“Like a bull-dog of course”—interrupted Heneage.
“But to resume; at every second sentence, he introduced
`seized like a bull-dog!' `dragged in, like a
bull-dog!' 'till at last, I could stand it no longer, but
shouted `go it! go it, like a bull-dog!'—I wish you
could have heard the roar; grave as the subject was, it
lasted full five minutes, since that time, I do every thing
`like a bull-dog!”

“Excellent! excellent! Fred,” cried Archer, laughing
furiously. “I shall do every thing `like a bull-dog,'
too. The word must be introduced and rendered
current. But come, come, we must lose no more
time. Take another glass of sherry, and let us be off.”

But they were not destined to get under way, quite
so quickly, for just as they were about to rise from
their seats, the hard gallop of a horse was heard,
coming across the grass field behind them, and before
they had time to turn their heads, a superb chesnut
thoroughbred with a bang tail, came flying over the
fence not ten yards distant from their table cloth, with
a loud and cheery whoop of its rider.

“That must be Frank, or the devil!” exclaimed
Harry, as he looked up from the glass which he was
filling—“nobody else would come tearing over fences
in that fashion—”

“`Like a bull-dog!”'—interrupted Fred—“But it
is he, sure enough. How are you, old fellow?”

“And what the deuce brought you here to-day?
We did not look for you before Friday at the earliest.”

“Why, look you here, old fellow,” answered
Forester, “when I found that Master Fred had come
up to give the birds a turn, which you have promised
all the season to save for me, I thought that, if I did
not come and look after them myself, I should be
minus at the end of the week. So I packed up my
trunk, and sent it by the Erie railroad. Saddled
Bright Selim, and went on board the Highlander with

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

him, last night at five o'clock—slept at Newburgh,
and galloped over hither with my gun slung upon my
shoulder, in shooting toggery as you see me. I only
stopped to ask Tom Draw to dine with you to-day—
which I found you had ordered already—took my
bitters with him, would not stay for breakfast, and am
as hungry as—”

“A bull-dog!” interrupted Heneage again, whereat
Timothy, who thought the repetition very funny, burst
into a furious laugh.

“I don't see the fun of everything being like a
bull-dog!”

“Everything is like a bull-dog, Frank”—said Harry.

“Is it? I am agreeable”—said Forester, who had
seated himself by the table cloth, which the others had
deserted, and had already finished four large slices of
tongue, two pounds of bread, and half a pint of sherry—
“some more tongue, Timothy, and another glass
of wine—“very agreeable I am—and I dare say everything
is like a bull-dog; but I can't see why, for my
part.”

“Specially Massa Hargreave! Frank”—said Archer,
in a ludicrous nigger tone; and as soon as he spoke
Forester, who never missed anything absurd, remembered
the point.

“Oh! yes! yes!” he replied—“was not that good.
I suppose he will be called Bull-dog Hargreaves
always now!”

“It is a great pity he had not lived in the time of
Cromwell that he might have been called at full length
`Seized-and-dragged-before-the-world-like-a-bull-dog
Hargreaves.'—That is a thoroughly puritanic and very
uphonious name”—said Heneage.

“Oh d—n Hargreaves! come along”—said Harry,
who was getting tired of this, and had taken up his
gun.

“I'm perfectly agreeable” said Forester, emptying

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

the last drop of sherry—“so, d—n Hargreaves!—
Have you the least objection, Fred?”

“Not the slightest”—answered Heneage—“except
that I think he has d—ned himself enough in all conscience.”

“Well! God bless Measter Goolley any ways”—
interposed Tim—“He desarves 't, joost for dragging
oot t' bull-dog.”

“Well said Tim!” cried Harry Archer, “and now,
look here! pack up the traps and direct Dick to the
end of the crab tree swamp. Hang all those birds up
smoothly by the loops in the game-bag, put it into the
wagon, and then follow us down the woodside.”

“Like a bull-dog!”

p145-073 CHAPTER. IV. AFTER LUNCHEON.

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

Well, lads, and what have you done this morning,
in the way of sport?” asked Forester, as they walked
across the grass field, toward the covert.

“Twenty-two cock, and three ruffed grouse,”
answered Archer.

“By George! that is good work. How long have
you been at it? How did Fred manage them?”

“Since eight o'clock”—said Harry—“and devilish
well, I assure you; to answer both your questions in a
breath.—Fred has shot better than ever I saw a new
one, in this country.”

“No, no, Harry”—answered Heneage—“I tailored
them very badly for a while.”

“I cannot call that tailoring”—said Archer—
“Henry Toler himself could not kill every bird in that
brake; and when that is said, it is as much as saying
that an ordinarily good shot would do well to kill
half—and, to tell you the truth, I did not expect to see
you kill one in five; seeing that this is your first day.
But, after that bad bit, you shot like a workman. If
you improve in proportion, you will give both Frank
and myself a tug to beat you next season.”

“Who is Henry Toler?”—asked Fred Heneage.

“The best shot in America!” said Frank Forester.

“And I think, that means in the world,” added
Harry quietly.

“The devil you do?” asked Heneage—“Do you
think the best shots here can beat our best shots at
home?”

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

“I think they can beat our best shots here, at
American game and in American covert.—The latter,
as you know already, is harder than English covert;
and, if we find quail, as I think we shall, in the crab-tree
swamp, you will make acquaintance with the hardest
bird to kill, that flies on earth.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes! indeed.”

“Did you ever shoot with Henry Toler? can he
beat you?”

“No. Yes.”

“Did you ever see him shoot?”

“Once—Pigeon from the trap. He would shoot
No. 8 shot, which is three sizes too small, and they
figged all his birds.—In spite of that, he killed every
bird. But they fell out of bounds, and he was beaten.”

“Did you ever see him shoot game?”

“Never Mr. Cross Examiner.”

“How then do you know that he can beat you.”

“Because I have shot with half a dozen men, whom
I can barely beat, or whom I cannot beat, and they all
admit that Henry is their master, not their match.”

“That is a reason?—Is he a good fellow?”

“Wait, 'till you meet him, with your knees under
my mahogany.”

“I am answered.”

“As how?”—asked Frank Forester.

“Because Harry must be marvellously changed, if
any but good fellows put their knees under his mahogany.”

“He is marvellously changed then—don't you
know that Lord George says the only reason he and I,
and Tom Hutchinson, and Howe, and Bill Porter, like
one another, is because we are such a set of d—d disagreeable
beasts!—But halloa! look at that—the dogs
are all standing.”

“By George! so they are. It is quail too! They

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

are basking in the bog grass by the fence side, and will
lie like stones.”

The ground, which they had now gained and which
was Harry's chosen spot of spots, was a long range of
boggy meadows, skirting the streamlet down which
they had been shooting all the forenoon, intersected
here and there with drains, and interspersed with lines
of willows, thick thorny brakes all overrun with cat
briars, and clumps of evergreen cedar. The margin
of the brook was lined on the hither side by a broad
verge of thick alder coppice, and on the farther by a
wide tract of wet and swampy woodland.

At a little distance from the stream the ground
became firm and the soil dry, and here among the tussocks—
the long grass of which, even in the heaviest
storms, bears the snow up from the ground, forming
long galleries under which the quail live unharmed
upon the seeds and berries that have fallen from
above—bevies are in almost all seasons very abundant.

In this dry meadow land, where not a bush was to
be seen, within a hundred yards, the three dogs were
standing, as stiff as graven images.

The black dog, which had found the birds, was
close upon them. His nose was pointed directly downward—
his head cocked knowingly on one side—his
full hazel eye, glaring with that peculiar expression,
which tells how hotly the maddening scent is streaming
up into the sensitive nostrils of the sagacious brute—
his lip covered with slaver, so eager was his excitement—
his hind leg lifted, and his fine silky flag erect,
and stiff as it were carved in iron.

The red setter Sancho, who stood next, and but a
short space behind him, caught but a little of the hot
steam which so wondrously excited his companion; to
a sportman's eye his attitude told everything.

He had approached as nearly as he dared, and with
his whole body stretched out to the utmost, his

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

snakelike neck elongated, his eye fixed, and his nostrils
audibly snuffing up the tainted air, he stood rigid as
his mate, but not erect as he—for the deep soft fringe
of his belly was within an inch or two of the withered
herbage; his fore leg was bent; and his red stern, with
its snow white tag, stretched out nearly into one line
with head neck and body, which all seemed to be
drawn forth to their utmost length, as if to near the
game as much as possible without moving forward.

The third dog, the liver and white spotted setter, was
backing thirty yards at least from the other two, having
been quartering his ground toward them, when they
came on their point.

“How do you know that they are quail, Harry?”—
enquired Heneage, as they stepped hastily forward to
the tuft of higher grass by which the dogs were
standing.

“By the nature of the ground, Fred. It is too dry
to hold cock there!—and partly by the attitude and
action of the dogs. I can generally guess very correctly
what bird is going to get up, where I can see the dogs
fully. These little chaps are close under Jem Crow's
nose, and Sancho has a snuff of them too.—They will
lie, as I said before, like stones; and though they offer
a very easy shot in the open, they make such a flutter
and hubbub as they get up, and they get up so closely,
that I would bet ten to one you do not kill a double
shot, be as cool as you may. It requires more practice
to get used to them, than to any bird I know.”

By this time, they had come up to the very place
where the dogs were standing; and Frank, at a gesture
of Harry's which he well understood, stepped forward
a few paces to the right, in order, if possible, to
head the birds off from the thorny covert on the banks
of the rivulet.

“Now, Fred, look out,” said Archer, “I will flush
them,” and with the words he walked forward a little

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

way, the black dog still keeping his point, and the red
setter backing him, steady and true as steel.

So hard did the birds lie, that Archer was actually
abreast of Jem Crow's nose, yet not a quail had risen.

Turning his head, he waved Heneage forward, and
as he came up, uttered a low whistle.

Jem pricked his ears, and the silky hair bristled a
little on his back, but he would not stir.

The red dog crawled up on his belly, until his nose
was parallel with that of his companion, and then stood
immovable.

Meanwhile the liver and white setter Chance, stole up
at a slow and guarded trot, as if he were treading upon
eggs, until he also struck the scent, a little way behind
the others, when he came to a full point also, though
less resolutely than the two leaders.

“Whe-ew! Hold up good lads!—Hold up!”

And thus exhorted, but most reluctantly and gingerly,
all the three crawled about two paces forward—
and again stood dead—and no words could induce
them to advance another foot.

