ustus
Scarborough, and immediately not a man in the county will speak to me. I
say that that is enough to break a man's heart,--not the injury done
which a man should bear, but the injustice of the doing. Who wants his
beggarly allowance! He can do as he likes about his own money. I shall
never ask him for his money. But that he should tell such a lie as this
about the county is more than a man can endure."

"What was it that did happen?" asked Joshua.

"The man met me in the street when he was drunk, and he struck at me and
was insolent. Of course I knocked him down. Who wouldn't have done the
same? Then his brother found him somewhere, or got hold of him, and sent
him out of the country, and says that I had held my tongue when I left
him in the street. Of course I held my tongue. What was Mountjoy to me?
Then Augustus has asked me sly questions, and accuses me of lying
because I did not choose to tell him everything. It all comes out of
that."

Here they had reached the rectory, and Harry, after seeing that the
horses were properly supplied with gruel, took himself and his ill-humor
up-stairs to his own chamber. But Joshua had a word or two to say to one
of the inmates of the rectory.

He felt that it would be improper to ride his horse home without giving
time to the animal to drink his gruel, and therefore made his way into
the little breakfast-parlor, where Molly had a cup of tea and buttered
toast ready for him. He of course told her first of the grand occurrence
of the day,--how the two packs of hounds had mixed themselves together,
how violently the two masters had fallen out and had nearly flogged each
other, how Mr. Harkaway had sworn horribly,--who had never been heard to
swear before,--how a final attempt had been made to seize a second
covert, and how, at last, it had come to pass that he had distinguished
himself. "Do you mean to say that you absolutely rode over the
unfortunate man?" asked Molly.

"I did. Not that the man had the worst of it,--or very much the worse.
There we were both down, and the two horses, all in a heap together."

"Oh, Joshua, suppose you had been kicked!"

"In that case I should have been--kicked."

"But a kick from an infuriated horse!"

"There wasn't much infuriation about him. The man had ridden all that
out of the beast."

"You are sure to laugh at me, Joshua, because I think what terrible
things might have happened to you. Why do you go putting yourself so
forward