Crippled as I was, I may here remark, once for all, that I was solely dependent for amusement on the perusal of such characters as I met in the bar at the Haycock. Deprived of my hunting, not overfond of reading, here was a book laid open, so to speak, before me, of which I had not even the trouble to turn the page, whilst the peculiarities of these different visitors furnished an inexhaustible fund of amusement; their rapid succession preserved me from the dangers of prolonged _têtes-à-têtes_ with Miss Lushington—interviews that could but have resulted in my total subjection by that seductive being, herself cold and unimpressionable as marble, experienced in the falsehood of our sex, and superior to the weaknesses of her own.
Off his horse, Tips was, to say the least, a very singular-looking person. He was a low, strong, broad-shouldered man, a perfect Hercules down to his waist, and with a length of arm and depth of chest that would have made him an ugly customer in the ring, an appellation to which his physiognomy also fully entitled him. Not that he had what is termed a “fighting nob;”—far from it. High features, bushy eyebrows, an aquiline nose, and a long, prominent chin gave him a sort of resemblance to a dilapidated Henri Quatre; but the nose had been smashed and thickened by a fall, the chin knocked on one side by the kick of a horse, and one of the eyes, rent and lacerated by a thorn, was disfigured by a ghastly droop of the lid, and a perpetual crimson in what ought to have been the white of the eye; very large, thick whiskers, of a rusty brown, framed this singular face, and a knowing, wide-awake leer in the undamaged eye, would have told an observer, without the aid of the blue-spotted neckerchief, that its proprietor was a “party concerned about horses.” Nevertheless, the man had a game, bold look about him, all the same,—that latent energy in his glance, which denotes physical courage, and without which a good judge of his species does not care to select one of the half-score he requires for the manning of a life-boat, the capturing of a gun, or the performance of any other dare-devil feat, that demands more boldness than brains. Had Tips been moulded in fair proportions, he would have been a heavy-weight; but below the waist, I must acknowledge, his limbs were more like those of a monkey than a man. His stomach seemed all to have gone up into his chest; and although his thighs were long, his thin shrivelled legs were absurdly short and small below the knee. He was made for a horseman and nothing else; nor, when you saw him at daybreak, exercising some lawless three-year-old, with its mouth full of “keys” and its dogged, sullen eye, prepared to take the slightest advantage of its rider, either to jump, kick, rear, or go backwards, could you help acknowledging that here, at least, was the _right_ man in the _right_ place. Of his early history I gathered some particulars from himself. I give them as an additional proof, if indeed any such were wanting, that in every grade and situation,