Three horsemen in front, two black coats and a red, and two reds joining the turnpike from the Witch berry road, increased the cavalcade and exercised Sir Moses’ ingenuity in appropriating backs and boots and horses. “That’s Simon Smith,” said he to himself, eyeing a pair of desperately black tops dangling below a very plumb-coloured, long-backed, short-lapped jacket. “Ah! and Tristram Wood,” added he, now recognising his companion. He then drew gradually upon them and returned their salutes with an extended wave of the hand that didn’t look at all like money. Sir Moses then commenced speculating on the foremost group. There was Peter Linch and Charley Drew; but who was the fellow in black? He couldn’t make out. “Who’s the man in black, Tommy?” at length asked he of Tommy Heslop. “Don’t know,” replied Tommy, after scanning the stranger attentively. “It can’t be that nasty young Rowley Abingdon; and yet I believe it is,” continued Sir Moses, eyeing him attentively, and seeing that he did not belong to the red couple, who evidently kept aloof from him. “It is that nasty young Abingdon,” added he. “Wonder at his impittance in coming out with me. It’s only the other day that ugly old Owl of a father of his killed me young Cherisher, the best hound in my pack,” whereupon the Baronet began grinding his teeth, and brewing a little politeness wherewith to bespatter the young Owl as he passed. The foremost horses hanging back to let their friends the hounds overtake them, Sir Moses was presently alongside the black coat, and finding he was right in his conjecture as to who it contained, he returned the youth’s awkward salute with, “Well, my man, how d’ye do? hope you’re well. How’s your father? hope he’s well,” adding, “dom ‘im, he should be hung, and you may tell ‘im I said so.” Sir Moses then felt his horse gently with his heel, and trotted on to salute the red couple. And thus he passed from singles to doubles, and from doubles to triples, and from triples to quartets, and back to singles again, including the untold occupants of various vehicles, until the ninth milestone on the Bushmead road, announced their approach to the Crooked Billet. Tom Findlater then pulled up from the postboy jog into a wallk, at which pace he turned into the little green field on the left of the blue and gold swinging sign. Here he was received by the earthstopper, the antediluvian ostler, and other great officers of state. But for Sir Moses’ presence the question would then have been “What will you have to drink?” That however being interdicted, they raised a discussion about the weather, one insisting that it was going to be a frost; another, that it was going to be nothing of the sort.