t Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion
in a street shaded with coal-dust, and dine in a room furnished with a
dirt-enamelled map of the county, a bad portrait of an anonymous horse
in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth with legs and cravat, and
various leaden spittoons, might have seemed a hard business, but for
the sustaining power of nomenclature which determined that the pursuit
of these things was "gay."

In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness which
offered play to the imagination. Costume, at a glance, gave him a
thrilling association with horses (enough to specify the hat-brim which
took the slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of bending
downwards), and nature had given him a face which by dint of Mongolian
eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin seeming to follow his hat-brim in a
moderate inclination upwards, gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable
sceptical smile, of all expressions the most tyrannous over a
susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to
create the reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund
of humor--too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable
crust,--and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate
enough to know it, would be _the_ thing and no other. It is a
physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been more
powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of horses.

Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock, turned
sideways in his saddle, and watched the horse's action for the space of
three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle, and
remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical than it
had been.

The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective.
A mixture of passions was excited in Fred--a mad desire to thrash
Horrock's opinion into utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain the
advantage of his friendship. There was always the chance that Horrock
might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.

Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth his
ideas without economy. He was loud, robust, and was sometimes spoken
of as being "given to indulgence"--chiefly in swearing, drinking, and
beating his wife. Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious
man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest of the arts, and might
have a