"Mr. Stangrave does, I'll warrant."

"I have at various times, both in England and in Virginia."

"Ah! Do they keep up the real sport there, eh? Well that's the best
thing I've heard of them, sir!--My horses are yours!--A friend of that
boy, sir, is welcome to lame the whole lot, and I won't grumble. Three
days a week, sir. Breakfast at eight, dinner at 5.30--none of your
late London hours for me, sir; and after it the best bottle of port,
though I say it, short of my friend S----'s, at Reading."

"You must accept," whispered Claude, "or he will be angry."

So Stangrave accepted; and all the more readily because he wanted to
hear from the good banker many things about the lost Tom Thurnall.

* * * * *

"Here we are," cries Mark. "Now, you must excuse me: see to
yourselves. I see to the puppies. Dinner at 5.30, mind! Come along,
Goodman, boy!"

"Is this Whitbury?" asks Stangrave.

It was Whitbury, indeed. Pleasant old town, which slopes down the
hill-side to the old church,--just "restored," though by Lords
Minchampstead and Vieuxbois, not without Mark Armsworth's help, to its
ancient beauty of grey flint and white clunch chequer-work, and quaint
wooden spire. Pleasant churchyard round it, where the dead lie looking
up to the bright southern sun, among huge black yews, upon their knoll