experience, although contrary

to my usual principle. It was only the third time I had ridden

Apple-Jack, and I had not yet acquired thorough confidence in my horse.

Alas! my amusement was doomed to meet with an early termination. The

first fence I negotiated most successfully; the second I avoided by

making use of a friendly gate; the third landed me in a rushy pasture,

over which the hounds were streaming, and whence I obtained an extensive

view of the surrounding country, and the line we were likely to run. A

black belt of wood crowned the horizon, and towards it the fox was

obviously pointing. In the interval lay a fair, flat country—green and

pastoral; but a foot-bridge, a quarter of a mile to the right, and a

stunted willow or two in the next field, denoted the vicinity of the

omnipresent Sludge. I dreaded it even then. But I might have spared

myself my apprehensions. Before I arrived at it, a low hedge and ditch

were to be crossed, which I saw his Lordship accomplish with ease, and

rode at myself in perfect confidence. Apple-Jack did it beautifully.

Alas! he landed in a covered drain (I believe the only one in the

country), and I remember nothing more, except a confused sensation of

jolting in a post-chaise, till I felt the doctor’s finger on my pulse,

as I lay on my back in my own bed at the Haycock.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER II

TIPS, THE HORSE-BREAKER

“IT’S a long business, a broken collar-bone,” I observed to Miss

Lushington, as I sipped my tea comfortably in the arm-chair she had

vacated for my use. “I am only thankful to be in such good quarters,

and—and—in such pleasant company,” I added, with a little hesitation.

Miss Lushington smiled, showing all her white teeth, and shooting

glances of consolation out of her bright eyes. “You must keep up your

spirits, sir,” said she (she pronounced it _sperits_). “Patience and

water-gruel is a cure for most diseases, and a broken collar-bone is

less painful than a broken heart, and easier cured than a broken neck!”

An observation like the above, involving the two fertile topics of

physical and mental suffering, was an opening to further confidences, of

which I should, doubtless, have availed myself, had our _tête-à-tête_

not been interrupted at this interesting juncture by the arrival of two

fresh customers, one of whom walked into the bar with the air of an

_habitué_ of the place, whilst his companion, evidently about to be

treated to “something to drink,” followed in a more diffident manner,

and entered the snuggery, as it were, under protest.

“What shall it be, Tips?” said a cheery voice, in the loud, frank tones

of a man who “stands treat,” but of which I could not see the owner, on

account of a wooden screen interposing between his person and the corner

where I sat. “What shall it be? Glass of sherry and bitters? Warm ale,

with a stick in it? Brandy-and-water hot? Name the article, and Miss L.

will measure it off for you, without a moment’s delay.”

“I’ll take a little gin-and-water, Mr. Naggett,” replied Tips, in a low

hoarse voice. “Cold, if you please, Miss,” he added, with the utmost

deference, as he drew the back of his hand across his mouth, in

anticipation of his favourite beverage; to my mind the most comfortless

of all potations.

Whilst Miss Lushington, like a Hebe in maturity, was supplying the

nectar, I had an opportunity of studying the exterior of Mr. Tips, the

horse-breaker, a public functionary of whom I could not have been long

in the neighbourhood without hearing, but whom I had as yet had no

opportunity of meeting, so to speak, in private life.

Crippled as I was, I may here remark, once for all, that I was solely

dependent for amusement on the perusal of such characters as I met in

the bar at the Haycock. Deprived of my hunting, not overfond of reading,

here was a book laid open, so to speak, before me, of which I had not

even the trouble to turn the page, whilst the peculiarities of these

different visitors furnished an inexhaustible fund of amusement; their

rapid succession preserved me from the dangers of prolonged

_têtes-à-têtes_ with Miss Lushington—interviews that could but have

resulted in my total subjection by that seductive being, herself cold

and unimpressionable as marble, experienced in the falsehood of our sex,

and superior to the weaknesses of her own.

Off his horse, Tips was, to say the least, a very singular-looking

person. He was a low, strong, broad-shouldered man, a perfect Hercules

down to his waist, and with a length of arm and depth of chest that

would have made him an ugly customer in the ring, an appellation to

which his physiognomy also fully entitled him. Not that he had what is

termed a “fighting nob;”—far from it. High features, bushy eyebrows, an

aquiline nose, and a long, prominent chin gave him a sort of resemblance

to a dilapidated Henri Quatre; but the nose had been smashed and

thickened by a fall, the chin knocked on one side by the kick of a

horse, and one of the eyes, rent and lacerated by a thorn, was

disfigured by a ghastly droop of the lid, and a perpetual crimson in

what ought to have been the white of the eye; very large, thick

whiskers, of a rusty brown, framed this singular face, and a knowing,

wide-awake leer in the undamaged eye, would have told an observer,

without the aid of the blue-spotted neckerchief, that its proprietor was

a “party concerned about horses.” Nevertheless, the man had a game, bold

look about him, all the same,—that latent energy in his glance, which

denotes physical courage, and without which a good judge of his species

does not care to select one of the half-score he requires for the

manning of a life-boat, the capturing of a gun, or the performance of

any other dare-devil feat, that demands more boldness than brains. Had

Tips been moulded in fair proportions, he would have been a

heavy-weight; but below the waist, I must acknowledge, his limbs were

more like those of a monkey than a man. His stomach seemed all to have

gone up into his chest; and although his thighs were long, his thin

shrivelled legs were absurdly short and small below the knee. He was

made for a horseman and nothing else; nor, when you saw him at daybreak,

exercising some lawless three-year-old, with its mouth full of “keys”

and its dogged, sullen eye, prepared to take the slightest advantage of

its rider, either to jump, kick, rear, or go backwards, could you help

acknowledging that here, at least, was the _right_ man in the _right_

place. Of his early history I gathered some particulars from himself. I

give them as an additional proof, if indeed any such were wanting, that

in every grade and situation,

“There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,

To take care of the life of poor Jack.”

Tips, then, began his career as a chimney-sweeper’s boy, and to this

appointment in tender years, may perhaps be attributed the physical

development of his upper man, and the malformation of his lower limbs.

His promotion, or rather I should perhaps say, his _descent_ into the

saddle, originated in a manner as alarming as it was unexpected. The

master chimney-sweeper’s wife was attacked with that malady which

peoples this world and the next. The doctor lived three miles off, in

the nearest market town. The pony that carried the soot was dead. Under

such a concatenation of unfavourable circumstances, it is needless to

observe that the master-sweep had taken refuge in inebriety. Beyond

blessing the unborn, and cursing everything else above an inch high, he

was incapable of any decided effort, and little Tips was started off in

a hurry, on the back of a well-bred chestnut filly of the baker’s, to go

for the doctor. The boy was fall of pluck, but deficient in practice.

The filly full of corn, and quite well aware of the five stone of

inexperience she carried on her back. It was not unnatural that her

shambling trot should soon become a canter, which a desperate shy at a

drove of pigs converted into a gallop under the most unfavourable

circumstances. Little Tips, when she swerved, held on manfully by the

bridle; the baker’s tackle was old and frayed; the head-band broke, and

the bit came out of the filly’s mouth; no pleasant predicament for an

urchin of nine years old, careering along a turnpike-road, on

market-day, at top speed. He stuck to her, however, like a monkey, and

devoutly hoped the gate at the town-end might not be shut.

Now it happened fortunately for Tips, that a certain old veterinary

surgeon, the kindliest and best of sportsmen, was jogging into this very

town on his thorough-bred mare, half a mile ahead of the runaway. The

old man heard the clattering of hoofs, and looked back to see a child in

imminent danger of its life. Quick-witted, cool, and sagacious, he

bethought him at once of the winding streets, the slippery pavement, and

the crowded vehicles. To enter the town at that pace would be certain

death, and the child must be stopped somehow at all risks. There was a

grass siding to the high-road, and nearly a mile farther to go.

