After a while, too, he made matters worse, for about the end of March he did another very foolish thing. He almost consented to buy an expensive horse from Sowerby—an animal which he by no means wanted, and which, if once possessed, would certainly lead him into further trouble. A gentleman, when he has a good horse in his stable, does not like to leave him there eating his head off. If he be a gig-horse, the owner of him will be keen to drive a gig; if a hunter, the happy possessor will wish to be with a pack of hounds. “Mark,” said Sowerby to him one day, when they were out together, “this brute of mine is so fresh, I can hardly ride him; you are young and strong; change with me for an hour or so.” And then they did change, and the horse on which Robarts found himself mounted went away with him beautifully. “He’s a splendid animal,” said Mark, when they again met. “Yes, for a man of your weight. He’s thrown away upon me;—too much of a horse for my purposes. I don’t get along now quite as well as I used to do. He is a nice sort of hunter; just rising six, you know.” How it came to pass that the price of the splendid animal was mentioned between them, I need not describe with exactness. But it did come to pass that Mr. Sowerby told the parson that the horse should be his for 130_l._ “And I really wish you’d take him,” said Sowerby. “It would be the means of partially relieving my mind of a great weight.” Mark looked up into his friend’s face with an air of surprise, for he did not at the moment understand how this should be the case. “I am afraid, you know, that you will have to put your hand into your pocket sooner or later about that accursed bill—” Mark shrank as the profane word struck his ears—“and I should be glad to think that you had got something in hand in the way of value.” “Do you mean that I shall have to pay the whole sum of 500_l._?” “Oh! dear, no; nothing of the kind. But something I dare say you will have to pay: if you like to take Dandy for a hundred and thirty, you can be prepared for that amount when Tozer comes to you. The horse is dog cheap, and you will have a long day for your money.” Mark at first declared, in a quiet, determined tone, that he did not want the horse; but it afterwards appeared to him that if it were so fated that he must pay a portion of Mr. Sowerby’s debts, he might as well repay himself to any extent within his power. It would be as well perhaps that he should take the horse and sell him. It did not occur to him that by so doing he would put it in Mr. Sowerby’s power to say that some valuable consideration had passed between them with reference to this bill, and that he would be aiding that gentleman in preparing an inextricable confusion of money-matters between them. Mr. Sowerby well knew the value of this. It would enable him to make a plausible story, as he had done in that other case of Lord Lufton. “Are you going to have Dandy?” Sowerby said to him again.