Evening came, and with it came Jog, laden, as usual, with an armful of gibbeys, but the shades of night followed evening ere there was any tidings of the sporting inmates of his house.  At length, just as Jog was taking his last stroll prior to going in for good, he espied a pair of vacillating white breeches coming up the avenue with a clearly drunken man inside them.  Jog stood straining his eyes watching their movements, wondering whether they would keep the saddle or come off—­whenever the breeches seemed irrevocably gone, they invariably recovered themselves with a jerk or a lurch—­Jog now saw it was Leather on the piebald, and though he had no fancy for the man, he stood to let him come up, thinking to hear something of Sponge.  Leather in due time saw the great looming outline of our friend and came staring and shaking his head, endeavouring to identify it.  He thought at first it was the Squire—­next he thought it wasn’t—­then he was sure it wasn’t.

‘Oh! it’s you, old boy, is it?’ at last exclaimed he, pulling up beside the large holly against which our friend had placed himself, ’It’s you, old boy, is it?’ repeated he, extending his right hand and nearly overbalancing himself, adding as he recovered his equilibrium, ’I thought it was the old Woolpack at first,’ nodding his head towards the house.  ‘Well,’ spluttered he, pulling up, and sitting, as he thought, quite straight in the saddle, ’we’ve had the finest day’s sport and the most equitable drink I’ve enjoyed for many a long day.  ’Ord bless us, what a gent that Sir ’Arry is!  He’s the sort of man that should have money.  I’m blowed, if I were queen, but I’d melt all the great blubber-headed fellows like this ’ere Crowdey down, and make one sich man as Sir ’Arry out of the ’ole on ’em.  Beer! they don’t know wot beer is there! nothin’ but the werry strongest hale, instead of the puzzon one gets at this awful mean place, that looks like nothin’ but the weshin’ o’ brewers’ haprons.  Oh!  I ‘umbly begs pardon,’ exclaimed he, dropping from his horse on to his knees on discovering that he was addressing Mr. Crowdey—­’I thought it was Robins, the mole-ketcher.’

‘Thought it was Robins, the mole-catcher,’ growled Jog; ’what have you to do with (puff) Robins, the (wheeze) mole-catcher?’

Jog boiled over with indignation.  At first he thought of kicking Leather, a feat that his suppliant position made extremely convenient, if not tempting.  Prudence, however, suggested that Leather might have him up for the assault.  So he stood puffing and wheezing and eyeing the blear-eyed, brandy-nosed old drunkard with, as he thought, a withering look of contempt; and then, though the man was drunk and the night was dark, he waddled off, leaving Mr. Leather on his once white breeches’ knees.  If Jog had had reasonable time, say an hour or an hour and twenty minutes, to improvise it in, he would have said something uncommonly sharp; as it was he left him with the pertinent inquiry we have recorded—­’What have you to do with Robins, the mole-catcher?’ We need hardly say that this little incident did not at all ingratiate Mr. Sponge with his host, who re-entered his house in a worse humour than ever.  It was insulting a gentleman on his own ter-ri-tory—­bearding an Englishman in his own castle.  ’Not to be borne (puff),’ said Jog.