178 EACECOUESE AND COVEET SIDE. 



" More tim^ber," he continued, as we went 

 on ; " five feet of it, I should think. — You take 

 it coolly enough," he said, turning to me ; " hut 

 it's all the same to you, I suppose ! Why, Tom 

 says that the park palings you jumped at 

 Hey thorp was over six." 



I did not ask whether Tom was at present an 

 inmate of Colney Hatch or Hanwell, or whether 

 he was being treated privately for what must 

 have been an extremely acute case of mania, 

 unless Tom was given over to an unparalleled 

 perversion of the truth ; for it occurred to me 

 that this was probably another of those technical 

 jokes couched in foreign phraseology, so many of 

 which had been lost upon me during the 

 morning^; and I only tried to smile as intelli- 

 gently as I could while Packenham took 

 another rather searching survey of my features 

 before we moved on to inspect the remaining 

 fences. 



I was quite resigned by this time, and had 

 hardly any astonishment left for Dacre's story 

 about a nasty bullfinch he had once come upon 

 suddenly when out hunting, whose unaccountable 

 proceedings had caused a series of disasters 

 which placed the bird before me in an entu^ely 

 new light. A fierce bullfinch perched upon a 

 fence and setting a whole hunt at defiance 



