130 Mr. Benjamin Bobbin. 



dead heat ! No it ain't. Jack in the Box has won! Up 

 goes his number — 4 — on the telegraph board, the favour- 

 ite second, beaten by the shortest of heads. '' Capital 

 race, was it not ? " and '' Come across to the drag and 

 have some lunch, old fellow," says the Colonel, who is a 

 rare plucked one. The Colonel was hit hard, there was 

 no denying it ; so confident had he been that he had not 

 hedged a shilling of all the money he had backed Gil Bias 

 for. He had no children, and the old place was heavily 

 mortgaged. Why not sell it outright, now this railway 

 was going to spoil it in a picturesque point of view ? His 

 next-door neighbour, too,old Admiral Hunks, he knew got a 

 tremendous price for his place since the railway had come. 

 Why shouldn't he go and do likewise ? Thus reasoningwith 

 himself, the Colonel accepted the railway company's terms, 

 and forthwith proceeded to put Oakley Hall into the hands 

 of Messrs. Puff and Butterwell, the well-known auctioneers, 

 with a view to sale, and soon there were such advertise- 

 ments in The Times and Field as never were seen. What 

 an earthly paradise they made it out to be ! The 

 Garden of Eden was nothing to it. Messrs. Puff and 

 Co., in fact, gave it as their private opinion that had Adam 

 seen it he would have let Eden at once to a moral certainty, 

 and taken up his abode at Oakley. 



Our friend the Colonel was sitting over a late breakfast 

 one fine September morning, and had just ordered his 

 butler to tell the keeper he would shoot that day, when a 

 noise of carriage-wheels in front of the house announced 

 the arrival of an early visitor. Tingle, tangle, tingle went 

 the hall-door bell. ''Who can it be at this time o' day ?" 

 thought the Colonel, laying down the Morning Post, 

 and stopping on the way a piece of devilled kidney he was 



