342 MR. THOMAS ROBINSON 



close by,' he gave ' All friends round St. Paul's,' and 

 made the evening go, till it was clear from general 

 appearances that, as our hunting friend old Carter would 

 say, ' the pace was good, and that settles them ' ? Then 

 drawing his chronometer from his fob with but little 

 less trouble than drawing a bucket from a well, he 

 announced that it was eleven o'clock, and drinking to 

 1 our next merry meeting,' and with regret that * the 

 best o' friends must part, as the dog said when he lost 

 his tail,' dismissed the company home, to meet them 

 next morning, himself as fresh as a daisy and with a 

 joke on his lips, to the effect that he * was dry, and that 

 if he had only known it overnight he would then have 

 taken enough to quench his insatiable thirst.' 



I have naturally, perhaps, dwelt over the incidents of 

 an evening which was a memorable one to both of us. 

 The last time, I think, that I ever had the pleasure of 

 seeing my old friend was at his own home, when he was 

 about eighty-one years old. And at that age he had just 

 mounted a colt which his stud-groom, Spriggs, himself a 

 man of sixty, was engaged in breaking. 



* The fact is,' said my veteran friend, ' Spriggs is 

 getting too old for it, and is afraid of the colt, who is 

 getting the mastery of him ; and unless I tackle him at 

 once, he (the colt) will be ruined.' 



However, after a bit he dismounted, and then told me 

 how his man had come to be unnerved. It appeared 

 that a two-year-old that I had sold to Spriggs a few 

 weeks before had run away with him from the top of a 

 hill about a quarter of a mile off, coming back to the 

 stables. Unfortunately the gates were shut, and the 

 filly charged them and got safely over, though hitting 

 them very hard. This or something else unseated 

 Spriggs, who fell* into the muck-yard on the other side, 



