man has meditated before.

"Eh! poor old Bob!" Stephen sighed and sipped. "I can cry that with any
of you. It's worse for me to see than for you to hear of him. Wasn't I
always a friend of his, and said he was worthy to be a gentleman, many
a time? He's got the manners of a gentleman now; offs with his hat,
if there's a lady present, and such a neat way of speaking. But there,
acting's the thing, and his behaviour's beastly bad! You can't call
it no other. There's two Mr. Blancoves up at Fairly, relations of
Mrs. Lovell's--whom I'll take the liberty of calling My Beauty, and no
offence meant: and it's before her that Bob only yesterday rode up--one
of the gentlemen being Mr. Algernon, free of hand and a good seat in the
saddle, t' other's Mr. Edward; but Mr. Algernon, he's Robert Eccles's
man--up rides Bob, just as we was tying Mr. Reenard's brush to the
pommel of the lady's saddle, down in Ditley Marsh; and he bows to the
lady. Says he--but he's mad, stark mad!"

Stephen resumed his pipe amid a din of disappointment that made the
walls ring and the glasses leap.

"A little more sugar, Stephen?" said Mrs. Boulby, moving in lightly from
the doorway.

"Thank ye, mum; you're the best hostess that ever breathed."

"So she be; but how about Bob?" cried her guests--some asking whether he
carried a pistol or flourished a stick.

"Ne'er a blessed twig, to save his soul; and there's the madness written
on him;" Stephen roared as loud as any of them. "And me to see him
riding in the ring there, and knowing what the gentleman had sworn to
do if he came across the hunt; and feeling that he was in the wrong! I
haven't got a oath to swear how mad I was. Fancy yourselves in my place.
I love old Bob. I've drunk with him; I owe him obligations from since
I was a boy up'ard; I don't know a better than Bob in all England. And
there he was: and says to Mr. Algernon, 'You know what I'm come for.'
I never did behold a gentleman so pale--shot all over his cheeks as
he was, and pinkish under the eyes; if you've ever noticed a chap laid
hands on by detectives in plain clothes. Smack at Bob went Mr. Edward's
whip."

"Mr. Algernon's," Stephen was corrected.

"Mr. Edward's, I tell ye--the cousin. And right across the face. My
Lord! it made my blood tingle."

A sound like the swish of a whip expressed the sentiments of that
assemblage at the Pilot.

"Bob swallowed it?"

"What else could he do, the fool? He had nothing to help him but