’Major Tifto was present and requested your Lordship’s opinion should be asked as to his guilt.  I do not know myself that we are warranted in troubling your Lordship on the subject.  I am, however, commissioned by the majority of the gentlemen who were present to ask you whether you think that Major Tifto’s conduct on that occasion was of such a nature as to make him unfit to be the depositary of that influence, authority and intimacy which ought to be at the command of a Master of Hounds.

’I feel myself bound to inform your Lordship that the hunt generally will be inclined to place great weight upon your opinion, but that it does not undertake to reinstate Major Tifto, even should your opinion be in his favour.

’I have the honour to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s most obedient Servant,
’Jeremiah Jawstock
‘Juniper Lodge, Staines.’

Mr Jawstock, when he had written this letter, was proud of his own language, but still felt that the application was a very lame one.  Why ask any man for an opinion, and tell him at the same time that his opinion might probably not be taken!  And yet no other alternative had been left to him.  The meeting had decided that the application should be made; but Mr Jawstock was well aware that let the young Lord’s answer be what it might, the Major would not be endured as master in the Runnymede country.  Mr Jawstock felt that the passage in which he explained that a Master of Hounds should be a depositary of influence and intimacy, was good;—­but yet the application was lame, very lame.

Lord Silverbridge as he read it thought it was very unfair.  It was a most disagreeable thunderbolt.  Then he opened the second letter, of which he well knew the handwriting.  It was from the Major.  Tifto’s letters were very legible, but the writing was cramped, showing that the operation had been performed with difficulty.  Silverbridge had hoped that he might never receive another epistle from his late partner!  The letter, as follows, had been drawn out for Tifto in rough by the livery-stable keeper in Long Acre.

’My dear lord Silverbridge,

’I venture respectfully to appeal to your Lordship for an act of justice.  Nobody has more of a true-born Englishman’s feeling of fair play between man and man than your Lordship; and as you and me have been a good deal together, and your Lordship ought to know me pretty well, I venture to appeal to your Lordship for a good word.

’All that story from Doncaster has got down into the country where I am M.F.H.  Nobody could have been more sorry than me that your Lordship dropped your money.  Would not I have been prouder than anything to have had a horse in my name win the race!  Was it likely I should lame him?  Anyways I didn’t, and I don’t think your Lordship thinks it was me.  Of course your Lordship and me is two now,—­but that don’t alter facts.