“Is not that pretty, Heneage?”—said Archer—
“What can be steadier than that? Now I will flush
them”—and, suiting the action to the word, he stepped
up briskly to the dog's noses, trampling the long grass
noisily down under his heavy boots—

Whir—Whir-r-r-r-r! Impeding one another, for an
instant, crossing, and fluttering their wings with rapid
and tumultuous haste, a large and well-grown bevy
rose under his very feet; and, as is not unfrequently
the case, dividing into two squads, wheeled to the
right and left, one to the coppice across Forester's face,
the other and larger division to the open meadow before
Heneage.

Well warned as he was, and confident of his coolness,
Heneage discharged his first barrel missing handsomely
before the farthest bird was ten paces from him;

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

and even Archer, cool old hand as he was, half raised
his gun with a tremulous and uncertain hand to his
shoulder.—It was but a momentary impulse, however,
and he looked steadily on until Heneage fired his
second shot, killing the old cock of the bevy neatly at
twenty yards—then choosing two birds in the act of
crossing, he cocked his gun, as he raised it, pulling his
trigger as it reached his shoulder; and then, before the
two birds, for the charge cut down both, had reached the
ground, easing the but a trifle, cocked and discharged
his remaining barrel, knocking a third bird over at
long distance.

Then, dropping the but of his piece to the ground,
he raised his hand to shade his eyes from the strong
sunlight, and cried, “mark—mark them, Fred; they
will all drop in the open meadow, where we can get
every bird.—There”—he continued, “three are down
by that bunch of rushes—and—that is it, I have them!—
the whole lot on this side of the drain by the willow
hedge. Now, Frank, what have you done?”

“Knocked down a brace, though one, I fear, is only
wing-tipped—and marked five or six down into the
thorns beside the blighted cedar.”

“Hold a moment, then, till I have loaded. If I am
not mistaken, there is another quail left here under
Jem's nose—he seems to be pointing, though he is
down to charge!”

And in fact when you looked closely at the face of
the sagacious brute, as he lay close, where, with his fellows,
he had couched instant, without waiting orders,
at the reports above his head, it was evident that
his master had not miscalculated his intelligent
meaning.

His eye was still set—his brow knotted into a rigid
frown—his nostril wide distended.

“Are you ready, Fred?”

“Ready.”

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

“Do not move. I will flush him to you. Do you
kill him, I will not fire.”

And leaning a little forward he brushed the long bog
grass with the muzzle of his gun, when up jumped the
bird, and crossing Heneage was covered deliberately,
and killed neatly.

“That will do—there are no more left here. Now,
Frank, whistle Jem Crow to you.—Go to him, sirrah,
go!—He will soon find your birds.”

“I have got the first,” answered Forester.—“Here
Jem, Jem Crow—good dog”—and with much less
reluctance, than he had shown before in joining Heneage,
the handsome black setter trotted away obedient
to a voice, which he knew second to his master's only.

Within a few moments Chance and Sancho had
found the five birds, which had gone down to Heneage
and Archer; and just as they were bagging the last,
they heard Forester cry, “Ha! dead—Jem dead!
have a care!—Fetch him!”

“That is well”—exclaimed Harry—“seven birds
for the first rise.—We shall get the whole of this
bevy.—Upon my word! you are shooting very well,
Heneage!”

“Coming a little into it, old fellow.—But which
way now?”

“I want you, Frank”—shouted Archer, “a council
of war! Halloa! what the deuce can be bringing
Tim across the meadow at this rate?—Gad! how he
twitches his short fins over the tussocks. I am afraid
something is the matter! What is it, Tim?”

“Please, sur,” responded Timothy, stopping short
at the hail, “you did na tell me what's to be dean wi'
Measter Forester' horse. T' boy canna maind him,
and draive horses doon to t' crab-tree swamp at yance!”

“Lord bless me, I did forget. Well! you must
ride him down the road, and leave him with the boy
and come in at the lower end to join us.”

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

“Varry well, sur”—responded Tim, and vanished,
running back even faster than he came, unwilling to
lose a minute's sport.

“Now Frank,” said Harry—“what is to be done?
We ought according to all rule to hunt up those birds
in the coppice first, for it is ten to one that we shall
not find those which dropped in the open meadow if
we go to beat for them now.”

“Not find them!” exclaimed Heneage in astonishment—
“Not find them! why I can go within half a
yard of the spot where they dropped.”

“I don't care, if you can go within half an inch,
you can't find them, if you go now.”

“You need not stare, Fred”—said Frank Forester,
“this is one of his cranks—he believes, or affects to
believe that quail can retain their scent at pleasure.”

“And do you?” asked Heneage, in some wonder.

“Not I, indeed! not one word of it.”

“Well never mind” said Archer, somewhat impatiently,
“we have no time to talk about that now. On
the other hand—the thorns are in our regular line of
beat, and to come back here will lose half an hour—
We have got to beat that corner at all events, for
there will be from six to ten woodcock along those
willows.”

“Oh! let us go to them, first,” said Heneage, “what
do you say, Frank?”

“In course, I say so. I will bet two to one we
find the birds directly.”

“In what, Frank?”

“In what you will!”

“Ponies?”

“If you please.”

“Done!”

And, without another word, throwing his dogs off to
the right and left, waving his hand and encouraging
them with his cheery whistle, away strode Harry, in

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

the middle, toward the rushes into which the first three
birds had been marked.

“There they lie, close to that tuft. Some of them,
not a yard asunder”—said Heneage to Forester.

“Well, you will see the dogs point them directly.”

But it was no such thing. For scarcely had he
spoken, before Jem Crow and Sancho, meeting from
opposite directions, quartered the very spot, both dogs
passing within six feet of the rush clump, at a long
gallop, their heads erect, whipping their flanks with
their feathery sterns, but without evincing the slightest
consciousness of game, and without moving a bird.

Archer looked round to them, with a smile and a
wink.

“That is the very place”—said Heneage.

“No, no!” said Forester, “it cannot be.—Is it so,
Archer?”

“Yes! to a yard!—But I want to prove this fact to
you.—I will call in the dogs, and get them down to it,
and make them hunt it out, inch by inch!”

And he did so; and the three dogs, worked the
spot over and over, at his bidding, snuffing, as it
seemed, every blade of grass, but moving nothing.

Ten minutes, were perhaps spent thus, in vain; and
they moved forward to the drain, Harry saying—

“Now you shall see. Nine birds went down by this
drain, and we shall not find them any more than the
other three.”

Nor did they. But as they neared the drain, along
which several willows grew rank and luxuriant, the
thick grass broke off, unable to grow beneath the shade,
into large isolated tussocks, and beyond them the soil
was bare and very moist, with here and there a few
water flags and large colt-foot leaves.

“We shall find cock here, lads”—said Harry—
“Jump over the fence, Frank, or they will dodge us.”

They paused to give him time to do as he was

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

directed, and, while they were standing still, in order to
do so, the red dog, coming up rapidly, took a flying
leap over one of the single tussocks, the very last one,
and instantly came on a dead point in the open ground,
with his head toward the fence, and his stern toward
the tussock he had just crossed.

“Toho! where are you, Frank? There is a cock
before him in the fence, close to the low willow, the
third from the crimson maple. Do you hear?”

“Aye! aye!”

“Then look to!”—and as he spoke, he walked forward
with Heneage to the point.

Just as they came up to the tussock, however, over
which Sancho had leaped so cleverly, and within a
foot of its base, Heneage trod on a tuft of short grass,
and close to his toe—Whir-r! up jumped a quail.

It took him so completely by surprise that he blazed
away too quickly, and missed it; but Harry cut it
down, before it had flown ten yards farther.

“That was a quail, not a cock!” shouted Forester,
behind the willows, having heard the rush of his
wing, and distinguished it from the flip flap of a timbler-doodle.
“I told you we should find them!”

“He did not point this—Heneage trod it up. He
is on his point still.—Be quiet.”

As soon as they had reloaded, and while Jem Crow
was retrieving the dead bird, Archer said to his friend
in a low voice—“Did you see that?”

“Yes! the dog's fore feet literally grazed the tuft in
which the bird lay, as he jumped the tussock.”

“Precisely—yet he did not scent or stand him.”

“And did—does stand—for you see he has not
moved—a woodcock, which is a bird of far weaker,
and more watery scent than the quail. Will you believe,
when you have seen?”

“It does look queer, I confess!—See, Jem has got
the bird.”

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

“Bring him hither, good dog. It is a young cock!
you can distinguish the males by their white chaps;
the cheeks of the females are reddish yellow. Now,
Frank, are you ready?—I will flush him! Hie cock!
cock! Purrh!”

Flip-flip-flap! the bird rose in the thicket.

Bang! and a stream of feathers which drifted down
wind, over the willow-tops, told them that Forester had
done his duty.

“Mark! mark! Fred, to your right! there goes
another. Cleverly done.—That was a good shot”—
he added, as Heneage cut him down just as he twisted
in toward the fence.

“Come over again, Frank, the dogs are making
game, toward the meadow edge.”

And Forester obeyed, and, out of the long grass,
where they had seen the quail alight, near the drain
edge, they killed seven cock over dead points.

One bird, the last at which they fired, was hit
very hard, but flew nearly half a mile, before they
marked him down near a single cedar in the open
ground.

“By the way,” said Archer, “there is a little spring
and a boggy place yonder, I should not wonder if we
find two or three more long bills there. Do you remember,
Frank, we killed nine there last autumn, on
a frosty morning late in the season.”

“To be sure I do”—said Frank, “it is a prime
place for them to feed.”

And they bagged four there accordingly, the crippled
bird, and three fresh ones; and just as they were
about to turn, the liver and white dog ran in upon a
small bevy of eleven quail, and flushed them out of distance;
for which he got a sound thrashing.

“Mark them, Frank!”

“I have marked them, they are down in the thorns
near to the six I marked in, before. But pretty lads,

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

you are, to mark! these are the birds, which you swore
dropped yonder—when in fact all of them came on, except
that single fellow, which you killed.

Whew-y, whew-y, whew-y. The small and plaintive
chirrup of a running bevy, came down the wind
as he spoke, from the very rushes in which they had
scarce half an hour before, knocked up and killed
eight woodcock.

“Do you hear that? do you hear that?” cried
Harry exultingly. “Now they have moved—now the
dogs will find them at once! Come on—come on!”