The old man was not long making up his mind. Putting his own mare into a

gallop, he allowed the filly to come alongside of him, and encouraged

her little rider with voice and gesture. The child gathered confidence

immediately, and sat cool and collected, as if racing. Edging him by

degrees off the road, the old man at last jostled his companion into the

fence, where the filly attempting to take it sideways, of course

remained, pitching little Tips over her head into a soft grass-field.

“_Be’ant hurt a mossel!_” exclaimed the child in high glee, scrambling

once more through the hedge, to assist his preserver in righting the

filly, on whom, after properly securing the bridle, he again mounted to

proceed on his errand, with unshaken nerve. The old man was so pleased

with the coolness of the urchin that he begged him of his master, and

took him into his own service, where Tips learned all of horses and

horsemanship that he ever knew, and where he might have remained for

life but that his employer died, and he was thrown upon the world once

more, with nothing but his natural abilities to depend upon.

And here let me lift up my voice, to correct a very erroneous notion,

rife amongst the unsporting portion of the community, to the effect that

rough-riders and that class of persons are men of dissipated habits.

Except in some rare instances, the very contrary is necessarily the

case. No man can preserve that cool, clear-headed daring which we call

nerve, if he addicts himself habitually to the use of stimulants. The

sensitive fibres of the human interior, which when injured and irritated

by alcohol, react upon the courage, spirits, and temper, exist equally

in the rudest day-labourer as in the most delicate fine lady. When these

are affected, the nerve begins to fail, and no man without that quality

can pretend to tame unbroken, or to ride ungovernable horses. Practice

will do much, and unquestionably the alarm created in the biped, by the

hostility of the quadruped, is somewhat disproportioned to the real

danger incurred; nevertheless, our own sensations and our daily

observation of others cannot but prove to us, that there is much truth

in the proverb which says, “He who would venture nothing, must not get

on horseback!” However drunk some of these dare-devil equestrians may be

willing to get on occasion, they are habitually men of temperate and

abstemious habits; almost invariably early risers, and consequently

sound sleepers during the night.

That a hardy, healthy habit of body is indispensable to such persons is

obvious, when we consider the muscular exertion they have to go through,

and the many hard knocks they are likely to sustain in their daily

avocations. We all know that a prize-fighter, in training, is capable of

receiving an amount of punishment without inconvenience, of which a

tithe would knock the same man “out of time” were he not toughened and

hardened against it by the severity of his preparation. The cutting blow

that would raise a swelled and angry sore on the face or person of a man

who had been indulging in gluttony and idleness, leaves but a slight red

mark on the clear skin of the thoroughly purified athlete; and the

latter rises rather refreshed than otherwise from a fall “over the

ropes,” that would have stunned and stupefied the former for an hour,

and given him a bilious attack for a fortnight.

Now the same argument holds good with men who are liable to be thrown

and kicked by horses, or exposed to the disagreeable contingency of

being rolled over or laid upon by their pupils, in that early education

at their fences, which all young hunters must go through. A rider in

perfect training, with his muscles developed into the elasticity and

toughness of _gutta-percha_, without a pound of superfluous flesh on his

ribs or an ounce of undigested food in his stomach, not only rides with

coolness, quickness, and confidence—the mental result of this physical

condition—but rises uninjured from the severe falls and violent

concussions to which his daring must occasionally subject him; and

should he even be unfortunate enough in some more than usually

complicated “cropper” to break a bone or strain a sinew, is cured by

dame Nature in so short a space of time as to astonish the attending

doctor, who has sufficient presence of mind, nevertheless, to take the

whole credit of the recovery on himself. Tips seemed to be made of iron.

According to his own account, he never was hurt but once, and that was

out of a gig. The circumstances were a little singular, and I had them

from his own lips on the first evening of my convalescence, whilst he

sipped his gin-and-water, by permission of Miss Lushington, inside the

bar.

Mr. Naggett, whom I gathered, from his order of “Port-wine-negus, with a

scrape of nutmeg and a slice of lemon in it,” to be of the genus

“swell,” was summoned away in a hurry to a “gent who wished to see him

on business,” as the waiter said, before he could put his own lips to

the fragrant mixture or burst on my astonished sight from behind the

wooden screen. Tips, accordingly, with the utmost diffidence, and at

Miss Lushington’s earnest entreaty, came alongside of my arm-chair,

where he remained standing, with his glass in his hand, shifting from

one leg to the other, and stirring his gin-and-water with an unnecessary

tea-spoon the while. He was dressed in wide cord breeches, leather

gaiters, a brown cut-away coat, the thickest worsted waistcoat I ever

saw, and the blue-spotted neckerchief, in which I believe he was born,

and I am quite sure he will die.

“Sorry to see you laid on the shelf, sir,” observed he, with a dab at

his forehead as if to remove an imaginary hat, for men of all nations

who are much concerned with horses acquire a sort of knowing politeness.

I answered feebly that “it was a tedious accident, but, I should think,

nothing in _his_ eyes, who had probably broken every bone in his body.”

And Miss Lushington smoothed the cushions while I spoke, and adjusted my

arm in its sling.

The rough-rider shook his head, took a sip of his gin-and-water, and

looked thoughtfully into his glass.

“Far from it, sir,” said he. “Far from it. Bones isn’t broke so easy as

gentlemen think. Ask your pardon, sir; now how was it as _your_ accident

came about? Collar-bone, sir, warn’t it? Well, sir, it wasn’t a _young_

horse as let you down that way, I’ll take upon me to—” swear, he was

going to say, but, looking respectfully at Miss Lushington, Tips put his

broad hand over his mouth, and rounded off his sentence with the word

“suppose.”

I was forced to confess that the culprit Apple-Jack was by no means a

young horse. In fact, he “owned” to ten; and, like seven-and-twenty in a

woman, that is an age at which a horse remains for an indefinite period.

“That’s where it is, sir,” answered Tips. “Now, a young one will spoil

your face sometimes, and strain you in the groin, and kick at you when

you’re down; and I’ve even known of ’em breaking of a man’s ribs. But a

collar-bone?—no. If you’ll excuse _me_, sir, I’ll tell you the reason

why. When a man breaks his collar-bone, ’tis because him and his horse

comes to the ground all of a heap; and a young one never falls all of a

heap without he’s blown, and then he seldom gets to the far side of his

fence at all.”

“You’ve ridden a good many young ones?” I asked, not without some little

admiration of a man who seemed to consider an inexperienced horse the

_safest_ mount.

“Here and there a one, sir,” replied Tips, looking modestly downwards.

“My old master, he bred a good sort; you don’t see many such nowadays.

And I mostly had the schoolin’ of ’em, both with Sir ’Arry and the

Squire. Bless ye, sir, the young ones isn’t the most troublesome as we

have to do with. A young horse is very _teachable_, as I call it; and

the sooner you get him, the easier it is to show him what you mean. A

little timorsome perhaps they are at first, and frightened at what

they’re about. I’ve seen the same with the women-folk.—[Here Miss

Lushington coughed loudly, and frowned.]—But when they _do_ go, they

_mean_ going, and no mistake.—[“Well, I’m sure!” said Miss L., gathering

up her work, and preparing to draw some beer.]—I’d as leave ride a

four-year-old, if he could have the _condition_ in him, as a fourteen.

If things don’t go cross with him at first, to my thinking, he’s the

pleasanter mount of the two.”

“But you don’t mean to say a young horse can jump as well as an old

one!” I exclaimed, completely aghast at such an upsetting of all my

preconceived notions; and recollecting, not without a qualm, how my

banker’s book might testify to the value I placed on seasoned and

experienced hunters. “Suppose you come to ‘doubles’! Suppose you come to

timber! Suppose you want to creep quietly through a gap by a tree!”

