enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a
little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he
could to a coppice on his right hand, through which it
occurred to him that he could make his way to Batherley
without danger of encountering any member of the hunt. His
first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home
forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand,
and along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question
to him as to other spirited young men of his kind. He did
not much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he
had to offer him at the same time the resource of Marner's
money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the
notion of making a fresh debt, from which he himself got the
smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long:
Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The
idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the
want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to
make his appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at
Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of
stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience
to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and
a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was
ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or
three small coins his fore-finger encountered there were of
too pale a color to cover that small debt, without payment
of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do
any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according to
the direction in which the run had brought him, he was not
so very much farther from home than he was from Batherley;
but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was
only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception that
there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented
course of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock, and
a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the
better. He remembered having crossed the road and seen the
finger-post only a little while before Wildfire broke down;
so, buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his
hunting-whip compactly round the handle, and rapping the
tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if to assure