And, wending their way hastily back, they had scarce
reached the drain and the willows, before all the three
dogs stood at once, on three different birds; and, to
be short, they found and bagged the eight quail, which
they had seen alight, out of the self same bogs, among
which three men and as many first-rate dogs had been
plunging and threshing about, for the better part of an
hour, so short a time before.

“I will not ask you to believe,” said Harry, “unless
we find the first three by that single rush clump.”

They did find them, and killed two, Archer missing
the third with his second barrel.

“Now do you believe that quail can retain their
scent?”

“Yes.—It is proved,” said Fred Heneage.

“No—I don't,” said Frank Forester.

“Of course not,” said Archer—“If either you, or
Lord George Gordon, were ever, on a single occasion,
to give in, after putting forth an opinion; I should turn
Millerite, and believe that the world is coming to an
end next April!”

“But how do you explain it, Harry?” said Heneage.
“can it be instinct?”

“We will talk about that after dinner. Now let us
follow up those bevies, and then find another.”

Those bevies they did follow up, and nearly finish

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

up, moreover; for out of eighteen birds which they
had seen into the thorns, they bagged thirteen—one
more killed which they could not find, and four getting
off, one missed, and three not shot at.

As they went down the swamp, they found two
more bevies; but they flew at once into impracticable
cover, dark pines over head, and swamp rhododendrons
below, and they rendered a bad account of
these, bringing to book eight, out of the two
bevies.

To make up for this bad luck, however, they came
on a little plump of woodduck floating on a small
lilied pool of black transparent water enveloped in
the thickest covert, and shot four of them; beside bagging
ten more woodcock, and a brace of ruffed grouse.

The sun was nearly setting, when they emerged from
the crab-tree swamp, and found Tim and the horses
quietly awaiting their arrival.

A cool spring was at hand, and the flasks of Ferintosh
and Jamaica were in demand instantly; then they
told up their game, and found the whole day's bag—
most glorious bag indeed—to consist of no less than
forty-three woodcock, thirty-six quail, five ruffed grouse,
and two couple of woodduck.

“Now then” said Harry, when the flasks were exhausted,
and the game-bag filled to repletion, “now
then, jump in as sharply as you please. For if we
don't look out, we shall be late for dinner and get
cursed grievously by old Tom Draw, who was never
backward in his life, at coming forward.”

p145-086 CHAPTER V. A VERY FAIR WOMAN; AND A VERY FAT MAN:

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

“Get away lads!” sang out Harry, as he sprang to
his box, lapping his whip up knowingly as he did so.
Frank Forester had ensconced himself already in the
back seat beside Timothy, who was employed in drawing
the bearskins, which the coming frost rendered
very acceptable, about their knees. Heneage sat in
front at Archer's left hand, with the stout fur-lined
apron covering his lap. The dogs crouched at their
feet, easy and warm, on the soft sheepskin rugs.

“Get away lads!”—and away they went, at the
word, untouched by the whip, at full twelve miles the
hour, their ears laid back upon their necks, now nibbling
at each other playfully, now snatching at the
long steel bits, 'till the bright curb chains rang and
jingled; while the well-made smooth running wagon
followed them almost noiseless over the limestone road.

Dick followed on `Bright Selim' at a slashing gallop—
no slower pace of the thoroughbred would keep way
with the spanking trot of the chesnut geldings.

There is no lovelier scenery on earth, than that
through which the homeward road of the sportsmen
lay, along the northern slope of the Warwick mountain;
with a mile's breadth of soft velvet meadows stretching
out green and gentle to the left, the bright waters of
the Wawayanda, flashing in golden reaches to the level
sunbeams far on their northern verge, and beyond the
stream a long range of many-colored woodlands, half
veiled by the purple haze of autumn, and the blue
summits of Mount Adam and Mount Eve soaring,

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

distinct in their dark azure, against the cloudless sky of
autumn.

On the right, rose the mountain side continuous,
ridge above ridge of leafy knolls with misty hollows
intervening, until, a mile or more aloof, it terminated in
a crest of gray and splintered crags, on which the
westering rays dwelt lovingly.

Along the slope of this romantic chain the narrow
country road ran sinuous; now diving into some fairy
glen, through which a nameless rill trickled over its
many-colored pebbles; between blocks of granite overrun
with wild vines, and trunks of still verdant oaks;
now climbing some bold hillock whence the view
reached for miles and miles over the verdant champaign
to the faint line of the Shawangunk hills, darkling
against the bright horizon.

As the wagon mounted the brow of one of these
little hillocks, a female figure turned into the road,
from a bye path, perhaps a hundred yards in advance,
mounted on a beautiful balck horse with a long tail
and mane; and cantered along gently, without looking
back, or appearing to notice their approach, in the same
direction as they were proceeding.

As soon as he observed the presence of the fair
equestrian on the road, Harry gathered his horses up a
little, and held them well in hand, in order to avoid
alarming her by coming up too quickly in her rear.

It was evident at a single glance that she was a
lady; for though she was riding all alone, there was
that in her whole dress and air, as she sat her spirited
horse, which distinguished her at once from the
ordinary country lasses, in their large sun bonnets and
calico skirts.

She wore on her head a neat beaver hat, with a long
veil of brown barége floating over her left shoulder, and
was dressed in an admirably fitting habit of rifle green
broad cloth, the long close waist, tight sleeves, and

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

ample skirts of which set off the exquisite proportions
of her round slender waist, her broad falling shoulders,
and the full contour of her form, as they came up behind
her.

That which struck Heneage the most forcibly, however,
was the easy grace with which she managed her
horse, evidently inclined somewhat to be skittish, the firm
squareness of her seat, and the lightness of hand, with
which she by turns humoured and controlled his mouth.

Taking it for granted, from the unconcern which
Archer manifested at this fair apparition, that he must
know who she was, Heneage was on the point of enquiring,
when suddenly a large brindled mastiff sprang
out, from the yard in front of a cottage, with an outburst
of fierce and savage baying, and dashed full at
the head of the black horse.

Terrified at this fierce assault the fiery black wheeled
round so violently, as would have unseated any less
skilful equestrian, and yerked out his heels spitefully
at the dog.

Then catching sight on a sudden of Harry's wagon,
the approach of which he had not heard, he reared
bolt upright, pawing the air with his fore feet, so that
it seemed as if he were in danger of falling backward.

But with unusual fearlessness and presence of mind
the fair rider slacked her rein, and laid the ivory
handled riding whip, which she carried, repeatedly and
sharply on his flanks.

With a great bound he alighted on his forefeet, and
again lashed out his heels viciously, and would have
reared again—but Heneage, who had instinctively freed
his legs from the bear-skin-apron at the first attack of
the mastiff, leaped out of the wagon, almost before
Harry had pulled up his horses, and had the black
firmly by the head, in less time than it has taken to
describe it.

Two or three fruitless struggles he made, snorting

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

and panting, between fright and anger; but the young
man humoured him so judiciously, while he held him
with a grasp like that of an iron vice, and spoke to him
so gently, and in horse-language so intelligible, that
he was mastered in a moment.

“Oh! Mr. Archer,” said the girl, “how can I ever
thank your friend enough; I believe he has saved my
life, for I am sure I must have fallen, if he had reared
once more.”

“Oh! dear no, you would not, Miss D'Arcey”—
replied Archer, taking off his hat, “I never saw any
one sit a horse so well in my life; and I flatter myself,
I am judge, you know. But Fred has always been a
lucky dog, and this is the greatest coup of all! allow
me to present Mr. Frederick Heneage”—he added—
“Miss Maria D'Arcey.”

As he looked up to bow, Fred Heneage saw her
face for the first time; and much as he had been led
to expect from the grace and symmetry of her person,
and from the exquisite melody of her low silver voice,
all that he had expected fell far short of the reality.

A fair high forehead, pure and transparent as white
alabaster, eyebrows and lashes black as night, fringing
eyes of the brightest and most laughing azure, a little
nose slightly retroussée, lending both glee and archness
to the bright rich face, lips red as the above carnation,
a clear fair complexion with a warm rosy flush dawning
through it, and a profusion of soft sunny nut-brown
hair, falling down in a flood of mazy ringlets, on either
side her face, quite to the shoulders.

Such is a bare description of the features, which met
the ardent gaze of Heneage, as he raised his head, and
uncovering his curly light brown locks bowed gracefully
and lowly.

But no words will describe the light of intelligence
and soul which informed those fair features—the mingled
expression of mirthful artlessness, and deep

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

sensitive thought, which rendered that fair young face so
wondrous beautiful and dazzling.

There was something in Heneage's eye, as it met
hers, that made her blush slightly for a moment; and
seeing her confusion, he was in turn somewhat embarrassed,
and, for once in his life at fault for words;
when Harry relieved them both, by begging her to take
a seat in his phaeton, and allow one of his men to ride
her unruly horse homeward.

“I will engage to set you down at your own door
in five minutes,” he added—“pray let me have that
pleasure.”

“What! dismount like a recreant and own myself
conquered,” she replied laughing. “Oh fie! Mr.
Archer, I fear you are but a false knight, after all,
giving me counsel, which were I to follow, you would
despise me utterly—counsel, which you know to be
wrong! If I were to dismount now, Daisy would never
let me get upon his back again—naughty Daisy,” she
added, patting the arched neck of the black, which
having recovered now from its affright, bridled and
whinnied conscious of her voice. “Besides, if mamma
were to hear of this suddenly, she would never let me
ride out alone again; and then good bye to all my
dear romance!—no! no! I will gallop Daisy home,
and whip him for his impudence well, too”—she added.
“The only kindness you can do me farther, is to let
Timothy—how do you do Timothy?—I forgot you
before—drive away that horrid dog.—Look at him, he
is waiting to fly at me again.”

“Jump out, Tim; jump out, man; and knock that
brute on the head, with a big stone.—Oh! Mr. Reed,”
he went on, as the owner of the dog came out of the
cottage, “It is too bad your keeping such a savage
beast, as that, unchained.”

“Well—yes—he is some savage”—drawled out
the man, in a careless tone—“Cesar, git in doors, you!”

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

“Some savage! hey?” said Harry, half laughing,
half indignant—“I should think he was. Here he
was all but the cause of Miss D'Arcey being thrown
from her horse, and perhaps killed just now?”

“Well—I did see that he skeart the hoss some.”
He made answer.

