ck with Evan's,
had discovered it to be dismally inferior.

'Oh, confound those bellows you keep blowing!' he exclaimed. 'I wish to
be decently polite, Harrington, but you annoy me. Excuse me, pray, but
the most unexampled case of a lucky beggar that ever was known--and to
hear him panting and ready to whimper!--it's outrageous. You've only to
put up your name, and there you are--an independent gentleman! By Jove!
this isn't such a dull world. John Raikes! thou livest in times. I
feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington. Now listen to me.
Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the
supper. Humour his whim--he won't have it. All Fallow field is paid to
keep him secret; I know it for a fact. I plied my rustic friends every
night. "Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o' yer
pryin's and peerin's among we!" That's my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead.
And that old boy knows more than he will tell. I saw his cunning old eye
on-cock. Be silent, Harrington. Let discretion be the seal of thy luck.'

'You can reckon on my silence,' said Evan. 'I believe in no such folly.
Men don't do these things.'

'Ha!' went Mr. Raikes contemptuously.

Of the two he was the foolisher fellow; but quacks have cured
incomprehensible maladies, and foolish fellows have an instinct for
eccentric actions.

Telling Jack to finish the wine, Evan rose to go.

'Did you order the horse to be fed?'

'Did I order the feeding of the horse?' said Jack, rising and yawning.
'No, I forgot him. Who can think of horses now?'

'Poor brute!' muttered Evan, and went out to see to him.

The ostler had required no instructions to give the horse a feed of
corn. Evan mounted, and rode out of the yard to where Jack was standing,
bare-headed, in his old posture against the pillar, of which the shade
had rounded, and the evening sun shone full on him over a black cloud.
He now looked calmly gay.

'I 'm laughing at the agricultural Broadmead!' he said: "'None o' yer
pryin's and peerin's!" He thought my powers of amusing prodigious. "Dang
'un, he do maak a chap laugh!" Well, Harrington, that sort of homage
isn't much, I admit.'

Raikes pursued: 'There's something in a pastoral life, after all.'

'Pastoral!' muttered Evan. 'I was speaking of you at Beckley, and hope
when you're there you won't make me regret my introduction of you. Keep
your mind on old Cudford's mutton-bone.'

'I perfectly understood you,' said Jac