SO

Ringwood is beginnin' to wince, and so I'll say no more -but he'll be missed in the grooming to morrow; saying, the huntsman gave what he would have called a cross between a nod and a bow, and if in opposition to a horse-laugh, there be such a thing as a horse-sigh, with that very kind of respiration he quitted the apartment. In the mean time, Sir Mark had commenced pacing up and down the room, his custom when he was much excited, and was muttering to himself in broken sentences

‘Ay, ay, a black day sure enough—first poor Herbert, and then the grey horse- the best brother and the best hunter that ever topped a fence. But misfortune, as they say, always shoots right and left with a double barrel. Here's Bedlamite on one hand with a broken neck, and yonder's my own brother laid out for burying-seven good yards into a gravel-pit; as for that Joe, lucky or unlucky, when I meet him I'll ride over him—with his whirl bones and stifles coming out of his loins-God's will be done, but it's hard to bear two deaths in one day-two deaths in one day."

To go back a little in our story while Hanway's postchaise was preparing for the Baronet, the doomed postillion left"The Rabbits," mounted on the surviving posthorse belonging to his master and leading Bedlamite by the rein. They had trotted, however, barely a quarter of a mile, when, whether he really heard any hounds according to Dick's surmise, or whether he disdained the companionship of a post-horse-the high spirited grey suddenly jerked the bridle out of Joe's hand, and dashed off across the heath at his very best pace. A few minutes sufficed to convince Joe of the futility of hunting a hunter on a spavined job-horse, and, accordingly, with his usual malediction on his luck and his birth, and another on all the grey horses in the world — he gave up the chase as one of those bad jobs for which he let himself out by the day, month, or year. Shortly after the mishap he encountered Ringwood Tyrrel, but could not muster courage enough to communicate what had happened, and subsequent to this meeting no person of the neighbourhood could remember having seen the familiar face of Unlucky Joe. The post

horse indeed, was found duly littered down in his own stall in his master's stable, but by whom he had been so replaced and attended was a profound mystery even to the ostler and helps at the Inn. The well-known despondency of Joe's character induced his fellow-servants to drag the horse-pond and to examine the well, but they found nothing that could lead any one to believe that such had been "his luck."

In the meantime the carcase of Bedlamite, as a morsel too noble for crows or hounds, was carefully brought home, in order to undergo a formal interment, which it subsequently received under a mound in the Park, and Mr. Richard Tablet was commissioned to erect a monument on the site. As the worthy master mason had no architectural invention of his own, he literally copied his obelisk, cherubim and all, from a certain one in the village church-yard, to the memory of Mrs. Eleanor Cobb. Some persons wondered that he did not even copy the Resurgam of the original, instead of Requiescat in Pace; but as the village sculptor always pronounced pace as one syllable, it seemed to him the aptest inscription in the world for a dead horse.

CHAPTER X.

Men must not be poor; idleness is the root of all evil; the world's wide enough, let them bustle: fortune has taken the weak under her protection, but men of sense are left to their INDUSTRY. The Beaux Stratagem.

In due time the remains of Herbert Tyrrel were translated from "The Rabbits" to Tylney Hall, where they lay in state in the best bed-room, the body being ceremoniously watched, day and night, by the domestics in rotation; although the guard was occasionally doubled, the females decidedly objecting to sit up all alone with a corpse, and particularly, as the dairy-maid remarked, "with a dead corpse which wasn't screwed down." In extenuation of such superstitious fancies, it must be remembered, that the

lower classes of that day had not yet become penny-wise through the medium of Penny Magazines, but were still absolutely pound foolish on the subject of ghosts and goblins; nor was a country milk-maid then aware, as doubtless she is now, of the absurdity of a gentleman, of sedentary habits through life, taking to walk after death like a penny postman.

Besides, the chamber in question was actually hung with some of the goblin tapestry of tradition. According to the domestic chronicle, the Tyrrels were descended from that same Sir Walter Tyrrel, whose arrow, aimed at a deer, slew the royal Rufus in the New Forest. The legend darkly hinted, that it was no chance shot that had glanced from a king's stag to a king's heart; and, indeed, the immediate flight of the regicide, and the apparently preconcerted facility of his escape into France, seemed to justify the inference. At any rate it was matter of popular belief, that the best bed-room had been haunted ever since by the apparition of a crowned king, with a shaft sticking in his bosom; and by way of collateral evidence, certain huge antlers in the hall were said to have been the very identical horns of the stag that was missed.