“Well—you shall see something else too, Mr.
Reed—you shall see that I will shoot him the very
next time I come up the road, if he flies out—”

“No! no! you will do nothing of the sort,” said
the girl laughing, “unless you want to quarrel with
me. I will have no ill feeling between you and Mr.
Reed. There is no harm done; and he will keep his
dog fastened up in future. He would have been quite
as sorry as yourself, Mr. Archer,” she added with a
sly glance, “if I had been hurt.”

“Well, he should ha' been tied up; that 'are ar' a
fact”—responded the man, about one degree less
sulky than his dog, yet moved, in his own despite, by
the witchery of her manner.

“All is right then,” she said, laughing again, “and
I will say good night, with many, many thanks”—
she added, looking toward Heneage. “By the by, if
your friend had not helped me so nicely, I don't believe
I should have spoken to you, Mr. Archer; you
have behaved very badly. It is above a month since
you have been to see me—but I am afraid, I must forgive
you now. Good night!”

And with the word, she turned her horse's head
back to the road, put him into a canter, and gradually
increased his pace, plying him pretty smartly with the
whip, 'till he was almost at full speed. At about a
quarter of a mile's distance, she turned off into a cross
road, and was lost to sight.

“How beautifully she rides! what a lovely girl!
who is she, Frank; who is she?”

“She is the second daughter of a Colonel D'Arcey,

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

who died some years ago on the Western Frontier.
Her mother, who lives about two miles from `the Box,'
is one of the most delicious old ladies in the world;
and a great friend of mine. Maria has an elder sister,
a nice girl too in petite santè. But look you, Fred, I
must not have you falling in love with either of them.”

“I am not a very falling-in-love-man,” said Fred
laughing; “But I cannot see why not. She seems to
me a very loveable sort of person; and I can afford to
love any body I like, thank God! why not, Frank?”

“Because she has got a brother, a lawyer in York,
who is just as unloveable a sort of person, as my fair
friend is loveable, and you have no idea yet how
loveable she is.—He is as hard, as crabbed, and as
narrow-minded a snob, as ever you met withal. He
tried hard to hinder me from darkening his mother's
doors, within which he is a perfect domestic tyrant,
until he discovered, in the first place, that I was not a
marrying man, and had no thought of the delicate
Julia, or the fair Maria; and, in the second, that he
could not quarrel with me, unless by being guilty of impertinence
so gross as to earn evil consequences.”

“But why—why in the devil's name! is he so
vicious?”

“He is naturally a brute in the first place—in the
next, he is a bigoted fanatic—in the third, a violent
ultra Native American, and hater of all d—d foreigners—
and, to conclude, a howling demagogue, who makes
vast capital by declaiming against British influence,
British tyranny, and British gold. I verily believe, he
would rather see his sister married to an American
counterfeiter, fresh out of the States' prison, than to an
English gentleman of wealth, accomplishment and
honor. He is a choice specimen of all the worst
points of his countrymen—thank God! a very rare—
I hope, a solitary specimen!—But, as I said before, I
must have no falling in love, Fred.”

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

“I don't know,” said Heneage laughing; “I never
thought of such a thing before; but now that you have
told me all this, it alters the matter very much.—The
spice of difficulty, perhaps the spice of danger, flavors
the dish of matrimony, marvellous well, men say—I
think—I think—I will fall in love with her.”

“There is many a true word spoken in jest;” said
Harry Archer gravely—“But I would rather give a
hundred pounds, than see this jest come true.” Just
as he uttered these last words, they reached the top
of the hill, on which the gate of the shooting box
opened; and descried, coming up the opposite side of
the ascent in his large two horse wagon, the renowned
Tom Draw.

His large double seated wagon of a bright green hue
picked out with black, was almost entirely concealed in
the mass of buffalo hides, among which, occupying
almost the whole width of the front seat, the fat man sat
sublime.

His horses, full sixteen hands in height, the one a
magnificent red roan, the other an iron gray, breasted
the steep hill, with arched crests and high round action
at full ten miles the hour; and, as Harry was wont to
say, but for the trifling difference in their color, few
gentlemen in any country could boast a handsomer or
better matched pair, not to say as good travellers, as
that of mine host of Warwick.

But the man—the fat man!

A volume would scarce suffice to describe his outward
man; a library would fail to convey a just idea
of the excellencies, the oddities, the humors of this
most worthy, most original, most happy of characters.

Wrapped in his ample overcoat of drab pilot cloth,
with buckskin mittens on his hands, and a huge fur cap
on his thick iron-gray locks, beneath which shone out,
beaming with mirth, and gayety and genuine good
humor, the broad expanse of his ample and handsome

[figure description] (145-094).[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

face, Fred Heneage, who had heard of him both from
Harry, and Frank Forester, but who had never seen him,
thought he had never beheld such a mountain of flesh.

His clear brown eye beamed with unutterable humor,
beneath the pent house of his thick shaggy grizzled
eyebrows, giving expression by their well marked
line, to a broad and expansive forehead. The nose was
small and well-shaped—but the mouth, the mouth, was
the great feature of the bold, manly, lion-like face—the
mouth, telling a world of character—with its arch dimples,
full-fraught with merriment and mischief at the
corners—its firm well-cut curve speaking of energy and
resolution and a will of iron—and the full, rich-red
nether lip betokening a little—yet not a very little
either—of voluptuous, perhaps sensual taste.

As he sat in his wagon, perched on the high soft
cushion of his easy seat, with all the lower part of
his person enveloped in the warm buffalo robes, the
effect of his enormous size was in some sort concealed,
or at least diminished; inasmuch as the breadth and
rotundity were not now contrasted with the want of
height; which, when standing, rendered his size more
conspicious.

Still, as he measured the vast breadth of his shoulders,
and suffered his eye to fall over the regular protuberance
which swelled outward from his chin downward
in fair round proportion, Fred looked enquiringly at
Harry, and said,

“Jest apart, do you mean to tell me that huge animal
can shoot—can walk?”

“I never saw a better shot—I have rarely walked
with a stauncher walker. He is not fast of course, but
where the ground is solid, he is unwearied. And without
any exception, he is the most thorough and best
sportsman I know anywhere.”

“The deuce! How tall is he?”

“About five foot six, and measures round the place

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

where his waist should be, five foot nine, thus being
literally larger round than he is long. His thigh is
bigger in girt than my chest, and I am not exactly a
baby. He weighs three hundred and forty-two pounds,
or in horseman's weight, with which you are of course
more familiar than with pounds, twenty-four stone six
pounds. And, by Jove! his heart is as large as his
whole body. Upon my word! it is no exaggeration to
say he is all heart.”

“Not a bit of exaggeration,” said Frank Forester—
“I really love Tom.”

“He is an extraordinary fellow indeed,” said Harry,
and I value him very highly, for his sterling and excellent
qualities, independent of his social and entertaining
disposition and humor. How are you, Tom?
How are you?” he exclaimed, as they arrived within
hail, exactly opposite to the gate, which Timothy
jumped down to open.

“How be you, boys? how be you?” shouted the fat
man, in a deep rich joyous tone, which bespoke his
hearty and jovial character. “I'm pretty smart, now
the cool weather's come. What sport to-day?”

“Very fair, Tom;” replied Archer—“very fair,
indeed; not quite as much as you and I have done in
old times—but very fair as things go now a days; about
ninety head, I think in all, and half of them woodcock.”

“That's not so slim any ways.—Least ways, not so
slim for you boys, when you harn't got old Tom along
with you. For you carn't mark quail no how—not one
on you, worth a cuss—nor shoot them, nuther. Least
ways, Frank carn't, by G—!”

“Well, and whose fault was it, we hadn't old Tom,
with us?—Did not I send you word to come over to
breakfast, and bring your cannon, and that brute Dash!
you are getting lazy in your old age, or playing possum,
you old hippopotamus.”

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

“Hippo—hell!” answered the fat man.—“Come,
git them little sorrel scrubs o' yourn out of my way, or
I drive over you, torights, and smash you into nauthen.
Git on! Forester's kind o' dry. His little jaws is
sticked together for want o' mystening—or else he's
so drunk he carn't speak.—Git on dew! I want's a
drink myself.—I harn't drinked only wunst since I left
hum.”

“Once? how the deuce did you manage that?
where did you get a chance to drink.”

Jem Decker's asleep up the road yonder, under the
big black walnut; and I see a black stun jug by him.
I guessed he'd drinked it pretty well down, for he was
'mazin hard and fast I tell you. And I thought if so
be he waked up and found any left he'd be doin himself
a mischief likely—he's the G— damnedest critter
when he's drunk—so I jest pulled old Roan up, and
got out and hitched! Then I took up the jug and
shook it jest to judge like how much there was in, you
know.”

“And how much was there, Tom?”

“Only a little mite I tell you—a pint maybe, or a
trifle over. Well! when he heard the liquor—chuck,
chuck in the jug, like, Jem he stirred, and turned over
on his back, and seemed oneasy kind o'—so I made
no more work, but jest drinked it up—”

“And left the jug empty, I'll be bound—you old
heathen!” said Forester.

“What! do you think I'd steal?”—replied the fat
man, with a mighty show of indignation.—“No, no, I
made a fair change with Jem—no one can say I stealed
it—and what I left instead o' the old apple Jack 'ill
do him a plaguy sight more good, when he wakes and
finds his biler jest as hot as h— and hotter.”

“What did you leave instead, hey Tom?”

“First best fish oil!” replied Tom with a monstrous
explosion of merriment—“It did smell some, I reckon

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

—but Jem's not particullar, and I doosn't begrudge
him the smell no how.”

“You give him the smell in!” said Forester, when
he could speak for laughing, “well, that was fair any
how. Rather above the bargain, hey?”

“Well, I don't know”—said Tom. His apple jack
stinked some too. I guess 't warn't the first time
there'd been fish oil in the jug—and I warnts a glass
of Archer's old Jamaiky to wrench my mouth out.
Git on dew—whip up them scrubs, or I'll be a top on
you down the hill.—Git on, boys, dew?”

p145-100 CHAPTER. VI. A GOOD FEED, DULY DEFENDED!

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

“Now, Timothy,” exclaimed Harry Archer, as he
dismounted from the seat of his wagon at the door,
“run in, and see what o'clock it is; and then ask Mrs.
Deighton if dinner will be punctual.”

“It's haaf paast faive, sur,” answered Timothy from
the hall, “and t' dinner ”ll be upon t' teable at six, and
no mistaek!”

“That's well—for I'm as hungry as a hawk”—said
Archer. We shall have just enough time to make
ourselves comfortable, Fred. Where the deuce do
you mean to stow yourself Frank?”

