"So I are without your telling," growled the countryman.
"Very well; I want your horse for a couple of hours. The Squire's ill, and I have to fetch the doctor."
And without another word, and heedless of the ejaculations of the bewildered Hodder, he began to loose the animal's girths.
"I'm blamed if you have a hair of him," said the yokel.
"I don't want one. Here!" and he pitched him a half-crown. The man gaped stupidly at the unharnessing of his beast, and began to pump up for another protest.
But before the words were ready, Mr Armstrong had led the horse out of the shafts and had vaulted on his bare back.
"Good-bye and thanks," said the tutor, clapping his heels to the animal's flanks; "you shall have him back safe."
And he plunged away, leaving the gaping son of the soil, with his half- crown in his hand, to the laborious task of hoisting his lower jaw back into its normal position.
Dr Brandram, in whose medical preserves Maxfield Manor lay, was solacing himself with an after-dinner pipe in his little cottage at Yeld, when the tutor, crusted in snow from head to foot, broke unceremoniously on his privacy. An intuition told the doctor what was the matter before even his visitor could say--
"The Squire has had a stroke. Come at once."
The doctor put down his pipe, and, with a sigh, kicked off his cosy slippers.
"He has chosen a bad night, Armstrong. How are the roads?"
"You'll need both horses to get through, and I can lend you a spent third."
"He knew what had happened, I think, but could not speak or move."
"Of course. Suppose you and I do the latter, and postpone the former till we are under weigh."
In less than ten minutes, the doctor's gig was trundling through the snow, with three horses to drag it, and Mr Armstrong in charge of the reins.
"Yes," said the doctor, "he's been leading up to this for a long time, as you have probably observed."
"Ah! well, you've only known him a year. I knew him twenty years ago."
"Ah!" replied the tutor, chirruping encouragement to the horses.
"Roger Ingleton's life twenty years ago was a life to make an insurance company cheerful," said the doctor.
"He had a scape-grace son. They fell out--there was a furious quarrel-- and one day the father and son--ugh!--fought, with clenched fists, sir, like two--two costermongers!--and the boy did not get the best of it. He left home, and no wonder, and was never heard of since. Faugh! it was a sickening business."