’I lived many years—­the greater part of my life, indeed—­with Sir Harry Swift. He was a real gentleman now, if you like—­free, open-handed gentleman—­none of your close-shavin’, cheese-parin’ sort of gentlemen, or imitation gentlemen, as I calls them, but a man who knew what was due to good servants and gave them it.  We had good wages, and all the proper “reglars.”  Bless you, I could sell a new suit of clothes there every year, instead of having to wear the last keeper’s cast-offs, and a hat that would disgrace anything but a flay-crow.  If the linin’ wasn’t stuffed full of gun-waddin’ it would be over my nose,’ he observed, taking it off and adjusting the layer of wadding as he spoke.

‘You should have stuck to Sir Harry,’ observed Mr. Sponge.

‘I did,’ rejoined Watson.  ’I did, I stuck to him to the last.  I’d have been with him now, only he couldn’t get a manor at Boulogne, and a keeper was of no use without one.’

‘What, he went to Boulogne, did he?’ observed Mr. Sponge.

‘Aye, the more’s the pity,’ replied Watson.  ’He was a gentleman, every inch of him,’ he added, with a shake of the head and a sigh, as if recurring to more prosperous times.  ‘He was what a gentleman ought to be,’ he continued, ‘not one of your poor, pryin’, inquisitive critturs, what’s always fancyin’ themselves cheated.  I ordered everything in my department, and paid for it too; and never had a bill disputed or even commented on.  I might have charged for a ton of powder, and never had nothin’ said.’

‘Mr. Jawleyford’s not likely to find his way to Boulogne, I suppose?’ observed Mr. Sponge.

‘Not he!’ exclaimed Watson, ‘not he!—­safe bird—­very.’

‘He’s rich, I suppose?’ continued Sponge, with an air of indifference.

‘Why, I should say he was; though others say he’s not,’ replied Watson, cropping the old pony with the dog-whip, as it nearly fell on its nose.  ’He can’t fail to be rich, with all his property; though they’re desperate hands for gaddin’ about; always off to some waterin’-place or another, lookin’ for husbands, I suppose.  I wonder,’ he continued, ’that gentlemen can’t settle at home, and amuse themselves with coursin’ and shootin’.’  Mr. Watson, like many servants, thinking that the bulk of a gentleman’s income should be spent in promoting the particular sport over which they preside.

With this and similar discourse, they beguiled the short distance between the station and the Court—­a distance, however, that looked considerably greater after the flying rapidity of the rail.  But for these occasional returns to terra firma, people would begin to fancy themselves birds.  After rounding a large but gently swelling hill, over the summit of which the road, after the fashion of old roads, led, our traveller suddenly looked down upon the wide vale of Sniperdown, with Jawleyford Court glittering with a bright open aspect, on a fine, gradual elevation, above the broad, smoothly gliding river.  A clear atmosphere, indicative either of rain or frost, disclosed a vast tract of wild, flat, ill-cultivated-looking country to the south, little interrupted by woods or signs of population; the whole losing itself, as it were, in an indistinct grey outline, commingling with the fleecy white clouds in the distance.