CAPTAIN SHABBYHOUNDE 263 



fitting clothes hung on him like sacks, and whose short 

 parchment-looking leathers and tightly-pulled up boots were 

 a world too wide for his shrunk shanks. The poor creature 

 did not look as if he had had a good meal for a month, and 

 most likely he had not ; for the Captain gave him but twelve 

 shillings a-week, and he had himself, a wife, and three small 

 children to keep out of it. How meek, passive poverty is 

 imposed upon in this world ! And yet the poor creature was 

 faithful, faithful even to the Captain — early and late at his 

 stable, careful and patient with his horses, attentive to the last 

 comer as to the first ; his regard for the animal seemed to 

 extend to the whole equine generation. 



The Captain was not the man to tell his right hand what 

 his left hand did ; but if he had, we really believe he might 

 have trusted Job Tod. He would have kept his secret. 

 Indeed, nature seemed to have meant Job for the secret 

 service department ; for if ever there was a silent, uncom- 

 municative, monosyllabic creature, it was Tod. " Yes " or 

 " No " seemed to constitute the stock of his vocabulary. 

 Honest as Aristides, and always as poor ; patient, attentive, 

 watchful, without being inquisitive, he served even Shabby- 

 hounde with all the faithfulness of affection ; j-et he had 

 never risen much above the rank of a horse-dealer's man. 

 The reader will see why. Job's manner and appearance were 

 against him — he had but one eye and no tongue. 



Strutt, however, was not deficient in that respect. Having 

 abused every limb and every look about the horse, he turned 

 the voluble battery of his tongue upon poor Job, whose 

 master he belaboured, through him, in a most exemplary way. 

 Job, however, as we said before, cared little for that sort of 

 thing, and having retraced his steps to Harborough, and 

 returned the pony to the butcher from whom he had borrowed 

 it, he betook himself to his stable, just as if he had only been 

 along at the post office. 



