She beckoned: and Hal, who was foremost, and proud to show his alacrity, ran on to receive her ladyship’s orders. Now, as we have before observed, it was a sharp and windy day; and though Lady Diana Sweepstakes was actually speaking to him, and looking at him, he could not prevent his nose from wanting to be blowed: he pulled out his handkerchief and out rolled the new ball which had been given to him just before he left home, and which, according to his usual careless habits, he had stuffed into his pockets in his hurry. “Oh, my new ball!” cried he, as he ran after it. As he stopped to pick it up, he let go his hat, which he had hitherto held on with anxious care; for the hat, though it had a fine green and white cockade, had no band or string round it. The string, as we may recollect, our wasteful hero had used in spinning his top. The hat was too large for his head without this band; a sudden gust of wind blew it off. Lady Diana’s horse started and reared. She was a _famous_ horse woman, and sat him to the admiration of all beholders; but there was a puddle of red clay and water in this spot, and her ladyship’s uniform habit was a sufferer by the accident. “Careless brat!” said she, “why can’t he keep his hat upon his head?” In the meantime, the wind blew the hat down the hill, and Hal ran after it amidst the laughter of his kind friends, the young Sweepstakes, and the rest of the little regiment. The hat was lodged, at length, upon a bank. Hal pursued it: he thought this bank was hard, but, alas! the moment he set his foot upon it the foot sank. He tried to draw it back; his other foot slipped, and he fell prostrate, in his green and white uniform, into the treacherous bed of red mud. His companions, who had halted upon the top of the hill, stood laughing, spectators of his misfortune. It happened that the poor boy with the black patch upon his eye, who had been ordered by Lady Diana to “fall back” and to “keep at a distance,” was now coming up the hill; and the moment he saw our fallen hero, he hastened to his assistance. He dragged poor Hal, who was a deplorable spectacle, out of the red mud. The obliging mistress of a lodging house, as soon as she understood that the young gentleman was nephew to Mr. Gresham, to whom she had formerly let her house, received Hal, covered as he was with dirt.