That evening Dr. Hutton started, on his long swift mare, for the Hall at Nowelhurst, where he had promised to be. He kissed his Rosa many times, and begged her pardon half as often, for all the crimes that day committed. Her brother Ralph, from Fordingbridge, who always slept there at short notice, because the house was lonely, would be sure to come (they knew) when the little boy Bob was sent for him. Ralph Mohorn—poor Rosa rejoiced in her rather uncommon patronymic, though perhaps it means Cow–horn—Ralph Mohorn was only too glad to come and sleep at Geopharmacy Lodge. He was a fine, fresh–hearted fellow, only about nineteen years old; his father held him hard at home, and of course he launched out all the more abroad. So he kicked up, as he expressed it, “the devilʼs own dust” when he got to the Lodge, ordered everything in the house for supper, with a bottle of whisky afterwards—which he never touched, only he liked the name of the thing—and then a cardinal, or the biggest meerschaum to be found in any of the cupboards. His pipe, however, was not, like his grog, a phantom of the imagination; for he really smoked it, and sat on three chairs, while he “baited” Rosa, as he called it, with all the bogeys in Christendom. It was so delicious now to be able to throw her into a tremble, and turn her cheeks every colour, and then recollect that a few years since she had smacked his own cheeks _ad libitum_. However, we have little to do with him, and now he is a jolly farmer. Rufus Hutton rode through Ringwood over the low bridge where the rushes rustle everlastingly, and the trout and dace for ever wag their pellucid tails up stream. How all that water, spreading loosely, wading over miles of meadows, growing leagues of reed and rush, mistress of a world in winter, how it all is content to creep through a pair of little bridges—matter of such mystery, let the Christchurch salmon solve it. Dr. Hutton went gaily over—at least his mare went gaily—but he was thinking (beyond his wont) of the business he had in hand. He admired the pleasant old town as he passed, and the still more pleasant waters; but his mare, the favourite Polly, went on at her usual swing, until they came to the long steep hill towards the Picked Post. As he walked her up the sharp parts of the rise, he began to ponder the mysterious visit of those convivial strangers. It was very plain that neither of them knew or cared the turn of a trowel about the frank art of gardening; that, of course, was only a sham; then what did they really come for? Rufus, although from childhood upwards he had been hospitable to his own soul, that is to say, regarded himself with genial approbation, was not by any means blindly conceited, and could not suppose that his fame, for anything except gardening, had spread through the regions round about. So he felt that his visitors had come, not for his sake, but their own. And it was not long before he