“He said I'd have no luck with him,” muttered Sewell, now in his misery,--“and, confound the fellow! he was right. No, I can't go back to look at his empty stall. It would half kill me.” It was very real grief, all this; he was as thoroughly heart-sore as it was possible for him to be. He sorrowed for what nothing in his future life could replace to him; and this is a very deep sorrow. Trafford's misfortune was so much the origin and cause of his own disaster that he actually thought of him with bitterness. The man who could make Crescy balk! What fate could be too hard for him? Nor was he quite easy in his mind about that passage in his wife's letter stating that men would not take their bets. Was this meant as reflecting upon him? Was it a censure on him for making Trafford ride a horse beneath his weight? “They get up some stupid cry of that sort,” muttered he, “as if I am not the heaviest loser of all. I lost a horse that was worth a score of Traffords.” When dressed, Sewell went down to the garden and lit his cigar. His sorrow had grown calmer, and he began to think that in the new life before him he should have had to give up horses and sport of every kind. “I must make my book now on this old fellow, and get him to make me his heir. He cares little for his son, and he can be made to care just as little for his granddaughter. That's the only game open to me,--a dreary life it promises to be, but it's better than a jail.” The great large wilderness of a garden, stretching away into an orchard at the end, was in itself a place to suggest sombre thoughts,--so silent and forsaken did it all appear. The fruit lay thick on the ground uncared for; the artichokes, grown to the height of shrubs, looked monsters of uncouthness; and even in the alleys flower-seeds had fallen and given birth to flowers, which struggled up through the gravel and hung their bright petals over the footway. There was in the neglect, the silence, the un-cared-for luxuriance of the place, all that could make a moody man moodier; and as he knocked off the great heads of the tall hollyhocks, he thought, and even said aloud, “This is about as much amusement as such a spot offers.” “Oh no, not so bad as that,” said a laughing voice; and Lucy peeped over a laurel-hedge with a rake in her hand, and seemed immensely amused at his discomfiture. [Illustration: 302] “Where are you?--I mean, how is one to come near you?” said he, trying to laugh, but not successfully. “Go round yonder by the fish-pond, and you 'll find a wicket. This is _my_ garden, and I till it myself.” “So!” said he, entering a neat little enclosure, with beds of flowers and flowering shrubs, “this is your garden?” “Yes,--what do you think of it?” “It's very pretty,--it 's very nice. I should like it larger, perhaps.” “So would I; but, being my own gardener, I find it quite big enough.” “Why doesn't the Chief give you a gardener?--he's rich enough, surely.”