II.

A SHORT-TEMPERED PERSON--GRAVITATION--THE BEST ENDOWMENT--MARY
FULCHER--FAIR DEALING--HORSE-WITCHERY--DARIUS AND HIS GROOM--THE JOCKEY'S
TRICKS--THE TWO CHARACTERS--THE JOCKEY'S SONG.

The jockey, having taken off his coat and advanced towards me, as I have
stated in the preceding chapter, exclaimed, in an angry tone, "This is
the third time you have interrupted me in my tale, Mr. Rye; I passed over
the two first times with a simple warning, but you will now please to get
up and give me the satisfaction of a man."

"I am really sorry," said I, "if I have given you offence, but you were
talking of our English habit of bestowing nicknames, and I could not
refrain from giving a few examples tending to prove what a very ancient
habit it is."

"But you interrupted me," said the jockey, "and put me out of my tale,
which you had no right to do; and as for your examples, how do you know
that I wasn't going to give some as old or older than yourn? Now stand
up, and I'll make an example of you."

"Well," said I, "I confess it was wrong in me to interrupt you, and I ask
your pardon."

"That won't do," said the jockey, "asking pardon won't do."

"Oh," said I, getting up, "if asking pardon does not satisfy you, you are
a different man from what I considered you."

But here the Hungarian, also getting up, interposed his tall form and
pipe between us, saying in English, scarcely intelligible, "Let there be
no dispute! As for myself, I am very much obliged to the young man of
Horncastle for his interruption, though he has told me that one of his
dirty townsmen called me 'Long-stockings.' By Isten! there is more
learning in what he has just said, than in all the verdammt English
histories of Thor and Tzernebock I ever read."

"I care nothing for his learning," said the jockey. "I consider myself
as good a man as he, for all his learning; so stand out of the way, Mr.
Sixfoot-eleven, or . . ."

"I shall do no such thing," said the Hungarian. "I wonder you are not
ashamed of yourself. You ask young man to drink champagne with you, you
make him dronk, he interrupt you with very good sense; he ask your
pardon, yet you not . . ."

"Well," said the jockey, "I am satisfied. I am rather a short-tempered
person, but I bear no malice. He is, as you say, drinking my wine, and
has perhaps taken a drop too much, not being used to such high liquor;
but one doesn't like to be put out of one's tale, more especially when
one