bottles, and stirring up the cripples about to be examined, and the heavy
flap of the coach-house door announcing that all was ready, he forthwith
led the way through a door in a brick wall into a little three-sides of a
square yard, formed of stables and loose boxes, with a dilapidated
dove-cote above a pump in the centre; Mr. Buckram, not growing corn, could
afford to keep pigeons.




CHAPTER III

PETER LEATHER


Nothing bespeaks the character of a dealer's trade more than the servants
and hangers-on of the establishment. The civiler in manner, and the better
they are 'put on,' the higher the standing of the master, and the better
the stamp of the horses.

Those about Mr. Buckram's were of a very shady order. Dirty-shirted,
sloggering, baggy-breeched, slangey-gaitered fellows, with the word 'gin'
indelibly imprinted on their faces. Peter Leather, the head man, was one of
the fallen angels of servitude. He had once driven a duke--the Duke of
Dazzleton--having nothing whatever to do but dress himself and climb into
his well-indented richly fringed throne, with a helper at each horse's head
to 'let go' at a nod from his broad laced three-cornered hat. Then having
got in his cargo (or rubbish, as he used to call them), he would start off
at a pace that was truly terrific, cutting out this vehicle, shooting past
that, all but grazing a third, anathematizing the 'buses, and abusing the