Tips indulged in a pitying smile. “Have you never had a violent _old_

horse, sir?” said he. “How many nags have you owned that you could trust

after half-a-dozen seasons to do a gate to a certainty, or land clear of

the second ditch, when they knowed nothing beforehand, or to go by a

post in a hurry without jamming of your leg against it? Now a young one

_takes notice_, as the women say of their babies.—You’ll excuse _me_,

miss.—A young one is all for learning, for doing the best he can to

please you—for going your way instead of his own. A young one may put

you down quietly once or twice from ignorance, or because you won’t let

him alone; and he hasn’t learnt yet to disregard your pulling him about,

but he makes it up to you before the day’s over. And if I was a-going to

ride for my life to-morrow over a country I’d never seen before, I’d ask

for a four-year-old to do it on, if I was quite sure that he was a fast

one, a bold one, and with a spice of the devil that he got from the mare

that bred him!”

With this startling exposition of his theory, Tips swallowed his

gin-and-water at a gulp, and then looked anxiously at the door,

seemingly for the reappearance of Mr. Naggett.

As that worthy, however, did not return, I could but entreat the

rough-rider to allow Miss Lushington to replenish his glass at my

expense; and lighting a cigar myself, by that lady’s permission, I

begged Tips to take a chair, and proceeded with my inquiries.

“Is there no sort of horse then,” I asked, “that you consider dangerous?

or do you believe that whenever an accident happens, collar-bones or

otherwise, it _must_ be the fault of the rider?”

“_Plenty_ of dangerous horses about, sir,” answered Tips, preparing to

make himself comfortable—“_plenty_ of ’em, more’s the pity, even for

horse-breakers and such-like, as I am myself. We never get no credit of

them. Even if we get them pretty handy, and return them as quiet to ride

or drive, why as soon as they’re back in their own stable, they begin at

their old tricks again. There was one as I had from Mr. Mohair, the

draper in Waterborough; a grey he was, and up to all manner of games.

Wouldn’t go by the milliner’s shop in the High Street, not at no price.

Mrs. Mohair was just mad about it, sir, I can tell you. Well, they sent

him over to me to break; and says the missus to me, says she, when I

took him away, ‘Break the spirit of him, Mr. Tips,’ says she, ‘if whip

and spur will do it. And don’t let me see of him backing and sidling

into the windows of them bold hussies again,’ says she, ‘not if you cut

him into ribbons for it!’ You see the ladies is mostly for strong

measures,—asking your pardon, Miss,—’specially where there’s other

ladies concerned. Well, I didn’t cut him into ribbons, I didn’t, because

it’s not my way; but I coaxed and humoured of him, and once or twice

when we _did_ have a tussle, I showed him pretty plainly who was master:

and I rode him backwards and forwards into Waterborough and what not,

and he passed the milliner’s windows and took no more notice than if

there hadn’t been a pretty girl in the whole shop, front or back. So I

takes him to Mr. Mohair, and says I, ‘You may ride him anywheres now,

sir,’ says I, ‘for if you do but shake a whip at him, he goes as quiet

as a lamb.’ And I charged him for the horse’s keep, and a sovereign

besides, and so thought no more about it.

“Well, sir, in less than a fortnight, I happened to be in Waterborough

on market-day; and as I came out of the horse-market, I see a crowd of

foot-people running towards the High Street, and I hear a precious

stamping and scuffling, and clattering of horses’ feet just round the

corner where the milliner’s shop stands; so I walk on to see what the

disturbance is. A precious shindy I found too. There was a donkey-cart

drawed on to the pavement, and a hamper of greens upset on the

door-step, and a old apple-woman cursing awful, and the foot-people

flying into the middle of the street; and in the heart of them all,

there was the grey horse right up against the milliner’s front-door,

with his head going one way and his body another, and his tail tucked

down in his quarters as if he meant mischief enough for a week; and Mr.

Mohair (he’s a timid gentleman, Mr. Mohair), sitting on his back as

white as a sheet, pulling of him by the bridle, and kicking of him in

the ribs, afraid to quilt him as he should have done by rights; afraid

to stick to him handsome, and yet more afraid still to get off his back,

for there stood Mrs. Mohair in her best black satin gown, with a shawl

pulled over her head, a rowing of him tremendous, and all the pretty

girls in the milliner’s windows laughing fit to break their hearts.

Well, I caught hold, and led him back to his own stable for pity’s sake;

and Mr. Mohair behaved quite like a gentleman; but he sold him to run in

the ’bus, and never got on his back again.”

“Very awkward for all parties,” observed Miss Lushington, probably

following out a train of ideas of her own.

Tips stared at her for a considerable period, winked solemnly with his

damaged eye, and then subsided once more into his gin-and-water.

“Do you think these vicious horses, then,” said I, “the most dangerous

customers you have to deal with?”

“No, sir, I don’t,” was the reply; “vice in a horse is the most

troublesome fault of all to cure, because it’s always breaking out

again, and because a vicious beast is sure to be a sensible beast too.

The horse-riders, you know, sir—them as teaches horses to fire pistols,

and make tea, and dance on the tight-rope, and what not—they always give

the preference to what they call a _restive_ one, because you see it’s

the beast’s sagacity that makes him so difficult to break, if so be the

breaker has begun with him the wrong way. It’s all _humbug_, sir, is

horsemanship, that’s what it is; and the easier a horse is humbugged,

the pleasanter he is to ride and drive. Now a real knowing ’un won’t be

humbugged at no price, and so we come to forcing of him, which is always

a difficult business, and then it’s ‘pull devil, pull baker,’ and if the

baker pulls hardest, why we call him vicious. But he’s always got his

wits about him, he has. He may be aggravating, _very_: but you can’t

call him _dangerous_. He won’t put _himself_ into a mess, not if he

knows it, and so he’s bound to take care of _you_, so long as you don’t

part company. I recollect of a nag, a very neat one, as belonged to a

friend of mine, who says to me one evening, ‘Tips,’ says he, ‘I’ll sell

you my bay Galloway,’ says he, ‘for seventeen sovereigns, there, and a

glass of gin-hot, for I dursn’t ride him, and that’s the truth.’ ‘I’ll

give you three five-pun’ notes and a bottle of French brandy,’ says I,

‘if it’s all on the square.’ ‘Done!’ says he. ‘Done!’ says I; ‘and now

what’s his little game?’ says I, when I’d ordered the brandy. ‘Well,’

says my friend, ‘whenever I ride down wharf-side to my business, he

makes a dash for the canal, and tries to plunge over head in the deep

water.’ ‘Has he ever been _in_ with you?’ says I. ‘Never!’ said he, ‘and

I’ll take care he never _shall_. I’m a family man, Mr. Tips, and plagued

with the rheumatics besides.’”

“So I brought the little nag home: and next day I took a sharp pair of

spurs, and an ash-plant, and rode him down wharf-side quite easy and

confidential. Sure enough he takes the bit in his mouth, and away he

goes best pace for the canal. We came at it so fast I thought we must

both have been in; and he stopped so short on the edge, if I hadn’t been

ready for him, I must have gone clean over his head. Well, he fought and

fought, but I couldn’t force him into it, till at last I got his hind

legs close to the brink, and I slipped off his back, and with a jerk of

the bridle, tipped him over as neat as wax. He had to swim for a hundred

yards and more alongside the towing-path afore he could get out, and he

never tried on _that_ game agin, you may take your oath. He was a sweet

cob as ever you see to carry fourteen stone, and I sold him to an old

gentleman at Croydon for five-and-forty sovereigns, money down. But he

didn’t want to go into the canal, bless ye; though once he _was_ in, he

swam like an otter.”

“I have always heard a frightened horse is worse than a vicious one,” I

observed, hazarding the remark with a certain hesitation in presence of

so high an authority.

“That’s _right_, sir,” answered Tips with a smile, born of gin-and-water

and approval. “It’s a frightened horse that will face anything and go

anywheres. He’s a _mad_ horse for the time, that’s what _he_ is. So long

as you see your horse’s eye standing out wild and red, you know that

he’s half out of his senses with excitement and likely to astonish you

above a bit; but still he keeps the other half pretty cleverly, and

though he _might_ jump a brick wall, he _won’t_ run his head against it.

But when you see his eye _turn blue_, then look out! Nothing will stop

him now, and he’ll go overhead into the deep sea as soon as look at it.

