"Does Sir Massingberd himself ride when he is in the field?" observed our host. "He must be a great weight for a shooting pony."
"Well, if you had asked me yesterday, I should have said he almost never rides; but it so happens that he did take the keeper's nag with him this morning. His great stables are all empty now, for, as probably you are aware, things are not kept up as they used to be at the Hall. Old Dobbin is the only representative of the magnificent stud that was once maintained there, now that Panther is dead. By the by, what has been done with him?"
"The carcass has been taken into the town," said Mr. Gerard. "He must have been a fine creature."
"His mouth, however, was of iron," said I. "Poor Marmaduke had no control over him whatever, at last; he had almost pulled his arms off."
"Notwithstanding the powerful bit?" observed Mr. Gerard.
"Yes," replied my tutor; "the bit was not only powerful, I should have almost called it cruel; but Sir Massingberd is a very good judge of all things belonging to a horse, and seems to have known that, at all events, no less was required. It was a town-made article, and came down from London with the animal."
"Ah, indeed," remarked Mr. Gerard. "But you have never told us, Mr. Meredith, how you managed to give the alarm here, without leaving your poor friend."
I am ashamed to say I had never given the old gipsy crone a thought from the moment that help arrived, although it was of her sending.
"The very woman whose appearance frightened the horse, repaired, as far as she could accomplish it, that mischief. She left in my hands, too, this fine old case-bottle, of which I should be sorry to rob her; and very curious is it that it has the Heath griffin, or some crest very like that, upon its stopper."
"It is the very crest," said the rector. "I am quite sure of that, although it is long since it last saw plate-powder. It is but too likely that the dark lady came wrongfully by it."
"Let us not be hasty to impute crime," observed Mr. Gerard, gravely. "This is a shooting-flask carried about the person; and gipsies are rarely pickpockets. When the owner is at home, it lies in someplace of safety; and gipsies are not burglars."
"Ably reasoned," observed Mr. Long. "It may, however, have been a case of 'findings, keepings,' as the school-boys say. I should think the Cingari claimed for themselves all flotsam and jetsam."