A young man in a plain gray livery and irreproachable top-boots stood contemplatively regarding the train as it came into the station. He touched his hat at sight of Miss Palliser, and she remembered him as Miss Wendover's groom. 'Any luggage, ma'am?' he asked, as she alighted; as if it were as likely as not that she had come without any. 'There is one box, Needham. That is all besides these things.' Her bonnet-box--frail ark of woman's pride--was in the carriage, with a wrap and an umbrella, and her dressing bag. 'All right, ma'am. If you'll show me which it is I'll tell the porter to bring it. I've got the cobs outside.' 'Oh, I am so sorry,--how good of Miss Wendover!' 'They wanted exercise, 'um. They was a bit above themselves, and the drive has done 'em good.' Miss Wendover's cherished brown cobs, animals which in the eyes of Kingthorpe were almost as sacred as that Egyptian beast whose profane slaughter was more deeply felt than the nation's ruin--to think that these exalted brutes should have been sent to fetch that debased creature, a salaried companion. But then Aunt Betsy was never like anyone else. Needham took the cobs across the hills at a pace which he would have highly disapproved in any other driver. Had Miss Wendover so driven them, he would have declared she was running them off their legs. But in his own hands, Brimstone and Treacle--so called to mark their difference of disposition--could come to no harm. 'They wanted it,' he told Miss Palliser, when she remarked upon their magnificent pace, 'they never got half work enough.' The hills looked lovely, even in this wintry season--yew trees and grass gave no token of November's gloom. The sky was bright and blue, a faint mist hung like a veil over the city in the valley, the low Norman tower of the cathedral, the winding river, and flat fertile meadows--a vision very soon left far in the rear of Brimstone and Treacle. 'How handsome they look!' said Ida, admiring their strong, bold crests, like war-horses in a Ninevite picture, their shining black-brown coats. 'Is Brimstone such a very vicious horse?' 'Vicious, mum? no, not a bit of vice about him,' answered Needham promptly, 'but he's a rare difficult horse to groom. There ain't none but me as dares touch him. I let the boy try it once, and I found the poor lad half an hour afterwards standing in the middle of the big loose box like a statter, while Brimstone raced round him as hard as he could go, just like one of them circus horses. The boy dursn't stir. If he'd moved a limb, Brimstone 'ud have 'molished him.' 'What an awful horse! But isn't that viciousness?' 'Lor', no mum. That ain't vice,' answered the groom smiling amusedly at the lady's ignorance. Vice is crib-biting, or jibbing, or boring or summat o' that kind. Brimstone is a game hoss, and he's got a bit of a temper, but he ain't got no vice.'