In the first place, the bull was come back--he had been to Bubbleton _minus_ his winkers, but no one in that salubrious town caring to purchase a bull, he had returned to his indigenous pastures and his disgusted owner--therefore must the bailiff hazard an excuse and a consolation, in which the words “poor,” and “stock,” and the “fair on the fifteenth,” are but oil to the flame. “Fair! he’ll be as thin as a whipping-post in a week--if anybody bids five shillings for him at the fair, I’ll eat him, horns and all! What weight are those sheep?” adds the General, abruptly turning to another subject, and somewhat confusing his deliberate overseer by the suddenness of the inquiry. “Now those turnips are not fit for sheep! I tell you they ought to be three times the size. Zounds, man, _will_ you grow larger turnips? And have I not countermanded those infernal iron hurdles a hundred times? a thousand times!! a hundred thousand times!!! Give _me_ the pail, you lop-eared buffoon--do you call _that_ the way to feed a pig?” and the General, seizing the bucket from an astonished chaw-bacon, who stood aghast, as if he thought his master was mad, managed to spill the greater part of the contents over his own person and gaiters, rendering a return home absolutely indispensable. He stumped off accordingly, giving a parting direction to some of his myrmidons to catch the black cob, in as mild a tone and with as good-humoured a countenance as if he had been in this heavenly frame of mind the whole afternoon.