the rest! It was not only in its skirts that this
wicked coat was deficient; the Corporal, who had within the last
few years thriven lustily in the inactive serenity of Grassdale, had
outgrown it prodigiously across the chest and girth; nevertheless he
managed to button it up. And thus the muscular proportions of the wearer
bursting forth in all quarters, gave him the ludicrous appearance of a
gigantic schoolboy. His wrists, and large sinewy hands, both employed
at the bridle of his hard-mouthed charger, were markedly visible; for it
was the Corporal's custom whenever he came into an obscure part of
the road, carefully to take off, and prudently to pocket, a pair
of scrupulously clean white leather gloves which smartened up his
appearance prodigiously in passing through the towns in their route.
His breeches were of yellow buckskin, and ineffably tight; his stockings
were of grey worsted, and a pair of laced boots, that reached the ascent
of a very mountainous calf, but declined any farther progress, completed
his attire.

Fancy then this figure, seated with laborious and unswerving
perpendicularity on a demi-pique saddle, ornamented with a huge pair of
well-stuffed saddle-bags, and holsters revealing the stocks of a brace
of immense pistols, the horse with its obstinate mouth thrust out, and
the bridle drawn as tight as a bowstring! its ears laid sullenly down,
as if, like the Corporal, it complained of going to Yorkshire, and its
long thick tail, not set up in a comely and well-educated arch, but
hanging sheepishly down, as if resolved that its buttocks should at
least be better covered than its master's!

And now, reader, it is not our fault if you cannot form some conception
of the physical perfections of the Corporal and his steed.

The reverie of the contemplative Bunting was interrupted by the voice of
his master calling upon him to approach.

"Well, well!" muttered he, "the younker can't expect one as close at
his heels as if we were trotting into Lunnon, which we might be at this
time, sure enough, if he had not been so damned flighty,--augh!"

"Bunting, I say, do you hear?"

"Yes, your honour, yes; this ere horse is so 'nation sluggish."

"Sluggish! why I thought he was too much the reverse, Bunting? I thought
he was one rather requiring the bridle than the spur."

"Augh! your honour, he's slow when he should not, and fast when he
should not; changes his mind from pure whim, or pure spite; new to the