52 Captain Dahher. 



of his flea-bitten, Roman-nosed, grey hunter, waves his 

 hand gaily to his admiring housekeeper, who waits at 

 the door with folded arms to see him off, and jogs steadily 

 off to meet Lord Daisyfield's hounds at Tilbury Cross 

 Roads. 



Captain Dabber is a short, stout, powerfully-built man, 

 with a stubbly beard and moustache of a mustard and 

 pepper hue, and at the present moment is attired in a 

 cutaway coat of dark green cloth, with brass buttons. 

 White cord breeches, and brown-topped boots adorn a 

 pair of very serviceable-looking legs, and the whole is 

 topped up with a velvet cap. As he himself expresses it, 

 he was ^'foaled " in the county, and as he has shot and 

 hunted, fished and walked, and driven pretty well all 

 over it in the course of his fifty-five years of existence, why 

 he may be said to be conversant with every inch of it, and 

 in return to be pretty well known in it, himself. 



Now, it was the original intention of our friend's 

 parents — as worthy an old couple as ever lived — to send 

 their hopeful son (who was their only child, by the way) 

 into the Church, when he had arrived at years of dis- 

 cretion ; and, with this object in view, they began, of 

 course, by thoroughly spoiling him. Being a strong 

 healthy urchin, with a tendency to low company, and 

 always brimful of the most exuberant spirits, he began 

 by the time he was twelve years old to get a trifle out of 

 their hand ; so they sent Master Charles off to school, 

 with a view to sobering him down a bit. He evidently 

 possessed no scholarly tastes, however, for he ran away 

 from the first one, and was expelled from two others, one 

 after the other. 



The two old people were nearly brokenhearted, as may 