You saw that gentleman as came in just now, and went out again,

sudden—Mr. Naggett? A very nice gentleman he is, and quite the

sportsman: dogs, greyhounds, fancy rabbits, and game-fowl, Mr. Naggett

he likes to have a turn at them all, and a kind friend he’s been to me

besides—we’ll drink his health, sir, if you please. Well, sir, Mr.

Naggett owned a well-bred, raking-looking sort of mare about two years

ago, that he was uncommon sweet upon, but somehow he never could do much

good with her. Tried her hunting, but she was a sight too rash and

violent for that; then he thought he’d make a hack of her; beautiful

action she had, stepped away like a cat on hot bricks; but she was so

unaccountable nervous, he couldn’t get her along the roads at all, if

there was much traffic, on market-days and such-like. At last he comes

to me in this very shop where we’re sitting now. ‘Tips,’ says he,

‘what’ll you have to drink? I have been thinking about Fancy-Girl,’ says

he. You see we called her Fancy-Girl on account of her skittish ways.

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to put her in harness.’ ‘Better not, master,’ says

I: ‘them Fancy-Girls is bad enough without putting them in traces,

a-purpose to kick over.’ ‘You’re a old woman,’ says he; ‘you send for

her first thing to-morrow morning, and break her nicely for me, single

and double harness, teach her to be generally useful, make tea, and wait

at table if required.’ I didn’t like the job, but trade’s trade, and if

your own brother’s a undertaker, why he can’t refuse to measure you for

a coffin; so the mare came home, and we had her in the break alongside

of a steady one afore the week was out.

“Well, sir, I took uncommon pains with ‘The Girl’ as we called her,

uncommon to be sure! I drove her in double harness, and I drove her in

single, and I was as gentle as a lady with her, and as quiet as a mouse.

Somehow I knew she’d play me a trick afore we’d done, and I never let

any one touch her but myself.

“One afternoon Mr. Naggett he comes up to my place and wants to see the

Girl in harness, and to drive her himself. I told him it wouldn’t be

safe, not yet, at no price; but Mr. Naggett he’d been a-drinking, for

things had gone cross at home, and he wouldn’t be satisfied without a

drive. Well, I got him set down to take a bit of dinner with me at my

place (it’s a poor place, sir, for gentlemen like you, but you’re

heartily welcome when you are passing that way), and he sent out for

some brandy, and made himself quite comfortable. After he’d smoked a

pipe or two, I tried to persuade him to go home. ‘Home!’ says he, ‘I

ain’t going home for a fortnight! while Mrs. Naggett’s blowing off _her_

steam, I’m a-getting _mine_ up,’ says he; ‘and if I don’t have a jolly

good spree this week and the next, I’m a Scotchman!’ says he, ‘and

that’s all about it!’

“So we went into the stables, and had the Girl stripped; and at last, if

it was only to content him, I was forced to put her into the trap, and

take him out for a drive; but I got him to promise he wouldn’t lay a

finger on the reins, ‘for,’ says I, ‘if anything _should_ happen,’ says

I, ‘without doubt Mrs. N. will cast it up to you, as you should have

taken her advice and stayed at home.’ He’s not an obstinate gentleman,

Mr. Naggett, and this convinced him at once.

“The Girl went kindly enough for the first half-mile, and I wanted to

turn back and go home afore worse came of it; but Mr. Naggett says,

‘We’ll just go down to the Silver Bells at Willow-tree, take a pint of

purl, and come back to tea; so, as it’s a good wide road and not much

frequented, I put the whip in the bucket, and drove steadily on.

“Well, sir, as luck would have it, we hadn’t gone a mile, before we came

to some chaps at the road-side, cutting down a tree. There isn’t many

trees along that line, and I wished there was none, or else they’d leave

them all standing. Them countrymen isn’t over cute, and though I got by

as quick as ever I could, the tree fell with a crash close behind us.

The Girl gave a jump, that I thought would have taken her clean out of

her harness, and away she bolted like a frightened stag. Bless ye! I’d

no more power over her than a baby. There was a hill to go down a few

rods ahead. I says to Mr. Naggett, says I, ‘Hold on, master; when we get

to the old Barn, the trap’ll run on to the Girl, and we’ll be kicked

out, so look for a soft place!’ Mr. Naggett didn’t seem to care about

arguing the point, but he swore awful.

“It soon came off, sir. The Girl wasn’t going to keep us waiting. A shy

at a heap of stones took us off the road, and the next stride brought us

into the fence. At the pace we were going, Mr. Naggett shot clean over

my head into a wheat-field, and got up quite sober and none the worse,

but he had to destroy the Girl; and as for me, why the trap, you see,

unfortunately turned on to me, and I broke three ribs and my

collar-bone, put out my wrist, lost two-and-seven-pence out of my

breeches-pocket, and had a concussion of the brain. But it might have

been worse! Here’s Mr. Naggett coming back to speak for himself, and I

wish you good-evening, sir.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER III

MR. NAGGETT

AS Tips took his departure, with a respectful inclination to myself, and

a most polite bow to Miss Lushington, I observed that lady to adjust her

shining locks, as it were mechanically, in obvious expectation of

accustomed homage; and indeed ere I had sufficiently admired the

attitude in which she performed this graceful movement, a fresh arrival

swaggered into the bar, in as different a manner as possible from the

modest entrance of his predecessor, Mr. Tips.

This gentleman, or perhaps the abbreviation _gent_ would convey more

distinctly the exterior of the individual thus designated—this _gent_,

then, was a personage of dashing appearance, dressed in the style which

the present age denominates “loud,” and which presents, as far as the

wearer’s ingenuity will admit, a combination of extreme splendour, with

a decided tendency to the sports of the field. I have remarked such a

peculiarity of costume in several individuals, less distinguished for

their general good sense and respectability than for a strong and

somewhat perverted inclination in favour of dog-fighting,

pigeon-shooting, excessive trotting against time, the pitting of

game-fowl in deadly conflict armed with artificial spurs, and even the

patronage of those human combats in which such profound secrecy is

always preserved, and to witness which it is indispensable to be

possessed of that mysterious passport termed by _Bell’s Life_ “the

office.”

Mr. Naggett, then, the well-known sporting butcher of the adjacent town

of Waterborough, was turned out from top to toe exactly as a well-known

sporting butcher ought to be. When he removed his low-crowned,

close-shaved hat, and disclosed his abundance of crisp, short-curling

flaxen hair, surmounting an extremely ruddy face with bright-blue eyes,

good features, and the whitest of teeth, I could easily imagine that the

respectful admiration of so well-looking an individual was an acceptable

compliment even to Miss L. His fawn-coloured whiskers, of which he

possessed a great abundance, were trained carefully to the very corners

of his mouth, from which they descended in those seductive semicircles

that are seen to their highest advantage in the commercial-room.

Scorning the delusion of moustaches, Mr. Naggett rested a stronger claim

to admiration on the brilliancy of his blue-satin neckcloth which, worn

without shirt-collar, and ornamented by an enormous pin modelled to

represent the head of the Champion of England in massive mosaic gold,

irresistibly attracted the eye of the beholder, while it dazzled alike

his fancy and his judgment. From the buttons of his waistcoat, scarlet

cloth with a binding of gold thread, not unlike those of Lord M——’s

footmen, or indeed of the gallant officers on the staff of the British

army, depended a massive watch-chain in the form of a curb, life-size,

if I may use the expression, and hung with many ornaments, of which a

death’s head as big as a walnut, and a strike-a-light box, were perhaps

the smallest and least conspicuous. Mr. Naggett’s coat was light-blue,

very much off his person, and very short in the tails; his trousers were

of drab, considerably tighter than is customary in these days of easy

fitting; and his Wellington boots were thick, clumsy, and badly cleaned.

He wore rings, but no gloves, and his hands were hardly so well washed

as might have been desired.

