“He’s such a beefey beggar,” replied Strongstubble, between the whiffs of a cigar. “Oh, ah, and a Frenchman too!” interposed Sir Moses, “he’ll have no idea of saving a horse, or holding a horse together, or making the most of a horse.” “Put him on one that ‘ll take care of himself,” suggested Cuddy; “there’s your old Nutcracker horse, for instance,” added he, addressing himself to Harry Waggett. “Got six drachms of aloes,” replied Waggett, drily. “Or your Te-to-tum, Booty,” continued Cuddy, nothing baffled by the failure. “Lame all round,” replied Booty, following suit. “Hut you and your lames,” rejoined Cuddy, who knew better—“I’ll tell you what you must do then, Tommy,” continued he, addressing himself familiarly to Dribbler, “you must lend him your old kicking chestnut—the very horse for a Frenchman,” added Cutty, slapping his own tight-trousered leg—“you send the Shaver to the Billet in the morning along with your own horse, and old Johnny Crapaud will manage to get there somehow or other—walk if he can’t ride: shoemaker’s pony’s very safe.” “Oh, I’ll send him in my dog-cart if that’s all,” exclaimed Sir Moses, again waxing generous. “That ‘ll do! That ‘ll do!” replied Cuddy, appealing triumphantly to the brandy. Then as the out-door guests began to depart, and the in-door ones to wind up their watches and ask about breakfast, Cuddy took advantage of one of Sir Moses’ momentary absences in the entrance hall to walk off to bed with the remainder of the bottle of brandy, observing, as he hurried away, that he was “apt to have spasms in the night”; and Sir Moses, thinking he was well rid of him at the price, went through the ceremony of asking the “remanets” if they would take any more, and being unanimously answered in the negative, he lit the bedroom candles, turned off the _modérateurs_, and left the room to darkness and to Bankhead. CHAPTER XXXIV. GOING TO COVER WITH THE HOUNDS. HOW different a place generally proves to what we anticipate, and how difficult it is to recall our expectations after we have once seen it, unless we have made a memorandum beforehand. How different again a place looks in the morning to what we have conjectured over-night. What we have taken for towers perhaps have proved to be trees, and the large lake in front a mere floating mist.