rfect animal. I like 'em to see; I like 'em to
have four legs; and I like 'em to have a little wind. I don't much
mind anything else."

"By Jove you're about right," said Calder Jones. The reader will
therefore readily see that Mr Maxwell the banker reigned as king in
that club.

Vavasor had sent two horses on in charge of Bat Smithers, and
followed on a pony about fourteen hands high, which he had ridden as
a cover hack for the last four years. He did not start till near ten,
but he was able to catch Bat with his two horses about a mile and a
half on that side of Edgehill. "Have you managed to come along pretty
clean?" the master asked as he came up with his servant.

"They be the most beastly roads in all England," said Bat, who always
found fault with any county in which he happened to be located. "But
I'll warrant I'm cleaner than most on 'em. What for any county should
make such roads as them I never could tell."

"The roads about there are bad, certainly;--very bad. But I suppose
they would have been better had Providence sent better materials. And
what do you think of the brown horse, Bat?"

"Well, sir." He said no more, and that he said with a drawl.

"He's as fine an animal to look at as ever I put my eye on," said
George.

"He's all that," said Bat.

"He's got lots of pace too."

"I'm sure he has, sir."

"And they tell me you can't beat him at jumping."

"They can mostly do that, sir, if they're well handled."

"You see he's a deal over my weight."

"Yes, he is, Mr Vavasor. He is a fourteen stoner."

"Or fifteen," said Vavasor.

"Perhaps he may, sir. There's no knowing what a 'orse can carry till
he's tried."

George asked his groom no more questions, but felt sure that he had
better sell his brown horse if he could. Now I here protest that
there was nothing specially amiss with the brown horse. Towards the
end of the preceding season he had overreached himself and had been
lame, and had been sold by some owner with more money than brains who
had not cared to wait for a cure. Then there had gone with him a bad
character, and a vague suspicion had attached itself to him, as there
does to hundreds of horses which are very good animals in their way.
He had come thus to Tattersall's, and Vavasor had bought him cheap,
thinking that he might make money of him, from his form and action.
He had found nothing amiss with him,--nor, indeed, had Bat Smithers.
But his character went with him, and ther