Lounging past Tattersall’s one baking day in June, I had the good fortune to encounter Mr. Savage, apparently as busily employed as myself in the agreeable occupation of doing nothing. If you have ever been addicted to the fascinating pursuit of fox-hunting, you will understand how, even in London, the presence of a fellow-enthusiast is as a draught of water to a pilgrim in the desert sand. Linking arms, we turned unconsciously down the yard, and were soon mingling with the motley crowd who fill that locality on a sale-day.

“Any horses you know to be sold here?” I asked, as we stepped into the office for a list.

“None but Sawyer’s,” answered Mr. Savage; “pretty good nags, too. I shall bid for one of them myself.”

Then we fell to talking of the grass countries and their delights, of the different rumours afloat as to this master and that, how one county was to change hands, and another to be hunted six days a week, how the young Squire was getting keen, and the old Lord was growing slack, and how, under all conditions, the foxes were not so stout nor the sport so brilliant as it used to be. Lastly, we got upon the doings of our Market Harborough friends. Struggles was as jolly as ever, nothing changed, putting on weight, and looking for weight-carriers every day. Brush? Oh, Brush had lost a “cracker” on the Derby, would back “Skittle-Sharper,” though Savage warned him not, and had been obliged to go on fall pay. What of the Honourable Crasher? He had appeared in London as usual, and was gone for a little change of air to New York! I pictured to myself how enchanted the “Broadway Swells” would be with Crasher’s superfine languor and general debility; how they would worship him as the “real article” in dandyism; how they would quote his sayings and imitate his nonchalance, and how favourable a contrast such an imitation would offer to their moral state of hurry and confusion, particularly about dinner-time. But I wondered what could have taken Crasher there, of all places in the world. Then I mentioned that I had seen nothing of my old friend Sawyer for a considerable period, and indeed had received no intelligence of his doings since the steeple-chase, in which he got so bad a fall.

“Haven’t you heard?” exclaimed Savage. “Why Sawyer’s married, poor fellow! Married pretty Cissy Dove, that flirting girl, who used to look so well on a chestnut horse. You must remember Cissy Dove. Why, there’s the very horse going up to the hammer with Sawyer’s lot. I suppose she’s given up riding now—got something else to do.”

Sure enough there was the late Miss Dove’s exceedingly clever palfrey, looking fat and in good case, as horses always do when they are “to be sold without reserve.” There was Wood-Pigeon, twice his hunting size. There was the brown and the grey, and one I didn’t know, and Jack-a-Dandy himself, submitting, not very patiently, to the attention............