In the mean time, the Baronet received daily and hourly cards or calls of condolence from persons, some of whom he knew by sight, some by name, and some by neither. If death is frequently guilty of severing relations and friends, he is as often the occasion of bringing them together; for, at a demise, many branches of a family meet and congregate, who but for such an occasion would most probably have never encountered for years. Then it is that strange aunts, uncles, cousins, and demi cousins, gather together as if from the ends of the earth, to mourn, or pretend to mourn, over a person they would not have known by sight, and with whom they have never been on visiting terms, till a black-edged card informed them that he was at home in his coffin. Thus on the fifth night, at the unusual hour of ten, the Baronet was favoured with a huge card announcing the arrival of Mr. Twigg, to sympathise as a branch in the sorrow of the Tyrrels; and accordingly that person soon made his entrance, which, to

Sir Mark, was literally "a gentleman's first appearance in the character of the Stranger." After a few bows and compliments he proceeded thus:

"I hope I know better, Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet, than to intrude at untimely hours, but, as the saying is, necessity has no law. It seems very odd that a man of my property can't have a bed at an inn, but so it is, though I offered the Green Man a guinea for one, and that's sixteen shillings more than ever I paid in my life. It's not very

pleasant for a man with money to go a begging for a night's board and lodging; but before your hospitality opens an account with ine, let's know, says you, who and what you are."

"To tell the truth," replied the Baronet, " I you have really the advantage of me; though I hope you won't take it as any thing personal: but there are so many strange faces in the field, I was never so thrown out in my life. It's very strange, sir, but though I can call over fifty couple of hounds at sight, and have every one of 'em at the tip of my tongue, and some of them not the easiest to remember,—I say, sir, it's very strange, but of all the ladies and gentlemen that have been in at the death of my poor brother, I can't give their own names to one half of the pack, upon my soul I can't, dog or bitch."

"Nothing more likely," returned the visitor, "and particularly when there's property in the case, and another name goes along with it. You must know, I got five thousand consols from my old master for changing Tyrrel into Twigg not a bad bargain, says you, and indeed I'd have taken a whole firm on the same terms; otherwise I have as good a right as any one to have a stag's head on my gold seal, though I've took a bee for my crest in preference, as, barring the five thousand, all my honey and wax through life, as I may say, has been of my own making. But that's neither here nor there, as regards my right to roost on your family tree. I presume, Sir Mark Tyrrel, Baronet, you've heard of my grandfather, old Theophilus Tyrrel, that died and left nothing to nobody?" "To be sure I have," said the Baronet; cleaned out on the turf. I remember I was at his funeral,

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"he was

and so were you, sir; I thought I had got a view of you somewhere, though I could not hit it off. Let me see →→→ my aunt's mother, and your mother's aunt — but I shall only founder if I attempt to go through the pedigree. Twigg, you are heartily welcome to Tylney Hall."

Mr.

bran new

"I beg to say I am much obliged, Sir Mark, for all favours; and must solicit a continuation of the same for my horse and my shay, and my servant. By the by, if you'd like my shay to go with the line of carriages, at the burying, I shall feel happy to oblige: I brought my own man down with me, and new blacked him on purpose, I assure you it's a very spruce sort of a set-out only a month ago — yellow picked out with red, and lots of bright brass bees on the harness. A bit of a flourish, says you, for one that has known afore now what drawing a truck is. But where's the harm o' that? I've riz like a rocket at Vauxhall by the exertion of my own hands, and have as good a right to leave off with a bit of a flash."

"Mr. Twigg," said the Baronet, "there's no disgrace in a humble set out in life, provided we're well up at the end in this world, you know, we can't all be equally mounted; one begins his course on a plate horse, may be, another on a cock-tail, and another on a galloway; but if by straight riding, and so forth, a man's in a good place at the finish, why it's to his honour and credit, and let him have the brush or the pad, as may be, gentle or simple." My own sentiments to a T," exclaimed the delighted Twigg. "We ought never to forget what we sprung from, as I said the very last Show to the Lord Mayor, who begun life as a common waiter at a tavern. My Lord Mayor, says I, while all the steeples was a-pealing, them's bigger bells than used to ring for you at the King's Head. To be sure the sword-bearer took me to task, but I gave him his change. I wonder, says I, a man can be so uppish at riding behind six horses, that to my knowledge has been drawn by eight, and that's when he first came up to London in the Bath waggon."

"I believe," said Sir Mark, "you were not intimate with my poor brother Herbert - indeed he was so long