Perhaps the knight saw their wonder, for the first words he said after they left the ground were, “Pixie, though small, is mettlesome, gentlemen,” (here he contrived that Pixie should himself corroborate the assertion, by executing a gambade,)—“he is diminutive, but full of spirit;—indeed, save that I am somewhat too large for an elfin horseman,” (the knight was upwards of six feet high,) “I should remind myself, when I mount him, of the Fairy King, as described by Mike Drayton:— Himself he on an earwig set, Yet scarce upon his back could get, So oft and high he did curvet, Ere he himself did settle. He made him stop, and turn, and bound, To gallop, and to trot the round. He scarce could stand on any ground, He was so full of mettle.’” “My old friend, Pixie,” said Everard, stroking the pony’s neck, “I am glad that he has survived all these bustling days—Pixie must be above twenty years old, Sir Henry?” “Above twenty years, certainly. Yes, nephew Markham, war is a whirlwind in a plantation, which only spares what is least worth leaving. Old Pixie and his old master have survived many a tall fellow, and many a great horse—neither of them good for much themselves. Yet, as Will says, an old man can do somewhat. So Pixie and I still survive.” So saying, he again contrived that Pixie should show some remnants of activity. “Still survive?” said the young Scot, completing the sentence which the good knight had left unfinished—“ay, still survive, ‘To witch the world with noble horsemanship.’” Everard coloured, for he felt the irony; but not so his uncle, whose simple vanity never permitted him to doubt the sincerity of the compliment. “Are you advised of that?” he said. “In King James’s time, indeed, I have appeared in the tilt-yard, and there you might have said— ‘You saw young Harry with his beaver up.’ “As to seeing _old_ Harry, why”—Here the knight paused, and looked as a bashful man in labour of a pun—“As to old Harry—why, you might as well see the _devil_. You take me, Master Kerneguy—the devil, you know, is my namesake—ha—ha—ha!—Cousin Everard, I hope your precision is not startled by an innocent jest?” He was so delighted with the applause of both his companions, that he recited the whole of the celebrated passage referred to, and concluded with defying the present age, bundle all its wits, Donne, Cowley, Waller, and the rest of them together, to produce a poet of a tenth part of the genius of old Will. “Why, we are said to have one of his descendants among us—Sir William D’Avenant,” said Louis Kerneguy; “and many think him as clever a fellow.” “What!” exclaimed Sir Henry—“Will D’Avenant, whom I knew in the North, an officer under Newcastle, when the Marquis lay before Hull?—why, he was an honest cavalier, and wrote good doggrel enough; but how came he a-kin to Will Shakspeare, I trow?”