Such was the man who now swaggered, with a good deal of noisy

assumption, into the bar. Removing his hat with easy familiarity to Miss

Lushington, he nodded a patronising “Servant, sir,” to myself, and then

producing what he was pleased to call “a weed” from a leathern case the

size of a portmanteau, proceeded to smoke, and drink the port-wine negus

that had been kept hot for him, with a great appearance of comfort and

gratification. The man had an air of rude health and bodily vigour about

him, that was especially provoking to a cripple like myself. Though

short and fleshy, his figure was round-made and strong, whilst the

clearness of his eye and the colour in his cheek denoted an unimpaired

digestion, and a circulation, to which languor, blue devils, and

dyspepsia were unknown. There are some people in whose constitutions

brandy-and-water and cigars seem to assimilate with the vital functions,

and turn to health and strength. “They go all at once,” says the

valetudinarian, and this may be true enough; nevertheless, I have seen

many of these enviable _bons-vivants_ go for a very long time.

Notwithstanding the freedom of his manners, his brilliant attire and

sporting exterior, I did not much admire Mr. Naggett. These instincts,

prejudices—call them what you will—of likes and dislikes are oftener

right than we suppose; and when I came to learn the antecedents of the

sporting butcher, as in such a gossiping place as Soakington I was not

long in doing, I was even less prepossessed in his favour than at first.

Mr. Naggett had begun life as the only son of a respectable

tenant-farmer in the neighbourhood of Soakington. As a boy at a

forty-pound school, he had distinguished himself less in mathematics,

classics, and the use of the globes, than in such games of skill or

chance as enabled him to get the better of his companions, to the

increasing of his own stores in marbles, pocket-money, and what not. He

smoked a short pipe in the playground, ate lollypops during

school-hours, and smuggled shrub into the dormitory. When the master had

him up for any of these offences, he was notorious for arguing the

point, and comported himself on all disputed questions of discipline,

like that troublesome mutineer who is called in the army and navy “a

lawyer.” Unlike this individual, however, he took his punishment without

wincing, and this Spartan quality made amends in the opinion of his

schoolfellows for a good many shady tricks and unenviable qualities. The

lad could use his fists too, an accomplishment he had learnt from an old

poaching labourer who worked on his father’s farm; and although he took

care never to match himself with any boy whom he could not conquer

pretty easily, his prowess in this line gained him immunity for a good

many little peccadilloes and infringements of the schoolboy’s code of

honour, which is exceedingly stringent as far as it goes.

When young Naggett’s education was supposed to be completed, and he came

home to live with his father as a lad of sixteen, there was not probably

a more finished young blackguard to be found within a circle of fifty

miles. The old man tried hard to make him work, but it was hopeless;

whilst at races, fairs, village feasts, anything in the shape of a

junketing, he was safe to attend and safe to get into mischief. Then he

always kept two or three greyhounds, much to the disgust of the Earl of

Castle-Cropper, his father’s landlord; and though he generally had a

pretty good nag of the old man’s to ride when he chose, he never won the

Earl’s respect by any display of daring in the field. Young Naggett’s

heart was not in the right place to ride well over a country, and

although he liked the excitement and display of hunting, it was not for

the sake of the sport that he attended at the covert-side.

His father died the year his son came of age, and the just old Earl,

though much against the grain, on his usual principle let the latter

continue the farm. Then began a career of extravagance that necessarily

ran itself out in a brief space of time. Late breakfasts, silver forks,

six-o’clock dinners, port, sherry, and punch till all the hours of the

night, with three or four riding-horses in the stable, and a box of

cigars always open in the hall, made Apple-tree Farm the most popular

resort in the neighbourhood for every “good-for-nothing” in the

country-side. This style of living went on for eighteen months. Then

came a bad harvest, the failure of a county bank, and a sale at the

farm, with Richard Naggett’s name amongst the list of bankrupts, and a

loss to the Earl of Castle-Cropper of more than he cared to think about.

Nevertheless, his old landlord never quite turned his back on his

tenant, and therefore we may fairly suppose that, beyond reckless

imprudence, there was nothing tangible against the latter, and that in

the main, and when confronted with a Waterborough lawyer, he acted what

is called “on the square.”

After this crisis, young Naggett was not much heard of, for some time.

There _was_ indeed an ugly poaching story in which the Earl was supposed

to have dealt very leniently with the offender in consideration of

certain old associations, and which, if possible, increased that

nobleman’s popularity, to the detriment of the culprit he had screened;

and there was likewise a very disagreeable show-up on Waterborough

race-course in regard to a horse called Cat’s Cradle, who was entered,

weighted, and described wrong for the Tally-ho Stakes, and then most

indubitably pulled by young Naggett, riding as a tenant-farmer, without

occupying one foot of land. There is a horse-pond at the end of the

course, and it was only the good-nature of some of the townspeople, and

the excitement created at the same moment by the detection of a

_maladroit_ pickpocket, that saved the adventurous jockey from

involuntary immersion therein.

The next that was heard of our friend was his occupation of a stool as a

copying clerk in an attorney’s office, and from that stool he dated his

subsequent rise in life. At first it was a gloomy change for the young

farmer and sportsman, to sit at a desk copying law parchments,

accustomed as he had hitherto been to the free open air and out-of-door

pursuits, which, notwithstanding his occasional dissipations, had

constituted his everyday life. Old Nobbler, too, was a pretty tight

hand, and although he hugely respected the astute qualities of his

pupil, that very good opinion made him look pretty sharply after him,

and keep him very close to his work. Nevertheless Old Nobbler was not a

bad fellow on the whole; and as he generally had a good horse in his

stable, and was getting too short-winded to ride much himself, he would

occasionally give his new pupil a mount with the hounds, enjoining him,

somewhat unnecessarily, not to rush into needless danger, and if he

_should_ see any gentleman rather _sweet_ upon the nag, why not to

disappoint him, if he could help it.

Few men were better qualified to ride a horse _to sell_ than Dick

Naggett. He had good hands, great caution, and an instinctive knowledge

of a customer. His excessive regard for his own neck ensured him from

getting into needless difficulties; and as he was never forward in a

run, but always conspicuous at a check, his horse obtained a reputation

for stoutness and safety, which he had not earned by going fairly over a

country in the line of hounds. There is a great art in riding hunters

for sale, quite different from the straightforward science. It is not

the boldest and most conspicuous horsemen who can obtain the longest

prices for the animals that carry him so brilliantly; the world is very

suspicious. Men have an unaccountable objection to buying a horse they

know anything about. Besides which, the hunter that has been ridden

fairly, however good he may be, _must_ occasionally have been seen in

difficulties. It is impossible to cross a severe line of fences, at a

good pace, and in the front rank, without an occasional mishap. A second

Lottery may find an unexpected trap on the further side of a fence,

which no exertion can clear, and another Eclipse might be blown in deep

ground, if rattled along close to a pack of high-bred fox-hounds on a

good scenting morning; then, when it comes to a question of buying, the

purchaser is good-naturedly warned by half-a-dozen officious friends,

each of whom has probably something of his own in the stall that he

wants to get rid of, and that he thinks would suit him better. One

considers the intended purchase very much over-rated; another saw him

refuse some rails in a corner; a third heard he was down at the thick

fence coming out of the wood; and a fourth has been informed that he was

in _difficulties_ when they killed their fox, and could not have gone on

another half-mile. Like Cæsar’s wife, a hunter must be above suspicion;

so the alarmed purchaser goes and buys a soft bay horse from a dealer,

of which mediocre animal nobody knows either good or evil—a beast that

nobody has ever yet liked well enough either to “show him up,” or to

give him a chance of putting his rider down. But a wary salesman knows

better than to keep a good place when he has got it. Whilst his horse is

fresh he flourishes away over a few fences, the larger the better, for

all England to look on and admire, knowing quite well that, in the hurry

and confusion of a run, he can decline when he pleases, and turn up

again at the first check in a conspicuous position, as if he had been in

front the whole time. The very few that could tell anything about it

have probably been so much occupied, and so full of their own

performances, that they do not know whether he was in their

neighbourhood or not; whilst the general public in the hunting-field,

like the general public everywhere else, are quite satisfied, if he is

only loud enough and positive enough, to take a man’s assurances about

himself on trust.

