“Horse ill!” exclaimed Sir Moses, throwing out his hands, and raising his brows with astonishment—“horse ill! O dear, but that shouldn’t have stopped you, if I’d known—should have been most welcome to any of mine—dom’d if you shouldn’t! There’s Pegasus, or Atalanta, or Will-o’-the-Wisp, or any of them, fit to go. O dear, it was a sad mistake not sending word. Wonder what Wetun was about not to tell me—would row him for not doing so,” and as Sir Moses went on protesting and professing and proposing, Cuddy Flintoff’s footstep and “_for-rard on! for-rard on!_” were heard returning along the passage, and he presently entered with a bottle in each hand. “There are a brace of beauties!” exclaimed he, placing them on the round table, with the dew of the cellar fresh on their sides—“there are a brace of blood-like beauties!” repeated he, eyeing their neat tapering necks, “the very race-horse of bottles—perfect pictures, I declare; so different to those great lumbering roundshouldered English things, that look like black beer or porter, or something of that sort.” Then Cuddy ran off for glasses and tumblers and water; and Sir Moses, having taken a thimble-full of brandy, retired to change his clothes, declaring he felt chilly; and Cuddy, reigning in his stead, made Billy two such uncommonly strong brews, that we are sorry to say he had to be put to bed shortly after. And when Mr. Bankhead heard that Cuddy Flintoff had been sent to the cellar instead of him, he declared it was the greatest insult that had ever been offered to a gentleman of his “order,” and vowed that he would turn his master off the first thing in the morning. CHAPTER XXXIX. MR. PRINGLE SUDDENLY BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE H. H. H.