“Oh! never fear. I have arranged that with Timothy—
I shall take possession of his room to-night.”

“Very well—now lose no time lads; for Mrs.
Deighton's six is sharp six you'll remember. Look
here, Tom, you will find this week's Spirit here, and
the last Turf Register, can you amused yourself with
them, 'till we get fixed, as you'd call it, I suppose?”

“Yes! yes”—answered Tom, “I'll amuse myself,
I promise you; but it won't be with no sperrit but
Jamaiky sperrits—them's the best sperrits for an arternoon.
Come, Timothy, you lazy injun, where are you
snoopin' off to, cuss you? Git me the sperrits and ice
water—your master haint got sense to order up no
licker.”

“If you have not got sense to order what you want
in my house, I am not bound to find you in brains.”

“The rum will find his brains, I'll warrant it,” said
Forester, “for I am certain whatever brains he's got,
are in his belly.”

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

“Sartain!”—responded Tom—“Sartain they be—
that's why its sich a nice, fat, round one.—No head
wouldn't hold my brains! a stoopid little know
nauthen, like you be, may keep his small mite o'
brains in his head, though it beant no bigger than a
nutshell—but it does take a belly, and a good, rousin',
old, biggest kind o' belly, to hold mine.—And the rum
will find them torights, and sharp them up too wust
kind, I reckon.”

“You do not make much toilet, Harry, I presume,”
asked Fred, as he sauntered away toward his bed-room,
after staring at old Tom in a vain attempt to make him
out, for half a moment.

“Just as you please about that, Fred. This is
liberty-hall. But I do always dress for dinner even
when I am quite alone.”

“The deuce you do! That must be a monstrous
bore!”

“Have you known Archer so long,” asked Frank
Forester, “and not discovered yet that his greatest
pleasure in life is boring himself.”

“It's very well his greatest pleasure in life aren't in
borin' other people, as you calls it,” interposed Tom,
who was growing a little crusty at the non appearance
of the ardent—“Least ways I know whose is—hey?
Little wax skin?”

“I do not find it so,” continued Harry, without
taking heed of the bye-play between Forester and old
Draw, who were forever sparring one with the other—
“on the contrary! I think life is not worth having if
we strip it of the decencies; and, living as I do in the
country, three fourths of the year, and more than half
the time alone, I find there is much more danger of becoming
somewhat slovenly and careless, than of being
over nice. When you don't meet a lady three times
in a year, or a man who shaves above twice a week,
unless on special occasions, it is easy enough to

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

degenerate into a mere boor.—I at least will keep clear of
that. Some folks think it manly and knowing to assimilate
themselves to the roughest and the rudest of the
rough and rude, because they chance to live in remote
rural districts, I am not one of them.”

“I don't think no one will find fault with you for
that, no how,” interposed Tom, “no one who knows
you. The darned critter's allus dressed as neat as a
new pin. And his dinner table, oh h—l, its just like
a jeweller's shop in Broadway.”

“Yes—and of that more anon—I have been attacked
for that too, before now.—But we'll talk about that,
while we are feeding; hey Tom?”

“I'm willin' so as you aren't over long a dressin'.”

“Well, here comes the Jamaica for you; and I will
not be a quarter of an hour.”

Nor was he; for in a little more than ten minutes he
returned, neatly attired in a puce-colored cut-away
coat, white waistcoat and black trousers, as natty and
well-dressed as possible, but without a shade of foppery—
the thing which of all he most abhorred—perceptible
either in his exterior or his manner.

A moment afterward Frank Forester made his entree,
and as usual his practice was as different from his principle,
as anything in nature could be. To judge him
from his talk you would have supposed that a red flannel
shirt and tow trousers, were his ultimatum and
beau ideal in the way of dress, yet forth he came, very
fine—to say the truth, a little too fine!—so fine, indeed,
that it required all his remarkably good looks and
quiet manner, to redeem his attire from the charge of
being kiddy at least, if not tigerish.

He wore the full dress blue coat of his old corps—
the first dragoons—a crack royal regiment, which he
had left but a year or two before—with its richly embossed
gold buttons, and black velvet cuffs and collar.
His shirt was rich with open work and mecklin lace,

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

and fastened in front by enamelled studs of exquisite
workmanship connected by slight chains of Venetian
gold. His crimson velvet waistcoat was adorned with
garnet buttons, and his trousers of Inkson's most
elaborate cut, fitting his shapely leg as if they had been
made upon it, displayed his high instep très bien
chausseè in a black gauze silk stocking, and patent
leather pumps.

Tom Draw stared somewhat wildly, at this display,
of which he certainly had never seen before even the
counterfeit presentment; and, though he was rigged
himself in his best swallow-tailed sky-blue, canary
colored waistcoat, and gray inexpressibles, he began to
think, as he afterward expressed himself, that he had
nauthen on him no how, barrin' his skin, and that
rayther o' the thinnest, and the dirtiest at that.

Scarcely was Frank well established in Harry's best
arm-chair, before Fred made his appearance in a plain
snuff-colored dress coat, and the rest of his garb quiet,
dark, and unpretending.

“Why what's all this about, in the name of wonder?”—
he exclaimed, looking at Frank attentively.

“Only a little of the heavy dragoon breaking out,
Fred,” answered Archer, it does so periodically—like
the fever and ague—and like it, thank heaven! it is
not catching. If I were to live a thousand years I
never should forget the first day I saw my gentleman
in this country.—He was walking up Broadway, arm
in arm with poor Power who had just landed on his
second visit to this country.—They had two of the narrowest
pinch up hats—Tom Duncombe's, only more so! —
stuck in the most jaunty style on the opposite sides
of their heads—each had his outer hand, as they swaggered
along arm in arm, stuck in the hind pocket of
his coat, and the skirt well brought round on the opposite
hip—each, to complete the picture, at every second
pace, gave the genuine sabretash kick with the outer

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

leg—unluckily in poor Power's case it was the right
leg—but that made no difference in life—and then the
toggery! Only conceive Master Frank, in a bright
pea-green body coat, with large basket buttons of solid
silver—a crimson cachemire neckcloth—elastic tartan
pantaloons, a little tighter than his skin, alternate
checks, each check two inches square, of black and the
brightest azure, and to conclude, more chains and spurs
and iron boot heels—more clash and clang, in walking
along the street, than there are to be found in a squadron
of cuirassiers. By Jove! It was inimitable!”

“What did you do, Harry?”—asked Fred laughing,
while Frank tried to grin, though not with the best
grace in the world.

“Do? Bolted to be sure! what would you have had
me do?—I would not have spoken to him in the street
in that rig for any sum! I was not very well known
in New York myself at that time, and I saw old Hays
on the other side of the street quietly contemplating my
friend there, with a cool confidential nod of the head,
and wink addressed to his own other eye—as who
should have said, `Aha! my fine fellow, it will not be
many days, before you and I shall be better acquainted!
' ”

What exclamation or asseveration would have followed
can never now be known, for just as Forester
stood up, not a little nettled, Timothy threw the door
open, and said,

“T' dinner's upon t' teable, please sur.”

And thereupon Frank's face relaxed into a mild and
placid smile, and drawing Tom's arm under his own,

“Allow me the honor,” he said, “Mistress Draw,
to hand you into dinner.”

“No you don't little wax skin—no you don't—not
through that door no how, we'd git stuck there, boy,—
and they'd niver pull us out; and we'd starve likely
with the smell o' the dinner in our noses, and

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

the champagne a bustin' under our eyes out o' the very
bottles to be drinked, and us not there to drink it.
No, no, we'll run no resks now.”

And with the words they passed into the dining-room,
arranged as on the previous evening except that,
for two covers, four were now laid on the white damask
cloth, and that a pair of tall silver wine coolers occupied
the centre of the table with the long necks of hock
and champagne flasks protruding.

At the left of each guest, stood a pint decanter of
delicate straw-colored sherry; and at his right, four
glasses, a long stalked beaker of old-fashioned Venice
crystal, a green German hock glass embossed with
grapes and vine leaves, a thin capacious sherry glass
with a curled lip so slender that it almost bent as you
drank from it, and a slim-shanked shallow goblet for
Bourdeaux or Burgundy.

There was but one comestible, however, on the table,
a deep silver tureen, with a most savory and game-like
odor exuding from the chinks of its rich cover.

“I would have given you some raw natives to begin
with,” said Harry, “knowing how much Tom likes
them, but we can't get the crustaceous bivalves up
hither with distinguished success, until the frost sets in.”

“I'm right glad on't, by the Etarnal!” exclaimed
Tom, “nasty, cold, chillin', watery trash! jist blowin'
out your innards for no good, afore you git to the grist
o' dinner—what kind o' soup's that, Timothy?”

“A soup of my own invention”—answered Harry—
“and the best soup in the world me judice.—Strong
venison soup, made as we make hare soup at home—
a good rich stock to begin with, about ten pounds of
the lean from the haunch brayed down into the pottage,
about a dozen cloves and a pint of port, and to conclude,
the scrag of the neck cut into bits two inches
square, done brown in a covered stew pan, and thrown
in with a few forced meat balls when the soup is

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

ready. You can add if you please, a squeeze of a
lemon and a dash of cayenne, which I think improve it.
It is piping hot; and not bad I think.”

“I have tasted something of the kind in the Highlands,
at Blair of Athole,” said Frank Forester.

“I have not,” replied Harry. “The Scotch venison
soup, is made clear, and though a capital thing, I like
this pureè better.”

“So do I, Harry,” said Fred Heneage—“and I
should think by the gusto with which you speak of it,
that you not only invented, but made it.”

“You'd think just about right, then,” answered
Tom, as he thrust out his plate for a second ladle full.
“He and I did make the first bowl of it, as iver was
made. And it tuk us a week—yes, a fortnight I
guess, before we got it jest right. I will say that for
Harry! the darned critter, is about as good as bringing
game up right on the table, as he is at bringing them
down right in the field.”

“Yes! and for that very thing, I have been assailed,”
said Harry laughing, “as lacking the true spirit of a
sportsman, as not enjoying the thing in its high ennobbling
spirit, as not a pure worshipper in heart and intellectual
love of the divine Artemis, but a mere sensualist,
and glutton, making my belly a god, and degrading
my good gun into a mere tool for the slaves of
Epicurus!”

“Treason! high treason! name the rash man! Hold
him up bodily to our indignation!”