Now, Dick Naggett could do the selling business, especially the

_talking_ part of it, to admiration. Turning out in extremely neat

attire, and with some article of dress, either coat, neckcloth, or hat,

peculiarly conspicuous, he could not be overlooked, and whilst careful

never to ask his horse to do more than the animal could handsomely

accomplish, he at the same time gave a customer such glowing

descriptions of its prowess, that he sold more than one very moderate

hunter of Old Nobbler’s for about twice its value, and three times what

the lawyer had given for it.

On these emergencies, too, Dick thought proper to affect the townsman,

and sink the agriculturist altogether—a propensity which elicited on one

occasion from Lord Castle-Cropper the only joke that reserved nobleman

was ever known to perpetrate. Dick was holding forth, as usual at the

covert-side, on the merits of the horse he was riding, and the silent

Earl emerging from the recesses of Deepdale Wood, which had just been

drawn blank, and followed by old Potiphar, a solemn badger-pied hound,

not entirely unlike his Lordship in the face, paused to listen to the

conversation.

“I’m only asking a hundred and seventy for him,” said Dick; “he’s the

cheapest horse out to-day. I’ll appeal to my Lord if he isn’t.”

Lord Castle-Cropper ran his eye over the animal. “I could have bought

him this time last year for that money exactly,” replied he, “barring

the hundred.”

“Oh! but all stock has risen since then,” retorted Dick, loud and

unabashed, “cent. per cent. I should say—sheep, cows, poultry,

guinea-pigs, and fancy rabbits!”

The silent Earl was one of those provoking people who, always sticking

to facts, always seem to have them, so to speak, at their fingers’ ends.

“I can only tell you, Mr. Naggett,” said his Lordship, “that I am glad

to take now two-thirds of the price I paid six months back for all kinds

of stock. I am a farmer myself, as perhaps you know.”

Dick was impudence personified. “Then you use us townspeople precious

hard, my Lord,” said he. “A nice price you farmers make us pay for our

mutton.”

“I think you lawyers make us pay a good deal dearer _for the skins_,”

retorted his Lordship; and although he never moved a muscle of his own

countenance, the bystanders raised such a shout of laughter as made old

Potiphar erect his ears and bristles, thinking a fox must have been

viewed away, and as shut up Dick Naggett for the next ten minutes at

least, after which he recovered completely, and sold his horse for a

trifle less than he asked, before the day was out.

Now, Old Nobbler had a daughter, like Shylock, and Jephthah, and

Virginius, and many other doting old gentlemen. Of course he was very

fond of the girl, and she did with him pretty much as she liked. Well,

“’tis an old tale and often told;” it was not likely that Barbara

Nobbler, in all the flush of eighteen summers, could abide constantly

under the same roof with Dick Naggett, and remain insensible to his

attractions. The lady was a swarthy bouncing _brunette_, cherry-lipped,

bright-eyed, heavy-handed, and with a foot and ankle of the mill-post

order, such as seldom belong to a good mover. Nevertheless, she was a

healthy, vigorous girl, with a quick temper, and a good heart. It was

natural that she should plunge at once chin-deep in love with rosy,

trim, curly-headed, flaxen-haired Dick Naggett. Old Nobbler would not

_hear_ of the match, shut Barbara up in her room, and turned Dick off

the stool in the office, and worse than that, out of the pig-skin in the

saddle-room. There was a dreadful blow-up in the house. The father had a

fit of the gout; the daughter was seen dissolved in tears; and the

lover, looking trimmer, rosier, and saucier than ever, was observed to

take tea, two days running, with Mrs. Furbelow, the dressmaker, a widow

of a certain calibre, over the way.

Flirtations, however, in all classes of life, may have been carried on

so far that it is better for all parties that they should not be

interrupted. Old Nobbler, a man not without legal experience, was

prevailed on to listen to reason, and an early wedding was the result,

which placed Mr. Naggett’s head once more above water, and indeed put

him in immediate possession of a little capital, with the prospective

reversion of a little more.

It was in consequence of this windfall that Mr. Naggett embarked on the

very flourishing business that he had conducted for some years, at the

period when I made his acquaintance,—a business that, somehow or

another, led him into all sorts of places where you would have supposed

there was neither time nor opportunity for the purchase and sale of

meat. It conducted him to Epsom annually, at the Metropolitan Spring

Meeting, and required his punctual return, for the Derby and Oaks. It

released him from Ascot, probably in consequence of the hot weather, and

swarms of flies prevalent in the month of June, but imperatively

demanded his attendance in Yorkshire, and twice or thrice within a

reasonable distance of Cambridge during the autumn months. In its

prosecution he was compelled, at great personal risk and inconvenience,

to take an expensive ticket by the very identical train that bore the

invincible Tom Sayers down the line to battle with his gallant

antagonist; and in order to do it thorough justice, he has often been

detained from his own home till the small hours of the morning, and

compelled to return fragrant with the combined odours of alcohol and

tobacco; nor does it appear that this mysterious business can remain

established on a secure basis, apart from the assistance of those

agreeable stimulants.

Why it should necessitate, as it seems to do, the proprietorship of a

half-bred stallion, three pointers, an Angola cat, the smallest terrier,

and the largest mastiff I ever saw, one cockatoo, and a dozen

Cochin-China fowls is more than I can take upon me to expound. Probably

Mrs. Naggett knows; for she has repeatedly demanded, not without high

words, an explanation of its mysterious intricacies.

I should not say, from all I have heard, that Mr. Naggett is a domestic

man. The habitual wearing of top-boots, combined with fancy waistcoats,

I believe to be inimical to the fireside qualities. Although there are

two or three Naggetts, with dark eyes like their mother, and flaxen

curls like their father, to be seen playing at hide-and-seek amongst the

grove of dead pigs and sheep that pervade the premises, and Mr. N. seems

to notice and be fond of the urchins, yet loud altercations are often to

be heard in his private residence behind the slaughter-house, and Mrs.

N.’s dark eyes are not always undimmed by tears. Fame, however, whose

hundred tongues are no less ubiquitous at Waterborough than elsewhere,

does not scruple to intimate that the butcher’s lady is quite able to

“hold her own;” and the gossips have been heard to affirm, with dark and

threatening glances at their own liege lords the while, that “though she

has been so put upon, poor dear, she can give him as good as he brings,

and quite right too.” The inference is obvious, the moral doubtless not

without its effect.

It was not in my nature to fraternise very cordially with a gentleman of

Mr. Naggett’s superior qualities. I am bound, nevertheless, to admit,

that his advances towards myself were cordial, not to say familiar in

the extreme. The undisguised admiration, however, with which Miss

Lushington regarded his every movement, and the terms of intimacy on

which he obviously stood with that decorous lady, may have prejudiced me

somewhat against him. There is a class of men, however, I have often

observed, and I say it in justice to Miss Lushington, with whom the

genus Barmaid seems to possess some mysterious affinity. As Eastern

poets feign that there is a certain bird to which the tree involuntarily

bends its branches, and the flower opens its petals, so I am convinced

there is a description of individual who is looked on with peculiar

favour by actresses, barmaids, hostesses, and other ladies whose

avocations bring them much into the presence of a discerning public.

These favourites of her sex are generally remarkable for exuberance of

spirits, command of language, a vivid freshness of complexion, and

general freedom of manner. They are loud in assumption, and great on all

topics of political or public interest; also prone to plunge into

quarrels, from which they invariably extricate themselves without

recourse to ulterior measures. His female admirers, in describing such a

one, generally sum up their catalogue of his merits by vowing that he is

“very free in company, and _quite the gentleman_.”

Mr. Naggett, stirring the fire with his boot, and winking facetiously on

Miss Lushington, as he drank her health in his hot negus, and asked her

whether she had ordered her wedding-bonnet yet, obligingly remarked,

that “it was a cold night, and he was sorry to see my arm in a sling;”

also “that he had heard of my accident, and hoped it wouldn’t be long

before I _over-got_ it,” with which friendly wish, expressed in a

compound verb, he finished his negus, and ordered some more, calling

Miss L. “my dear,” unblushingly, to my excessive disgust. He then drew

his chair to the fire, expressed his astonishment that Tips had gone to

“perch,” as he called it, and proceeded to make himself agreeable.

