The hostler or host--for he had the air of playing both parts--a big clumsy fellow, with immobile features and small eyes, looked at us thoughtfully and chewed a straw. "Well, may be," he said, at last. "I never asked him." And without more he took Smith's horse by the rein and lurched through the door into the stable; the lanthorn swinging in his hand as he did so, and faintly disclosing a long vista of empty stalls and darkling roof. As I followed, leading in my sorry mare, a horse in a distant stall whinnied loudly. "That is his hack, I suppose," said Smith; and coolly taking up the lanthorn, which the other had that moment set down, he moved through the stable in the direction whence the sound had come. The man of the house uttered something between an oath and a grunt of surprise; and letting fall the flap of the saddle which he had just raised that he might slacken the girths, he went after him. "Softly, master," he said, "every man to his----" But Smith was already standing with the lanthorn held high, gazing at a handsomely-shaped chestnut horse that pricking its ears turned a gentle eye on us and whinnied again. "Umph, not so bad," my companion said. "His horse, I suppose?" The man with the straw looked the animal over reflectively. At length with something between a grunt and a sigh, "He came on it," he said. "He won't go on it in a hurry." "Why not?" said the man, more quickly than he had yet spoken: and he looked from the horse to my companion with a hint of hostility. "Have you no eyes?" Smith answered, roughly. "The off-fore has filled; the horse is as lame as a mumper!" "Grammon!" cried the other, evidently stung. And then, "You know a deal about horses in London! And never saw one or a blade of green grass, maybe, until you came Kent way!" "As you please," Smith said, indifferently. "But my business is not with the horse but the master. So take us in, my good friend, and give us supper, for I am famished. And afterwards, if you please, we will see him." "That is as he pleases," the fellow answered sulkily. But he raised no second objection, and when we had littered down the horses he led the way into the house by a back door, and so along a passage and down a step or two, which landed us in a room with a sanded floor, a fire, and a show of warmth and comfort, as welcome as it was unexpected. Here he left us to remove our cloaks, and we presently heard him giving orders, and bustling the kitchen.