Manley, who was aut a huntsman aut nullus.
He measured a man by "the length of his
fork," not by the expression of his countenance,
or the shape of his head. But as Sir
Harry was wont to observe, there was such
a thing as too long a fork, so his approbation
was withheld until he had seen a man on
horseback; and if his seat there was square
and easy, his hand light, and his courage
good. Sir Harry hailed him as a brother.

Mr. Higgins attended the first meet of the
season, not as a subscriber but as an amateur.
The Barford huntsmen piqued themselves on
their bold riding; and their knowledge of
the country came by nature; yet this new
strange man, whom nobody knew, was in at
the death sitting on his horse, both well
breathed and calm, without a hair turned on
the sleek skin of the latter, supremely
addressing the old huntsman as he hacked off
the tail of the fox; and he, the old man, who
was testy even under Sir Harry's slightest
rebuke, and flew out on any member of the
hunt that dared to utter a word against his
sixty years' experience as stable-boy, groom,
poacher, and what not; he, old Isaac Wormeley,
was meekly listening to the wisdom of
this stranger, only now and then giving one
of his quick, up-turning, cunning glances,
not unlike the sharp o'er-canny looks of the
poor deceased Reynard, round whom the
hounds were howling, unadmonished by the
short whip, which was now tucked into
Wormeley's well-worn pocket. When Sir
Harry rode into the copse—full of dead
brushwood and wet tangled grass—and was
followed by the members of the hunt, as
one by one they cantered past, Mr. Higgins
took off his cap and bowed—half deferentially,
half insolently—with a lurking smile in the
corner of his eye at the discomfited looks
of one or two of the laggards. "A famous
run, sir," said Sir Harry. "The first time
you have hunted in our country, but I hope
we shall see you often."

"I hope to become a member of the hunt,
sir," said Mr. Higgins.

"Most happy—proud, I'm sure, to receive
so daring a rider among us. You took the
Cropper-Gate, I fancy; while some of our
friends here"—scowling at one or two
cowards by the way of finishing his speech.
"Allow me to introduce myself—master of
the hounds" he fumbled in his waistcoat
pocket for the card on which his name was
formally inscribed. "Some of our friends
here are kind enough to come home with
me to dinner; might I ask for the honour?"

"My name is Higgins," replied the stranger,
bowing low. " I am only lately come
to occupy the White House at Barford, and
I have not as yet presented my letters of
introduction."

"Hang it!" replied Sir Harry; "a man
with a seat like yours, and that good brush
in your hand, might ride up to any door in
the county (I am a Leicestershire man!), and
be a welcome guest. Mr. Higgins, I shall
be proud to become better acquainted with
you over my dinner table."

Mr. Higgins knew pretty well how to
improve the acquaintance thus begun. He
could sing a good song, tell a good story,
and was well up in practical jokes; with
plenty of that keen worldly sense, which
seems like an instinct in some men, and
which in this case taught him on whom he
might play off such jokes with impunity
from their resentment, and with a security
of applause from the more boisterous,
vehement, or prosperous. At the end of
twelve months Mr. Robinson Higgins was,
out-and-out, the most popular member of
Barford hunt; had beaten all the others by
a couple of lengths, as his first patron, Sir
Harry, observed one evening, when they
were just leaving the dinner-table of an old
hunting squire in the neighbourhood.

"Because, you know," said Squire Hearn,
holding Sir Harry by the button—"I mean,
you see, this young spark is looking sweet
upon Catherine; and she's a good girl, and
will have ten thousand pounds down the day
she's married, by her mother's will; and—
excuse me, Sir Harry—but I should not like
my girl to throw herself away."

Though Sir Harry had a long ride before
him, and but the early and short light of a
new moon to take it in, his kind heart was
so much touched by Squire Hearn's
trembling, tearful anxiety, that he stopped, and
turned back into the dining-room to say,
with more asseverations than I care to give:

"My good Squire, I may say, I know that
man pretty well by this time; and a better
fellow never existed. If I had twenty
daughters, he should have the pick of them."

Squire Hearn never thought of asking the
grounds for his old friend's opinion of Mr.
Higgins; it had been given with too much
earnestness for any doubts to cross the old
man's mind as to the possibility of its not
being well founded. Mr. Hearn was not a
doubter or a thinker, or suspicious by nature;
it was simply his love for Catherine, his only
child, that prompted his anxiety in this case;
and after what Sir Harry had said, the old
man could totter with an easy mind, though
not with very steady legs, into the drawing-
room, where his bonny blushing daughter
Catherine and Mr. Higgins stood close
together on the hearth-rug—he whispering,
she listening with downcast eyes. She
looked so happy, so like her dead mother had
looked when the Squire was a young man,
that all his thought was how to please her
most. His son and heir was about to be
married, and bring his wife to live with the
Squire; Barford and the White House were
not distant an hour's ride; and, even as these
thoughts passed through his mind, he asked
Mr. Higgins if he could not stay all night—
the young moon was already set—the roads
would be dark—and Catherine looked up