"This was the way on it. When I was a bit of a boy, I used to travel with Ducrow, and learned a secret or two in horse-painting worth knowing. None of your stupid dyes, that you may see when the sun shines, making the coat hard and starry, like a plastered gable. This is a thing that won't wash off. Nothing takes it off but a preparation which is part of the secret. So I steals "Red Rover "-walked him off easy at two in the morning, for I had a key of my own-rode him forty miles across the country to a quiet place I knew of, and painted him a splendid gray. It was really, sir, a pretty thing to look at. We then set out together for Scotland; and barring that sharp-nosed bobby at Hexham, who must have been up to the dodge himself, no one challenged me. It would have done your heart good to have heard the jolly beak pitching into the bobby that a gray horse could not be a chestnut.

"I was then serving a master who was training another horse on the sly across the border. I put him up to my plan; and he went shares, as a gentleman should. And now you have my tale.'

"The matter was kept very close at the time. Mr Stanton made some inquiry to ascertain whether 'Deserter's' rather eccentric proceedings were in conformity with the rules of the Jockey Club; but

he found everything square in that respect, and thought it unnecessary to take any further steps.”

"Thank you, Rendelson. Strange, if true, as they say. No offence, man," said our host, as Rendelson's face darkened; "we don't doubt you-it is only too good to be true. Shall we join the ladies?"

So we broke up, and returned to the drawingroom. I had no further conversation with the widow, for Mr Rendelson entirely monopolised her, much, as I thought, to her chagrin. As I had a drive before me, I left early, amid many kind expressions of hope of a speedy return, and a very warm request on the part of Mrs Carrington that Dagentree and I would come up and visit her in the course of the week. Rendelson shook hands with me, with a cordiality which I thought more than the occasion called for, and with an eye which rather belied his smile.

L

CHAPTER XVII.

POLITICS.

I

FOUND Dagentree sitting up for me, and ac

cepted his cordial invitation to smoke a cigar on the verandah before retiring. He seemed singularly buoyant; and after I had recounted the adventures of the evening, I inquired after his proceedings.

"I prospered very well," he said, "and played abominably; but we defeated the curate notwithstanding."

"We!" I rejoined. "Who were we?"

"Miss Sophia Wendover and I played together," he explained, with the slightest tinge of consciousness in his manner. "She is a very good player. I had a first-rate couple of hours on the river before you went," he added, palpably changing the subject.

"It seems to have been a very good day for angling," I suggested, maliciously; but he would not rise to my fly; and without further dwelling on the events of the day, we fell into more general talk.

"I wonder, Dagentree," I said, "that you should have so little humanity about you. Sybaritic as all around you is, do you think that the 'unfeathered two-legged thing' which you are ever was intended, in the fitness of things, to vegetate in this bower of roses until you die in aromatic pain? If love stir you not, why should you be dead to ambition?" "What do you mean by ambition, my good benighted soul?"

"Oh, of course; the thing is as stale as the quotation. If I let the tangles of Neæra's hair' alone, I must 'scorn delights,' I suppose. But you know the

end, Comes the fell Fury.' ladyship here."

I had rather wait her

"And if all the world were to do as you do, what would become of us?"

"If they all had £20,000 a year, and did as I do, they would be uncommonly well off."

Pemberton. "Possibly; but how long do you think your £20,000 a year would remain to you, if this great social machine, which we call government, were never worked excepting by ignoble or mercenary hands?"

Dagentree. "Every one to his part. The machine to my mind would run much more smoothly, and do its work much better, were there fewer hands engaged in its operations. Politics I hate."

Pemberton. "Wherefore, thou cynic of the woods? Dagentree. "It is a base part. I grant you, like many other things, it has its own attractions at a distance. To 'wield at will a fierce democraty,' to labour for a country's good, and all the commonplaces of patriotism, are grand-sounding sentiments, and make the boyish pulse beat high with very laudable emotions. But the reality! It is like the pictures outside the menagerie compared with the sawdust, the gas, the evil odours, the hideous cries, and squalid wretchedness of the immured animals within. Political life is concentrated selfishness."

Pemberton. "I do not agree with you. The field of exertion is a noble one-the ends, when rightly estimated, the purest and most elevating of which the intellect is capable. The gold, of course, is not without alloy-no human merit is; but allowing a large discount for those who engage in public affairs from meaner motives, it is a magnificent feature of our country that her richest and noblest feel that it adds to their wealth and their nobility to be permitted to give their free services to the nation."

Dagentree. "Still the outside picture. But pay your money—and here the simile continues good-pay your money, and go inside. I do not say, with Walpole, that they all have their price in money value. He said, by the way, 'All these men have their price,' and