“A nasty fall, sir, yours must have been, as I understand,” said he,

“and it’s well as it wasn’t worse. You’ve a nice-ish team standing here,

but you’ll excuse _me_, sir, they’re not exactly the _class_ of horse

for a gentleman like you to ride. I’ve been fond of horses all my life,

from a boy, I may say, and I’m forty years of age now: forty years of

age, though perhaps you wouldn’t think it, and in that time I’ve learned

to keep my eyes open. Now, sir, you don’t ride so very light, I’ll be

bound to say.”

I am a little touchy about my weight, I confess. I believe most men are,

the heavy ones liking to be thought lighter and the light ones heavier

than they really are. “I ride thirteen stone,” I replied. “Thirteen

stone, to a pound; I weigh every day of my life, and I haven’t varied

since I was five-and-twenty.”

“Thirteen stone! indeed, sir!” replied Mr. Naggett, running his eye, as

I thought, in a very free-and-easy manner over my proportions. “Well, I

shouldn’t have thought it. But you’re thick, sir; thick and a _little_

fleshy. Now, your nags is hardly thirteen-stoners, sir—not in a country

like this; I’m sure you must agree with me?”

Speechless with indignation, I seized the poker and split—not Mr.

Naggett’s head, but a burning coal in the very centre of the grate,

without farther reply. This coolest of butchers proceeded

unhesitatingly:—

“It’s a pity to see a gentleman undermounted, specially in a country

like this: so dangerous too! Why, sir, all the worst falls as I’ve known

take place down here in our Soakington district, have been entirely

owing to gentlemen riding horses below their weight. There was Squire

Overend, only last season, got a little thorough-bred weed he called

Happy Joe, as he swore nothing could touch. No more they couldn’t when

the ground was light; but look what happened. There came a splash of

wet, and the ground up to our girths, just as we’ve got it now, and

likely to have it for the next six months; and Happy Joe, he turns a

complete somersault over a stile the Squire puts him at, and falls on to

his rider with a squelch, breaking the cantle of his own saddle into

shivers, and inflicting such severe internal injuries on Squire Overend,

that he has never been out hunting since, and all from obstinacy—sheer

obstinacy, I call it; for I told the Squire myself how it would be, from

the first.”

Somewhat discouraged, I admit, by the ghastly catastrophe of Mr.

Overend, I began to think it was just possible that Apple-Jack might not

be so good as he looked, and that perhaps it might be wise to purchase a

horse or two more accustomed to the country, and with a little more

power.

Mr. Naggett, who never took his clear blue eyes off my face, seemed to

read my thoughts intuitively, and proceeded with more than usual

volubility:—

“There’s a friend of mine, sir, got a horse, that I should say was just

about your mark, and would carry you as I can see you _like_ to be

carried. I had him in price all last season myself, but money couldn’t

buy him then; for my friend he was an out-and-out sporting chap, and

could _ride_ too! But he’s been and got married since, and gone to live

in Drury Lane for good and all; so he’s no more use for a hunter now,

than a cow has for a side-pocket, or a pig for a frilled-shirt. What a

horse he is, to be sure!—dark-brown, tan muzzle, not a speck of white

about him; up to fourteen stone; by Ratcatcher, out of Sly Puss by

Mousetrap, and Mousetrap, you remember, was by Grimalkin, and the sire

of Whittington, Cat’s-cradle and a many good ones. I know all about him,

and have done since he was a foal. My friend he bought him off of the

farmer that bred him.”

“Why, Ratcatcher has been covering at the Castle for years,” I replied,

rather congratulating myself upon having Mr. Naggett “out;” “and Sly

Puss never belonged to anybody but the Earl!”

“Well, sir,” retorted he, “and that’s exactly the farmer I mean. A very

respectable farmer I call him too, and one that farms _his own land_,

which is more than can be said for a good many of them. Talk of jumping,

I wish you could only see this nag jump!”

There is something about the discussion of horseflesh in front of a big

fire, with a cigar in his mouth, that disposes a man unaccountably to

_buy_. Knowing I couldn’t hunt for six weeks, what did I want with

another horse?

“Why should I not?” I rashly inquired. “I might look at him, at any

rate. Where is he to be seen?”

“Well, sir, he’s at my place now,” replied Mr. Naggett, adding, with an

air of charming frankness. “The fact is, I’ve got him to keep for my

friend, who is a cousin of my wife’s, and I’ve got the riding of him for

his corn. If it wasn’t that my business won’t allow me to hunt as much

as I should like, I’d buy him myself, particularly considering the

price.”

“What does he ask?” I inquired, walking as it were open-eyed into the

pitfall prepared for me.

Mr. Naggett looked me over from top to toe, as if I had been a prize ox.

Probably he was making a mental computation of my soft-headedness. I am

afraid I looked very much like a fool, for he replied boldly—

“One hundred and twenty sovereigns; take him as he stands; no questions

asked; and dirt-cheap at the money.”

“How old is he?” was naturally my next inquiry. “Is he quiet to ride?” I

added; “and thoroughly temperate with hounds? Also, is he fit to go at

present? and does your wife’s cousin warrant him sound?”

“Come up and see him, sir! Come up and see him!” was the only reply Mr.

Naggett could be brought to give. “My business will take me away all

to-morrow and the next day; but say Saturday, sir. You know my little

place. Any time on Saturday I shall be at your service, and the horse

too. Ride him, lark him, have him galloped, see him jump! If you can get

him into a difficulty, I’ll _give_ him to you—at least my wife’s cousin

will. You may take my word for it, that if once you lay your leg over

him, he’ll never go out of your stable again!”

And Mr. Naggett, suddenly remembering a very particular engagement,

vanished incontinently, after wishing me an exceedingly civil

“good-night.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER IV

TOM TURNBULL

THE hasty departure of Mr. Naggett seemed to produce a corresponding

effect of drowsiness on Miss Lushington—an unusual weakness, to which I

am bound to admit she was by no means subject. Like the Roman vestals,

she never seemed tempted to quit her post, nor desirous of flinching

from the duty of keeping alive the sacred fire, represented in her

sanctuary by a blazing heap of coals through the day, and a jet of gas

continually flaring from a pipe above the tap during the small hours

towards morning. Now, however, she yawned most unreservedly, and hinted

freely on the propriety of “shutting up for the night.” Perhaps, after

the departure of the flash butcher, everything seemed by comparison tame

and insipid. As I shall not have occasion to refer to Mr. Naggett again,

I may here mention that as soon as I was able to move about, I _did_ go

to inspect the famous horse by Ratcatcher, out of Sly Puss by Mousetrap,

and found him a good-looking animal enough,—large, strong, well-bred,

and a fine goer, with many hunting-like qualities about him; but, on the

other hand, by no means likely to emerge blameless from the ordeal of a

veterinary surgeon’s examination, being indeed a little suspicious in

one eye, very queer about the hocks, and with a curious catch in his

windpipe, which Mr. Naggett triumphantly quoted as a proof of the

excellence of his lungs, but which to my fancy seemed uncommonly like

the respiration of a prospective whistler.

I need hardly observe that I declined the proprietorship of this

high-bred animal upon any terms whatever, although I was offered him as

a _swap_, as a contingent reversion, and as a temporary investment: nay,

so anxious was Mr. Naggett to accommodate me, and so liberal in his

professions, that I was compelled to decline very strenuously the

purchase of him at a considerable reduction on his original price, with

half the money down, and my bill at three months for the remainder.

Though I have often seen Mr. Naggett in the hunting-field, and have

partaken of many excellent joints, both prime beef and Southdown mutton,

of his purveying, this was the conclusion of my dealings with him in

horseflesh, and the termination of our somewhat unexpected intimacy.

