of surprise at our part of the
table; and Dutton was rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for
parting with his favourite hunting mare.

'The truth is, friends,' said Dutton at last, 'I mean to give up
farming, and'----

'Gie up farmin'!' broke in half-a-dozen voices. 'Lord!'

'Yes; I don't like it. I shall buy a commission in the army. There'll
be a chance against Boney, now; and it's a life I'm fit for.'

The farmers looked completely agape at this announcement; but making
nothing of it, after silently staring at Dutton and each other, with
their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths, till they had gone
out, stretched their heads simultaneously across the table towards the
candles, relit their pipes, and smoked on as before.

'Then, perhaps, Mr Dutton,' said a young man in a smartly-cut
velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, who had hastily left his
seat further down the table--'perhaps you will sell the double Manton,
and Fanny and Slut?'

'Yes; at a price.'

Prices were named; I forget now the exact sums, but enormous prices, I
thought, for the gun and the dogs, Fanny and Slut. The bargain was
eagerly concluded, and the money paid at once. Possibly the buyer had
a vague notion, that a portion of the vender's skill might come to him
with his purchases.

'You be in 'arnest, then, in this fool's business, James Dutton,'
observed a farmer gravely. 'I be sorry for thee; but as I s'pose the
lease of Ash Farm will be parted with; why---- John, waiter, tell
Master Hurst at the top of the table yonder, to come this way.'

Master Hurst, a well-to-do, highly respectable-looking, and rather
elderly man, came in obedience to the summons, and after a few words
in an under-tone with the friend that had sent for him, said: 'Is this
true, James Dutton?'

'It is true that the lease and stock of Ash Farm are to be sold--at a
price. You, I believe, are in want of such a concern for the young
couple, just married.'

'Well, I don't say I might not be a customer, if the price were
reasonable.'

'Let us step into a private room, then,' said Dutton rising. 'This is
not a place for business of that kind. Sharp,' he added, _sotto voce_,
'come with us; I may want you.'

I had listened to all this with a kind of stupid wonderment, and I
now, mechanically as it were, got up and accompanied the party to
another room.

The matter was soon settled. Five hundred pounds for the lease--ten
years unexpired--of As