His reflections were interrupted by the pleasing information, that although some of his beasts that were tied up had been sold at the top price, only a few of those in the off-droves could find customers at the second, because the butchers could not get to see them. “And you see they _will_ have the pull of the market, if they can get it.” Mr. Bovington looked unutterable despair, and told the salesman emphatically to _sell_. “It don’t matter to him,” said Brumpton, who was again at poor Bovington’s elbow, “what the animals fetch. Sold for much or little, the salesman’s profit don’t vary—4_s._ a head for beasts, and from 10_s._ to 13_s._ a score for sheep, at whatever price he sells. That’s the system here, and it don’t improve the profits of the grazier. Why should _he_ care what you get, or lose?” Towards the close of the market, Mr. Bovington perceived, that if it cost the animals intense torture to be got into their allotted places, it took unmitigated brutality to get them out again. The breaking up of a ring-drove might have made a treat for Nero; but honest Mr. Bovington had had enough. He retired from the arena of innumerable bull-fights in a state of mind in which disgust very much preponderated over personal disappointment. “And mentioning bull-fights,” thought he to himself, “Upon my life! I don’t think we are so much better than those people in Spain after all, while we stand this sort of thing, and eat our dinners, and make our wills.” Mr. Brumpton and he determined to breakfast together, at the ‘Catherine Wheel,’ in St. John Street. “What remedy do you propose for these horrors?” asked our dejected friend. “A market in the suburbs,” was the answer. “But look at the rapidity with which London spreads. How long will you guarantee that any site you may select will remain ‘out of Town?’” “Ah, that’s the difficulty,” said Brumpton. “In 1808, it was proposed to remove the market to the ‘open fields’—Clerkenwell-fields; but, twenty years afterwards, there was not a blade of grass to be seen near the place. It was covered with bricks and mortar. Rahere-street—in the midst of a dense neighbourhood—now stands on the very spot that was suggested. Again, only last year a field between Camden-town and Holloway was proposed; but since then, houses have been built up to the very hedge that incloses it.” “Islington market seems not to answer.” “No; _I_ think it lies too low. They can’t drain it properly.” “What is to be done, then?” “I’ll tell you what I think would be best. Let a good site be fixed upon; and don’t rest contented with that. Fence off, also, a certain space around it with appropriate approaches. Let these be kept sacred from innovating bricks. Deal with a new cattle-market as the Board of Health proposes to deal with cemeteries. Isolate it. Allow of no buildings, except for market purposes—of no encroachments whatever—either upon the area itself or its new approaches.”