nts, or ships, or homes and families (according
to the head-quarters of their life), while others put their coats on
to ride for all the doctors in the county, who should fetch back
the Admiral to this world, that he might tell everybody what to do.
Scudamore stood with his urgent despatches in the large well-candled
hall, and vainly desired to deliver them. "Send for the Marquis,"
suggested some one.

Lord Southdown came, without being sent for. "I shall take this duty
upon myself," he said, "as Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Captain
Stubbard, as commander of the nearest post, will come with me and read
these orders. Gentlemen, see that your horses are ready, and have all
of the Admiral's saddled. Captain Scudamore, you have discharged your
trust, and doubtless ridden far and hard. My orders to you are a bottle
of wine and a sirloin of roast beef at once."

For the sailor was now in very low condition, weary, and worried, and in
want of food. Riding express, and changing horses twice, not once had he
recruited the inner man, who was therefore quite unfit to wrestle with
the power of sudden grief. When he heard of the Admiral's death, he
staggered as if a horse had stumbled under him, and his legs being stiff
from hard sticking to saddle, had as much as they could do to hold him
up. Yet he felt that he could not do the right thing now, he could not
go and deal with the expedient victuals, neither might he dare intrude
upon the ladies now; so he went out to comfort himself by attending to
the troubles of his foundered horse, and by shedding unseen among the
trees the tears which had gathered in his gentle eyes.

According to the surest law of nature, that broken-down animal had been
forgotten as soon as he was done with. He would have given his four
legs--if he could legally dispose of them--for a single draught of
sweet delicious rapturous ecstatic water; but his bloodshot eyes sought
vainly, and his welted tongue found nothing wet, except the flakes of
his own salt foam. Until, with the help of the moon, a sparkle (worth
more to his mind than all the diamonds he could draw)--a sparkle of the
purest water gleamed into his dim eyes from the distance. Recalling to
his mind's eyes the grand date of his existence when he was a colt, and
had a meadow to himself, with a sparkling river at the end of it, he set
forth in good faith, and, although his legs were weary, "negotiated"--as
the sporting writers say--the distance bet