I believe, however, that the dread of those wide and fathomless rivers which are constantly jumped, in Warwickshire, by at least _one_ amphibious sportsman out of a daring field, and of which the width from bank to bank, according to the newspapers, is seldom less than seven-and-twenty or more than seven-and-thirty feet, was what principally terrified our friend. Accustomed to a leading championship at home, he shrank from such aquatic rivalry, and resolved that, with all its fascinations, Warwickshire at least should not have the benefit of his patronage. Once, after a steaming gulp of the stimulating fluid, the idea of Melton flashed across his mind, but it was dismissed as soon as entertained. “I’m not such a fool as I look,” quoth Mr. Sawyer; “and I don’t mean to keep eight hunters and a couple of hacks to meet a set of fellows every day, who won’t condescend to notice me unless I do as they do. Whist and dry champagne, and off to London at the first appearance of frost; ride like a butcher all day, risking twice as much neck as I do here, and then come out ‘quite the lady’ at dinner-time, and choke in a white tie, acting the part of a walking gentleman all the evening. No! Melton won’t suit my book at any price. Besides, I’d never sell my horses there; they order their hunters down from London just as they do their ’baccy’ and their breeches.” So the idea of Melton was dismissed; and a vision of Oakham, or Uppingham, or even Billesdon rose in its stead. He could not quite get those tempting pastures, with their sunny slopes and flying fences, out of his head. The same objection, however, applied to the last-mentioned places that drove him from home, viz. the want of society. That deficiency seemed to threaten him wherever he set up his staff. At Wansford he would be as solitary as in the Old Country; also he would be further from High Leicestershire than he liked. The same drawback was attached to Lutterworth, and Rugby, and Northampton. It was not till the third glass that the inspiration seized him. Dashing the end of his cigar under the grate, he rose from his easy-chair, stuck his hands in his pockets and his back to the waning fire, stamped thrice on the hearth-rug, like a necromancer summoning his familiar, and exclaimed aloud, “The very place! I wonder I never thought of it before. Strike me ugly, if I won’t go to Market Harborough!” Then he finished his brandy-and-water at a gulp, lit his candle, and tumbled up to bed, where he dreamed he was riding a rocking-horse over the Skeffington Lordship, with no one in the same field with him but the late Mr. William Scott, the vehemence of whose language was in exact proportion to the strength of the beverage which had constituted his own night-cap. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II “MR. JOB SLOPER”