"Gie's your hand upon it!" cried Tom Southall, jumping up from his chair, and stretching a fist as big as a leg of mutton--well, say lamb--over the table. "And here--here," he added, with an exultant chuckle, as he extricated a swollen canvas-bag from his pocket--"here's the dibs at once." This transaction excited a great deal of surprise at our part of the table; and Dutton was rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for parting with his favorite hunting mare. "The truth is, friends," said Dutton at last, "I mean to give up farming, and--" "Gie up farmin'!" broke in half-a-dozen voices. "Lord!" "Yes; I don't like it. I shall buy a commission in the army. There'll be a chance against Boney, now; and it's a life I'm fit for." The farmers looked completely agape at this announcement; but making nothing of it, after silently staring at Dutton and each other, with their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths, till they had gone out, stretched their heads simultaneously across the table toward the candles, relit their pipes, and smoked on as before. "Then, perhaps, Mr. Dutton," said a young man in a smartly-cut velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, who had hastily left his seat farther down the table--"perhaps you will sell the double Manton, and Fanny and Slut?" "Yes; at a price." Prices were named; I forget now the exact sums, but enormous prices, I thought, for the gun and the dogs, Fanny and Slut. The bargain was eagerly concluded, and the money paid at once. Possibly the buyer had a vague notion, that a portion of the vender's skill might come to him with his purchases. "You be in 'arnest, then, in this fool's business, James Dutton," observed a farmer, gravely. "I be sorry for thee; but as I s'pose the lease of Ash Farm will be parted with; why--John, waiter, tell Master Hurst at the top of the table yonder, to come this way." Master Hurst, a well-to-do, highly respectable-looking, and rather elderly man, came in obedience to the summons, and after a few words in an under-tone with the friend that had sent for him, said, "Is this true, James Dutton?" "It is true that the lease and stock of Ash Farm are to be sold--at a price. You, I believe, are in want of such a concern for the young couple just married." "Well, I don't say I might not be a customer, if the price were reasonable." "Let us step into a private room, then," said Dutton, rising. "This is not a place for business of that kind. Sharp," he added, _sotto voce_, "come with us; I may want you." I had listened to all this with a kind of stupid wonderment, and I now, mechanically, as it were, got up and accompanied the party to another room.