“First let us drink!—That pale sherry is delicate and
very dry. Will you have champagne, Tom?—No—
very well—Here is a health then to C. E. of the Buffalo
Patriot.”

“C. E!—Who the devil is C. E?”—cried all three
in a breath.

“Alias, J B.”

“And who then is J B?”

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

“The man wot stabbed me in the tenderest part—
which he, I suppose, would say is my abdomen?”

“Are you in earnest, Harry?”

“I am gravely in earnest, when I say that he taxed
me seriously, though sportively, with all that I have
stated.—He said that, in my admiration of good things,
in dwelling on the melting richness of a woodduck, or
the spicy game flavor of a grouse, in preferring a silver
plate whereon to eat my venison, to an earthern trencher,
in carrying out a bottle of champagne and cooling it
in a fresh spring for my luncheon, instead of trusting
to execrable rye or apple whiskey, I prove myself degenerate
and no true votary of the gentle woodcraft.
He is afraid that I cannot rought it!”

“Is he, indeed?—Poor devil!”

“He don't know much then, no how, that chap!”
answered Tom, as he went largely into the barbacued
perch, which had taken the place of the pottage—
“Least ways he don't know much, if he thinks as a
chap carn't rough it becase he knows how to eat and
drink, when there's no need of roughing it. I've seen
fellows as niver had seen nauthen fit to eat nor drink
in their lives, turn up their darned nasty noses at a good
country dinner in a country tavern, where a raal right
down gentleman, as had fed allus on the fat of the land,
could dine pleasantly. Give me a raal gentleman, one
as sleeps soft, and eats high, and drinks highest kind,
to stand roughing it—and more sense to C. E., next
time he warnts to teach his grandmother.”

“How do you like this fish?”

“Capital—capital?”

“Well, all its excellence, except that it is firm, lies
in the cookery.—It is insipid enough and tasteless, unless
barbacued.”

“Then you were wise to barbacue it.”

“And how should I have learned to barbacue it; if I
had not thought about such things. No, no boys—I

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

despise a man very heartily, who cannot dine just as
happily upon a bit of salt pork and a biscuit, and perhaps
an onion, aye! and enjoy it as well, washed down
with a taste of whiskey qualified by the mountain brook—
or washed down with a swallow of the brook unqualified—
as he would enjoy canvass-back and venison
with champagne and Bourdeaux.—Who cannot
bivouack as blithely and sleep as soundly under the
starlit canopy of heaven as under damask hangings—
when there is cause for dining upon pork, and for
bivouacking.—But there is one thing, boys, that I despise
a plaguy sight more—and that is a thick-headed
fool, who likes salt pork as well as canvass-back and
turtle.—Who does not see any difference between an
ill-cooked dish swimming in rancid butter, and a chef
d'æuvre of Carême or Ude, rich with its own pure
gravy? and yet more than the thick-headed fool, do I
abhor the pig-headed fool, who thinks it brave forsooth
and manly and heroical withal, and philosophical, to
affect a carelessness, which does not belong to him, and
to drink cider sperrits when he can drink Sillery sec of
the first growth! And that being said, open that champagne,
Timothy.”

“So much for C. E?”—enquired Forester.

“No no!” exclaimed Harry, eagerly—“I deny any
such sequitur as that, C. E. is a right good fellow—or
was, at least when I knew him—It is a weary while
ago since he supped with me in New York, the very
night before he left it—never I believe to return—at
least since then I have never seen him—and many a
warm heart has grown cold, and many a brown head
gray in the interim. But when I knew C. E. he would
never drink bad liquor when he could come by good—
and right well did he know the difference—and by the
way, while vituperating me for my gourmandize, he
shows that he is tarred a little with the same stick. He
abuses me for saying that the woodduck is as good a

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

bird as flies, except the canvass-back, asserting that
the blue-winged teal is better.”

“Out upon him!” exclaimed Forester—“the blue-winged
teal is fishy, nine times out of ten.”

“Aye! Frank—but he is speaking of the teal on the
great lakes; and I dare say he is right. It is to the
fact that he is the only duck seen on the sea board,
who eschews salt water and salt sedges that the summer
duck—for that is his proper name—owes his pre
ëminence over all the other wild fowl of this region.—
Now, as the blue-winged teal, or Garganey, is in the
same predicament on the lakes, I think it very questionable
whether in that country he may not be as good,
nay better than my favorite.”

“Are you in earnest? Do you think that the diet
of ducks makes so much difference in their quality,”
asked Heneage.

“So much? It makes all the difference.—What
renders the canvass-back of the waters of the Chesapeak,
the very best bird that flies; while here, in Long
Island sound, or on the Jersey shore he is, at the best,
but a fourth rate duck.—The wild celery, which he
eats there, and which he cannot get here, for his
life.”

“A roast leg of mutton?—by no means a bad thing,
Harry”—said Fred Heneage—“when it is old enough
and well roasted.”

“This is six years old,” answered Archer—“Black
faced, Scotch, mountain, of my own importation, my
own feeding, and my own killing. It has been hanging
three weeks, and, by the way it cuts, I believe it is
in prime order—done to a turn I can see that it is.
Will you have some?”

“Will a fish swim?—Where is the currant jelly?”

“On the side board. I don't consider currant jelly
orthodox with mutton, which is by far too good a
thing to be obliged to pass itself for what it is not.”

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

“I agree with you,” said Frank—“I hate anything
that is like something else.”

“Of course—all good judges do. That puts me in
mind of what Washington Irving once told me, that
he never ate clams, by any chance, because he was
quite sure that they would be oysters if they could!”

“Excellent! excellent!” said Fred and Forester,
both in a voice; whereupon Tom added,

“They carn't come it though—stewed clams is not
briled iseters!”

“No more than mosquitoes are lobsters, which was
John Randolph's sole objection to the insects.”

“And do you really prohibit currant jelly with roast
mutton?”

“I don't prohibit anything—but I don't eat it, and
I think it bad taste to do so. Venison I think the only
thing that is improved by it. Canvass-back ducks I
think it ruins. Nor should I think C. E's plum jelly
with grouse, one whit better. The sharpness of currant
jelly is very suitable to the excessive fat of English
park-fed venison; but with any lean meat I think it
needless, to say the best. There is but one sauce for
any kind of gallinaceous game, when roasted, whether
his name be grouse, partridge, pheasant, quail, or wild
turkey.”

“Right, Harry, and that is bread sauce.”

“And that is bread sauce; made of the crumb of a
very light French roll, stewed in cream and passed
through a tamis, one small white onion may be boiled
in it, but must be taken out before it is served up to
table, a lump of fresh butter as big as a walnut may be
added, and a very little black pepper. Let it be thick
and hot, and nothing else is needed; unless, indeed,
you like a few fried crumbs, done very crisp and
brown.”

“Open that other flask of champagne, Timothy—
Tom's glass is empty, and he begins to look angry.

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

Will you take wine with me?” said Heneage, who had
hit Tom's feelings to a hair.

“In course, I will”—replied Tom joyously, “when
Harry gits a talking about his darned stews and fixins,
he niver recollects that a body will git dry.”

“Pass it round, Timothy,” said Harry—“that's not
a bad move of old Tom's by any means. I believe
I was riding one of my hobbies a little hard. But it
provokes me to see the good things, which are destroyed
in this country by bad cookery; and it provokes me
yet worse, to hear hypocrites and fools talk as if it were
wrong for the creature to enjoy the good things designed
for his use by a good Creator.”

“It is about as rational truly as to assert that it is
impious to plant a tree or cultivate a bed of exotics
in order to make finer a view naturally beautiful;
because Providence did not plant them originally
there.”

“Yes! Sartain! yes I go that,” said old Tom, who
was always death again humbugs, as he would have
said himself—“or wicked to wear breeches becase
natur did not fix them on our hinder eends in the
creashun. I do think, too, though I niver hearn of it
'till Archer come up this a-way, and larned us how to
eat and drink, as bread sauce doos go jist as nat'rally
with roast quails, as breeches on a—”

“Shut up you old sinner,” said Harry laughing.
“Here come the ruffed grouse, larded and boiled, for
boiling which Fred so abused me this morning.”

“He won't abuse you, when he has once tasted
them,” said Forester. “It is the best way of cooking
them.”

“Well—yes—they bees kind o' dry meat, roasted;
but then I don't find no great faults with the dryness—
specially when one's got jist this wine, to wrench his
mouth with arter.”

“They are good—with this celery sauce especially.”

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

“As is bread sauce to roast, so is celery sauce to
boiled game—Q-e-d.”

“There is a soupçon of onion in this also, is there
not?”

“Just enough to swear by—do you think it too
much?”

“I did not say a taste, I said a soupçon—are you
answered?”

“There aint no Souchong in it no how—nor no
Hyson, nother. He'll be a swearin' it's Java coffee
next”—said Tom, waxing again somewhat wrothy.

“He is thirsty again,” said Frank—“what shall it
be; I say hock after this boiled white meat.”

“Right, Frank, for a thousand!” said Harry, “and
after the woodcock, which Tim is bringing in, we'll
broach a flask of Burgundy.—Hock with your white
game, Burgundy with your brown! But hold, hold!
Timothy, Mr. Draw will not touch that hock—it's too
thin, and cold for his palate.”

“Rot-gut!”—replied Tom—“None o' your hocks
nor your clarets for me—there aint no good things
made in France except champagne wine and old Otard
brandy.”

“Well, which of two will you have, Tom?”

“That 'are champagne 's good enough for the likes
of me.”

“Oh! don't be modest, pray. It will hurt you!”

“What this here wine?—not what I've drinked on
it, no how—I could drink all of a dozen bottles of it,
without its hurtin' me a mite.”

The woodcock followed, were discussed, and pronounced
perfect; they were diluted with a flask of
Nuits Richelieu, so exquisitely rich and fruity, and of so
absolute a bouquet, that even the hostility of fat Tom
toward all French wines was drowned in the goblet,
thrice the full of which, mantling to the brim, he quaffed
in quick succession.

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

The Stilton cheese, red herring, and caviare, which
succeeded, again moved his ire, and were denounced
as stinkin' trash fit for no one to eat but a darned
greedy Englishman; but the bumper of port again
mollified him, and he said that if they ate them cussed
nasty things jist to make the wine taste the better for
the contrast, he didn't see no sense in that, for it was
mazin' nice without no nastiness afore it.

