"No, Mangan, I'll be damned if I go out to make a fool of myself and the hounds!" he said, when reproached by the Doctor for staying at home. "The sooner I'm put down like an old hound, the better!" Dr. Mangan had been equal to the occasion, and had assured Dick that Bill Kirby was "lost altogether" for want of his counsels, and that the whole field were saying the Major was the only man to show sport, and that he knew the way a fox'd run, as well as if he was inside him! "In company with another old gander, I suppose!" says poor Dick, with tears in his eyes, being both moved and cheered by his own jest. The Doctor's presence was partly a reassurance and partly a menace, to Major Dick. There had been, from time to time, further opportunities for the investment of the Doctor's "spare ha'pence" in "something solid and safe, like land." Aunt Bessie Cantwell's money, for instance, had, on her demise, all come Dr. Mangan's way. There was no need for the Major to think there was any obligation, he might call it a mutual advantage, if he liked, anyhow, why shouldn't the money go where it was wanted? The security was all right. "Oh yes," says Dick, "that's right enough, and whenever I can come to terms with the tenants--" "No hurry!" the Big Doctor would answer; "five per cent. is good enough for me!" The Doctor, alone of all Dick's friends, sympathised with Major Talbot-Lowry in the matter of the tenants, and he condemned the conduct of his own son, Barty, as heartily as did Dick that of his nephew, in their dealings with the Coppinger estate. "'Tis impossible to hold these young fellows," he said, severely, while he and Dick strolled slowly round the weedy flower garden of Mount Music, one sunny August afternoon, four years after Larry's coming of age; "You may be sure that I pointed out to Barty that he and Larry were playing the deuce with you over the sale, but what could I do? After all, Barty had to obey the orders he got from his boss!" "I know, I know," responded Dick. "My dear fellow, I don't blame _you_, my own cousin's a different pair of shoes! Richard may fight it out with the tenants when I'm gone. He'll have to marry money. Why, my God! If I sold at these fellows' price, the property would hardly clear itself! At least," Dick cleared his throat and picked himself up with a guilty jerk, as does a horse who stumbles from carelessness, "at least, it would cover the charges, and--and the mortgages of course--but not much more--" Dr. Mangan looked straight in front of him, as became a mortgagee of delicate feeling, and said with some elaborateness, "No man need be anxious about money whose security is Irish land, nowadays. 'Tis daily appressiating in value." "To every man except the owner!" Dick struck hard with his ash-plant at a tall weed as he spoke, and decapitated it with the grace and dexterity of the old cavalryman. He put force enough into the cut to have felled a tougher foe.