“Oh, yes! I understand,” said I, stopping him abruptly. “By the way, how is Blondel--that is, my horse--this morning?”
“Well, he looked fresh and hearty, when he went off this morning at daybreak--”
“What do you mean?” cried I, jumping up in my bed. “Went off? where to?”
“With Father Dyke on his back; and a neater hand he could n't wish over him. 'Tim,' says he, to the ostler, as he mounted, 'there's a five-shilling piece for you, for hansel, for I won this baste last night, and you must drink my health and wish me luck with him.'”
I heard no more, but, sinking back into the bed, I covered my face with my hands, overcome with shame and misery. All the mists that had blurred my faculties had now been swept clean away, and the whole history of the previous evening was revealed before me. My stupid folly, my absurd boastfulness, my egregious story-telling,--not to call it worse,--were all there; but, shall I acknowledge it? what pained me not less poignantly was the fact that I ventured to stake the horse I had merely hired, and actually lost him at the play-table.
As soon as I rallied from this state of self-accusation, I set to work to think how I should manage to repossess myself of my beast, my loss of which might be converted into a felony. To follow the priest and ransom Blondel was my first care. Father Dyke would most probably not exact an unreasonable price; he, of course, never believed one word of my nonsensical narrative about Schamyl and the Caucasus, and he 'd not revenge upon Potts sober the follies of Potts tipsy. It is true my purse was a very slender one, but Blondel, to any one unacquainted with his pedigree, could not be a costly animal; fifteen pounds--twenty, certainly--ought to buy what the priest would call “every hair on his tail.”
It was now too late in the evening to proceed to execute the measures I had resolved on, and so I determined to lie still and ponder over them. Dismissing the waiter, with an order to bring me a cup of tea about eight o'clock, I resumed my cogitations. They were not pleasant ones: Potts a byword for the most outrageous and incoherent balderdash and untruth; Potts in the “Hue and Cry;” Potts in the dock; Potts in the pillory; Potts paragraphed in “Punch;” portrait of Potts, price one penny!--these were only a few of the forms in which the descendant of the famous Corsican family of Pozzo di Borgo now presented himself to my imagination.