The devilled biscuits he approved mightily, as creating
a wholesome drought, which he applied himself to
assuage by emptying three bottles of pale sherry to his
own cheek, while the three young men were content
with one double magnum of Chateau Latour. But
when he emptied the third bottle he was as cool and
collected as if he had not tasted a single drop, and was
half disposed to run rusty, at being summoned into the
library to take a cup of coffee and an old cheroot—but
here again his wrath was once more assuaged by the
curaçao, of which he drank off half a tumbler, and
then professed himself ready for a quiet rubber, while
Tim was gittin supper.

p145-114 CHAPTER VII. THE QUADRUPEDS' QUARTERS.

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

There had been a very heavy shower during the
night, but it had cleared off bright and cold before
morning broke; and now, as the sun rose cloudless
in the pearly and transparent sky, no view can be conceived
more beautiful than that which lay before the
eyes of Heneage, who had arisen early, and stood
gazing over the landscape from the porch of the shooting
box.

The summits of the Warwick hills, round-headed,
bold and vast, cut sharp and clear, with all their wooded
outlines, in dark purple masses against the lucent sky;
beneath this massive screen, sparkling with dew, and
gay with ten thousand gorgeous hues, the noble woods
beyond the little river, concealed the level fields which
spread their gentle undulations to the foot of the distant
mountains. Nearer yet to the eye, in the middle
ground, the wild rocky bank fringed with its feathery
junipers, and carpeted with glossy leaved azalia, was
veiled by the thin mist, which seethed up, white as
snow, from the bed of the rushing torrent, to be dissipated,
long ere it reached the upper air, by the increasing
power of the sunbeams.

In the foreground the smoothly shaven lawn, as
green as an emerald, and almost as bright from the
lustre of the quick glancing dew-drops, sloped away
gently from the portico to the stream's margin, broken
by two or three clumps only of rare exotic rhododendrons,
and one large osier basket full of roses of all
colors and varieties, with a luxuriant honeysuckle entwined
about its handle.

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

Heneage stood there perhaps ten minutes, looking
out with a well pleased eye, and framing to himself,
half unconsciously, ideal pictures of some such solitude
as this to be his “dwelling place,”

“With one fair spirit for his minister,”

While he was still gazing at the little landscape, discovering
some new charm every moment, and yet
wondering within himself whether Harry did not find
it very lonely all by himself there in the winter, a
quick firm footstep resounded on the hall floor behind
him, and Archer's cheerful voice crying aloud,

“The top of the morning to you, Master Fred. I
had no notion that you were such an early man. Why
the sun is scarce out of bed yet.”

“Oh! yes, in the country I like to be moving early;
besides I thought you breakfasted about this time.”

“Never, before eight, unless when I am going to
make an early start and a long day's shooting. And
never at all, when Forester's up here. Timothy tells
him all sorts of lies about the time, but it is all to
no purpose; the little devil knows instinctively what
o'clock it is, even with the window shutters closed, and
nothing can induce him to get up in what he calls the
night.”

“And you classed me as being in the same category,
hey?”

“To say the truth, yes! and I half believe this fit of
early rising is only accidental. Perhaps the fair Maria's
charms have banished `nature's soft nurse.”'

“You be hanged!—If the truth must be told, it was
the infernal racket that your fat friend kicked up, when
he was starting, not metaphorically, but literally, in the

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

night, that aroused me. Where the deuce did he sleep?
and what took him away this morning? I thought he
was going to stay and shoot with us to day!”

“He slept upon the sofa in the library—he went
away to get his gun and Dash, and his shooting toggery.
How did he rouse you? I did not hear him.”

“Roaring like a bull for his bitters! what the devil!
are bitters, old fellow?”

“Oh! you will learn that soon, if you cultivate Tom.
By the way, what do you think of him?”

“Think!—By the Lord! He is far beyond all thinking
about. If he were not alive now, I should be quite
certain that Shakspeare must have made Falstaff after
him; as it is, I fancy, nature must have made him after
Falstaff.”

“All but the cowardice, I grant you—but the old
dog is pluck to the back-bone.”

“How did you make him out?”

“I discovered him—and it is not the act of my life
of which I am the least proud. I expect that I shall
go down to history, at least, side by side with Columbus,
Vasco di Gama, and such like worthies, as the discoverer
of Tom Draw, the great American original.”

“He is indeed an original!”

He is the original—the only original I have ever met
with in the United States. It is an odd thing, and I
cannot account for it, but original and eccentric characters
appear to me to be the growth of old countries.
But come, Tom will be back to breakfast soon, and by
that time Frank will be afoot, and bellowing for his
breakfast, of which he will eat more than any two
people in the room, while swearing all the time that he
has no appetite. Do you like to walk round, and look
at the stable and the kennels?”

“Of all things. I have been wondering where they
are placed; for there is no glimpse to be seen of any
out-house.”

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

“This way; I will show you; they are close by,
though hidden by my trees and trellices.”

The cottage stood, as it has been described, midway
the slope of the hill which arose very rapidly behind;
with an open grove of tall white oaks and
hickories growing close down to the rear of the building,
and sweeping off in a long receding curve from
either of the angles, to the right hand and left, a few
scattered trees only, dotting the lawn and flanking the
ends of the cottage.

A few yards only within the thick wood, at each extremity
of the house, a tall latticed screen composed of
rough gnarled branches, unbarked and fresh from the
forest, wound away in irregular lines until it was lost
to sight in the aisles of the woodland, covered with ivy
and parasitic creepers, such as thrive in the shade.

This rustic fence, which was at least eight feet in
height, and covered with perrenial verdure, completely
effected the concealment of the out-buildings, while it
was in its turn so far hidden by the outskirts of the
grove, as to give no appearance of regularity or artificial
stiffness.

Opening a small doorway in the fence, not far from
the gable of the house, Harry led his friend into a narrow
gravel walk, which wound for a short distance in
and out among the tall trees and then entered a little
court, immediately behind the cottage, covered with
smooth white gravel, and having in the centre a large
tank four or five feet deep by twelve in diameter, full of
beautifully clear spring water, which rushed into it continually
from a stone spout with a sweet gurgling sound,
and passed out again by an aperture below the lip of
masonry without ever overflowing it. In this tank there
stood half a dozen submerged flower pots containing
water lilies of different colors and varieties, their broad
glossy leaves floating upon the transparent surface, and
affording a grateful shadow to the gold and silver fish

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

with which it was stocked abundantly. In addition to
these finny sparklers, a dozen or two, at least, of beautiful
tame summer ducks were dipping and disporting
themselves on the clear waters, or preening their
feathers on the brink, while on the gravel of the courtyard
twenty or thirty little snow-white bantams were
strutting about proud of their feathery pantaloons, and
as many pink-eyed fan-tailed pigeons were circling
amorously, one about the other, making the air vocal
with their low plaintive cooing.

When Harry entered the little enclosure, pigeons and
summer ducks, and bantam fowls, all came crowding up
around him for their share of the handful of peas and
corn, with which the pockets of his shooting jacket were
provided.

“This is my poultry yard, what do you think of it,
and my little pets?—Why, Peter, you impudent little
villain,” he added, “are you not ashamed of yourself?”
as a pretty white pigeon, after circling two or
three times about him, fluttered up, and alighted on
his shoulder.

“They are very nice, and very pretty,” said Fred.
“But I must confess that I hate pets.—It is so disagreeable
to have them killed and eaten, after you have
been playing with them, and coaxing them.”

“Killed and eaten!” do you suppose that I am such
a Goth. No, Fred, the greatest cruelty I commit to
these little folks is to devour the eggs of the bantams,
the squabs of the white pigeons before they have
emerged from their boxes, and the young of these
summer ducks, which, as soon as they are able to take
care of themselves, are kept away from the water, and
fed in separate coops, in the other yard, upon celery.
None of these breeding people are ever destined for the
kitchen. In the other court, which is under Mrs.
Deighton's especial superintendence, there are never
less than a dozen woodduck, and as many capons,

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

cooped and waxing fat. But thither I never enter in.
But come, we are losing time; this is the way to the
stables.”

And with the words he opened a second door near
the pigeon house, and passed with his friend into a
larger court yard, neatly paved with cobble stones,
having, like the first, a large tank in the centre continually
fed by the same bright streamlet. This court, unlike
the other, was surrounded on all sides by buildings,
between two of which was an arched gateway, with a
large folding porte cochère, and as in the little poultry
yard through which they had come on their way, everything
was as clean and neat as a lady's drawing-room.
There was not a particle of litter or rubbish to be seen;
no odoriferous goat was there, no fox chained to his
rank kennel, no terrier prowling about, snapping and
troublesome, the only quadruped in sight being a large
tabby cat, blinking with her half closed eyes, and purring
to herself in silent satisfaction, as she lay basking
in the full sunshine on the top of the horse block.

Exactly facing them as they entered was a long
building consisting of an open carriage house, with an
arched colonnade of unbarked cedar posts in front,
with a hay loft above it surmounted by a small clock-house
with a weather cock and vane—at either end,
projecting some twelve feet in advance of the carriage
house, was a wing of twenty feet front, with a door
five feet wide of stout oak studded with nail heads, and
a handsome window. Each of these wings, which
were only of a single story, had an open cupola above
it with moveable venetian blinds, admitting a free circulation
of fresh air.

Toward the right of these wings Archer took his
way, and lifting the heavy latch, entered a passage six
feet wide by twelve in length, neatly paved, with a
large stable lamp swinging from the roof.

To the right of this was the grain room, its window

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

protected by a wire grating, and all the walls, floor,
and interior of the binns lined with sheet iron.

“All snug and tight, Fred,” said Harry, as he
pointed it out to him—“no rats or mice here! Pretty
good oats,” he added, taking out a sample. “The
best of North Rivers, but they are light as compared
with ours at home. These are what they call very
heavy here, nine and thirty pounds the bushel.”

“The devil! do you call that heavy!”

“Yes! Faith! exceeding heavy!—We have none
of your fifty pound oats, we don't manure liberally
enough for that, but come—here are the prads.”

He threw open the second door, and the stable was
before them, a square space of twenty feet, with four
stalls occupying the whole length of the wall facing
them—four stalls handsomely filled by the round
powerful quarters and square docks of four as spicy
cobs, as ever did their mile in three minutes—two
blacks and two bright glossy chesnuts.

Their sheets of clean white holland, their woollen
blankets checked with a yellow line, bordered with
blue, and with blue initials, their poitrels of the same,
and their hoods, knowingly folded back over their gay
surcingles, were the perfection of cleanliness and good
taste.

