The Man of Law murmured, "Circumstances--circumstances--I thought so!" Sir Bingo whispered to his friend the Squire, "Run out--blown up--off the course--pity--d----d pretty fellow he has been!" "A raff from the beginning!" whispered Mowbray.--"I never thought him any thing else." "I'll hold ye a poney of that, my dear, and I'll ask him." "Done, for a poney, provided you ask him in ten minutes," said the Squire; "but you dare not, Bingie--he has a d----d cross game look, with all that civil chaff of his." "Done," said Sir Bingo, but in a less confident tone than before, and with a determination to proceed with some caution in the matter.--"I have got a rouleau above, and Winterblossom shall hold stakes." "I have no rouleau," said the Squire; "but I'll fly a cheque on Meiklewham." "See it be better than your last," said Sir Bingo, "for I won't be skylarked again. Jack, my boy, you are had." "Not till the bet's won; and I shall see yon walking dandy break your head, Bingie, before that," answered Mowbray. "Best speak to the Captain before hand--it is a hellish scrape you are running into--I'll let you off yet, Bingie, for a guinea forfeit.--See, I am just going to start the tattler." "Start, and be d----d!" said Sir Bingo. "You are gotten, I assure you o' that, Jack." And with a bow and a shuffle, he went up and introduced himself to the stranger as Sir Bingo Binks. "Had--honour--write--sir," were the only sounds which his throat, or rather his cravat, seemed to send forth. "Confound the booby!" thought Mowbray; "he will get out of leading strings, if he goes on at this rate; and doubly confounded be this cursed tramper, who, the Lord knows why, has come hither from the Lord knows where, to drive the pigs through my game." In the meantime, while his friend stood with his stop-watch in his hand, with a visage lengthened under the influence of these reflections, Sir Bingo, with an instinctive tact, which self-preservation seemed to dictate to a brain neither the most delicate nor subtle in the world, premised his enquiry by some general remark on fishing and field-sports. With all these, he found Tyrrel more than passably acquainted. Of fishing and shooting, particularly, he spoke with something like enthusiasm; so that Sir Bingo began to hold him in considerable respect, and to assure himself that he could not be, or at least could not originally have been bred, the itinerant artist which he now gave himself out--and this, with the fast lapse of the time, induced him thus to address Tyrrel.--"I say, Mr. Tyrrel--why, you have been one of us--I say"---- "If you mean a sportsman, Sir Bingo--I have been, and am a pretty keen one still," replied Tyrrel. "Why, then, you did not always do them sort of things?" "What sort of things do you mean, Sir Bingo?" said Tyrrel. "I have not the pleasure of understanding you."