waste words.

"All of them," replied the other. "Even the hacks, saddlery, clothing,
in short, the whole plant, and without reserve--going to give it
up--at any rate for a time."

"Sorry for that," replied Bearwarden, adding, courteously, "Can I
offer you a lift? I'm going your way. Indeed, I'm going to call at
your mother's. Shall I find the ladies at home?"

"A little later you will," said honest, unsuspecting Dick, who had not
yet learned the lesson that teaches it is not worth while to trust or
mistrust any of the sex. "They'll be charmed to give you some tea. I'm
off to Croydon to look over my poor screws before they're sold, and
break it to my groom."

"That's a right good fellow," thought Lord Bearwarden, "and not a bad
connection if I was fool enough to marry the dark girl, after all." So
he called out to Dick, who had one foot on the step of his phaeton--

"I say, Stanmore, come and dine with us on the 11th; we've got two or
three hunting fellows, and we can go on together afterwards to your
mother's ball."

"All right," said Stanmore, and bowled away in the direction of
Croydon at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. If the horses were
to be sold, people might just as well be made aware of the class of
animal he kept. Though the sacrifice involved was considerable, it
would be wise to lessen it by all judicious means in his power.

_How_ great a sacrifice he scarcely felt till he arrived at his
country stables.

Dick Stanmore had been fonder of hunting than any other pursuit in the
world, ever since he went out for the first time on a Shetland pony,
and came home with his nose bleeding, at five years old.

The spin and "whizz" of his reel, the rush of a brown mountain stream
with its fringe of silver birch and stunted alder, the white side of a
leaping salmon, and the gasp of that noble fish towed deftly into the
shallows at last, afforded him a natural and unmixed pleasure. He
loved the heather dearly, the wild hillside, the keen pure air, the
steady setters, the flap and cackle of the rising grouse, the ringing
shot that laid him low, born in the purple, and fated there to die.
Nor, when corn-fields were cleared, and partridges, almost as swift as
bullets and as numerous as locusts, were driven to and fro across the
open, was his aim to be foiled by a flight little less rapid than the
shot that arrested it. With a rifle in his hand, a general knowledge
of the surrounding forest, and a couple of gi