The cheering was now aroused, and Stephen had his glass filled again in triumph, while the farmer meditated thickly over the ruin of his argument from that fatal effort at fortifying it by throwing a hint to the discredit of the sex, as many another man has meditated before.

“Eh! poor old Bob!” Stephen sighed and sipped.  “I can cry that with any of you.  It’s worse for me to see than for you to hear of him.  Wasn’t I always a friend of his, and said he was worthy to be a gentleman, many a time?  He’s got the manners of a gentleman now; offs with his hat, if there’s a lady present, and such a neat way of speaking.  But there, acting’s the thing, and his behaviour’s beastly bad!  You can’t call it no other.  There’s two Mr. Blancoves up at Fairly, relations of Mrs. Lovell’s—­whom I’ll take the liberty of calling My Beauty, and no offence meant:  and it’s before her that Bob only yesterday rode up—­one of the gentlemen being Mr. Algernon, free of hand and a good seat in the saddle, t’ other’s Mr. Edward; but Mr. Algernon, he’s Robert Eccles’s man—­up rides Bob, just as we was tying Mr. Reenard’s brush to the pommel of the lady’s saddle, down in Ditley Marsh; and he bows to the lady.  Says he—­ but he’s mad, stark mad!”

Stephen resumed his pipe amid a din of disappointment that made the walls ring and the glasses leap.

“A little more sugar, Stephen?” said Mrs. Boulby, moving in lightly from the doorway.

“Thank ye, mum; you’re the best hostess that ever breathed.”

“So she be; but how about Bob?” cried her guests—­some asking whether he carried a pistol or flourished a stick.

“Ne’er a blessed twig, to save his soul; and there’s the madness written on him;” Stephen roared as loud as any of them.  “And me to see him riding in the ring there, and knowing what the gentleman had sworn to do if he came across the hunt; and feeling that he was in the wrong!  I haven’t got a oath to swear how mad I was.  Fancy yourselves in my place.  I love old Bob.  I’ve drunk with him; I owe him obligations from since I was a boy up’ard; I don’t know a better than Bob in all England.  And there he was:  and says to Mr. Algernon, ‘You know what I’m come for.’  I never did behold a gentleman so pale—­shot all over his cheeks as he was, and pinkish under the eyes; if you’ve ever noticed a chap laid hands on by detectives in plain clothes.  Smack at Bob went Mr. Edward’s whip.”

“Mr. Algernon’s,” Stephen was corrected.

“Mr. Edward’s, I tell ye—­the cousin.  And right across the face.  My Lord! it made my blood tingle.”

A sound like the swish of a whip expressed the sentiments of that assemblage at the Pilot.

“Bob swallowed it?”