Another manœuvre was not quite so innocent. Being sent, as a boy, on his father’s Arab mare, on a disagreeable journey, he dismounted outside of the town, daubed the poor mare’s face and knees with mud, and led her back home, saying that she had fallen and thrown him, and hurt him so much, that he could not go. His clothes being smeared plentifully, too, added to the probability of the story. But if Harry had any feeling, he was severely punished for his ruse, for his father, in a great rage, took the riding-whip and gave the innocent mare, who never made a false step in her life, a most unmerciful beating, and soon after sold her. This fact had reached Betty Trapps through Sylvanus Crook, and she prognosticated something awful of so cruelly artful a lad. Cruelty, however, was far from one of Harry Thorsby’s sins of manhood. He showed often very humane feeling. Thorsby was frequently at Hillmartin; and there was a belief that he aspired to the hand of a rich Miss Mountain, of Castleborough. However that might be, he soon had occasion to accompany Ann and Letty home one evening, and from that day was as frequent and familiar a visitor at the Grange. George Woodburn had seen something of him at different times in Castleborough and in the hunting-field, and there soon grew up a great friendship. They made appointments to go to the hunt together. George invited him to come and shoot with him; for, besides the game on Woodburn Farm, Sir Emanuel Clavering had given George free range on his lands; and in a while Thorsby was on the most familiar terms at the Grange. Everybody liked him. He was so intelligent and so full of the spirit of good nature and of life enjoyment. He often came and passed the night there, that he might talk with Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn, and sing a variety of popular airs with Letty, which Ann accompanied on the piano.