"Devil take it! that's unfortunate," cried Wittingham, "I wanted you to go and call out that meddling scoundrel, Hayward, whom I told you of. He bolted into my room last night, and he told me he had horsewhipped me once, and would horsewhip me again whenever he met me, if I could not get some gentleman of honour to arrange a meeting with him."
"Upon my life, I can't stay," cried the other, "though I should like to see you shoot him, too, if he is alive, which I have some doubts of--but stay," he continued, after a moment's thought, "I will find a man for you, and I will send him down without loss of time--Major Woolstapler; he has been lately in foreign service, but that's all the same, and he's a capital hand at these things; and, if you follow his advice, you will shoot your man to a certainty--he shall be down before three days are over; I am off for Bristol, and so up the Cath road to London. We shall get there to-night; and he will be down to-morrow or the next day early. He'll hear of you at Buxton's, I suppose. Good-by, good-by." And he jumped into the chaise.
A moment after, as soon as the door was shut, he seemed to recollect something, and putting his head out of the window he beckoned up young Wittingham, saying, in a low voice, "You'll need the bull-dogs, so I'll send you down mine. Tell Woolstapler to contrive that you have number one. It will do his business, if tolerably well handled--and I say, Wittingham, don't mention to any one that you have seen me either here or at Oxford. My cousin fancies I am in India still." Then turning to the postillion, he said, "Go on and brush along fast. Sixpence a mile for good going."
Never was such an intimation given to a postillion without the horses suffering for it. I actually once made a Bavarian go seven miles and a half an hour between Ulm and Augsburg by the same process. I record it as amongst the memorable events of my life, proudly satisfied that no man upon earth ever did the same, either before or since. On the present occasion, the postillion, without fear, struck his spurs into the horse's side, laid the whip over the back of the other with that peculiar kind of gentle application which intimated that if the brown-coated gentleman did not get on as hard as his four legs would carry him, the instrument of propulsion would fall more heavily the next time; and away they went, at a pace which was a canter up hill, a trot down, and a gallop over the flat. Captain Moreton leaned back in the chaise and murmured, "We've cut them, by Jove!"