“Drat it!” exclaimed Miss Lushington, as I lit a bedroom candle, and she

herself prepared to collect her different effects, such as keys,

scissors, workbox, and thimble, preparatory to retiring for the night,

“it’s never over here, it isn’t! One down, t’other come on! I did think

I’d have had my hair in curl-papers to-night before one o’clock,” she

added coquettishly, smoothing down the glossy bands that encircled her

fair forehead; “but goodness gracious me! Old friends is welcome in

season and out of season! If it isn’t Mr. Turnbull!”

So warm a greeting, from a lady of Miss Lushington’s self-control,

impelled me to put down my chamber-candlestick and study with some

curiosity the manners and appearance of the new arrival. On his first

entrance he was so completely enshrouded and enveloped in a top-coat, a

shawl-handkerchief, and a round low-crowned hat, that I could perceive

nothing of him but his boots. These, however, were sufficiently

characteristic. Strong, round-toed, and with deep mahogany tops,

fastened up round the knee with the old-fashioned string, they

harmonised well with the double-Bedford-cord breeches, of which they

formed the appropriate termination. As their owner, unwinding himself

gradually from the coils of his shawl, and emerging from his drab

top-coat, stood at last conspicuous in the full glare of the gas-light,

I could not help thinking that a man might travel through a long

summer’s day, without meeting so fine a specimen of the real British

yeoman as Mr. Turnbull.

I like the round-cropped bullet-head that you never see out of our own

little island. I like the fresh healthy colour, that deepens, instead of

fading, with age, and the burly thick-set form, square and substantial

as a tower, deriving its solid proportions from a good English ancestry,

“men of mould,” since the days of Robin Hood, and its vigour from good

English beef and floods of nut-brown ale. These are the sort of men that

kept the green wood in merry Nottinghamshire, and bore back the chivalry

of Europe at Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers. These are the sort of men

that would turn the tide of an invasion to-day, shoulder to shoulder in

their dim grey ranks, handling the rifle as deftly as their fathers did

the bow, yet impatient somewhat of long-bowls at five or six hundred

yards, and longing withal to get to close quarters and try conclusions

with the bayonet. When it comes to clash of steel, depend upon it “the

weakest will go to the wall.”

Five foot ten in his stockings; fourteen stone, without an ounce of

superfluous flesh upon his ribs; built in the mould of a Hercules, with

a ruddy-brown complexion and dark crisp hair, short, close curling and

grizzled about the temples, for our friend is nearer fifty than forty,

Tom Turnbull, as he is called at every fair, market, and cattle-show in

three counties, nods good-humouredly to Miss Lushington, and gives a

backward scrape of his foot in deference to myself.

“Glass of strong ale, if you please, Miss,” says he, in cordial cheery

tones, and holding it up to the light, tosses off the clear sparkling

beverage, with a sigh of intense satisfaction. No wonder. Since a market

dinner at one o’clock, Tom Turnbull has ridden the best part of thirty

miles. He has nine more to go before he reaches Apple-tree Farm, where

he has succeeded Mr. Naggett (what a contrast!), and he will be out

to-morrow morning at daybreak, looking after the ploughs, and taking

perhaps a vigorous spell between the stilts himself. There is a good

animal, however, waiting for him at the door, submitting impatiently to

the caresses of the admiring ostler, and having had her own suck of

gruel, looking wistfully round for her master, who she knows is never

very long having a suck of _his_.

If you want to be thoroughly acquainted with your horse to inspire him

with that unreserved confidence which the animal is certainly capable of

feeling in his master, ride him at night. An hour in the dark draws the

bond of partnership tighter than a day in the sunshine. When you have

made a journey or two together over bad roads, without a moon, you learn

to depend upon each other thoroughly, and the animal will answer your

hand and bend to your caresses with a willing promptitude he would never

acquire by daylight. Tom Turnbull spends many an hour of darkness in the

saddle, and except on one occasion when he took a short cut over some

low fences, and tumbled neck-and-crop into an open culvert, breaking his

own head and his horse’s neck, has never met with what he calls an

accident.

I fancy the old-fashioned highwaymen knew more about the sagacity and

powers of their horses than any more respectable sportsmen of the modern

times. They rode, as their business obliged them, continually by night;

and the distances they accomplished were so marvellous as to be

incredible, had they not been attested by the most unimpeachable of

evidence in the witness-box. Horses can see wonderfully well in the

dark, and no doubt a man who was riding against time for an _alibi_,

with so heavy a stake as his own life depending on his success, would be

tolerably venturesome in his efforts to “get forward;” but yet, under

the most favourable circumstances, it cannot but have proved haphazard

work, jumping fences by moonlight; and what a good mare must poor Black

Bess have been, when she started fresh on the North road for her journey

to York!

In this one respect Tom Turnbull resembles Dick Turpin; the former, too,

has a mare he rides long journeys by night, and for whose merits and

reputation he entertains the profoundest respect. She is a lengthy, low,

wiry, bay mare, with short flat legs, clean and hard as iron. She

rejoices in a lean, game head, with a curl not unlike a sneer above her

nostrils, and a wild eye; also, the long, fine, and rather lop ears,

which belong to her high-born family. In the breeding of all stock Mr.

Turnbull knows what he is about. If he wants a promising foal that shall

grow into a couple of hundred pounds at five years old, he does not put

an old worn-out mare, whose constitution and physical qualities are

exhausted by hard work, to a fashionable stallion, and calmly expect the

produce to excel the united excellencies of sire and dam in the best

days of both. On the contrary, he begins, as we humbly opine, at the

right end. He gets a foal or two out of the young fresh mare before she

commences work, instead of after she is incapable of it. The dam’s

functions are then in their highest state of vigour and redundance; nor

is it possible but that this must materially enhance the value of her

offspring. The infant is all the better, and the mother none the worse.

The Arabs, who are by no means behindhand in their knowledge of horses,

and whose everyday wants necessitate their bringing the animal to its

highest state of perfection, at least as regards their own purposes,

have established, as an incontestable maxim, that while the colt

inherits “make and shape” from his sire, his inner qualities—if we may

so call them—his mettle, speed, temper, and powers of endurance come

from his dam. None of us who have taken an interest in the rearing of

young horses can have failed to observe the strong outward resemblance

they usually bear to their sires. “How like the old horse!” is a remark

one hears every day when looking at some dark-brown flyer by The

Dutchman, or some commanding animal with extraordinary power and

substance by Cotherstone; but we seldom see any striking resemblance to

the dam, although, when some veteran sportsman is relating the feats of

the “best he ever had in his life,” whether hunter, hack, or trotter, he

generally winds up with the observation, “He was as good as the old

mare!” Now, the Arab ought to be a capital judge, and though by no means

despising speed, endurance is the quality which he most values in his

horse, and puts most frequently to the test. It is no unusual feat for

an Arab to ride a hundred miles a day for four days together, through

the desert, carrying with him (no trifling addition to his own weight)

the water that is to last him throughout his journeys, also the forage

that must supply his steed, and the handful or two of pressed dates that

shall serve to keep the rider alive till he reaches his destination. Now

we have nothing of this sort in England, and, since the introduction of

railroads, have indeed small occasion to prove the lasting qualities of

our horses. The covert-hack of the present day is the animal that is

required to prove his superiority to his stable companions, for he _may_

be asked, by a master who likes to get his beauty-sleep after eight

A.M., to do his fifteen miles, with as many stone on his back, in five

minutes over the hour; and this is exceedingly good going. Still, a

summer’s day’s journey of eighty or ninety miles, with only one stoppage

to bait for an hour or two, such as used to be frequently accomplished

by jockeys and other locomotive individuals on the old-fashioned hackney

of the last century, was a very different matter, and required in the

performer not only perfect soundness of limbs and constitution, but a

very true and even style of going, that gave every point and

articulation fair play, and no excess of work above its due share. Such

a fault in a horse as _hitting his legs_ of course would have rendered

him utterly useless before two-thirds of his task was accomplished.