‘Oh, you’ll be Mr. Sponge?’ observed the stranger, jumping to a conclusion.

‘I am,’ replied our hero; adding, ’may I ask who I have the honour of addressing?’

’My name’s Romford—­Charley Romford; everybody knows me.  Very glad to make your ‘quaintance,’ tendering Sponge a great, rough, heavy hand.  ’I was goin’ to call upon you,’ observed the stranger, as he ceased swinging Sponge’s arm to and fro like a pump-handle; ‘I was goin’ to call upon you, to see if you’d come over to Washingforde, and have some shootin’ at me Oncle’s—­Oncle Gilroy’s, at Queercove Hill.’

‘Most happy!’ exclaimed Sponge, thinking it was the very thing he wanted.

‘Get a day with the harriers, too, if you like,’ continued the shooter, increasing the temptation.

‘Better still!’ thought Sponge.

’I’ve only bachelor ’commodation to offer you; but p’raps you’ll not mind roughing it a bit?’ observed Romford.

‘Oh, faith, not I!’ replied Sponge, thinking of the luxuries of Puffington’s bachelor habitation.  ‘What sort of stables have you?’ asked our friend.

‘Capital stables—­excellent stables!’ replied the shooter; ’stalls six feet in the clear, by twelve dip (deep), iron racks, oak stall-posts covered with zinc, beautiful oats, capital beans, splendacious hay—­won without a shower!’

‘Bravo!’ exclaimed Sponge, thinking he had lit on his legs, and might snap his fingers at Jog and his hints.  He’d take the high hand, and give Jog up.

‘I’m your man!’ said Sponge, in high glee.

‘When will you come?’ asked Romford.

‘To-morrow!’ replied Sponge firmly.

‘So be it,’ rejoined his proffered host; and, with another hearty swing of the arm, the newly made friends parted.

Charley Romford, or Facey, as he was commonly called, from his being the admitted most impudent man in the country, was a great, round-faced, coarse-featured, prize-fighting sort of fellow, who lived chiefly by his wits, which he exercised in all the legitimate lines of industry—­poaching, betting, boxing, horse-dealing, cards, quoits—­anything that came uppermost.  That he was a man of enterprise, we need hardly add, when he had formed a scheme for doing our Sponge—­a man that we do not think any of our readers would trouble themselves to try a ‘plant’ upon.

This impudent Facey, as if in contradiction of terms, was originally intended for a civil engineer; but having early in life voted himself heir to his uncle, Mr. Gilroy, of Queercove Hill, a great cattle-jobber, with a ’small independence of his own’—­three hundred a year, perhaps, which a kind world called six—­Facey thought he would just hang about until his uncle was done with his shoes, and then be lord of Queercove Hill.

Now, ‘me Oncle Gilroy,’ of whom Facey was constantly talking, had a left-handed wife and promising family in the sylvan retirement of St. John’s Wood, whither he used to retire after his business in ‘Smi’fiel’’ was over; so that Facey, for once, was out in his calculations.  Gilroy, however, being as knowing as ‘his nevvey,’ as he called him, just encouraged Facey in his shooting, fishing, and idle propensities generally, doubtless finding it more convenient to have his fish and game for nothing than to pay for them.