On arriving at the extremity of the plain, I looked towards the dingle.  Isopel Berners stood at the mouth, the beams of the early morning sun shone full on her noble face and figure.  I waved my hand towards her.  She slowly lifted up her right arm.  I turned away, and never saw Isopel Berners again.

The fourth morning afterwards I received from her a letter in which she sent me a lock of her hair and told me she was just embarking for a distant country, never expecting to see her own again.  She concluded with this piece of advice:  “Fear God, and take your own part.  Fear God, young man, and never give in!  The world can bully, and is fond, if it sees a man in a kind of difficulty, of getting about him, calling him coarse names; but no sooner sees the man taking off his coat and offering to fight, than it scatters, and is always civil to him afterwards.”

III.—­Horse-Keeping and Horse-Dealing

After thus losing Isopel, I decided to leave the dingle, and having, by Mr. Petulengro’s kind advice, become the possessor of a fine horse, I gave my pony and tinker’s outfit to the gipsies, and set out on the road, whereupon I was to meet with strange adventures.

At length, awaiting the time when I could take my horse to Horncastle Fair and sell him, I settled at a busy inn on the high-road, where, in return for board and lodging for myself and horse, I had to supervise the distribution of hay and corn in the stables, and to keep an account thereof.  The old ostler, with whom I was soon on excellent terms, was a regular character—­a Yorkshireman by birth, who had seen a great deal of life in the vicinity of London.  He had served as ostler at a small inn at Hounslow, much frequented by highway men.  Jerry Abershaw and Richard Ferguson, generally called Galloping Dick, were capital customers then, he told me, and he had frequently drunk with them in the corn-room.  No man could desire jollier companions over a glass of “summut”; but on the road they were terrible, cursing and swearing, and thrusting the muzzles of their pistols into people’s mouths.

From the old ostler I picked up many valuable hints about horses.

“When you are a gentleman,” said he, “should you ever wish to take a journey on a horse of your own, follow my advice.  Before you start, merely give your horse a couple of handfuls of corn, and a little water—­somewhat under a quart.  Then you may walk and trot for about ten miles till you come to some nice inn, where you see your horse led into a nice stall, telling the ostler not to feed him till you come.  If the ostler happens to have a dog, say what a nice one it is; if he hasn’t, ask him how he’s getting on, and whether he ever knew worse times; when your back’s turned, he’ll say what a nice gentleman you are, and how he thinks he has seen you before.