The floor paved with bricks set edgewise was
actually redolent of cleanliness. The beds were laid
down with a neatly plaited border; and over every
stall hung an elaborate wreath of straws destined to
allure any wandering fly—vain destination, for the
deuce a fly was to be seen or heard in that abode of
nattiness.

The horses had been fed and littered down, and the
venetian blinds were therefore closed, but enough of
light penetrated, with the air, through the shutters of the
ventilator in the roof to allow all the details to be seen
even to the smallest.

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As they came in one of the black cobs turned his
head and whinnied; and at the sound the others rattled
their blocks and running halters, and looked with some
token or other of recognition, at their master.

“Ah! you rogues, I must not forget you,” said
Harry, and turning back into the grain room he brought
a few bits of carrot, which lay ready to his hand in a
barrel, and fed them severally, clapping their smooth
and well-groomed necks, with this choicest of equestrian
dainties.

“Where is your hay—Harry? you have no loft
overhead I see!”

“No! indeed.—The hay is over the carriage house.
There is no greater mistake in the world than to put
your hay and grain over a stable, where all the fetor
and ammonia must rise and impregnate the food with
insalubrious stench.—No, indeed, nothing but the
fresh air above, and a constant change of that. Now
then, let us go to the other wing. See, here,” he continued,
as he entered it, “here is my harness and saddle
room, with a furnace and boiler for hot water—and
here,” passing through the vestibule—six feet, by
twelve, like that on the other side, “Here are the boxes
for the thoroughbreds.—This is Frank Forester's `Bright
Selim,' and a beauty he is with his rich chesnut coat
and mouse-colored muzzle, and that is my `Bay
Trojan;' you have not seen him yet. Tell me, Fred,
did you ever see a finer quarter, a more richly shaped
gambril—a more sloping shoulder. What a round
barrel too! and look at his chest! Plenty of room for
the bellows in that chest, hey, Fred?—Good arm,
short cannon bone!—What fault can you find with
him?”

“None, by the Lord! He is a superb colt. How
is he bred?”

“By Priam, out of Betsy Richards by Sir Archy.
There is no better blood in America.”

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“He ought to run.”

“He would, I have no doubt.—But he has never
been in training. I bought him young at a very big
figure, for his shapes, and as I cannot afford the
luxury of racing, I have eschewed training him.”

“You were wise, I suppose—yet I think I should
have risked being tempted.”

“Not I. I want him for a riding horse, not for a
racer; the two are incompatible.”

“Even so. Where are the dogs? Let us have a
look at them, and then to breakfast.”

“This way then.”

And leaving the stable court by the side door, they
went out into the oak grove, through which they walked
a couple of hundred yards to the skirt of a green
meadow, and there they found the kennel.

It was a neat wooden building of two apartments,
the outer one paved with brick and opening upon a
green court some twenty yards square, with a branch
of the little brook, which was dammed above to supply
the poultry yard and stable, meandering through it.
Within was a second room furnished with wooden
beds supplied sparingly with clean wheaten straw, and a
stove in the centre, protected by a grated fender or
cage reaching nearly to the ceiling.

The dogs—two brace and a half of superb setters,
two black with tan spots above their eyes—two red,
of Lord Clare's famous Irish breed, one liver and white
spotted—and a brace of strong Blenheim spaniels—
were rolling and playing on the grass, or swimming in
the little stream, all looking fresh and vigorous and
healthy.

“I give them a bit of fire at night, poor brutes, in
this autumn weather.—It is hard to send them shivering
to a cold bed after a stiff day's work in the cold water
of our swamps.—Besides, a dog lasts as long again,
when he is well cared for.”

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“Perfectly right, Harry—I never saw a more complete
establishment for its size. But where are my
pointers?”

“I was afraid they might get to fighting, so I had
them put into a spare lodging which I have for puppies
or bitches. Here it is, by the boiling room.”

“And very well they look, poor lads,” said Fred—
“Good dog Don! good dog Punch!—should not you
like to go out, old fellows?”

“You shall take them out one of these days, Fred;
we will go down and shoot quail in the open fields in
South Jersey—they will tell there. But hark! there
goes the breakfast bell, and as there is a broiled woodduck,
celery fed, fresh reeking from the gridiron, it
behoves us neither to let him grow cold, nor bide the
brunt of Frank Forester's fine morning appetite.

p145-124 CHAPTER VIII. COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOW BEFORE.

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Harry's prediction was well nigh accomplished,
would have been altogether, had they suffered five
minutes longer to elapse before they turned homeward
from the kennel; for, when they reached the dining-room
Frank was established, as large as life, at the
breakfast table, with half a woodduck on his plate, a
cup of black tea at his right hand, and Timothy at his
elbow, grinning from ear to ear at some one of his
favorite's witticisms.

“Just as I thought, Fred,” exclaimed Harry—“all
the broiled duck gone, I'll be bound.”

“Only half, only half of it, Harry, and I sent word
to Mrs. Deighton to put the other on the gridiron at
once, just to save time.”

“Wonderful!” said Archer.

“What's wonderful?”

“That Frank Forester should have thought of anybody
but himself, so long as there was anything good
before him?”

“Do you call this good?”—he replied, holding up
a morsel of the juicy broil on the point of his fork.

“Not having tasted it, I cannot say. I should bet
upon it though, by the way you are tucking into it.”

“One must eat something.”

“There's a cold quail pie on the side board, a
buffalo's tongue, and the sirloin.”

“Yes—but they are cold.”

“And so the duck is bad is it, Frank?” said Fred

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Heneage, sitting down to the well covered board.—“I
had rather not take your word for it.”

“Not bad exactly—a thought underdone perhaps!”
said Forester, who never praised anything.

“Not exactly!” said Fred—“upon my word, it is
delicious. Is this the bird you and the Patriot-man are
fighting about.”

“Skirmishing!—only skirmishing! I wish he would
send me down a few brace of his sand-hill cranes, or a
few couple of the blue-winged teal on which he brags
so confidently. I dare say, as I observed last night,
they are more delicate on the fresh water. Ha! what
is this?” he continued, as the boy Dick brought in a
pretty little note, upon a silver waiter, and presented
it to his master—“who brought that, Dick?”

“Mrs. D'Arcey's man, sir.”

“Ha! you're in luck, Fred; it must be an invite.
Exactly!” he continued, as he opened the note, and
skimmed the contents—“compliments, Mr. Archer—
this evening—coffee—happy to see his friend Mr. Heneage,
Mr. Forester too—Ha! ha! that's not so bad,
upon my soul!—`if it were any use to ask him, but as I
have quite made up my mind never to do so any more,
pray tell him from me that I beg he will not fatigue
himself, by coming to what I think I can hear him
calling that terrible old woman's tea fight.”'

“She's not a terrible old woman at all—I'll be
hanged if I ever said so”—exclaimed Frank, energetically—
“not a bit of it, she's a very good old thing indeed,
an excellent old thing!—I'll go for one, Harry,
that's a dead fact!”

“No, will you, Forester, indeed?” said Archer;
“that's something new for you, such a woman hater—”

“Lady hater fine lady hater! if you please, Master
Harry,” yes I do most cordially detest your genuine
New York fine lady, that's a fact, who is much too
genteel to know anything, or do anything, or even

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open her mouth to say anything—whose highest idea
of society is to gather eight or ten grinning counterjumpers,
without one idea beyond the tie of a gold and
silver cravat, about her; whose highest ambition is to
have a more elegant pocket handkerchief than Miss
Tare-and-Tret; who says `sir' at every sentence, giggles
at every word, and if a man of sense speaks to her,
looks on it as an act of great presumption on his part.
I do hate ladies, as they call themselves, but a good
honest, open-hearted, frank, natural, very woman, I
adore, I revere, I—”

“Hold hard—hold hard, Frank,” said Harry laughing,
“if all these raptures are intended for my little
friend Maria, they are thrown away pitifully, for she is
bespoken!”

“Tush! tush!” laughed Forester, in answer—“a
little saucy, blue-eyed, curly-pated chit, like that, a
woman!—a school girl more likely, fit only to be
marking samplers—no! no! it is the dear good old
thing, I mean. Upon my soul, if it were not for
having those two great awkward bouncing misses
calling me Pa, I dont know but what

I'd put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all,

“It would be to no purpose, she would not have
you, Frank.—But what say you, will you go indeed?
What say you, Fred?”

“Indeed will I”—said Forester, “I would not miss
my game of piquet, for a thousand, with my venerable
lady love.”

“We can hardly refuse, I should think”—said Heneage,
sipping his tea, and affecting to speak indifferently,
as if he did not care a farthing whether they
went or not. “They must know that we can possibly
have no other engagement, here in the country.”

“Oh! you need be under no restraint about that,”

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said Harry, casting a waggish glance toward Forester,
“we are under no rules of strict formality here in the
first place; and, as I give dinners now and then, they
cannot tell that I am not expecting friends. So, if you
think it a bore, as I dare say you do, for there will be
no one but the two girls and ourselves, except the old
lady, you can stay at home with fat Tom and myself,
and let Frank go to `the Elms' alone.”

“Why, do you not mean to go?” asked Heneage.

“Just as you please,” answered Harry, determined
to let it rest with Fred himself. “I thought, by your
manner, you did not care about it, except as a point
of ceremony, in which case—”

“What the deuce is the sense of all this coquetting
and nonsense?” said Frank Forester, half laughing,
half provoked, “you both of you intend to go, as you
know perfectly well; and, as there is no reason why
you should not like to go and flirt with two very pretty
girls, I cannot conceive why you don't say so. Look,
here comes old Tom, rattling across the bridge with
his big nags, and we have no time to lose if we are to
shoot to-day, sit down quick, and write your acceptance.”

“That is soon done,” said Harry, going to the writing
table, and inditing a note, which as soon as it was
finished, he handed to Dick, saying, “give that to
John, and hark you, tell Timothy to let him have a
horn of whiskey—and then I want to speak to Timothy.”

There was a moment's silence, while they were
lighting their cheroots, and then Archer began again.

“I've been thinking, boys, that it will be our better
way, instead of taking luncheon with us, and coming
back to a late hot dinner, which will lose us lots
of time, as we must be home to dress at seven o'clock,
to have a regular cold dinner sent out to the Eagle
rock at four o'clock, by which time we shall have got
through the cream of our shooting. What do you say?”

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