rom Pool, he rarely afterwards emerged from
its seclusion. It was not _Time_, we shall presently see--he was indeed
but four-and-forty years of age--that had bowed his figure, thinned his
whitening hair, and banished from his countenance all signs of healthy,
cheerful life. This, too, appeared to be the opinion of the gossips of
the village, who, congregated, as usual, to witness the arrival and
departure of the coach, indulged, thought Mr. Symonds, who was an inside
passenger proceeding on to Otley, in remarkably free-and-easy
commentaries upon the past, present, and future of the new-comer.

"I mind him well," quavered an old white-haired man. "It's just
three-and-twenty years ago last Michaelmas. I remember it because of the
hard frost two years before, that young Jim Hornby left Otley to go to
Lunnon: just the place, I'm told, to give the finishing polish to such a
miscreant as he seemed likely to be. He was just out of his time to old
Hornby, his uncle, the grocer."

"He that's left him such heaps of money?"

"Ay, boy, the very same, though he wouldn't have given him or any one
else a cheese-paring whilst he lived. This one is a true chip of the
old block, I'll warrant. You noticed that he rode outside, bitter cold
as it is?".

"Surely, Gaffer Hicks. But do ye mind what it was he went off in such a
skurry for? Tom Harris was saying last night at the Horse-Shoe, it was
something concerning a horse-race or a young woman; he warn't quite
sensible which."

"I can't say," rejoined the more ancient oracle, "that I quite mind all
the ups and downs of it. Henry Burton horse-whipped him on the Doncaster
race-course, _that_ I know; but whether it was about Cinderella that had,
they said, been tampered with the night before the race, or Miss
Elizabeth Grainsford, whom Burton married a few weeks afterwards, I
can't, as Tom Harris says, quite clearly remember."

"Old Hornby had a heavy grip of Burton's farm for a long time before he
died, they were saying yesterday at Otley. The sheepskins will now no
doubt be in the nephew's strong box."

"True, lad; and let's hope Master Burton will be regular with his
payments; for if not, there's Jail and Ruin for him written in capital
letters on yon fellow's cast-iron phiz, I can see."

The random hits of these Pool gossips, which were here interrupted by
the departure of the coach, were not very wide of the mark. James Hornby,
it was quite true, had been publicly horsewhipped tw