It is resolved that Mr. Sawyer’s shall be the next stud inspected; but such an unheard-of breach of etiquette as leaving their present haunt until every individual horse has been stripped, cannot be entertained for a moment; so Mr. Savage, in his turn, enlivens the process by attacking poor Struggles: “You never got to the end that Keythorpe day, after all,” says he. “What’s the use of these long pedigrees of yours, if they can’t stay? I have always understood their only merit as hunters is, that you can’t _tire_ the thoro’-bred ones. But confess now, Struggles, you stopped before the hounds ran through the Coplow!” “No distance at all!” chimes in Brush. “And the ground must have been quite light before the rain,” adds Mr. Sawyer, who thinks he _must_ say something, and who has not been permitted to remain in ignorance of this Keythorpe day, now more than a fortnight old. Struggles turned from one to the other of his tormentors, with a grin on his jolly face. “Little Benjamin couldn’t have been so beat, when I caught your horse for you,” said he to Brush; “or when I went by _you_, Savage, in the lane, and that was after five-and-twenty minutes, with fifteen stone on his back, amongst those hills. No, no, my boys! Fair play’s a jewel, and neither of you were there to see whether I’d had my gruel or not. _Stop_ indeed! I’d lay odds none of old Catamaran’s stock would cut up soft, if you rode them till the day after to-morrow. Stop! I’ll be hanged if I didn’t _trot_ when I got on the high-road coming home.” “Never mind! we know,” interposed Mr. Savage—a tall pale man, with a hawk’s eye that nothing escaped. “Why, you were _seen_, my good fellow!—_seen_ with your own back against your horse’s, shoving him through a fence. They said if you hadn’t been the heaviest of the two, you’d have been there now.” Like almost all stout men, Struggles was the essence of good-humour. He burst into a hearty laugh, but persevered in his denial. “_Who_ saw me?” said he; “who saw me? He must have been in a right good place, though I say it.” “Parson Dove saw you,” rejoined his accuser. Whereat Mr. Sawyer felt his heart give a thump. “Parson Dove made a capital story about it. He said he never saw a horse so _badly in_ with so heavy a backer. I shouldn’t wonder if he put it in his sermon on Sunday. However, he’ll be out to-morrow—he and Miss Cissy, and the lot of ’em. I’ll appeal to him if what I say isn’t true.” Mr. Sawyer listened attentively. Then he should see Miss Dove again on the following day, and in the enjoyment of what she had confided to him was a favourite pastime. Involuntarily he found himself thinking of the black eyes, with their long eyelashes, and wondering whether she would look well in a riding-habit.