“Too much,” I said; “but go on with your novel.”

“Well, my plan is simply this—­but make a bet, will you?  I give odds.  I bet you five to one in fives, that I produce, in a week from this time, a novel called ‘Love and Glory,’ not of my own composition or any body else’s—­a good readable novel—­better than any of James’s—­and a great deal more original.”

“And yet not written by any one?”

“Exactly—­bet, will you?”

“Done,” I said; “and now explain.”

“I will, if we get round this corner; but it is very sharp.  Bravo, mare!  And now we’ve a mile of level Macadam.  I go to a circulating library and order home forty novels—­any novels that are sleeping on the shelf.  That is a hundred and twenty volumes—­or perhaps, making allowance for the five-volume tales of former days, a hundred and fifty volumes altogether.  From each of these novels I select one chapter and a half, that makes sixty chapters, which, at twenty chapters to each volume, makes a very good-sized novel.”

“But there will be no connexion.”

“Not much,” replied Jack, “but an amazing degree of variety.”

“But the names?”

“Must all be altered—­the only trouble I take.  There must be a countess and two daughters, let them be the Countess of Lorrington and the Ladies Alice and Matilda—­a hero, Lord Berville, originally Mr Lawleigh—­and every thing else in the same manner.  All castles are to be Lorrington Castle—­all the villains are to be Sir Stratford Manvers’—­all the flirts Lady Emily Trecothicks’—­and all the benevolent Christians, recluses, uncles, guardians, and benefactors—­Mr Percy Wyndford, the younger son of an earl’s younger son, very rich, and getting on for sixty-five.”

“But nobody will print such wholesale plagiarisms.”

“Won’t they?  See what Colburn publishes, and Bentley, and all of them.  Why, they’re all made up things—­extracts from old newspapers, or histories of processions or lord-mayor’s shows.  What’s that coming down the hill?”

“Two coaches abreast”—­I exclaimed—­“racing by Jupiter!—­and not an inch left for us to pass!”

“We’ve a minute yet,” said Jack, and looked round.  On the left was a park paling; on the right a stout hedge, and beyond it a grass field.  “If it weren’t for the ditch she could take the hedge,” he said.  “Shall we try?”

“We had better”—­I answered—­“rather be floored in a ditch than dashed to pieces against a coach.”

“Lay on, then—­here goes!”

I applied the whip to the left ear of the mare; Jack pulled at the right cheek.  She turned suddenly out of the road and made a dash at the hedge.  Away she went, harness, shafts, and all, leaving the stanhope in the ditch, and sending Jack and me flying, like experimental fifty-sixes in the marshes at Woolwich, halfway across the meadow.  The whole incident was so sudden that I could scarcely comprehend what had happened.  I looked round, and, in a furrow at a little distance, I saw my friend Jack.  We looked for some time at each other, afraid to enquire into the extent of the damage; but at last Jack said, “She’s a capital jumper, isn’t she?  It was as good a flying leap as I ever saw.  She’s worth two hundred guineas for a heavy weight.”